Exploring Tel Arad: An Ancient Canaanite and Israelite City

So after watching my video on Tel Arad and the theory that some ancient Israelites might have believed that their god was married to the Canaanite goddess Asherah, a few of you requested a more comprehensive video about this city, and I really don't blame you. Tel Arad was one of my absolute favorite archaeological sites in this whole region, which is the northern reaches of the Negev Desert in southern Israel. I like visiting sites where you can really feel what it was like to live there, where you can see the shape of the city, the location of the major places where people would have gathered. For comparison, go to any other Bronze Age site. So let's take Jericho, for example, and you'll be disappointed by a pile of dirt with no discernible shape to the ancient settlement. But, as you can see from my footage from Tel Arad, you can still clearly see the city walls of the site, the residences and the temples are still visible, and you can walk across the streets in under 10 minutes and imagine what daily life would have been like living here. So let's get into it. Tel Arad has two major settlement periods, a Bronze Age Canaanite period and an Iron Age Israelite period. Most of the lower city, which you can see here standing on top of the tel, is Canaanite. It dates to around 2600 BCE. And here we're walking through a Canaanite temple complex in the lower city. It appears to be a double temple outfitted with a basin and platforms used for some sort of ritual, though we're not exactly sure what. The Canaanite city must have experienced a decline of some sort because archaeologists have found zero evidence of settlement from the Middle or Late Bronze Age. So that means it must have sat here abandoned until the Israelites moved in 1500 years later. The Israelite phase is dominated by this huge fortress on top of the tel, and I really wish I got more footage of the whole fortress itself. So, uh, sorry about that. It was occupied roughly from the 10th to 6th centuries BCE, the time of King Solomon to King Josiah from the Hebrew Bible. And presumably it was built to defend the southern border of the Kingdom of Judah. If you remember from my earlier video, this citadel is unique as the site of a temple to Yahweh, the only Israelite temple that we know of, and a temple that apparently follows the same layout as the Temple of Solomon, with an outer courtyard and an inner Holy of Holies. It's pretty cool to think that a small garrison here not only needed storerooms and barracks, but also a shrine. It really tells us something about the daily life and priorities of the soldiers who were living here. Another major discovery at this site is a horde of over 100 Hebrew inscriptions on pottery shards that date roughly to the 7th or 6th centuries BCE, so not long before the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah. These inscriptions shed light on daily life in the fortress. They record not only nitty-gritty details about the distribution of rations and troop movements, but even personal correspondences with a commander of the fortress. Several of the inscriptions mention a guy named Eliashib, son of Eshiahu, who presumably was the commander in the late 7th century. Most of these inscriptions are really functional bookkeeping inscriptions. They describe payments to mercenaries and managing provisions, but some shed light on ancient Israelite religion as well. These inscriptions mention two priestly families that we find in the Hebrew Bible, so, for example, Pashor in Ezra 238 and Merimoth in Ezra 833, as well as possible references to the House of Yahweh, as mentioned in inscription number 18. So you can see here that there's a reference to the House of Yahweh, and some people think this refers to the temple in Jerusalem or possibly the temple in Arad itself, but it's pretty ambiguous. And it's sites like this that remind me why I'm so fascinated by ancient religion. I can't help but let my imagination run wild as I walk around. When the Israelite garrison was stationed here, did they look down on the lower city and see these ruined Canaanite temples? Did they even know what they were? Or what was it like to look out over this desolate landscape in 800 BC? When I was there, a huge thunderstorm came through, and I easily found shelter in my car. But what would it have been like to experience the same thunderstorm as a Canaanite praying to the storm god in 2600 BC? Or a Judahite soldier in 800 BC with his shrine to Yahweh just a few yards away? I'm sometimes envious of scholars who study modernity. You have so much data, newspapers, video recordings, or actual living people that you can interview. But for scholars of the Hebrew Bible and scholars of antiquity in general, you have these scattered remains to work with. A ruined town, a ruined fortress, a few dozen inscriptions. We're missing so much data, and it's just so damn difficult to interpret what's left. Well, that's all I got. Make sure you check out my Patreon. These people are lifesavers keeping this channel afloat. And I'll see you next time.