What we found at Gal On
Gal On was not actually the name of the site we excavated in the year 2000; it was the name of the nearby kibbutz at which we stayed. The name of the site we worked at is Khirbet Hoah but that is only its modern Arabic name. The original Hebrew name is not known, so we prefer to talk about our year 2000 excavations as at Gal On meaning, according to the secretary of the kibbutz, "a wave of courage."
We left the kibbutz each morning at 6 am and worked till 8 am when we stopped for the breakfast the kibbutz provided. We stopped work at 12.45 and returned to the kibbutz dining room for lunch. Most evenings we ate the food we had purchased from the super market at Ashkelon. The one exception to that was on the last evening before we flew to Istanbul.
We had hired a mini van from Avis in Jerusalem and drove ourselves to the worksite each morning. On this last evening we drove to Kiriyat Gath and found a restaurant there. It was quite a good meal but the menu was sadly lacking in desserts. As the restaurant had a good variety of ice creams on sale we all decided that an ice cream would just top off the meal nicely. However the restaurant manager was horrified at our request. Practising Jews never eat meat and dairy products at the same meal and he recoiled from the idea of even serving it to Gentiles in his restaurant.
A rather strange compromise was reached. It appears that clients were permitted to enter the restaurant and purchase ice creams and eat them provided they had not eaten any meat dishes at the restaurant, so we all purchased our ice creams and filed out the front door and ate our ice creams just outside. The requirements of Kosher law had been fulfilled and we got our ice creams.
This Jewish custom is derived from the Mosaic injunction which stipulates that "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk." Exodus 34:26. Archaeological evidence has been produced to suggest that boiling a kid in its mother's own milk was a heathen custom which should be shunned by the worshippers of YHWH to prohibit them from emulating a pagan practice, but over the centuries this custom has been extended to prohibit the consumption of any flesh foods with dairy products.
For the last three years we have stayed at the Beit Govrin Kibbutz which is right next door to the ruins of Biblical Mareshah and we walked to the dig each morning. This year the Beit Govrin Kibbutz guest rooms had been booked out before we applied but we were able to make arrangements to hire the guest rooms at Kibbutz Gal On which is not much further away. The quarters were reasonably comfortable and the surroundings pleasant. The kibbutz takes a pride in its gardens and the flower beds were a blaze of colour.
The Gal On kibbutz, and others in the vicinity, were first established in 1946, defying the British Mandate's law forbidding Jewish settlements. The original settlers came from Poland. Some had come from concentration camps, others had fought against the Nazis. All of them had stories to tell of persecution and privation.
They founded the settlement in an arid area on the edge of the Negev and by rigorous work and unyielding purpose, turned it into the prosperous and verdant farmland that it is today. It embraces an area of some 12,000 acres and has almost 300 members. It is predominantly an agricultural kibbutz producing cotton, potatoes, wheat, maize, watermelons, citrus fruits and avocadoes. A lesser industry manufactures small electric motors and fans. The guest rooms in which we stayed are likewise a source of income. They also run a farm of about 300 ostriches which they sell for meat and leather, but it is apparently not a very profitable industry.
Kathryn, the lady in charge of the breakfast room, kindly took us on a tour of the kibbutz with its colourful flower gardens, and explained the functions of the main buildings. One housed the volunteers who work on the kibbutz for limited periods, but apparently the kibbutz authorities take rather a dim view of most of the volunteers' industry and morals. She referred to their buildings as "love cabins," and rather dryly commented that "we like it when they come and we like it even more when they go. They pretend to work and we pretend to pay them."
The kibbutz operates a farm for a living and also raises chickens, as well as running a dairy farm. In the fowl shed they raise some 30,000 chickens in batteries and they have 300 cows in their dairy. Lights illuminate the dairy during the night so the cows just stand there and produce milk 24 hours a day and are milked three times daily.
The kibbutz also owns a small model farm for the benefit of the children. A few sheep, two Shetland ponies and a number of exotic birds are kept there. The two peacocks had brilliant plumes but as the farm was not so far from our guest rooms the piercing calls of the peacocks during the night were not exactly conducive to sound sleep.
As far as is known our excavation site is not known from the Bible. It was a village at the time of Christ and as "He went through every city and village preaching and bringing the good tidings of the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with Him" (Luke 8:1) it may well be that Christ and His disciples visited this village.
Boaz Zissu, a large and likeable archaeologist representing the Israeli Antiquities Authority was in charge of the dig. Many ancient cities (largecommunities with defensive walls around them) have been excavated in Israel but very few villages (small settlements usually without a city wall). Boaz was working on a thesis about small villages at the time of Christ for his Ph.D., so he was quite an authority on Early Roman and Late Roman villages in Israel.
The area covered by the village we worked in was only about 120 by 80metres, enclosing the remains of stone walled houses. The walls are still standing up to about 1.5 metres in height. No doubt every Jewish village had its synagogue and this village was no exception. There is an oblong room which has been identified as the ruins of a synagogue. Matthew 9:35 says that "Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people," so He may even have taught in this synagogue.
Much archaeological work had been done on the site before we arrived. Boaz had been allocated a team of unemployed Jewish immigrants who were receiving social security payments, so it was "work for the dole." Needless to say they were not highly motivated and only worked when closely watched, and even then, reluctantly and slowly. Boaz was delighted at the zeal with which our group worked.
The evidence showed that the village had been destroyed at the time of the second Jewish revolt 135 AD, and has been unoccupied since about 200 AD. Many items had already been recovered from the tel including coins from the period of its occupation. Sayid, a genial Arab who comes from this area and has been fascinated with metal detectors ever since he was nine years of age, has been employed by the IAA to use his detector. Through his skill and experience he has been responsible for finding more than 50 coins, varying in size from a large inscribed bronze coin from the Late Ptolemaic Period down to a diminutive "Widow's Mite" as mentioned in the Biblical account.
An unusual feature of this village was what appeared to be a large number of water cisterns in the houses but most of them had tunnels branching off from their bases. Boaz was of the opinion that they had been designed as hideaways should an enemy enter the village. One such tunnel led to a room from which a tomb door had been cut. Within was a series of vaults for burial of family members. Several other tombs have been found but they had been looted in antiquity and only broken pottery remained.
One major find was an ostracon (a piece of pottery with writing on it), with three Hebrew letters painted on it. The meaning of the word could not be determined because it was incomplete, but it is unusual to find any Hebrew writing in excavations.
At the outset we divided our work force into two groups: those who were prepared to work underground and those who preferred to work above ground. David Coltheart, our Assistant Editor, led the underground volunteers and I looked after the others who helped with the excavations of one of the housing complexes.
Those working in one of the tunnels found it a bit difficult digging in the confined space but at least they were sheltered from the sun, though the weather was quite moderate during the time of our stay. Those of us above ground level had a net canopy to shield us from the sun.
Boaz said at the outset that he had a feeling we would find a tunnel in the area we were digging. Whether it was the floor of a home or a courtyard in which we were digging we never did find out, but sure enough, we did unearth a circular hole in a corner of our square and it did turn out to be the entrance of an underground cavity from which a tunnel would have been chiselled. We eagerly removed the debris that was filling the hole, finding some attractive pottery in the process.
Nearly one metre down the circular hole began to widen and we fully expected to find another underground tunnel but it was not to be. We had two fine young men, who are teaching at a Theological Seminary in Moscow, touring with us and working on the dig. It was Uri who excavated the hole and began to clear the tunnel, but he finally reported that he had reached the far wall and no sign of a tunnel. Apparently the original diggers had good intentions but had not continued with the digging of their tunnel. All their hard work for nothing!
One of our ladies working in the house area found a spherical stone slightly larger than a cricket ball. It was an old sling stone which may have been used in a mechanical catapult by the Romans when they destroyed the village in 135 AD. The local carpenters must have plied a brisk trade for we found several large iron nails, such as could have been used to nail Christ to the cross.
Two of our ladies preferred to work on pottery washing, a very important activity designed to detect any possible marks, designs or inscriptions. In antiquity, papyrus and parchment were the writing materials used by the influential, but the poor people wrote their messages or business records on broken pottery of which there was always a plentiful supply. A thin reed brush dipped in water mixed with soot was the ink usually used.
When the potsherds are first gathered from the dig they may be covered with dust or mud and marks or words cannot be readily distinguished. Washing and scrubbing the sherds with a nail brush will reveal any marks, patterns or written messages. This time no inscriptions or marks were found by us, but the ladies seemed to enjoy taking a close look at the various types of pottery styles we were excavating and we found some rather nice pieces of fancy pottery.
From time to time Sayid visited each site, waving his magic wand over the debris we had accumulated, and he was responsible for finding some coins we had missed. One of them was a small roughly stamped piece of copper similar to the two pitiful mites which the poor widow had tremulously cast into the temple treasury. It was an act which caught Jesus' attention and was highly commended by him because "she out of her poverty has put in all the livelihood that she had." (Luke 20:4)
by David Down
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