Tell es-Safi/Gath at the Annual Archaeological Conference in Israel

On Thursday, March 2nd, 2006, the Annual Archaeological Conference in Israel will be held at the Mt. Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University. There will be sessions throughout the day, with lectures on various topics (in Hebrew). In the afternoon session that will deal with excavations and studies relating to the Iron Age, which will be chaired by Ami Mazar (in room 302 of the Archaeology building), I will be giving a paper on the recent finds at Tell es-Safi/Gath. Among others, I will be mentioning the LB finds from this season, and, needless to say, I will discuss the new so-called “Goliath Inscription,” discussing some of the suggested implications of the find. For example, on the one hand, this well-dated inscription provides excellent evidence that the Proto-Canaanite script was still in use in the late 10th/early 9th cent. BCE (as B. Sass has recently argued), much later than previously accepted; on the other hand, it shows that Indo-European names (including those very similar to Goliath) were used by the Philistines in the Iron Age IIA.

  Deposit of Lamps below floor of LB building –  notice the gleefull look of the excavator!

See you there! (for the detailed program in Hebrew, see below)

Aren

archaeological congress 2006.pdf