Archaeology and the Babylonian Exile

LEEN RITMEYER has been blogging about the archaeology of the Babylonian Exile:

The Middle Gate. “her gates have sunk into the ground.” (Lamentations 2:9).

The Middle Gate is mentioned in Jeremiah 39.3 as the place where the Babylonian princes came together to celebrate their conquest of Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem was dramatically exposed in the excavations in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem that were directed by the late Prof. Nahman Avigad. After digging down for some 10 m., a large L-shaped fortified wall of the Israelite period was found.

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Ezekiel in Babylon. Archaeological evidence for the Babylonian Exile.

In our previous blog, we looked at the Middle Gate as an example of the description in Lamentations 2:9 that Jerusalem’s “gates were sunk into the ground.” We published it on the 1st of September, as that was one of the readings for the day according to the Traditional Daily Reading plan of the Avery Bible app.

Today, on the 5th of September, according to this plan, we begin reading the Prophecy of Ezekiel. From Chapter 1 we understand that Jehoachin, King of Judah, was exiled to Babylon along with Ezekiel and several thousands of Jerusalem’s leading citizens.

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For many PaleoJudaica posts on the unprovenanced, but apparently genuine, Al-Yahudu Babylonian cuneiform archive, start here and follow the links.

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