Gibeon el jib

Gibeon (el-Jib) is the archaeological site at modern el-Jib, 6 miles (9 km) north of Jerusalem, which Simcha Shalom Brooks, author of a 2007 reference article on Gibeon, gives as the location of the biblical city of Gibeon, in the tribal territory of Benjamin (Joshua 18:25). Excavations there, Brooks reports, found jar handles inscribed with the city's name, two water systems and cellars dug out of the rock near wine presses.

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Gibeon in the Bible

The people of Gibeon, called Hivites, "acted deceptively" to win a treaty from Joshua and were made "woodcutters and water carriers" (Joshua 9:3-27). Gibeon was "a great city, like one of the royal cities; it was larger than Ai" (Joshua 10:2). Joshua's prayer, "O sun, stand still over Gibeon," is told under Sun Stands Still at Gibeon (Joshua 10:12-14). Abner's men and Joab's men met "by the pool of Gibeon," where twelve from each side fought before Abner and the men of Israel were defeated (2 Samuel 2:12-17). Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings at Gibeon, "the great high place," and there the LORD appeared to him in a dream (1 Kings 3:4-5); Chronicles adds that God's Tent of Meeting was there (2 Chronicles 1:3). The prophet Hananiah son of Azzur was "from Gibeon" (Jeremiah 28:1), and Ishmael son of Nethaniah was found "near the great pool in Gibeon" (Jeremiah 41:12). Melatiah the Gibeonite and "the men of Gibeon" made repairs in Nehemiah's day (Nehemiah 3:7).

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Identification and Excavation

According to the Penn Museum's archives, Edward Robinson, an American explorer, proposed el-Jib as Gibeon because of its location and the likeness in sound between Arabic "Jib" and Hebrew "Gibeon," while the German biblical scholar Albrecht Alt of Leipzig argued for Beeroth (Joshua 18:25). Brooks dates Robinson's identification to 1838. James B. Pritchard, the Penn Museum's first Curator of Biblical Archaeology and later its director, led five field seasons at el-Jib from 1956 to 1962. Pritchard recalled finding "a short Hebrew inscription on the handle of a jar" that read "Gibeon" and "supplied the answer to decades of debate over the location of the famous biblical city." Brooks counts 56 inscribed jar handles. Not every one bears the city's name.

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The Water Systems

Brooks describes the two water systems as built in the Iron Age so that the city's people would have water during a siege. In Brooks's description, the first is a shaft cut in the rock, 37 feet (11.3 m) across and 35.5 feet (10.8 m) deep, with a spiral stair of 79 steps; at the bottom the stair runs on as a tunnel to a water chamber 44.5 feet (13.6 m) below the pool's floor. The second, a stepped tunnel from inside the city to the village spring, Brooks assigns to later in Iron Age II. Brooks identifies the shaft with the "pool of Gibeon" of 2 Samuel 2:13. Carl Rasmussen, writing on his HolyLandPhotos.org site, finds the shaft's date "difficult to determine" beyond the Iron Age and thinks it "not too probable" that it is that pool.

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Wine Cellars

Brooks describes the rock-cut cellars as shaped like cisterns, each 6 feet (2 m) deep, with wine presses carved from the rock nearby. Pritchard judged that the inscriptions were "nothing more than labels for wine jars" and that the jars "were made for the export of fine wine from Gibeon."

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Periods of Occupation

Brooks reports occupation in Early Bronze Age I and in a later phase she dates to about 2300-2000 BC. Those dates fall within the Early Bronze Age (3500-2000 BC). Joshua's conquest, from about 1406 BC (some date it about 1250 BC), falls within the Late Bronze Age. For that age, Brooks reads the excavated data as showing no settlement, with Late Bronze pottery in some of the tombs. Penn Museum records list scarabs naming the Egyptian kings Thutmose III and Amenhotep II from Gibeon's Bronze Age cemetery, one dated 1479-1150 BC. In Iron Age I, Brooks adds, a massive city wall 10.5 to 11 feet (3.2 to 3.4 m) wide was built around the hill. The Penn Museum's archives judge an 8th-century BC date for the wall probable.