Tel Lachish

תל לכיש / Tell ed-Duweir

Israel · Southern District

Ancient cityIntermittent excavation
Approximate period5,500 BCE — 150 BCEBronze Age and Iron Age See on the map ↓

In brief

Lachish was an important centre first among the Canaanite city-states and later within the Kingdom of Judah. Alongside walls and temples, excavations have yielded objects relating to the use of early alphabetic writing.

What was found?

  • 1Ivory comb with a Canaanite inscription

    It is a double-sided comb bearing a sentence expressing a wish to remove lice from the hair and beard. Researchers date the inscription to approximately 1700 BCE; the remains of a louse were also detected on one of its teeth.

  • 2Monumental city gate

    Gate structures from different phases and sections of the six-chambered gate were uncovered during excavations. The remains allow the architecture and transformation of the Iron Age city entrance to be traced.

  • 3Assyrian siege ramp

    The ramp, constructed by piling stones against the city's slope, is associated with the Assyrian siege of 701 BCE. It documents the engineering solution used to bring siege engines close to the walls.

  • 4Lakiş letters

    Letters written on pottery sherds found in the gate area preserve military communications in ancient Hebrew. They provide information about troop movements, patrols and signal stations.

What does it point to?

The inscribed comb shows that the alphabet could be used for an everyday subject such as personal grooming. The gate, siege ramp and letters present a picture of a city in which defensive architecture and military communications can be studied together.

What did it teach us?

  1. Documented that early alphabetic writing could be used to compose a complete sentence on an everyday object.
  2. The louse remains on the comb directly linked the object's use to the problem mentioned in the inscription.
  3. Revealed physical traces of Assyrian siege techniques through a surviving ramp.
  4. Showed that pottery sherds were used as writing material for military correspondence.

Images

Lachish 160313 09
Oren Rozen · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Latest news / selected archive

In 2022, it was announced that a complete Canaanite sentence expressing a wish to be rid of lice had been read on an ivory comb previously found during excavation and dated to approximately 1700 BCE.

Record

Culture
Canaanite; Judahite
First modern dig
1932
Team / historical
Yosef Garfinkel, Michael Hasel, and Martin Klingbeil; Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Southern Adventist University
Coordinates
31.5650°, 34.8489°

Sources

  1. en.parks.org.il
  2. openscholar.huji.ac.il
  3. jjar.huji.ac.il
  4. en.wikipedia.org
  5. İsrail Eski Eserler İdaresi — Tel Lakiş kapı meydanı kazı raporu

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