The biblical town of Ziklag may have been found, a team of Israeli and
Australian archaeologists announced on Monday. The ruins were found near
the southern town of Kiryat Gat in Israel and have been dated to the
early 10th century B.C.E. – the time associated with King David.
If they're right, it would bolster the theory
that David was more than just a local hilltop chieftain as some
researchers claim, and support the theory that he indeed ruled over a
united kingdom in the area of Judea, say the researchers, from the
Israel Antiquities Authority, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and
Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia. But the kingdom doesn't seem
to have been the mighty entity in antiquity that some envision.
Ziklag is mentioned in the Books of Joshua and Samuel as a Philistine town abutting the city of Gath (after which the modern city of Kiryat Gat is named).
In this context, the
archaeologists point out that the very name Ziklag stands out in the
biblical record because it isn’t Semitic or Canaanite, but apparently a
Philistine one. Apropos of that, recent genetic studies on skeletons
discovered in a Philistine cemetery in Ashkelon, on Israel’s coast, have
proved once and for all who these mysterious Philistines were: They originated in Europe.
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