Stone blocks decorated with scenes of lions and banquets, found strewn upon a hilltop archaeological site in Jordan, may have once been part of an ancient Israelite palace built some 2,800 years ago, two leading Israeli scholars conclude in a new study.The open-access underlying article is in the journal Tel Aviv:The incised ashlar blocks unearthed at the biblical site of Mahanaim, just east of modern Dayr Allah in Jordan, are likely remains from the time when the Kingdom of Israel ruled over part of this region, the researchers say.
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Finkelstein, I., & Ornan, T. (2024). An Israelite Residency at Mahanaim in Transjordan? Tel Aviv, 51(2), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2024.2385148For the epigraphic and iconographic discoveries at Kuntillet ʿAjrud, see here and many links, plus here and here.Abstract
In this article we deal with the site of Tall adh-Dhahab al-Gharbi in the valley of the az-Zarqa River, the biblical Jabbok, in Jordan. We discuss a group of incised ashlar blocks found there, probably dating to the first half of the 8th century BCE. We suggest that the blocks originated from an official building, a residency or a gate complex, not yet excavated, and propose thematic similarities with visual imagery from Kuntillet ʿAjrud. We then show that this site can be securely identified with biblical Mahanaim and point to several biblical verses that may hint at the existence of a North Israelite residency there.
Also, the nearby town of Dayr Allah, mentioned above, is the site of Tel Deir 'Alla (Deir Alla), where the Northwest Semitic Balaam inscription was excavated. It dates to around the same time as this palace. I don't know if that is signficant, but it seems worth mentioning. More on it here, with many links. And for an intriguing corpus of alphabetic Northwest Semitic cuneiform inscriptions from the same site, see here.
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