Tel Gezer

Tel Gezer was the site one of the most important cities in the Middle East in ancient times. It still stands at the junction of the routes along the coast, known as the Vias Maris, and from Jaffa to Jerusalem. It is a huge Tel that can been seen from the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway (Route 1). However, it is very difficult to approach and find a route into the Tel. With the leadership of one of my daughter's friends, we were taken on a tour of Tel Gezer on Yom Haatzmaut (Independance Day).
A Tel is a flat-topped hill that is formed from the layers of cities that were built on the site, one on top of the other, over a period of thousands of years. It is a phenomenon unique to the Middle East, where such cities occupied strategic locations on natural hills, where there also was a spring of water, in order to dominate the surroundings and were gradually increased in height as the cities were built on them and destroyed in invasions and combat. When we lived in Rehovot in the 1960s we tried to visit Tel Gezer, and we naturally went to the kibbutz Gezer (Gezer in Hebrew means "carrot"), which is adjacent to the Tel, but even with directions we were unable to find a way up to the Tel. This time we approached the Tel from the other side up a long winding stoney trail, that I would not have attempted unless I was following an experienced guide.
The main such Tels recorded in the Bible were Hazor, Gezer and Megiddo, and control of them meant in effect control over all the Land of Israel. However, they were also, of course, targets for invading armies and most of them were destroyed and rebuilt over and over again. Apart from being mentioned in the Bible, Gezer was one of the cities listed in an Egyptian stele and the Amarna Letters (hieroglyphics written on small stone tablets) as having been seized by the Pharaohs. Eventually these Tels were abandoned and some of them were lost to antiquity.
Tel Gezer was rediscovered by Ganneau a French archeologist in 1871 when he came across a reference to a shrine for a Sheikh at Tel el-Jezer near the Arab village of Shusha. Robert Macalister excavated the site in 1902-7 for the Palestine Exploration Fund of Britain, and made some of the first important discoveries. He found a series of stone markers positively identifying the site as Gezer, a Canaanite gate of the city dated from ca. 3,500 bce, a six chambered gate from a later period that is identical to gates excavated at Hazor and Megiddo and now identified as from the period of Solomon, a calendar stone that is the oldest Hebrew inscription known, a group of ten monumental megaliths thought to be a Canaanite "high place," and a sloping tunnel leading down to the water source.
There is one inescapable conclusion from these findings, that the relationship of descriptions in the Bible to specific actual sites in the Land is real. This was the basis used by later archaeologists, such as Albright, to excavate sites such as Megiddo and Hazor. Although Tel Gezer has been worked on by many archaelogists over the years, only ca. 15% of it has been excavated. It is indeed a huge site and it takes at least an hour to transit the top of the Tel.
One of the greatest experiences of my life was when a group of Israeli planes flying over for Independence Day banked low over Tel Gezer and turned from the coast inland towards Jerusalem. The relationship between its ancient history and today's reality could not have been more explicit.
After our visit to Gezer we all drove to Modi'in, across the Ayalon Valley below, and had a wonderful barbecue picnic in a park, and we celebrated Israel's 61st birthday in style.