Those of you who follow my blog know that I have spent parts of two seasons at an archaeological dig at Lachish.

Today there was news of one of the discoveries that was made during the time we were digging there.

Photo by Emil Aladjem from Haaretz.com

The first article that I saw today was from Haaertz. The picture above is from the article.

Did the Kingdom of David Exist? New Wall in Southern Israel Reignites Debate

There was also an article in the Times of Israel:

Archaeologist: Thick Wall found at Lachish Indicates King Solomon’s Son Built It

Both of these articles are full of information about the wall and what it means.

You may noticed that my title is An Old Wall at Lachish. This is because it is from the time of King Rehoboam, so it is very old. However, it is a wall at Lachish that had not been discovered or documented in earlier digs.

When I was at the site the wall was not fully uncovered as in the first picture, but I was able to see the wall and stand on it. We knew that olive pits had been submitted for dating and that there was a good possibility that the dates would come back from the time of Rehoboam. It takes time for all the research that goes into announcing discoveries, but it is always cool when something is announced that has a personal connection.

I did get to do a little bit of work in this part of the dig, but we were mainly working in other areas at Lachish.

On the last day of our time at the dig in 2016 I took a few pictures from the bus as we pulled away from the site. In this picture you can barely see the wooden dump structure. Look just to the left of the center on the down slope.

However, you can clearly see the remains of the stone dump structure from the First Expedition to Lachish. It is at the upper right.

Here is another view of the area where the wall was being excavated. You can see that it is a little bit down the slope of the tell.

On the cover of the book Biblical Lachish: A Tale of Construction, Destruction, Excavation and Restoration by David Ussishkin there is a good picture of the side of the tell where the wall was excavated.

This year I will again return to Israel for an archaeological dig. I will spend two weeks at a site near Lachish where we will again be searching for more information about this time period in history.  See: Upcoming Wanderings II

Steven