Hazael's invasion and baked bricks at Gath

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: New Discovery Changes Story of King Hazael’s Attack on Biblical Gath. The Philistines of Gath were thought to be outliers in the Levant in building with Mesopotamia-style fired bricks. But what baked the bricks at Tell es-Safi wasn’t a kiln (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

So what have we? A technique that can help not only date ancient sites using the magnetic properties of clay pots and bricks, and that can detect the temperature of the heat they experienced, but which ended up changing the narrative of the ferocity of Hazael’s attack on Gath, based on the story of one house. A house that had been thought not to have burned inside, only on the roof, but it did. That house had been thought to have been, strangely, made of fired bricks, but wasn’t; and it didn't collapse over time but abruptly, in one terrible event that left scars in the collective memory:

“Then Hazael king of Aram went up, and fought against Gath” – 2 Kings 12:18.

A new application for archaeomagnetism technology.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.