Dec 4, 2022 06:31 PM
https://bigthink.com/the-past/earth-magn...struction/
EXCERPTS: A vast city of 10,000 once stood within the grounds of Tel Zafit National Park. Now it is an archaeological dig, nothing but burned mud bricks, a crumbling break in the city’s defenses, and weapons cobbled together at the last minute from animal bones. What happened here? What force brought this great city to its end?
According to the Bible, Gath was one of the main Philistine cities and the home of Goliath the Giant. Its destruction is glossed over, described in less than one verse of the Bible, in the book of 2 Kings.
Archaeologists have long worked to figure out what happened to the ancient city of Gath, and just as important, when it happened. But dating sites like this is no straightforward task. Recently, a team of scientists led by Yoav Vaknin of Tel Aviv University tried a new method to date archaeological digs like Gath: They used the Earth’s magnetic field. Their results recently appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
[...] The history of changes in the magnetic field is recorded in rock. Perhaps the most well-known record is etched in stone at the mid-Atlantic ridge... Surprisingly, this method can also be used for archaeological sites like the one at Gath...
[...] the team gathered the information the mud bricks held about the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, and they combined it with knowledge of other events whose timing is precisely known.
[...] Using their chronological anchors, they could create a timeline. They recorded the intensity and direction shown in mud bricks from 21 archaeological layers at 17 sites to discover exactly when each of these cities was destroyed. The team showed that several cities were destroyed around the same time — Tel Rehov, Horvat Tevet, Tel Zayit, and Gath. They suggest that all of these cities were destroyed by King Hazael.
The timing of the destruction of another city, Tel Beth-Shean, is often contested. Vaknin’s team studied this site and found that its bricks recorded a different magnetic field intensity and orientation than the other cities, suggesting that this Judean city was destroyed perhaps 70 to 100 years earlier, by Pharaoh Shoshenq I. The biblical account of still another ancient city, Tel Beth-Shemesh, suggests destruction at the hands of Jehoash, the King of Israel, and the team’s geomagnetic dating showed a timeline consistent with this interpretation... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: A vast city of 10,000 once stood within the grounds of Tel Zafit National Park. Now it is an archaeological dig, nothing but burned mud bricks, a crumbling break in the city’s defenses, and weapons cobbled together at the last minute from animal bones. What happened here? What force brought this great city to its end?
According to the Bible, Gath was one of the main Philistine cities and the home of Goliath the Giant. Its destruction is glossed over, described in less than one verse of the Bible, in the book of 2 Kings.
Archaeologists have long worked to figure out what happened to the ancient city of Gath, and just as important, when it happened. But dating sites like this is no straightforward task. Recently, a team of scientists led by Yoav Vaknin of Tel Aviv University tried a new method to date archaeological digs like Gath: They used the Earth’s magnetic field. Their results recently appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
[...] The history of changes in the magnetic field is recorded in rock. Perhaps the most well-known record is etched in stone at the mid-Atlantic ridge... Surprisingly, this method can also be used for archaeological sites like the one at Gath...
[...] the team gathered the information the mud bricks held about the direction and intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field, and they combined it with knowledge of other events whose timing is precisely known.
[...] Using their chronological anchors, they could create a timeline. They recorded the intensity and direction shown in mud bricks from 21 archaeological layers at 17 sites to discover exactly when each of these cities was destroyed. The team showed that several cities were destroyed around the same time — Tel Rehov, Horvat Tevet, Tel Zayit, and Gath. They suggest that all of these cities were destroyed by King Hazael.
The timing of the destruction of another city, Tel Beth-Shean, is often contested. Vaknin’s team studied this site and found that its bricks recorded a different magnetic field intensity and orientation than the other cities, suggesting that this Judean city was destroyed perhaps 70 to 100 years earlier, by Pharaoh Shoshenq I. The biblical account of still another ancient city, Tel Beth-Shemesh, suggests destruction at the hands of Jehoash, the King of Israel, and the team’s geomagnetic dating showed a timeline consistent with this interpretation... (MORE - missing details)
