Tel Erani () or Tell esh-Sheikh Ahmed el-ʿAreini () is a multi-period

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

on the outskirts of Kiryat Gat in the Southern District of

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. It is also known by the name '' ʻIrâq el-Menshiyeh'' ("vein-like sand ridges of Menshiyeh"), although thought to have borne the original Arabic name of ''Menshiyet es-Saḥalīn''. The tell was first occupied in the

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

period, but its most notable remains are from the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

and

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

, when it was the site of a substantial

Philistine Philistines (; Septuagint, LXX: ; ) were ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the Philist ...

city with links to

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, before becoming a Judahite town. It has been identified with the

biblical The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

cities of

Libnah Libnah or Lobana (, ''whiteness''; ) was an independent city, probably near the western seaboard of Israel, with its own king at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan.Gina Hens-Piazza Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries: 1–2 Kings Abingdon ...

, Gath, ''

Mmst MMST (Hebrew: ''MMŠT'') is a word written in Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, Paleo-Hebrew abjad script. It appears exclusively on LMLK seal inscriptions, seen in Archaeology of Israel, archaeological findings from the ancient Kingdom of Judah, whose mea ...

'', Eglon and Makkedah, but none of these identifications are certain. The city was destroyed by the

Assyrians Assyrians (, ) are an ethnic group indigenous to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians share descent directly from the ancient Assyrians, one of the key civilizations of Mesopotamia. While they are distinct from ot ...

in the 8th century BCE, and again in the 6th century BCE, possibly by the

Babylonians Babylonia (; , ) was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as an Akkadian-populated but Amorite-ru ...

. In the

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

period, it was the site of a temple. There are also signs of settlement in the

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

, and

Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...

periods. The

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

village of

Iraq al-Manshiyya Iraq al-Manshiyya () was a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arab village located 32 km northeast of Gaza City. The village contained two mosques and a Mazar (mausoleum), shrine for Shaykh Ahmad al-Arayni. It was depopulated after the 1948 Arab ...

was located at the foot of the tell until it was depopulated in the

1948 Arab–Israeli War The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

Discovery and history of investigations

Tel Erani was first documented by Claude Reignier Conder and Herbert Kitchener in their 1872–1877 survey for the

Palestine Exploration Fund The Palestine Exploration Fund is a British society based in London. It was founded in 1865, shortly after the completion of the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem by Royal Engineers of the War Department. The Fund is the oldest known organization i ...

. They described the contemporary village of

and remarked that the site was "evidently ancient and important, and seems possibly to represent the ancient Libnah." The identification of Tel Erani with the biblical city of

was based on the

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

in the hills nearby – the name of the city meaning 'the white' in ancient Hebrew. Remains from the 10th century BCE have been found at the site. The town, then belonging to the

kingdom of Judah The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelites, Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands to the west of the Dead Sea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem. It was ruled by the Davidic line for four centuries ...

, was destroyed in 701 BCE, with 15 LMLK jar handles discovered among the debris. In 1921,

William F. Albright William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891 – September 19, 1971) was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars ...

argued that the site was a poor fit with Libnah, and instead proposed it was the major

city of Gath. He placed Libnah at Tell es-Safi, which most scholars of the time identified with Gath. When the Palestinian population was forced out of the area in the

, Albright's theory was the basis for naming the new Israeli settlements of Kiryat Gat and Kibbutz Gat.

New identification

Historical geographer, M.D. Press, concludes that Tel Erani, by way of a transformation of its name, may have been the 1st-century Idumean town of ''Sallis'' (= Shiḥlayim) mentioned by

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

(''

The Jewish War ''The Jewish War'' is a work of Jewish history written by Josephus, a first-century Roman-Jewish historian. It has been described by the biblical historian Steve Mason as "perhaps the most influential non-biblical text of Western history". ...

'' 3.2.2. ). A citadel (acropolis) was once built at the site, making it a likely place of refuge for a retreating army ''en route'' from

Ascalon Ascalon or Ashkelon was an ancient Near East port city on the Mediterranean coast of the southern Levant of high historical and archaeological significance. Its remains are located in the archaeological site of Tel Ashkelon, within the city limi ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

Excavations

The site is very large, more than 24 hectares.

Yeivin dig (1950s)

In the late 1950s, Shmuel Yeivin opened excavations at the site (then known as Tel Gat) to confirm Albright's identification. Although he did find

material, the pottery was not consistent with a Philistine city. Albright's theory was therefore rejected. Instead, Yeivin discovered that the main phase of occupation of the site was earlier, in the

Early Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

. He also found what was then the earliest evidence of contact between

and

Canaan CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...

: a potsherd bearing the ''

serekh In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a serekh is a rectangular enclosure representing the niched or gated façade of a palace surmounted by (usually) the Horus falcon, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. The serekh was the earliest conven ...

'' of the pharaoh

Narmer Narmer (, may mean "painful catfish", "stinging catfish", "harsh catfish", or "fierce catfish"; ) was an ancient Egyptian king of the Early Dynastic Period, whose reign began at the end of the 4th millennium BC. He was the successor to the Prot ...

Jagiellonian University excavations

Polish archaeologists from

Jagiellonian University The Jagiellonian University (, UJ) is a public research university in Kraków, Poland. Founded in 1364 by Casimir III the Great, King Casimir III the Great, it is the oldest university in Poland and one of the List of oldest universities in con ...

in Krakow have been excavating here since 2013. They found that the oldest artefacts on the site may date to the

Amratian culture The Amratian culture, also called Naqada I, was an archaeological culture of prehistoric Upper Egypt. It lasted approximately from 4000 to 3500 BC. Overview The Amratian culture is named after the archaeological site of el-Amrah, located around ...

(Naqada I) ca 4,000 BC. So the ancient Egyptian trading post at Tel Erani may be much older that previously thought.Egyptian trading post at Tel Erani in Israel older than previously thought.
archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com 9/09/2019 :"Last year’s 018research by the Kraków archaeologists proved that the inhabitants of Lower Egypt maintained relations with the southern Levant where Tel Erani lies. “We proved that he relationswere very lively,” said Professor Ciałowicz, adding that both regions were cooperating with one another closely in 4,000 BC. Copper and olive oil flowed into Egypt and animal and fish meat was transported in the opposite direction." An Early Bronze Age I fortification wall was also discovered in 2018, which may date to over 5,300 years old. This may be the oldest such defense wall in Israel.

References