Rejuvenation: Tell About Metal & Tel Abel Bet Ma’acah

[Music] hi everybody eat hair oh and rejuvenation for the Land of Israel Network a beautiful February day in Jerusalem cold but I am on Mount Scopus so Jerusalem is literally at my feet am at Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in the office of archaeologist na ma yalla moch who has been in the news on the last couple of months because of the discovery that she made in the tell that she's digging in the north of Israel so first of all dr. muck dr. Yalow mock thank you so much for making time for me today sure I tell a little us about this we'll get back to you and to the dig itself but well first of all what is this dig you know people have heard of the digs in the ocean lime and cuts or and tell Don and like the big-ticket digs but your here's an archaeologist at Hebrew University and where exactly do you play in the dirt maybe a word about myself I was educated here at the Hebrew University I studied biblical archaeology in Near Eastern Studies some Akkadian Sumerian if anyone wants to have a conversation in KT and hear the address that's so much better I did stick with biblical archaeology and it led me to a certain specific field which is Arco metallurgy in my studies I have focused on ancient metals of of the bronze and iron ages and I've been I've been wearing two hats over the years I've been excavating in biblical sites trying to reconstruct ancient history of Israel and its neighbors but also I have been delving into chemical and isotopic analysis of metals attempting to establish the origin of the metals to reconstruct you know trade networks you can me social structure and so I kind of moved between these categories and three years ago I got this position here at the Hebrew University and I'm still doing both but I did enter into this project of the excavations of Talib Albert Maha which was initiated by my colleague colleagues Nava panik's Cohen of the Hebrew University she's here at the Institute the editor of the Kadam series and a colleague of ours from Azusa Pacific University dr. Robert Mullins and the two of them actually long before I joined decided to excavate this wonderful tell way up in the north of Israel and it's been seven seas seasons okay so a couple of questions and and I think just for some clarity for maybe some of my listeners who aren't familiar with the time periods which is probably many many people so first of all what is considered biblical history in biblical archaeology and especially because you're a metal person you talk about the Bronze Age you talk about the Iron Age so if you can which is obviously paramount when it comes to the material culture of the people so if you can explain a little bit how the biblical biblical archaeology fits into that is it Bronze Age is it Iron Age is it both you know like Abraham is mid bronze is that considered biblical archaeology or is that a little bit before the department of Biblical Archaeology actually begins with the catalytic period which is way before anything related to the Bible is studied but this is a historical division between the prehistory Department which kind of ends at the Neolithic period and the m66 millennium 5th millennium the calculative period actually starts sometime in the 5th millennium BC and it's highly developed culture metallurgically speaking we have amazing metal works from that period now we have the knavish milord you can see that in the Israel Museum right the copper the copper instruments are so beautiful its copper based it's made of copper with difference it's it's a combination an alloy of copper and other metals and the metal itself is not local that it was produced here with amazing craftsmanship and and so it's a very unique culture this calculate the period since we do not know exactly where to locate the the ancestors we we we feel that the Bronze Age is a biblical period at least in its background our patriarchs must have walked around this country sometime during these times so the Bronze Age basically begins in the third millennium and it ends in the late second millennium after the Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan and so we consider these periods biblical although the first biblical account would be the time when Israelites start to evolve as a nation which is the late second millennium then we're already moving into the Iron Age correct at least here in the Middle East yes we call it the early Iron Age in the late second millennium and then in the early first millennium it's already the Iron Age - which is a period where we have both biblical accounts and extra biblical accounts which corroborate the biblical narrative so well we would call let's say the first Temple period right from around - a thousand till apparently - 586 when the Babylonians destroyed so those 400 odd years would be considered the late Iron Age and for there you have cooperation from archeology news and also sources outside the country from the ninth century on we have extra biblical accounts we have them in the 10th century too with the shock raid that the Pharaohs of Egypt who comes in and wreaks havoc true but the problem is that we are not sure which of the destructions if at all should be correlated with this Pharaoh and thus the whole period of the 10th century is basically a period which is under controversy this is the debate that we call the high and low chronology because we have those urban centers that develop during this period the early first millennium and some think they developed under on wide rule this is what you would call the Tel Aviv school yeah and if you follow the biblical narrative with David and Solomon you would say that perhaps they were built under some you're talking about Megiddo cuts or guess their Jerusalem to some extent exactly unfortunately the carbon-14 dating which we had a lot of hopes that it would you know contribute to resolving this controversy they don't they don't give the the resolution needed I can see from my site in a bed that Maha which we'll talk about shortly that destructions can be dated we have a destruction during the 10th century we cannot say if it's the first half of the ninth century of the second half of the ninth century and you can manipulate the data and you can do a lot of things but basically I don't think we can we consult resolve this currently mm-hmm but there's different always in the future in your botanical archaeology and I know also different methods I read something since you're into metals so I want to ask you about this that there are ancient iron pieces that were have been found that for a while they thought predating the Iron Age there for a while they thought I don't even remember I wrote it where I read this that there were civilizations that had been way ahead of their time they'd invented iron then they were destroyed and maybe that knowledge got lost and only came back about 3000 years ago and that this all these pieces were tested not long ago and they all come from meteorites so this is all iron they sourced from outer space kind of putting away at least for now that idea that perhaps there were civilizations that were ahead of themselves so what do you think about that because you're doing if you're doing the chronology copper bronze and then into iron it follows pretty much a pattern but then you can you get these blips sometimes that will say uh what's going on here and and then have these theories well the point is that meteorite iron is metallic iron and it's a big difference between the full you know fledge Iron Age where they smelt iron they produce iron from its ores it's a difference from using metallic iron explain to those of us who aren't into iron okay it's not only iron metals can only be worked if they're in their metallic state once they are combined with oxygen and other elements becoming minerals right there they cannot be work they're like rocks try to work a rock and try to pound a rock it will shatter it will break it's not malleable so you need to extract the metal from it and the way to do it is to reduce it heat it up in a reduced environment which is an oxygen-free environment together with carbon this is what's called smelting or there's another term for this this is called smelting if you heat it up together with charcoal that contains carbon then the carbon would pull you know in in certain conditions it will take the oxygen out of that mineral and release the metal and this this is what we term smelting and this is the technology which is complex the meteorites iron already is in metallic irony metallic form and it's workable so it's not such a big invention the invention is when they realize that they can separate metal from or metal from mineral so they do that first for copper and lead during the sixth but not before the 6th millennium BC but for iron it takes a long time because there's two reasons first the melting point of iron is higher than copper of course led and other metals and second if you want to be able to work with iron you cannot have too much carbon in it you need some carbon in order for it to become steel but you cannot have more than 2% of carbon and if you heat the metal together with charcoal even if you reach that liquify temperature melting point of over 1500 degrees Celsius you end up with the product too rich in carbon and it's not workable so this is really an exact science it is an exact science and the point is that only when humankind you know figured out how to decarbonize the iron they could use iron melted iron mm-hmm so what they did do they developed kind some kind of a compromise they used temperatures similar to copper smelting temperatures which is around 1200 degrees Celsius but they ended up in with the product of iron which wasn't liquefied but was rather it's called a bloom it's a product that's mixed iron and slag so it's something that you need to forge and remove the slag and work on it mechanically so if you smelt copper you get a liquid metal which you can pour into a mold and create a shape but if you use iron which is not liquefied it's only half it's like in a solid state then you need to work on it mechanically in order to make an item out of it but what instruments can you work on it mechanically with since it itself is so hard I'm thinking that you have to have a diamond to cut another diamond because the diamond is so hard right so how does that what did they use what did they work the iron with in order to be able to shape it I must say that bronze could be a very hard metal with the right composition you also have stone objects which are used as hammers they had their tools to work with and once they started to create steel of course they created their own tools and we're able to continue to work on iron but what I want if we come back to the time of the of the development of these territorial kingdoms the Israelites and the Jew dates this is the time when they adopt iron this is the first time when we start seeing iron really enter the scene as a metal for mass production of tools and weapons so it goes hand in hand with this period with the development of these kingdoms which would also make sense because the kingdom would be stronger if it has these better materials I mean I'm just thinking biblically right around the time of let's say Saul and Jonathan like the first monarchy at the very beginning it seems like the Philistines are doing very well that they know okay so - so explain that they have more of the metal in the GMB whatever you want to call it the Israelites don't or the tribes don't what's happening in that period I guess we call the end of the period of the judges the beginning of Samuel and later on the Kings so you're right that the Bible describes the period during the time of Sol the Israelites would go down at the Philistines allegedly to sharpen their tools and that implies that they didn't have the technology to produce iron the Israelites but that's not the impression that we get from the new yorky illogical finds what we see is that iron production develops in Philistia at the same at the same time when it develops in other territorial kingdoms and the fact is that as much as I can tell there are two sources for early iron technology one source is Cypress where we see iron knives being produced as early as the 12th century BC what culture was there or what people do we say that the cafetorium I mean the the actual site like what nation identified with creaks creaking those fans yeah and the nice way Creedence not there's an expression if somebody's really dumb they say he's a that's not what we're talking about quite the opposite so who shall which people were there the point is that in Cyprus the local Cyprus I don't know how to define them they they were expert metal Smith they would smelt copper and produced during the Late Bronze Age which is 14th to 12th century BC huge amounts of copper and they had on their island or they brought in they had Cypress is very rich in copper at the bottom of the produce there is mass mass amounts of copper and they knew how to smelt this copper and produce copper in in tons they would they would produce they would make them into these ingots in the form of oxide and they got the the name oxide ingots and these were traded all over the Mediterranean in thousands and sometimes during the 12th century BC in Cyprus we see the beginning of iron production so the fill the Philistine connection where Cyprus might have brought some iron objects and possibly the technology but we do not have evidence in felicia for iron production before the late 10th 9th century BC did they have the raw material here or they had to bring it in from somewhere else and just work it here we have iron iron good iron deposits in Israel we have them in the Negev and Alva but there's also and this is my second route for iron technology there are iron deposits in Jordan in the Gilead you know the name Basel I hugging a be okay also Elijah is from the Gilead le ow Aguila D okay the Prophet yeah but the buzz aligned with the main Basel which is iron in Hebrew is very interesting and in the Gilead we not only have good iron we have remains of iron smelting so is just poonam because they're the two main well there's the two main copper centers right there's Tamina that's down in our Naropa and fennan is not that's not the same place no say none is a copper source Phoolan say none and it's located way to the south it's south of the Dead Sea and what I'm talking about the Gilead that's north of the e-book River so it's closer to the community I would say and there we do have smelting remains from the 10th 9th century BC which is kind of contemporary with all those urban center that are starting to work iron during the tenth ninth centuries BC so is that the tribe of miniature I'm thinking biblically now and where they were sitting which would have been around that time also yes no it's a it's yes it's the territory and the question is where did this technology come from we have I was talking about smelting during the tenth ninth century but the truth is that we have burials in the area of the Gilead that are dated to around 12 century BC famous beginning of iron in Cyprus and there are iron bracelets or anklets deposited in these burials and there are dozens of them and so it seems like someone I would say came from the outside because we don't have any proof for local development possibly from the north possibly from the region of Anatolia came to this region to the Gilead sometimes during the late 13th early 12th centuries and saw this potential with the iron ores and produced iron there we don't have production evidence for this time but we do have those bracelets those finds and so there are two sources of where the technology could have come from one is in the east and the ways in the Jordan area and the other one is from Cyprus and so let's go back to the Philistines we have no evidence that the Philistines had iron technology more than anyone else in the region during the time of Saul they we have the evidence for later on during the 10th the ninth century but Saul is like late 11th we have no evidence for that and we have to remember that when the Bible describes victories of the Israelites in order to enhance his victories they the Bible describes the Israelites as weak to begin with right and it's basically when does this story come in when Jonathan and soul are you know are sitting there waiting for the battle with the Philistines and then it's like an open it's like a quote inside the story that tells us that the Israelites had no they had to go down at the Philistines and sharpened their tools and only David and Saul had their source with them and so what does that tell us Israelites was were very weak and nevertheless they won the battle this recurs in the Bible she led voix I don't know how to say that I mean this song of Deborah of the prophetess and judge Deborah yes as a beautiful song there also it says that the Israelites had no weapons on earth no shields and and they still won the battle and so it's a motif and emphasize that without God's help or God being on the side then it's not just being stronger in battle that it's going to help you win but having got on your side or God wanting it to win yes and and actually if you look at the archaeological material there is quite a bit of iron in the what we call the Israelite settlements and the in the central Mount but it's a little difficult to date the finds there because we're not looking at big tell occupations where we have destructions that are dateable it's these small settlements which are not well excavated and not well dated and they contain quite a bit of iron iron objects some of them were excavated you know a hundred years ago and the method of excavation and the publication it all prevents us from really knowing how much iron they had and when did they have that iron my guess is that Israelites had iron during the the late first sorry late second millennium BC even during let's say the period of the judges in the tribes before we have a United Monarchy and Jerusalem just one the just side question is this the first time that iron work appears in the world or is this happening here but in as far as you know in China or in South America or places where they wouldn't necessarily at that time had connections there is at the same time this kind of technology coming or if this is the first plate like I know in Europe the Iron Age is much later or is this really the first because I know you're sure in touch with archaeologists around the world is this the beginning well I would say that in the late third millennium we start seeing some iron objects and tools all of them are unique all of them are prestigious and they are custom-made and we start seeing more and more mentions of iron objects in texts in the ancient Near East the one place it's always said to have been the origin of metal of iron technology is Anatolia Hittite Anatolia today's Turkey and it's true because there's a lot of texts that mention iron there there's much less archaeological material that really demonstrate this but the textual evidence kind of points to this region as an as having this expertise and I think that people around Anatolia considered the Shiites as expert iron workers we have this one letter from the king of Assyria to the king of Hitachi you know saying sorry the king of the Hittites a letter from the king of Assyria and he says to him for that iron you have asked I we are trying to produce iron but we're not very successful when we we are able to find good or we shall produce good iron and meanwhile I'm sending you a blade for a sword and what that tells us one that Kings around Anatolia think that people in Anatolia have this expertise that's one and second that they really don't they have problem identifying good iron ore sources iron is very abundant it's everywhere but it's not in equality which is enough for smelting because iron loss in the smelting process is so big that you get out of when you smelt good iron you end up with I don't know 30 percent of what you began with so if you start with low quality low grade iron ore you end up with nothing and so even them even though they sort of have the technology they are not sure yet which orestes melt and they're not successful all the time they try and so this is the theory that our technology develops somewhere in that region I think it still might be true because we don't have any evidence for another region having so much mentions and so much information about it and we have to remember that when the Hittite Kingdom broke down there was kind of a continuation of the Hittite rule in North Syria that's it that's in the 12th century and the road from North to Syria to north of Israel is not so big we have those army and population you know going around and technologies pass in these manners right and so my guess is that the origin is somewhere there in the north isn't it here in Israel I know this is in your field but isn't it here in Israel where they have in the past couple of years tried to figure out why we move from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age in terms of not just that the knowledge of how to make iron but what's going on in terms of the climate that there are droughts and fires and people on the move like the sea people that come here and the Mycenae and civilization falling apart and around this Mediterranean area where so much is going on there are some really cataclysmic events natural events if you will that set the world as people knew it kind of ending one major period in beginning another well it what can you add to that we do have eventually a big difference between the bronze and ona and the Iron Age because after those destructions in the end of the Iron Age in the end of the Bronze Age a new social political order develops the iron is not the main thing here it's far from the main thing and and actually it's a later development iron is adopted by the territorial kingdoms that develop as a result of this of these destructions but you also must remember there's a lot of continuity between the bronze and iron age and this is also something that we talk about a lot in past years that Canaanite population Canaanite culture continues and merges into these new what you call Israelite Jew day and it sits there the culture continues if we have time and I'll show you a bit about what we have excavated at the bell but Maha you can see how for instance the cult cultic practices that were Canaanite they go into their own age they continue and we think that people genetically you know they continue so we have additions we have mixing of populations we have populations coming from the outside entering some from the Aegean world what we call the Philistines the Philistines are not all the gene Philistines have an elite of people that some of them were foreign and they brought some of their practices we see them as immigrants not everyone by the way sees them as immigrants some think that it's a cultural phenomenon but let's say we do accept the the the the understood the idea that therefore that they're foreigners and that they did come from the outside it's not all the population it's people that kind of took hold of a local population and in the second generation after that first Philistine arrival we have hybrid you know practices and so it's true for everywhere around Israel we have a strong Canaanite population with some additions possibly aramean tribes Israelites what we call which could be certain nomadic people that settled or they could be Canaanites and they are actually described as Canaanites and they even even in the Hebrew Bible right there Canaanites that went down to Egypt and came back and so I think there's a big difference culturally between the bronze and Iron Age but there's also a great majority of continuity and then of course as you mentioned you have the religious beliefs that come in and that distinguish a lot of the people in their in their cult excites do you think that iron was mainly used for weaponry or do you find it into in terms of religious sites are they wanting to create iron bowls so they can better give sacrifices I'm just throwing that out or is the main push to have that higher level metal in order to able to conquer other people and make weapons out of it well no I think the metals that you can liquefy would continue to serve as metals for the production of you know small figurines and and maybe some offerings iron is a practical metal and it's used for the production of iron and a sort for tools and weapons the point is that when iron is first appears in the region bronze is fully it's so it's used it's there we have intensive copper production in there 'va at the same time that aren't appears we have loads of copper from fennan and Timna mm-hmm during the late 1st millennium and late second millennium and early first millennium one isn't replacing the other they're using both well iron eventually replaces bronze but the question is why do they decide to use iron when copper is so prevalent so you might say they don't have the tin tin is another metal that is added to the copper in order to make it stronger you can't use copper without just pure copper you need to make it into an alloy be cause it's not strong enough it's very soft just plain copper I think all of us also have that copper Bowl or bracelet that our grandmother gave us because they had this right this tradition that copper warded away the evil eye I don't know I I have one of those and I know other people who do also but you can easily dent it with your finger it's definitely not a strong metal exactly but if you add five to ten percent of tin into the copper you get a very strong durable metal and the tin as opposed to copper and iron is rare as a deposit I mean on earth and we're not sure we're not even sure where it income from comes from which is so funny because in the modern world that tin can right it's like what you get I don't know peas or carrots in seems to be the most ubiquitous like the cheapest kind of metal around you throw it away it's what your tuna is in for lunch but that's not really ten what we're using today I don't think it's that I don't think it's tin but we do know that there's a shift between the sources of tin between the bronze and iron ages in the Bronze Age tin comes from the east we're not sure how far away from could come from Iran or further in the central as Central Asia but during the Iron Age it's probably coming for the West those Phoenician endeavors they theories of Greece or for the other parts of the Mediterranean there is 10 in Iberia and there's 10 in England and the British Isles yes so the point is do we know of a lack of tin during the early first millennium that would cause make them go into iron production the answer is no we don't feel today I think most scholars don't think that something that an invention or use of a new technology would be enforced it's something that you choose to do not because you have to do it I think that they would choose to use iron rather than bronze is because they can control iron better they're not dependent on any one iron sources it's true that it's not everywhere but it's still something that you don't need to invest a lot of effort to quarry it's not so deep in the ground it's not far far away like tin and you don't need in order to make iron into steel you need charcoal basically right a supply of carbon but that's it mm-hmm you don't need to alloy it with anything so maybe that's why you know those kingdoms decided to use iron and to develop iron work because it seems like they decided to do it at the very beginning and they you know continued until you know the end of their regimes so okay so let's get back to the kingdoms of what we call the first temple period so you tell that you're associated with now I tell a beta maka is for those of you who know Israel and I should really tell you that when you turn on my show you should have two things with you a map of Israel and the Tanakh and a Bible because we're going to refer back to that all the time at some point during the shows is way up in the northern part of today's modern Israel almost at the very tip we're right near my Lodge so if you're looking at your map it's like almost at the Lebanese border so this is Mutulu excuse me not my let Mutulu at the at the like this little area that's really right now just totally on the Lebanese border with Lebanon but it's always been an area of back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and so tell us a little bit about the history of the talents first of all the location the location of a Belle beth maachah is at the very north of the Hula Valley and in the iron age it sits between three entities you can say between the Israelite Kingdom between the aramean sphere which is comprised of different kingdoms but maybe the strongest would be alarm Damascus and between Phoenicia which is more or less today's Lebanon and northern Israel it's it's the northern coast of Israel I would say and the coast of Lebanon the major city relevant to our to the time of our a settlement would be tyre which is growing and expanding during this time in and has a very significant you know cultural development and so we have this site it's it's a 100 dunam site tell you can see it if you drive on Road 90 towards Missoula if you look to your right to the east you'll see this tell which is kind of pronounced over the the valley the Hula Valley and it's a beautiful agricultural area with tremendous water sources also still today very needed and we check the news every morning what's happening in the snow and the Gullah and the come on and that it's all that area in the northern part of Israel which also makes sense why it would be constantly fought over that's what people needed then as now and so this tell until 1948 there was an Arab village located on the tail called a Biel Alchemist and of course it preserves the ancient name of a bill and on ready during the 19th century travelers going around to this area identified this tale because of the because of this error village as the biblical a bill and we have I think two biblical mentions of raids that mention a Velvet maja in its geographical surrounding which helps this identification for instance in first Kings Ben Hadad listens to Assad the king of Judah who tells them to attack the Israelites and he and and the Bible tells us that he went attacked the cities of Israel and he hit yon which is a city that we know is identified with Taliban in the a youn marjayoun valley which is north of Mutulu it's already in Lebanon and he attacked also dan Tel Dan and then a bit maha and they're all right there you can pretty much see all three of them without even see yeah you'll see that a bed.but maha is located six kilometers kind of to the west northwest of dan about 30 kilometers to the north of cut soul which is located in the southern part of the Hula Valley seventy kilometers from the meth Damascus and 35 kilometers from tyre so it's really in the midst of all this area and with when we read this biblical description of a youn Dan a bell beth maachah and the land of Naphtali the naphthalene mountains then it's right there it's it's a perfect description of the location of this element we're talking about kings one chapter 16 the second chapter 15 excuse me the second / sook the second verse if you want to look it up for yourself okay first twenty first cuff I thought it said bet I'm reading it in Hebrew here without my glasses verse 20 okay so that's where you can see and the second source here is Kings - yeah Kingston fifteen verse 29 it's from the eighth century from the destruction of Israel by the Galactic pls of the king of Assyria and he also says that he had ruined or took Yan and vana Baalbek maha Genoa Kadesh and we know how to identify at least Kadesh cuts all and all the Gilead and and the Galilee and so we have a good identification of the site or the land of Naphtali of that tribe of Naphtali which is even today that area is called the regional count the mountains of Naphtali one of the most interesting biblical narratives that mention a bit bit maha is the story of the rebel Sheva Ben Berkeley who rebelled against David and had to escape and the stories in the Sam in second samuel chapter 20 and there's it's a very long story but in the end he reaches the very northern site or city that he can go to which is velvet maha and you have the the army the chief of staff yeah chief of staff pursues him all the way to a bell but maha and when he reaches the site he's he starts to rattle the the city wall according to the story and a wise woman calls from the city wall and says talk to me you up and he says ok I'm listening and she says why why are you doing this why would you ruin a city and a mother in Israel which is an amazing and unique expression it's it's the one and only place where it's used a city and a mother and she says why would you ruin a city and a mother in Israel we have been loyal to Israel and she says you know avail would be it used to be a place where people come and ask ask of course in the sense of divination they would ask and they get their answer and why would you want to ruin the city and he says oh no I I don't want to ruin the city all I want to do is get this rebel and she says oh okay she goes back and when she comes out she has the head of the rebel she tosses it over the wall and that's that and yeah every we should let women run things she just got that done in like three verses exactly and so this is a very very interesting story and it kind of raises the question of who does this city belong to what's the divination that she's talking about also religiously speaking which at the time was paramount in the cultures who's in control of that city okay so for the divination part we'll get to because I have something very interesting to tell you about an interesting fine from the past season but I think what this the question is whether the people here belong politically culturally socially to the Israelites or perhaps there are men or maybe they're Israelites but under army and control or otherwise if they could go back and forth during this period a time period they could be just the same people but you know changing affiliations or loyalties with whoever is controlling the area at the time exactly and paying their taxes to whomever they need to and so this is a question that leads us throughout the research because when we are studying this very interesting site we keep on asking ourselves who are they what are they what kind of interesting combination do we have here for people who are sitting really close to Phoenicia influenced from what's going on there they're basically in the territory of the Israelites if you accept the biblical narrative at least some for some time and and they're also under mean sphere or rule or or influence what are they who are they what is the population comprised of what is that what is their culture what are their beliefs and this is this is the aim of the excavation basically and one more mention I must say something about the name maha first of all the name a bill the the name a bell probably a meadow a watered meadow is a name that is we see it in extra biblical accounts from the second millennium and and then when Abed batma HEIs mentioned in the Bible it's always with the suffix beth maja and so what happened between the second and the first millennium we think that probably some kind of a tribal element joined the city or took over bringing with it the name bit maja bait means house of and maja you would say someone's name okay so my peers in the Bible in many many contexts and it's very interesting because for instance of Shalom was the son of maja David's son Absalom the one who rebelled against him his mother isn't she a princess of Kishore or and her name is maja okay exactly and that brings us to the question of what is the relation between a bed bed maja and those two biblical kingdoms Shula and maja they're mentioned a lot of times together as two kingdoms and the geographical area is probably for the shore is the surrounding the surroundings of the canary and for maja would be the Golan Heights the bhishan area of the Bashan and it's not exactly the location of our site but some people would say that the kingdom of maha expanded to include the north of the hula-hula valley and that Abell that muhammad has been the the main city the capital of this maha kingdom of course there's no evidence for this not even in the bible maja the king of maja it's kind of general knowledge that these cities are affiliated with the remains but actually if you read the verses carefully it's not so clear what shrew and maja are the king of maja is affiliated or mentioned together with kings of our immune kingdoms he joined them in giving I don't know troops to the kingdom of Judah against Israel but it doesn't say that maja is actually a man and we do not know that a bill that maja is even related to the kingdom of maja but that's kind of about one of those questions that were interested in in understanding okay so can I tell you something about the excavation please please please first of all one interesting point is that this tale was never excavated it's one of the only tale of the large large tales that was never ever excavated it was approached during the 60s but because of its proximity to the border it ended up not being excavated at all and William Deever professor William Deever conducted a survey in 1973 but also he wanted to excavate there but he never did and so when my colleagues never panicked going in Robert Mullins decided that they want to conduct an excavation this was the tell that they had in mind and they started with a survey of the tale and the survey the point of the survey was to walk around and gather pottery sherds and look at the morphology of the tale and see which periods are represented in these shirts and they did and they could tell that the tale was sitting on top of a huge lower I would say step and this lower step was probably an early Bronze Age city and we have the pottery shirts to confirm this it was a huge city during the early Bronze Age to third millennium but we have not excavated this part of the tale do you even know what it would have been called when you go back into the sources what what it's sitting on maybe some city that's mentioned that you don't know where it was we do not we have no sources for these early Bronze Age cities for their names or no and so this was I would say the earliest city in this represented in this mount the second city we know was erected in the beginning of the second millennium and during the middle Bronze Age and excavations both in the lower mount and then the upper mount revealed fortifications from this period and even though Kotzur was a huge mega city of 800 dunams during this time the cities around it which were certainly hold in under the under the regime of cuts or which is mentioned quite hevene etc cut roads a huge city then and very important sitting on one of the only ways that you could cross on a dry spot across from let's say the water of to tell Don of the baniyas and all the springs that come off the therm on and then the Jordan leads into the Kinneret there were very few places we actually cross on dry land and at the time cuts or was one of them which is why it's got I don't know twenty seven layers 28 layers it's it's a fabulous site that very few people go to unfortunately I love taking people to Hut's or they've heard about all the others but not cuts or nuts or is amazing so any had they would have been under kind of the regime of whoever was ruling class or they would have been part of that yeah cuts or would be the southernmost city in the Syrian sphere you know with Molly and Kutner and all these huge Syrian cities and huts all would be the southernmost point of that area and of course all these cities around it would be under its regime certainly but still they were fortified and the question is why you know but it's a cultural thing and it's meant to I don't know to to give a steam you know to the local rulers or you know to show their ability to to build complex structures and so just to bring my readers to know the Bible my preachers my listeners into the Tanakh this is also perhaps when the spies come right when we're sitting in the desert and they school it they call settimeout ugly man they come in and they see tremendous fortified cities so perhaps this is that same time period this is what they're seeing that even the smaller towns for some reason have walls around them and the mid Bronze Age are they afraid of something is it as you said to show prestige like we can you know stand on our own literally a lot of questions about that time period but just for my for my listeners to put it into some kind of frame that you're familiar with I'm not sure because I think perhaps the Medellin story would be later and more related to the Israelite settlement right so that would be well there is no Israelite settlement yet it's before we come in it's but after Egypt and and then coming in with you know Moses sends them out all right all those questions forty yes it has to be closer to the time right lot of questions as well so much so much to still learn even with all that we know getting back to so you're saying that this city was fortified as well it was fortified and in the south of the tel we had excavated a tower and a city wall very strangely built with big boulders basically filling it it has a facade the facade is oriented inside the city and in the back it's filled with basically rocks or boulders it's very strange and it has a rampart and the interesting thing is that at the top of the hill the upper mount was also surrounded by a rampart rampart would be layers and layers tilted layers of crushed rock and debris that are kind of placed in the in the direction of the of the mound making both the podium that you can build on and also a protective element and so we have these fortifications for the middle Bronze Age and we know that these fortifications were still being used during the Late Bronze Age most of the cities in Israel because of the Egyptian regime are not fortified during the Late Bronze Age Late Bronze Age would be from 1500 to 1200 BC and and so the wall continues to be used until the Israelite period during the Israelite period we see a lot of pits dug into the wall the city wall and so we understand that it's out of it's not used anymore so the city isn't protected or you think there's another wall or something else going on we haven't found another wall and we do not know that the city was surrounded and with the wall so it could be that they felt that they didn't need to be protected is that the conclusion one of the conclusions you would come to we do not know yet it's too soon to tell because we've you know we've been excavating for seven year seven years and there's so little that we know and we feel that we don't want to jump into conclusions and just tell what do we see tell it as we see it at the point where you're just getting more questions and not the answers yes exactly exactly and I just want to mention one very interesting find from the Late Bronze Age which is a silver horde we basically found a little jar with the neck broken and kind of reshaped and then inside this goosh a black a black of like purplish thing you know and the conservator here me me la vie in the heat in the Institute of Archaeology she looked at it and she said listen there's something in this jar and she extracted the whole thing out you can see it the the the audience can't but how does she can I ask how she got it out without breaking the jug or she had to break the jug she kind of released it it was kind of stuck to the bottom and it's a small you can see the the scale here it's a small group of objects that adhere to each other because of corrosion and it was basically a collection of silver items and you can see it after being clean it was a bunch of earrings and little pieces scrap pieces of silver and one ingot and these pieces were analyzed and we kind of have an idea where the silver came from probably from Lavery on Greece mainland Greece but it's a it's a it's an amazing find it's uh it's it's it's quite rare we don't have a lot of silver horse from that period okay so I'm kind of jumping on forward to the very very interesting or the most interesting period I would say on the tale currently which is the Iron Age one we have in the middle of the tale it's basically on the lower tail but it's not far from the upper tail we have an area of excavation called area a and we have very interesting remains from the Israelite period including a cultic a building with a cultic kind of orientation I would say which was destroyed in heavy flag Eurasian during the 11th century BC and on top of it was built a huge administrated Ministry building well built very rich with an amazing cultic room which I will describe in a minute and these two built in this building was also destroyed in a heavy configuration during the 10th century BC how do I know because we took olive pits charred olive pits and we analyzed them using carbon-14 dating method and we have these two dates so we have a destruction during the 11th century and a destruction during the 10th century this is when we started the conversation I said I don't know if a bit Maha would you know solve the question of the United Monarchy because we can't say anything more than that second layer being destroyed during the 10th century who destroyed it why would it go with the story of Venna dad is the story of Benedetto at all relevant some biblical stories would say it's later you know if you read the Bible as is that would be the time of Benedict and it's interesting questions so I was just a few weeks ago at the tourism ministry they do these review courses for tour guides and someone who is a zoo archaeologist who does animal bones so he gave us a lecture fascinating lecture for five hours you have to be a really dirty tour guide I can't remember his name I cannot remember his name but one of the things that he was telling us is of course when you find animal bones in tells that can tell you a lot about the people living there for example an absence of pig this is the obvious one might tell you that it was Israelite or Judean he also just have to tell you said the chickens really only came in for eating as I'm sure you know live with the Romans and so and that the different kinds of Higgs also that European pigs came in which they're connecting with the Philistines it was really really fascinating so what have you found there in terms of animal bones does that give you any clue here or you don't have that that wasn't significant in your tell well let me describe to you the earlier what we call cultic oriented structure yes I can tell you now that some of my listeners are getting or shifting in their chairs because when we talk about cults now in the Western world it's like Jonestown you know somebody who gave everybody poisoned orange aid or whatever it is a cult is seen in a very negative connotation I would say in today's world someone following some kind of crazy charismatic leader and doing ridiculous things not so when we're talking about the biblical times I just want to put that in here and have your elaborate on that a little bit okay I was I would just say that the reason that we don't call it religion because religion is a big word and cult would be something practical all we can do is describe what kind of material culture objects that might be related to cult are found in our excavations and how they might have been used we can do more than that and so this is why we call it cult but not in exactly not in the sense that in the modern sense so just let me you can see and it's it's a building with a rounded wall which is an interesting feature because most of the walls are kind of you know right-angled and you were asking about bones so I would say three things about this building one we found the burial of an ecwid either a horse or a donkey right at the entrance to the room second we found a dead dog which were not sure if he wandered in or was placed there MMH ends had a strange thing with dogs right but that's much much later I can assure you we do have the Persian period on the tale but this is he was buried under destruction so he must be Iron Age mm-hmm and we have antler antler horns now antler horns antler is something that is shed you know yeah so I think we're talking about the same archaeologist our archaeologist is milord Mahone I think is the guy that you heard from and he said well the the what are the chances that a deer walked into the building and shed its antler there and so we think that they're bringing this antler for a reason and so just to answer your questions about the archaeology the archaeology in this particular building is very interesting and we do have a small bull figurine which is in the entire Near East is always related to deities some to battles some to other deities and we have Bulls in the aramean area and we have Bulls in Canaanite sites of course in the Egyptian yes and and so this is not so indicative of the specific type of what is it made out of that perfectly it's made of clay and the other feature or the main feature that makes us kind of point out that the cultic nature of this building is the many many standing stones that we found in this building a standing stone would be a stone that is erected for no practical reason in the Tanakh they would say Obama this is what they would refer to or I'm not some matzo mat sofa and we have those we have those just you know in the middle of the room or near the entrance and and that this is it this is telling you're more like an idol than you're saying a stone that's standing specifically would be something for it could be an ancestry cult and mr. Colt could be many things and we're not there yet to say what exactly they're doing in this building we oh we also have some installations we have three stone like small podiums and next to each there's a two Boone like a cooking furnace and we're not sure if they're doing some activity and then they need the Colt in order to protect this activity or it's the opposite it's a cold place and it needs I don't know bread or some other cooked material for the practice the cultic practice it's always a question who's who's helping whom here it's part of some kind of sacrificial offering or something like that are you even having the temple to shewbread so these are things that you have in all their in all the different cultures so this is this is the earlier building that was destroyed the one that I was just talking about that was destroyed during the 11th century and top of it of course we have other stratums but they're not very significant and then there is a huge building erected you can see it here it is right angled it's very elaborate it has several stages of construction and it has many rooms and a very for this period of the Israelites period where we have either the remnants of the Canaanite cities like in Megiddo you know or we have these small Israelite settlements what we call Israelites forum houses or whatever was known at the time the way they built their homes and and we have those around the Galilee the APRA Galilee and in huts or there's practically nothing it's a tiny tiny you know village barely a village and then here at a bell bet maha they construct a huge building with very you see this wall almost like a palace you think I would say we call it a building because we're careful but it does have some very extravagant features like this amazing stone floor and we have more than one of those floors we have a couple of those floors and in the entrance we have pilasters in every side of the entrance you walk through pilasters this is fancy and this says to us that the downfall of cuts or was a turning point for abbot maha who grew in size and in significance there is an elite in velvet maha who is able to control population and build this amazing building and this is this is a kind of a seesaw you know in terms of the power the control of the power in that area of the Galilee is going back and forth cuts or the mega huts or during the Bronze Age was it was crushing you you couldn't evolve under its wings and now that Hut soars down a belly's up up and kicking and who what are the guesses who who and another question is what happened to the people of cuts or could some of them have reached a bill and joined local population there possibly bringing some of the cultural aspects of huts or into a bell but this building has no parallel as far as we know so far and it's it's big and it's well constructed and it's interesting and I want to see show you one room in this building also with a cultic connotation and this room is a room that we're not finished excavating but we already found some amazing pieces there the reason that it's so well preserved because it was destroyed as I said in that 10th century destruction and everything was kind of crushed under the destruction so we have huge pthey Galilean pithoi jugs that held wine oil but I don't know I don't know yet but yes huge jars some of them from the Tyrian coast with a wavy band decoration and they were crushed on the floor and we have a small offering table constructed of basalt stones rounded basalt stones one on top of the other and we have this here these are the Galilean we have huge stones that were brought into the room and we are not sure for what reason we thought they were matzah boat like the standing stones but they're probably not they're probably more like fences like they were standing on their whites wide size side like a svaha like you would separate one part of the room from the other it's an interesting feature we have no parallel for that like how the Holy of Holies was separate from the other parts in the temple you have different areas different sacred spaces if you will that each have their own function now if you're not convinced you know from the offering table then we have this wonderful cultic stand that was found in the in the destruction it has one parallel in Megiddo at exactly the same time 11th century BC and it's amazing it's certainly used for liquids because we have a kind of a funnel you see we found that the base of the funnel but not the bowl and we will find a bowl because we know the room still extends to the north and but we see how it's placed in this amazing windowed stand which is peddled you have these little petals which is very very characteristic of Canaanite cult that kind of flower design design the pedal design and so we have this wonderful and then this season if this is not enough we continue to excavate the room and we found a closing wall to the north to the stood to the west and then in the corner we found a square installation you can see it here sorry for the people listening it's made of it's built up it's surrounded by a low fence of stones very dark material between this fence and this construction which I can tell you it looks very dark sediment but it's not burnt sediment it's some kind of a liquid or material that accumulated in this space between the fence and the installation at the top of the installation there are two depressions which are plastered and it's like a double sink and if you're not convinced there's a hole leading from one of the sinks into the wall at the back of the installation and so they're using this installation for liquid we call it you know just just as a Edison nickname we call it the kosher sink because it's a double sink it's a double sink it has a permeated one for milk which is what kosher kitchens have since we don't mix the two yes and this is the hole for the how do you say because the drainage the drainage hole it's all plastered it's plastered together with the wall behind it it's an amazing installation and it's again unique and it joins the cultic stand and I haven't mentioned some other stuff like you know results huge bizarre balls and all kinds of findings and it all you know leaves us thinking what what were they doing in this room were they producing something and then again using the cultic making wine and then using it for some kind of wine I don't think they were making here we don't have evidence for that that in itself is interesting yes the absence of wine yes but they're doing something with liquids and we're not sure if this installation is a cultic one per se or as an industrial one and then they need some kind of ceremony before or after utilizing it for some practical reason have you brought in the lung goat who does she's the one who gets into the plaster a lot of times it finds pollen that was trapped like in Ramat Raquel and in other places to see what was growing at the time I I did ask her to do that and she said that the question is whether the plaster was exposed to the exterior at the mouth oh hell the plastered wall that observed those pollen seeds was exposed to the air and to a garden it was in the beautiful garden there and the pollen told gave us tremendous information about what was growing there fig trees and it's all game and amazing yeah so just curious about what because now when you go to this area I'm just thinking I was just there a few weeks ago you find a lot of what we call the stone fruit growing in that area there's the beautiful orchards apricots and plums and you would I don't know if they had I doubt they had plums then but who knows what they were growing then exactly yeah and so what we can do here is analyze the plaster to see if it absorbed some kind of molecules of organic matter and again and continue our analysis of the sediments between this small fence and the installation to see what did what did what was absorbed in that sediment and this is something that we're working on it's so interdisciplinary now archaeology it's absolutely phenomenal it's almost like everybody is in on this all the different kinds of Sciences yes we're always looking for new ways to gain additional information about our findings I want to go on this this building was destroyed and then what was built on top of it is not clear we we know that immediately on top of the destruction we have walls that relate to the iron to a the date again is problematic we do not know when was this new town built was it built in the middle of the 10th century which would be Solomon or was it built later in the 10th century or early 9th century which would be already the home right dynasty a heaven Jezebel and just to throw my listeners who are new to all this into the the muddle and the back-and-forth between let's say Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University or the different chronologies is also the messages that in terms of the Bible so is the strong Kingdom Solomon who the Bible represents is really a great king or is it Ahab and Jezebel and that dynasty which are more the worshipers of vile and according and the Bible yells that tremendously and a lot of the prophets Elijah especially saying like what's going on with you guys you worshiping other gods so remember the agenda of the Tanakh I'm using agenda carefully here but remember the point of the Tanakh is not a history book it's making a point and it's making the point a religious point if you will and the monotheistic religion that it's representing and so that's a lot of what we're getting in here now is and again not just archeology but a whole lot of other thoughts and ideas and different schools some of whom take very very seriously what they're doing here all of whom would take it seriously okay and so I need to mention one thing from this town from this city there we excavated in the last season a stone floor and on the stone floor with a podium constructed of stones circle of stones elevated from the level of the floor and on top of this podium was a vessel an amphora a jug I would say and it contained 425 Astra galley bones which are knuckle bones 400 and when five animal knuckle bones which animal do you know we do we have their sheep goat and a little bit of deer no pigs and no cattle some of the bones were just starting now to look into them and to clean them some of them are treated some of them are painted red some of them are drilled and the point is that these bones knuckle bones are known to have been used for divination purposes how exactly they were used I'm not sure some of them were exchanged for a sacrifice will you pay for your sacrifice uh-huh that you made a sacrifice and then you could wear it on your neck saying I made a sacrifice some of these bones were used for gaming so they have these several you know functions possible functions but I have to refer you back to the words of the wise woman who said with you of their chief of staff of David's army exactly and she's saying you know they used to ask in a bill and get answers and then we find this jug left as is not touched no one took it with him when they fled or whatever they left it there sitting on the podium with full of these knuckle bones and this is an amazing fine and we are not sure you know what it says what it means almost like a place of Oracles if which is maybe a term that people a little more familiar with from later on Wow I want to say something about the name the city and the mother the situate Septuagint you know the translation of the Greek translation when it says city and a mother in Israel they say metal Pauline like metal is a ism yes but it's like a mother Mattel it's it's you know a city and it's a little blue Terra City and it's you would have like the mothership you have the mother city and then the satellite cities around but you have all through our history the main area so a city is many times you know associated or turned mother and that's that's a known association but it also could be then when she says why would you ruin a city and a mother she could be saying why do you want to ruin a city and a mother in a sense of herself a prophetess we know that the word mother is used to describe prophetess like women prophets deber eyes a mother and so we have to wonder what kind of special you know what kind of special [Music] statue that stature what kind of special stature had a bell bet maha in a regional sense the sit the seat of this wise woman was maybe a prophetess the divination the cultic practices that we are not sure what they are what they mean and so these are questions that we're dealing with I'm coming through the very end now we're going up to the mound to the top of the mound to area be where we saw the middle Bronze Age rampart you remember we also have their air remains from the Iron Age one from this 12th 11th century BC but most important is the Citadel that we exposed from the ninth century BC it's basically contemporary with the astragal epod and that you know those remains the knuckle homes and those and the buildings there that we're we're just beginning to excavate so at the top at the very very top of the mound there's a citadel very thick walls it's basically looks like a row of rooms it was probably rooms surrounding a courtyard or something of the sort but it's a massive structure and it we found many many interesting finds in this building we found a painted Venetian jar in one of the rooms which is very interesting because it kind of ties us to Phoenicia to the cultural influence from Phoenicia maybe connect anomic ties and we have a figurine of a woman the head of a woman which is in finishin style because we have her like hair you know this hat all hair what we call very finishing in style also made of clay and we found a seal probably depicting a boat which would also tie us to the Mediterranean coast and we have some Greek pottery dating the structure to the 9th century BC in addition we found a wonderful bearded male figurine in a room that was dated based on carbon-14 of charred olive pits to the ninth century and so there's this huge Citadel and I will describe the figurine in a minute and we have the date of the room but we are not sure when it was constructed and by whom so it could have been constructed by an aramean king after he destroyed an Israelite town or it could be the Israelites building a citadel to protect themselves from the eminent threat of the Armenians it could go both ways and in any event culturally it really ties us to the Phoenician Coast so what's going on the figurine is tiny let me just find the picture it's five and a half centimetres long and it's made of finance which is basically an ancient glass it's a it's a silicate paste that you add to it some salts and minerals like copper minerals and when you let it dry you know the minerals kind of migrate to the surface and then you put it in the furnace and it creates a glaze OVA like a glaze in the surface and so it's a glassy surface and it's beautiful and you have this paste which you can you know make it into either press it into a mold which this is what probably we have here or you can just shape it with your hands and and then make it do we know who did this there is there have you found anything similar anywhere else so this head is unique it's excellent workmanship it's beautiful if you can open the internet or just you know write bearded male figurine I'm hoping to put this picture when they open the show this is the guy that they've seen okay so the point is that we can look at the technology and ask ourselves where could it you know where was it produced or where could it have been produced it could be in the Phoenician coast they have the technology it could be needed but they certainly have the technology but it could be also in Syria they produce finance in many regions of the Near East and for a long time before this figurine of the ninth century BC the point is that this individual if you look at him he's you can see that he has a very interesting hairstyle kind of corded I would say like cords making the hair and they're painted painted before before baking in in black the eyes are black the the I mean the pupils are black the eyebrows the beard the hair and then you and he's wearing this band on his forehead with stripes in in black and also yellow / I would say gold and his face is greenish because of this copper tint we already examined the materials and we know that they added copper in order to create this greenish tint of the face and we know they used manganese in order to create this blackish hair and other features and these banded bearded individuals are they could be a general description of a Semite individual we see these depictions from the ramesside period you know how the Egyptians portray their enemies and we see it in many others Near Eastern art depictions bearded banded males are common but I must say that's it had been suggested that his origin was Egypt Rama site Egypt but all of these guys have their ears showing and he doesn't and I think it is of importance he's very stern and of course you're not supposed to talk about expressions in the ancient art of the Near East but still it's it looks like a dignitary why because of the hair because of the these I would say yellowish goldish stripes on the bed on their headband and because of its uniqueness it's a unique item custom made found in a citadel we are thinking that perhaps whoever built the Citadel commissioned this object so there are many many many options one a very general figure describing but why why in the ninth century you know it's not the Egyptians describing their enemies who would describe a general individual a Semite so that's an option it's a general figure the other options it's an individual and if it's an individual who is it are we looking at the face of an individual from the ninth century BC and if we are who are we looking at is this a local ruler like you know the local builder of the Citadel that commissioned whatever the statue or could it be a depiction of a king a ninth century period King and then if it is pick your choice is it casa el of around Damascus is it a hub Juhu it could be a number of video individuals could be a Phoenician King you know it could be anyone and my colleagues don't like I have been scolded already for doing this type of interpretation and saying you know opening this figure for identification identification because you know art experts would say this is going too far or archaeologists or Bibb lettuce would say this is going too far don't do it but once this figure went out to the world and we did not keep him with us you know usually archaeologists kind of tend to keep close to heart the nice finds and then think about them for a few years and then you know let the world know and we kind of take a different approach we like to publicize our finds very soon after we excavate them because we feel that it's better for scholarly you know debate and also we think it's the right of humankind to know what we're exposing here it's not ours to keep and we are this is our policy to kind of put the things out there and let people think about them and so if we let people think about them I think it's only right to bring up all the options and say we need to be very very careful about our interpretation of such items but on the other hand we like to play around a little bit mm-hmm right and so this is it may be a general at least look of what a man would have looked like even if we never know and we probably never will know exactly who this is what a man looked like and what he wore and what his hairstyle is like in that he was bearded which is also something it's like look it's looking millennia into the past it's so it's so absolutely exciting if my listeners is the TEL open if my listeners want to come when did the excavation season start and do you take volunteers I know that there's a lot of excavations in Israel where they'll have students come in and dig with them for a month or two even get college credits how does that work here with your University and specifically with with tell Abel beth maachah aha okay so our next season would we'll start in June 23 this this year and would end in July 19th 23rd of June to the 19th of July that's a less than a month why so short actually all of us all three Co directors are students of a mimosa professor a mimosa and we we've all excavated with him Attila HOF which is amazing site and that'll velvet my high is a piece of cake for us in terms of weather I mean Telus Hall is located in the Beit Shean Valley which is possibly the hottest place in the entire country it's so humid it's awful that's where did you find the apiary right they found Solomon's the honey that was in her area and now that my colleague found this apiary and yes it was a furnace there and so but but my highs like a walk in the yeah it's it's nothing for us in terms of weather the thing is that we need to find time when we can have volunteers join us and different universities you know they end at different times and American universities would like us to dig earlier and German universities would like us to dig later and we're always trying to you know stretch and I have three kids at home I must confess and they're small 7 to 11 and we have been excavating very long seasons at TELRIC Hoeven before that in Bachan six weeks seasons I think in hots or they did give in eight weeks and in it's simple it's impossible for us to do it anyway wait we're I'm so glad you said that because you're you're also family people archaeologists are not just archaeologists but you have a lot going on and it's summer vacation your kids are home so for you to go to work for two months while your kids are home is not there's a balance here in Israel that we really try and find between family and work a very healthy balance I think for the most part so I'm actually glad very glad that you said that I'm sorry you're not digging for longer but I'm happy for your kids that their email their mother their mother will be around they're not just in the city and the mother I just yeah I just of course the distance from Jerusalem is a crucial factor here because we leave our houses and we stay there at one of the kibbutz seem around the tell and so it's it's we do it for a month and we welcome volunteers with definitely welcome volunteers we have our website which is www.hyken.com [Music] we love having volunteers and we love having visitors and the TEL is open all year long it belongs to the National Park Resort Authority now and but it's open all year and it's it's of course that the excavation areas are they have something around them a fence but you can still you know get the impression of the site and the view and and look at the walls that are still standing there and if you wish to come and volunteer yes please please do so and there's also a possibility to get academic credit we had a wonderful group of students last season and we welcomed volunteers definitely they have to commit for a month or someone could come let's say for even two or three days let's say they're coming to is almost summer and they want to really get involved in the dig or you prefer to know who they are and have them there the entire time for the experience I would recommend to come for at least two weeks to come for one week is certainly a possibility to come for less would need a special we'll have to consider it because it takes time to get a handle on how to excavate and and it's I must say it's a hard physical work but we do have you know senior citizens and all ages with us and it's it's highly recommended because until you touched the earth the debris you know you do not get the feeling of history you know at its entirety I can totally back that up I get the shivers even just thinking about it when you get into the earth and you're touching something that hasn't been seen in thousands of years and if you if you're a Bible person and this is a biblical site and you're thinking what went on here who was here maybe you can add to the discovery into the knowledge or even add a question which is also fine it there's never there's really absolutely nothing like it this is not Universal Studios this is the real deal thank you so much dr. nam-il Oh Mac for spending a lot of time explaining to us both about the the different metal that it's your specialty and also about this incredibly exciting site if people want to see are the pictures up on the website as well what you showed me yes and there are also publications and there's a lot of material out there that you can find well thank you so very much and thank you everybody for listening for making it this far eave heroin even ation on the land of israel network thank you to Ben and to Tabitha and to everywhere on the network you can always write to me Eve at the Land of Israel come and take a look at my website leave Harrow compher where i'm going to be in the next couple of months take care of you Betty from Mount Scopus in Jerusalem goodbye for now [Music] for Rosh Chodesh Aadhaar bet this coming new moon we are doing the Land of Israel Network Sabaton at the Dead Sea called the Israel inspired retreat where there's going to be Torah study and connection and meditation and prayer and we're going to be able to connect and to talk about everything that's going on in Israel today on spiritual levels it's going to be a really special weekend you can