An entire branch of Archaeology, that of religious
archaeology, is dedicated to the confirmation or disapproval of events depicted in
sacred texts as factual historical events. What archaeologists usually follow
when pursuing the confirmation of an event is the establishment of synchronism.
That is, the matching of data offered by the text in point with archaeological
finds such as settlements and objects, epigraphical accounts written in stone and
other inscriptions.
With regards to one biblical event, the existence of the
kingdom of King Solomon, and indeed that of King Solomon himself, there has
been some dispute. There has until now been insufficient evidence that iron-age
cultures had emerged in the Jordanian space where King Solomon had purportedly
ruled during the 10th Century B.C.
Structures dug up by archaeologists at Hazor, Megiddo,
Bethshan and Gezer are claimed by some scholars to have belonged to his kingdom,
and to have been destroyed simultaneously (after the King’s death as the Bible
relates) in a raid by the Pharaoh Shoshenq I, whose hebraized name was given in
the bible as Shishak. Indeed, inscriptions in honor of the pharaoh on a wall at
Karnak depict a thorough list of Palestinian settlements conquered by Shoshenq
and his armies.
Many scholars however, citing the lack of any contextual
evidence to suggest a thriving Iron Age society at the time, attribute the
ruins to the later 9th Century B.C. rule of king Omri.
Archaeologists digging at a site called Khirbat en-Nahas (Arabic
for “ruins of copper”) in southern Jordan have uncovered something
extraordinary. The site was a copper mine that’s been used over many hundreds
of years. The main sign that it ever existed is a large amount of slag left
over from the smelting process. Slag means charcoal, and charcoal means the
possibility for carbon dating. Professor Thomas Levy of the University of
California San Diego lead the research, and using advanced 3D positioning
technology (which is just a fancy way of letting the computer doing your
stratigraphy; it can be done manually just as well, it just takes more time)
has tagged and sent off for analysis several pieces of charcoal.
His finds are most interesting. The oldest (lower) strata of
slag dates back from the 10th Century B.C., smack in the middle of
the biblical Solomon’s reign. This rebuffs research done in the 70s that
suggests metalworking began there only three centuries later.
The find alone isn’t enough to convince every scholar that
these are King Solomon’s mines (or rather, the historical equivalent of Sir
Rider Haggard’s fabulous yet fictional gold mines of the same name), but is certainly
more than enough to make the theory of the existence of Solomon’s kingdom quite
plausible.
There’s more however. Levy’s team dug through 20 meters of
slag to get at the results, and its structure made him raise an eyebrow. It
shows that around 910 BC there was a disruption of mining, and that it only
resumed sometime in the 9th Century BC. This coincides with the date
of Shoshenq’s raids, and his own records show that he had occupied the settlement
of Hazevah, about 8 miles away from Khirbat en-Nahas.
"We can't believe everything ancient writings tell us,"
Levy said in a statement, referring to both the Bible and Shoshenq’s
inscriptions. "But this research represents a confluence between the
archaeological and scientific data and the Bible," and felt confident
enough to say that “We’re back in the ballgame.”
The find supports the theory of Egyptian raids on the
Edomite kingdom and ancient Israel right after the age of Solomon, and Levy’s
team hopes to find out next whether the site actually belonged to Solomon’s
kingdom or to Edom’s leaders.
