Archaeologists who found a 3,000-year-old gold ibex earring in the remains of the ancient Canaanite city identified with Armageddon expect that further discoveries will broaden historical insight about the site.
Digging resumed on June 17, almost a month after the announcement that a jewelry trove was found in the remains of a private home built near the palace that housed the then rulers.
A point of debate is whether Megiddo, now part of present-day Israel, was one of several Egyptian garrisons in the late Bronze Age, said Israel Finkelstein, co-director of the dig.
“I personally think Megiddo was not such a city,” Finkelstein said. “But what we are doing now illuminates this question.”
Megiddo, which the New Testament identifies with the “Armageddon” battle of the end of days, has been home to 37 different cities over thousands of years and is a trove of archaeological treasure.
Strategically, the UNESCO World Heritage site has been invaluable because it controlled a commonly used passage on the trading route between Egypt and Mesopotamia, and stood along a route connecting Jerusalem with the Jordan River valley.
“Anything that would shed light on the sequence ofevents and sequence of material culture that would show whether this culture was the last phase of the Egyptian Canaanite system or the next phase, would be of utmost importance,” said Finkelstein, also a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University.
The ibex piece was a “major find,” said Finkelstein, who participated in his first dig 40 years ago. “Sometimes you come across items and say to yourself, ‘I haven’t seen anything like that in my life.’”
“It is important to understand the methodology of working with these jewelry pieces and to understand the origin of the gold and silver,” he said. “It sheds light on trade relations and connections between Canaan and neighboring lands.”
Front Section, Pages 2 on 06/24/2012