Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

608 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
Umm Lakis.
Petrie soon saw that nothing was to be found
there and accordingly commenced work on a mound in the
neighborhood, called Tell el- Hesy, which seemed to him to
promise particularly good results. He was not disappointed.
Though he found neither splendid buildings nor inscriptions,
he nevertheless succeeded in
bringing to view the successive
periods of the history of Lachish in the layers of
debris which lay one upon the other. At the top, almost
on the surface, he came upon remains of Greek times of
about 450 b. c. Deep underneath, forty-five feet below
ground, he uncovered ruins of the time of the eighteenth
Egyptian dvnasty, i. e., about 1400 b. c. In the middle,
twentv feet under the surface, the potsherds he discovered
proved to be Old-Phenician, belonging to about the ninth
centurv. The fact here strikingly brought out, that in each
century the height of the debris increased on an average
five feet, was likewise confirmed wherever Petrie took the
depth as an index for the age. The picture of the city so
often destroyed and rebuilt, rose anew before the eyes of
the explorer. The ramparts of the oldest period, behind
which the inhabitants perhaps sought protection against the
Egvptian invasions, are no less discernible than the walls
walls again arose on the top of these, till
of a higher stratum, which may be the fortifications of
Rehoboam mentioned in the Bible (2 Chron. 11:9). New
finally Nebuchadrezzar
besieged and no doubt also destroyed the city, about
590 b. c. (Jer. 34:7). After that the citv was left without
walls. The discoveries show that it was still populated
as an open citv after the return of the Jews in the second
half of the fifth
centurv, but only to become desolate again
in a short time. The settlement, it appears, was soon
transferred from here to another place.
After the excavations in tracing the course of the wall at
Jerusalem (comp. above, pp. 6o2,seqq.) were completed, the
English Palestine Exploration Fund in 1899 and 1900