THE ONLY BIBLE CAPITAL?

Of the seven biblical kingdoms between the Euphrates and Egypt, says Rami Arav, we have only one capital thoroughly excavated — at Bethsaida.

Arav calls his Iron Age city the largest and best preserved capital from that period of the ancient Near East.

Arav, who teaches at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, is co-director of the dig with Richard A. Freund of the University of Hartford (Conn.)

Arav names the Bethsaida Iron Age city Zer — believing Joshua 19:35 refers to the site just north of the Sea of Galilee on which Arav has spent 20 years.

Capitals of the other Iron Age kingdoms in the Bible are less thoroughly studied, Arav claims:

o Damascus in Syria, Amman in Jordan and Jerusalem in Israel have all been continuously occupied and aren’t fully accessible to archaeology.

o Samaria of the Northern Kingdom was partly excavated in the 1930s and — now in the occupied West Bank — is difficult to work further.

o Tyre of the Phoenicians was partly destroyed by Alexander the Great but never abandoned.

o Dibon of the Moabites? Arav believes excavations at modern Dhiban, Jordan, are inconclusive about whether it is the correct site.

When he started digging at Bethsaida, some scholars wondered whether there ever was a kingdom of Geshur. But Arav is convinced he has its capital — everything a king needs.


NOTHING BUT MONUMENTAL

From the city’s Iron Age, says Arav, “we have never seen anything but monumental and we have been digging for 20 years. We have a palace. We have a monumental gate. We have storages. That’s what constitute a capital city, in my mind.”


The complex at Bethsaida is best known for its massive four-chamber gate, which Arav says by area is the largest gate complex in the ancient Near East — half an acre if you include the outer marketplace. The adjacent palace overlooks the approach, where merchants must have sold goods and where the king’s subjects must have come to buy and sell, to appeal to the city’s elders in judicial matters, and to worship where priests sacrificed on one of the five “high places” within the complex.

The Bible mentions gates more than 1,000 times, says Arav. “The city gate is the heart and soul of the city,” he adds. “The most important function of the city is the city gate.”

Arav thinks Bethsaida was important enough to be the capital of the kingdom of Gerush from which David of Israel took a wife, Ma’achah.

If he’s right, that would mean Absalom — son of David and Ma’achah — probably fled to this city after ordering the death of his brother Amnon for Amnon’s rape of Absalom’s sister Tamar (2 Samuel 13).

But Absalom would have entered through the 10th century gate, not the one through which visitors walk today. Arav and his crew are probing below the monumental ninth-century gate for clues about its predecessor.

They won’t remove the big gate, however. “I think I would lose all my students today,” Arav quips from a plastic patio chair in the shade amid the stony rubble of centuries. “It’s a huge undertaking. It’s also a landmark.”


WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE?

The gate complex proper is 525 square meters, a quarter acre, not counting the exterior marketplace. The gate’s chambers include grain-storage areas — excavators found the carbonized kernels.

Also in the complex were seven stelae, one depicting a bull god — perhaps Hadad — evidently broken in five pieces by the conquering Assyrians. It is now in the Israel Museum.

What bothers Arav about his monumental capital is that he can’t find its people. “Where might be the domestic quarter?” he muses from his plastic patio chair amid the ruins.

He may yet find it in the city proper — or perhaps the city was only for the king, his family, his entourage, his guards and the priests, while subjects lived in villages around the city.

When the Assyrians invaded, these subjects would have fled behind the gate — in vain. About 732 BCE, Tiglath-Pileser III destroyed the city.

It lay desolate until Tyrean colonists arrived in the third century BCE. They grew flax to weave into linen for dying in Tyre, Arav surmises. His crew has found loom weights and flax pollen where flax is absent now.

In 100 BCE the Hasmonean Jewish dynasty took the city. Again it was abandoned. Arav believes the Jews gave the Tyreans the choice given the conquered Idumeans further south at about the same time — convert or depart. The Idumeans, surrounded by desert, submitted to circumcision. The Tyrean colonists had another choice, guesses Arav. They left for Tyre.

Thereafter Bethsaida, once the proud capital of a mighty kingdom, became a modest fishing village. The Romans gave the territory to Herod the Great, expecting him to protect international trade routes against Bedouin raiders.


PUNY WALL

Around the time of Jesus, it was a large village. Herod’s son Philip honored it by making Bethsaida a polis in about 30 CE. For show, Philip added a 1.5-meter-thick wall — puny in comparison to the massive six-meter-wide Iron Age fortification.

The New Testament suggests Jesus preached and healed in the village-polis, and disciples Peter, Andrew and Philip were from there.

It persisted as a fishing village until the third century CE, says Arav, when one or more earthquakes altered the course of the Jordan, silting up lagoons and eventually leaving the village more than a kilometer from the Sea of Galilee.


LEAVING A LEGACY

Other digs’ seasons continue, but for Arav and his colleagues at Bethsaida the season ends this week. Over the years, Bethsaida’s season has gradually shortened from 12 weeks to six. Why? “Because I’m getting old,” sighs Arav, who will turn 60 in October.

Do the end of the season and the landmark birthday enhance the importance of Bethsaida for him?

Arav is working with a park planner to make the rough-and-tumble site more accessible to visitors. “Every human being wants to leave a legacy,” he says. “Think about Knossos and Evans. Think about Schliemann and Troy.”

In other words, Arav is thinking big, even monumentally — like his mysterious city at Bethsaida.