Did the Pharaoh's Forces Burn Down Biblical Libnah 3,000 Years Ago?
Ancient Egyptian king Shishak listed his conquests in the Levant and Libnah isn't there. But neither is Jerusalem and the Bible says otherwise
Surrounding the top of Tel Burna is a monumental casemate fortification wall. When enemies threatened, the space between the two walls could be stuffed with debris to strengthen it. But did it work?
Tel Burna has been identified as the biblical town of Libnah, a Judahite city on the border of Philistia. It had a beautiful view of the Philistine city of Gath on one side, and the Judahite city of Lachish on the other. Now fresh excavations starting in 2010 and culminating in 2024 under the direction of Prof. Itzhaq Shai of Ariel University have revealed new perspectives on Libnah and the efficacy of its defenses.
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Occupation of Tel Burna began in the Bronze Age, the Canaanite period. Among other things, Shai and the team discovered intriguing figurines in the context of a cultic building from the 13th century B.C.E. (reported in 2015). At that time, the town was not protected by a city wall: almost none of the settlements in the region were. And in the second half of the 10th century B.C.E., the city on the hill in the Shephelah, the Judaean foothills, was burned to the ground.
That created the first archaeological "destruction layer" dating to the Late Bronze Age, the Canaanite period, marked by soot and debris. "It was a terrible destruction," Shai observes.
Following that traumatic event, in the late 10th or early 9th century B.C.E., a double wall, 1.6 meters thick each, encompassing 70 square meters was built around the top of Tel Burna, Shai and the team reported in Atiqot in 2023. This intimidating bulwark of stone and mud brick would do its job for around 200 years.
"It was a terrible destruction"
Come the late 8th century B.C.E., Shai and the team now deduce - the townsfolk beefed up the western facet of the city wall. This was not a case of mass paranoia. The people knew what to expect.
So who burned down Tel Burna in the 10th century, when it had no city wall? Who wanted to burn it down again 200 years later, leading the city fathers to reinforce the rampart they built after the first disaster? Did it work? Following the latest excavations and analysis, the archaeologists think they know the answer.
Pharaoh on the move
Jericho, which is only about 85 kilometers from Tel Burna as the dove flies, may have been one of the earliest fortified cities in the Levant. It clearly had a massive defensive wall in the Middle Bronze Age, possibly built on earlier fortifications. But they were apparently still not common when the town on the tell was burned down in the 10th century.
Who could have done it? Absent a record of that specific event, the archaeologists point at the timing and the annals of history, albeit partial ones, which leads them to suspect that the perpetrator was none other than the Egyptian king Shishak, aka Sheshonq, or some other variation.
It is known that about 3,000 years ago Egyptian forces swept through Canaan in Shishak's grand quest to Make Egypt Great Again after it shrank back to its base on the Nile during the Bronze Age Collapse of civilizations around the Mediterranean two centuries earlier. Shishak's Iron Age campaign in the Levant is reported on the "Bubastite Portal," a stone tablet listing 150 city-states that the pharaoh crushed in his condescension.
It shows Shishak supported by approving gods as he smites his enemies, who are depicted bound, explained Yigal Levin in Biblical Archaeological Review in 2023. "Each prisoner features a name-ring with a toponym, identifying a place that Sheshonq conquered or destroyed," Levin wrote, and there are 150 such places.
Libnah is not among them. Neither is Jerusalem. Yet the Bible says: "In the fifth year of King Rehoboam [925 B.C.E.], King Shishak of Egypt marched against Jerusalem."—1 Kings 14:25.
Megiddo, on the other hand, is on the list. So, did Shishak attack Jerusalem (and Libnah, mentioned in neither source) or didn't he?
The stone isn't complete and maybe these names are in the missing part. Or the list could be tainted: kings are known to exaggerate their deeds or appropriate conquests of their predecessors, Levin says. Or maybe Shishak was paid tribute by Jerusalem's incumbent king and spared the city (as mentioned in the Bible). But while the non-mention of Jerusalem may be one story, Libnah may have been another.
Armies conquering a land in fire and blood don't necessarily record the destruction of every piddling hamlet in their way, Shai points out. "Shishak's 10th-century chronicles didn't go down to the resolution of crushing this or that hilltop town in the Shephelah," he suggests.
So why point the finger at him? The timing and optics, mainly. He invaded in the 10th century and Tel Burna was burned down at about the same time.
Shai stresses that the history of the southern Levant from the 12th century B.C.E. until the Assyrian arrival in the 9th century is murky. There are practically no extra-biblical records for that time, other than the possibly patchy Egyptian annals of Shishak's campaigns.
So possibly Libnah at Tel Burna was burned down by Shishak as he fought to regain Egypt's lost colonies but he couldn't be bothered to write about it.
The city fathers would however have been more impressed by the event, we can infer from the construction of a massive city wall turning the hilltop into a fortress in the late 10th century or early 9th B.C.E.
Jerusalem is spared, again
A late July visit to Tel Burna felt surprisingly lovely despite the burning sun. From the top of the ruins, its strategic value becomes clear: a view in all directions, and a breeze. On a clear day one could see Ashdod and Ashkelon on the coast, the Hebron hills inland and the enemy's machinations in Gath. They could also see Lachish.
Whatever Shishak's opinion of his conquest, that is the real importance of Tel Burna, Shai explains: location, location, location. It seems the Israeli army agreed because during Israel's War of Independence in 1948, a trench was dug on the tell to monitor enemy forces.
It bears mention that the hill's present height is due to sediment buildup on the 10th century Iron Age fortifications surrounding the whole of the hilltop, Shai points out. Standing on the bedrock, one is several meters lower in elevation.
A strip of vegetation greenly marks the remnants of the over-exploited Nahal Guvrin brook at Tel Burna's foot. At the time it was the town's source of water, Shai says. Cisterns for water storage were common in other Iron Age towns but none have been found in Tel Burna even though it may have had a population as large as about 1,500 at its heyday, and occupied as much as 60 to 80 dunams [60,000 to 80,000 square meters] in area, Shai says. One starts to see why Shishak didn't boast about conquering it.
Shai adds that we, modern types with our daily showers, obsession with sterility and incessant hand-washing are spoiled by modern plumbing. The water requirements of the ancients were presumably more modest. People and their donkeys could reasonably lug water in jugs up the hill.
Anyway, following the destruction by Shishak or another, the casemate wall was built. Most of the townsfolk lived outside it, Shai says, down the slopes. Presumably they would crowd inside when the enemy came marauding. Their gods were safe though. The 2024 excavation of the Canaanite Bronze Age level found evidence of two monumental buildings with walls thick enough to be ramparts (though they aren't - wrong location) near a Canaanite temple, identified due to standing stones, masks, figurines and cultic vessels.
The two newly unearthed buildings could have something to do with the temple, Shai suggests, or belonged to rich and powerful people, but ordinary homes they were not.
The wall would protect the town for about 200 years, Shai and the team deduce. And then in the 8th century B.C.E., a massive reinforcement commenced.
The Assyrian precedent
"So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah" – Isaiah 37:8
The advantages of a double wall would be to avoid building a single wall at least 5 meters thick, as some other cities did; the space between the walls could be utilized for storage during quiet times and when threats arose, the space could be filled, effectively creating a 5-meter thick city wall.
In about 721 B.C.E. Assyrian forces riding out of Mesopotamia on a mission to expand the empire captured the northern kingdom of Israel and kicked out the ten tribes, most of whom would become "lost." The "Ashurim", as they were called for their worship of the god Ashur, were notorious for burning the captured cities to the ground. Captives were killed or enslaved if it didn't cause too much trouble. Elites were reportedly reserved for horrible tortures, so if the people of Libnah were expecting this, it might have seemed logical to reinforce the wall.
"The casemate wall is Iron Age," Shai says; Judahite, but the filler is material from the Late Bronze Age, Canaanite, as one can tell by the pottery pieces. "The townsfolk also built a glacis [steep slope inconvenient for raiding soldiers] down the hillside using filler material," he added.
So the timing and the biblical version of events, the evidence, and analysis lead the team to identify this flurry of activity as preparations to defend the town from the Assyrians led by Sennacherib, king of Neo-Assyria after his father Sargon II. Sennacherib was on a mission to punish Judah for rebelling, and didn't think for a moment that Egypt or Yahweh would ride to the Judahites' defense:
"Thus says the king [Sennacherib]: 'Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he shall not be able to deliver you from his hand" - 2 Kings 18:28
Sennacherib reigned from 705 B.C.E. to 681 B.C.E. and in his punitive campaign, he didn't conquer Jerusalem. His forces besieged Jerusalem and why the Assyrian army didn't finish the job and left, we do not know. According to the Bible, the Assyrians failed to conquer Jerusalem and strangle the dissident king Hezekiah because the Lord himself killed "a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp" – a miracle that some ascribe to rodents infecting the Assyrian forces with pestilence.
Apparently, Libnah was not so delivered. The archaeologists believe that Sennacherib did reach Libnah. He did burn it to the ground, based on dating the second blackened destruction layer from the Iron Age.
We don't know if the wall worked or not. Maybe a traitor opened the gate. By the 7th century B.C.E. the city wall had become obsolete and was not in use any more, as we know from the conversion of part of it into a silo, Shai says.
The archaeologists also found the city gate where they assumed they would: in the south. Whether it was a chambered gate is unclear. It is possible that part of it fell down the hill and is forever gone. And then the settlement would be abandoned once and for all after the Persian period, when the local center of dominance moved to Maresha. Which can also be seen from the hilltop on a beautiful day.