Azekah was a town in the Shephelah guarding the upper reaches of the Valley of Elah, about 26 km northwest of Hebron. The current tell by that name has been identified with the biblical Azekah, dating back to the Canaanite period. Today, the site lies on the purlieu of Britannia Park. According to Epiphanius of Salamis, the name meant "white" in the Canaanite tongue. The tell is pear shaped with the tip pointing northward. Due to its location in the Elah Valley it functioned as one of the main Judahite border cities, sitting on the boundary between the lower and higher Shephelah. Although listed in Joshua 15:35 as being a city in the plain, it is actually partly in the hill country, partly in the plain.
Biblical history
In the Bible, it is said to be one of the places where the Amorite kings were defeated by Joshua, and one of the places their army was destroyed by a hailstorm. It was given to the tribe of Judah. In the time of Saul, the Philistines massed their forces between Sokho and Azekah, putting forth Goliath as their champion. Rehoboam fortified the town in his reign, along with Lachish and other strategic sites. Lachish and Azekah were the last two towns to fall to the Babylonians before the overthrow of Jerusalem itself. It was one of the places re-occupied by the people on the return from the Captivity.
Identification
Although the hill is now widely known as the Tel of Azekah, in the early 19th-century the hilltop ruin was known locally by the name of Tell Zakariyeh. J. Schwartz was the first to identify the hilltop ruin of Tell-Zakariyeh as the site of Azekah on the basis of written sources. Schwartz's view was supported by archaeologist William F. Albright, and by 1953, the Government Naming Committee in Israel had already decided upon giving the name "Tel Azekah" to Khirbet Tall Zakariya. In 1838, British-American explorer Edward Robinson passed by the site of Tell Zakariyeh, which stood to the left of the modern village bearing the same name. French explorerVictor Guérin thought Tell Zakariyeh to be the same village mentioned in the Book of I Maccabees, known then as Beit Zakariah, although C.R. Conder thought it to refer to a different Beit Zakariyeh, the more easterly Beit Skaria. "As for Azekah," Guérin writes, "it has not yet been found with certainty, this name appearing to have disappeared." Scholars believe that the town's old namesake can be seen in its modern-day corruption, "az-Zakariyeh". In the mosaic layout of the Madaba Map of the 5th century CE, the site is mentioned in conjoined Greek uncials: Το του Αγίου Ζαχαρίου, Βεθζαχαρ . Epiphanius of Salamis writes that, in his day, Azekah was already called by the Syriac name Ḥǝwarta. Modern Israeli archaeologists have noted that, because of the existence of an adjacent ruin now known as Khirbet Qeiyafa, and which is situated opposite Socho, not to mention the site's "unusual size and the nature of the fortifications," that there are good grounds to suggest that the site in question may actually point to the biblical Azekah.
Non-Biblical mention
Azekah is mentioned in two sources outside of the Bible. A text from the Assyrian kingSennacherib describes Azekah and its destruction during his military campaign. Azekah is also mentioned in one of the Lachish letters. Lachish Letter 4 suggests that Azekah was destroyed, as they were no longer visible to the exporter of the letter. Part of the otracon reads:
Archaeological findings
Excavations by the English archeologists Frederick J. Bliss and R. A. Stewart Macalister in the period 1898-1900 at Tel Azekah revealed a fortress, water systems, hideout caves used during Bar Kokhba revolt and other antiquities, such as LMLK seals. Azekah was one of the first sites excavated in the Holy Land and was excavated under the Palestine Exploration Fund for a period of 17 weeks over the course of three seasons. At the close of their excavation Bliss and Macalister refilled all of their excavation trenches in order to preserve the site. The site is located on the grounds of a Jewish National Fund park, Britannia Park. In 2008 and 2010, a survey of the site was conducted by Oded Lipschitz, Yuval Gadot, and Shatil Imanuelov, on behalf of Tel-Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology. The Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition, part of the regional Elah Valley Project, commenced in the summer of 2012. It is directed by Prof. Oded Lipschits of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, together with Dr Yuval Gadot of TAU and with Prof. Manfred Oeming of Heidelberg University. and is a consortium of over a dozen universities from Europe, North America, and Australia. In its first season 300 volunteers worked for six weeks and uncovered walls, installations, and many hundreds of artifacts. As part of the Jewish National Fund park, whenever possible structures will be conserved and displayed to the public.
