RT Article
T1 Was a "Gate Shrine" Built at the Level III Inner City Gate of Lachish? A Response to Ganor and Kreimerman
JF Bulletin of ASOR
VO 385
SP 153
OP 170
A1 Usishḳin, Daṿid 1935-
LA English
PB The University of Chicago Press
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1880475316
AB The city gate of Level III at biblical Lachish dates to the Iron Age IIB period and was destroyed in the Assyrian conquest in 701 b.c.e. In 2015-2016, Saar Ganor and Igor Kreimerman excavated the southern wing of the inner gate. In a recent issue of this journal, Ganor and Kreimerman (2019) suggested that the innermost, southern chamber of the gatehouse was a "gate shrine," that the "gate shrine" was desecrated during the reform of Hezekiah, that it was turned into a symbolic toilet, and then sealed. The present paper has four aims. First, it presents an integral picture of the inner gatehouse based on all the excavations which took place there. Second, it argues that there was no gate shrine in the gatehouse. Third, it argues that the assumed gate shrine was not desecrated during the time of Hezekiah’s reform. Fourth, it shows that the innermost, southern chamber contained an installation of secular nature that parallels that in the innermost northern side of the gatehouse.
K1 Hezekiah’s reform
K1 Iron Age city gate
K1 Lachish
K1 gate shrine
K1 horned altar
DO 10.1086/712425