Megiddo's gates and stables
Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer all carry monumental gates and fortifications from the early Iron Age.
DisputedExcavated site10th–9th century BC
A fortified city with a six-chambered gate, a water tunnel cut to a spring outside the wall, and long pillared buildings once read as stables for hundreds of horses. 1 Kings lists Megiddo with Hazor and Gezer among Solomon's building projects, and speaks of his chariot cities.
And this is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised; for to build… Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.
- Found
- Tel Megiddo, Israel, 1925 — University of Chicago Oriental Institute; renewed by Tel Aviv University
- Now held at
- In place, a UNESCO World Heritage site
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
The buildings are real; their date is one of the sharpest disputes in the field. The traditional tenth-century (Solomonic) dating is contested by a "low chronology" that puts them a century later under the Omrides. The pillared buildings may be stables or storehouses.
How historians use it
The type-site of the Iron Age chronology debate; both sides publish on the same stratigraphy.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Finkelstein, Ussishkin & Halpern, Megiddo III–V excavation reports
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.