A couple weeks ago I wrote a challenge post titled Can You Tell the Tel?

I posted five pictures of tels to see if my readers could tell which tel they were.

Three of the tels were quickly identified and I gave more information about them in a post that I wrote last week:  Some of the Answers

In the comments from the post one of my friends that I visited the other sites with identified the other two tels.

The ones that were first identified were:Tel el-Jib or Gibeon

Abel Bet-Maacah

Hippos-Sussita

Now for the identification of the other two pictures from the challenge. I will post each picture and the original text and then give the identification and more information.

Here is tel number one. This may be a tough one as it does not have much variation in shape.

This tel is Derbe or Kerti Hüyük. We know that Paul and Barnabas preached here on Paul’s First Missionary Journey and that Paul was here with Silas on his Second Journey.

I visited Derbe in 2014 and we could see the excavations that they had made the previous summer. This was the first excavation at Derbe. There had been earlier site surveys including one in 1956 when they found an inscription that showed that it was Derbe.

You can visit my post Tells Tell a Tale to see more images from the day I visited the site.

Here is tel number two. This tel is in a beautiful unspoiled setting.

This tel is Lystra or Zordula Hüyük.

Many interesting things happened at Lystra like Paul healing a lame man. Lystra was also the home of Timothy and his mother and grandmother, Lois and Eunice.

Lystra has not been excavated. However, there have been a few items discovered there. One item was a 2nd century stone altar with Lystra inscribed in Latin.

It would be interesting to see what an excavation at Lystra would find. For now, it is just a beautiful unspoiled mound.

I hope that you enjoyed this little challenge. I am debating whether to do another challenge in the future. Perhaps I will, but maybe with multiple pictures from a single tel. Also, maybe from ones that are better known.

Steven