TAU and the Hebrew University collaborated on a study that precisely dated 21 destruction levels at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by recreating the direction and/or strength of the earth's magnetic field recorded in charred residues.
The new information confirmed Biblical stories of Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Geomagnetic fields reveal the truth behind Biblical narratives
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
The groundbreaking interdisciplinary study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on Yoav Vaknin's doctoral thesis, which was supervised by Prof. Erez Ben-Yosef and Prof. Oded Lipschits of TAU's Institute of Archaeology, as well as Prof. Ron Shaar of the Hebrew University's Institute of Earth Sciences, as per Phys.org.
Geophysicists studying the mechanism of the earth's magnetic field track variations in this field over history, according to the experts.
They do this by utilizing archaeological finds containing magnetic materials that, when heated or burned, preserve the magnetic field at the time of the fire.
Thus, in a 2020 study, researchers recreated the magnetic field as it was on the 9th of Av, 586 BCE, the Hebrew date of Nebuchadnezzar's and his Babylonian army's destruction of the First Temple and the City of Jerusalem.
The researchers were able to reconstruct the magnetic fields recorded in 21 destruction levels using archaeological finds found over several decades at 17 locations around Israel, as well as historical knowledge from ancient inscriptions and Biblical stories.
They used the information to create a trustworthy new scientific technique for archaeological dating.
According to Yoav Vaknin, "based on the similarity or difference in intensity and direction of the magnetic field, we can either corroborate or disprove hypotheses claiming that specific sites were burned during the same military campaign; additionally, we have constructed a variation curve of field intensity over time that can serve as a scientific dating tool, similar to the radiocarbon dating method."
The academics cited the destruction of Gath of the Philistines (now known as Tel Tzafit in the Judean foothills) by Hazael, King of Aram-Damascus.
Various dating methods date this incident to about 830 BCE, however, it has not been proven that Hazael was also responsible for the destruction of Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit, and Horvat Tevet.
The latest analysis, which discovered complete statistical synchronization between the magnetic fields observed at all four locations at the moment of demolition, offered a compelling case for their annihilation during the same campaign.
A devastation level at Tel Beth-Shean, on the other hand, recorded a completely different magnetic field, refuting the popular belief that it was also destroyed by Hazael.
Instead, the magnetic data from Beth-Shean show that this city, along with two other sites in northern Israel, was most likely destroyed 70-100 years earlier, a period that might match with the Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq's military expedition.
The Hebrew Bible described Shoshenq's campaign, as does an inscription on a wall of the Temple of Amun in Karnak, Egypt, which lists Beth-Shean as one of his victories.
One of the most intriguing discoveries made by the new dating method concerns the end of the Kingdom of Judah.
According to Prof. Erez Ben Yosef, the final days of the Kingdom of Judah are hotly discussed.
Some experts suggested, based on archaeological evidence, that the Babylonians did not fully destroy Judah.
While Jerusalem and the Judean foothills' frontier cities vanished, neighboring communities in the Negev, the southern Judean Mountains, and the southern Judean foothills were mostly unscathed.
Prof. Oded Lipschits said that the new dating technique is unique in that it is based on geomagnetic data from locations with known exact demolition dates from historical sources.
The magnetic field of the Earth is crucial to human survival. Most people are unaware that without it, there would be no life on Earth since it protects us from cosmic radiation and solar wind.
Vaknin and colleagues combined and compared magnetic data from previously dated sites with evidence from undated sites spanning from Beth She'an in Galilee to Be'er Sheva in the Negev desert, as per Haaretz.
Their findings provided answers to various biblical archaeological mysteries.
The remnants of big structures destroyed by a catastrophic fire at Tel Beth She'an are one mystery.
Excavators at the site have wavered between assigning the city's destruction to Pharaoh Sheshonq I, the historical Shishak who attacked the Levant around 925 B.C.E., or to the Aramean armies of Hazael of Damascus, who captured sections of the Holy Land around a century later.
The researchers discovered that this specific disaster in the Galilee cannot be traced to the Arameans by collecting the charred bricks at Beth She'an and comparing the data to the magnetic image from places previously associated with Hazael's rampage, most notably the Philistine city of Gath.
The intensity and direction of the magnetic field recorded in Beth She'an, on the other hand, suggested that the last time the ancient walls were heated to a high temperature was in the late tenth or early ninth century B.C.E., which is consistent with the Egyptian invasion led by Sheshonq, as recounted in the Bible (1 Kings 14:25-26) and on the walls of the pharaoh's own temple at Karnak.
