Recent Discoveries at Biblical Gibeon

When we went to Palestine in the summer of 1956 to begin the first archaeological excavation of the city of Gibeon, we might have anticipated our most important discovery from some hints in biblical history. While in the more than 40 times that Gibeon is mentioned, practically nothing is said about the physical features of the city, there is significantly an occasional and casual mention of the city’s water supply.

Joshua once cursed the wily inhabitants of Gibeon, those who so successfully deceived him that he made a covenant of peace with them, and “made them that days hewers of wood and drawers of water” (Josh. 9:27). Later, the scene of the famous contest between the 12 men of Joab and the 12 men of Abner is explicitly named as the “pool of Gibeon.” There the two opposing groups of contestants sat down, “the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool” (2 Sam. 2:13). Centuries later, after the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, the usurper Ishmael was found by Johanan “by the great waters that are in Gibeon (Jer. 41:12).

Remarkable Water System

Yet these hints that Gibeon was long and widely known for its water supply did not fully prepare us for the discovery in 1956 and 1957 of one of the most extensive water systems ever unearthed in ancient Palestine. It included a system of tunnels cut through a total distance of 389 feet of solid rock, more than 172 steps for the water carriers of Gibeon, and a pool around the edge of which is a spiral stairway which once provided the “drawers of water” with an easy access to the water level deep within the hill on which the city stood. This elaborate construction is even more impressive when one considers that it was all hewn from rock with primitive, untempered tools.

When we started digging early in the summer of 1956 at the Arab village of Al Jib, just eight miles north of Jerusalem, we were not absolutely certain that the site was that of ancient Gibeon. Biblical scholars had debated the location of Gibeon for over a century, and there was still reasonable doubt about its being at Al Jib. The expedition had been sent out by the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania and the Church Divinity School of the Pacific for purposes of gathering what information it could. The first staff consisted of seven Americans: S. E. Johnson, Jean H. Johnson, Marcia Rogers, T. H. Hall IV, R. C. Dentan, H. N. Richardson, and the writer, who served as director; and Thorir Thordarson from Iceland, and a Jordanian surveyor, Subhi Muhtadi.

The Site Of Gibeon

After weeks of monotonous work looking through fragments of broken pottery found by our 80 Arab workmen, we one day had the good fortune of finding a short Hebrew inscription on the handle of a jar which supplied the answer to decades of debate over the location of the famous biblical city. It read “Gibeon.” A few days later, there emerged from the ground another piece of pottery inscribed with the name “Hananiah,” a name which appears in Jeremiah 28:1: “Hananiah the son of Azzur the prophet, who was of Gibeon.” Now, at last, we knew exactly where we were.

During the following season, that of 1957, with a different staff (this year the director was assisted by F. V. Winnett, Asia G. Halaby, Linda Witherill, Claus Hunzinger, and again Subhi Muhtadi) we succeeded in clinching the identification even more firmly by finding 24 additional inscriptions of the name “Gibeon” and the actual names of prominent citizens of the city. Some of them bore biblical names, such as Azariah, Amariah, Nahum and Meshullam. Others were Hebrew names not mentioned in the Bible.

Why did the men of Gibeon take the trouble to place the name of their city on the handles of these pottery jars? This question was answered during our second season, when we found that these jars were made for the export of fine wine from Gibeon. The inscriptions were nothing more than labels for wine jars; the manufacturer had labelled his product with his name and address. That which had once advertised the quality of the product now provided the student of the Bible some 2,500 years later with a fixed location on the map of ancient Palestine. This discovery now makes it possible to use the biblical accounts concerning the history of Gibeon as a guide for what is found at Al Jib, and to illustrate the text of the Bible by what comes from the 16 acres of ruins of several superimposed cities at this place.

Vulnerable To Attack

Obviously this ancient city was most vulnerable at the point of its water supply. A city could be swiftly brought to its knees by merely cutting its inhabitants off from the spring which supplied them with water. It has long been known from the Bible (2 Chron. 32:30) and from the discovery of the famous Siloam tunnel in Jerusalem that Hezekiah was famous for the conduit which he had cut to bring water inside the walls of Jerusalem, probably during the perilous days of 701 B.C. when Sennacherib came down “like a wolf upon the fold.”

It was the same kind of peril which must have prompted the building at great cost of the ingenious water system which we uncovered at Gibeon in the summers of 1956 and 1957.

Actually there were two systems. Gibeon was built on a rocky hill rising about a hundred feet above the surrounding plain. Around the edge of this naturally defended hill the inhabitants had built a strong city wall, 26 feet thick just above the spring; but at one time the people had been accustomed to go out a small watergate and climb down the steep hill to get water from the spring below.

In time (just when, we have not as yet been able to determine) the engineers of the city devised a safer means of getting to the water which flowed from the base of the hill. They cut a tunnel through 170 feet of solid limestone from the city square within the city wall to the spring at the bottom of the hill. There, at the end of the tunnel, they carved out a cave and equipped it with a stone door which could be dropped quickly into place in time of attack. Within the cave they had a reservoir which could be reached easily and safely even when the enemy was encamped in the plain.

The tunnel was no temporary measure. It was equipped with 93 steps cut from the solid rock of the floor, and niches held oil lamps to provide light for the water carriers.

A second system, far more protected than the first and surely more costly to construct, was a further provision for civil defense. To make this additional access to water in time of siege, the dwellers within the walls had quarried straight down to a depth of 82 feet through solid rock.

In the days when there were no metal buckets, water had to be carried from wells in earthen jars. These fragile containers could not be let down with ropes, so a narrow well could not suffice for the drawers of water in ancient Gibeon.

The makers of this system first removed the rock from a large cylindrical hole, 36 feet in diameter, down to a depth of more than 30 feet; and along the edge they cut a spiral stairway for the water carriers. Then, at that point, they continued the stairs by means of a tunnel to the depth of another 49 feet until they reached water. At the bottom of 79 steps they cut a large chamber in which water could collect.

When we finally broke into the water chamber, a workman made his way into the room, which had been closed for 25 centuries, and found there the water cool and sweet. The entire construction had been filled in, perhaps at the time of the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, and its existence had been completely overlooked until we found it below the field of one of the farmers at Al Jib.

The Gibeonites had more than earned the right to be called “drawers of water.”

We Quote:

JOSEPH R. SIZOO

Professor of Religion, George Washington University

Religion and education have been regarding one another as rivals. The hue and cry about separation of church and state means for many people education without any reference to religion. We need desperately a view of society in which education and religion are not given independent provinces. Education divorced from religion is doomed to spiritual sterility. Religion divorced from education is doomed to superstition and bigotry. Religion and education when both are honest, humble, and informed are natural allies. And education shot through with a glad awareness that the universe in which we live is the creation of a living God, makes for a far different way of appraising life from the way the secularist looks at it.…

The ministry is a lonely profession; the minister is often a lonely man. That may seem strange to lay people but it is true. He keeps silent vigil in the lonely night watches with his God and comes down storm-swathed sides of Sinai to announce thus saith the Lord. He is in the world but not of it, he is with people and yet apart from them. What Richard Watson Gilder wrote in his Ode to Grove Cleveland is true: “Lonely is the life that listens to no voice save that of duty.” Believe me, being a prophet of God is often a lonely business. Many, many times in the past I have wondered if I stood alone.… The minister of God, keeper of the pathway to the eternal stars, is always sustained and encompassed by more loyalties and friendships than he dreams.—In an address at the Awards Dinner of the Washington Pilgrimage, where he was honored as “Clergyman of the Year.”

James B. Pritchard holds the A.B. degree from Asbury College, B.D. from Drew, and Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. He was Professor of Old Testament literature at Crozer Theological Seminary from 1942–54, and now holds that post at Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. He served as annual Professor at the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem in 1950–51. His role in excavations at Gibeon has brought him wide prominence. Here he recalls the weeks of patient search and exciting discoveries.

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