The Lachish letters — "we are watching for the signals of Lachish"
Letters from the last weeks of Judah, found in the ash of the gate they were written in, name the two cities Jeremiah names — one of them apparently already dark.
Vom Boden bestätigtInschriftc. 588 BC
Military dispatches written in ink on potsherds, found in the burnt debris of the gate. Letter IV reports watching for the fire-signals of Lachish "because we cannot see Azekah". Jeremiah, writing in the same months, says the king of Babylon's army was fighting against Jerusalem, Lachish and Azekah — "for these defenced cities remained."
We are watching for the fire-signals of Lachish, according to all the signs which my lord has given, for we cannot see Azekah.
- Gefunden
- The gate guardroom at Lachish (Tell ed-Duweir), Israel, 1935 — James Starkey's excavation
- Heute in
- Israel Museum, Jerusalem; British Museum, London
- Sprache
- Hebrew
- Wie es zu uns kam
- Ausgegraben oder noch dort stehend, wo es errichtet wurde.
Was er zeigt
The letters name no biblical figure with certainty. What they show is the situation Jeremiah describes, in the right place, at the right moment.
Wie Historiker es nutzen
One of the largest corpora of pre-exilic Hebrew prose; standard in the study of Hebrew epigraphy and of the Babylonian campaign.
In der Schrift
Verbunden mit
Quellen
- Torczyner, Lachish I: The Lachish Letters (1938)
Diese Texte liegen vorerst auf Englisch vor. Übersetzungen folgen.