Vaknin, Yoav; Shaar, Ron; Lipschits, Oded; Mazar, Amihai; Maeir, Aren M; Garfinkel, Yosef; Freud, Liora; Faust, Avraham; Tappy, Ron E; Kreimerman, Igor; Ganor, Saar; Covello-Paran, Karen; Sergi, Omer; Herzog, Zeev; Arav, Rami; Lederman, Zvi; Münger, Stefan; Fantalkin, Alexander; Gitin, Seymour and Ben-Yosef, Erez (2022). Reconstructing biblical military campaigns using geomagnetic field data. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - PNAS, 119(44), e2209117119. National Academy of Sciences NAS 10.1073/pnas.2209117119
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The Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts describe Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns to the Southern Levant during the 10th to sixth centuries BCE. Indeed, many destruction layers dated to this period have been unearthed in archaeological excavations. Several of these layers are securely linked to specific campaigns and are widely accepted as chronological anchors. However, the dating of many other destruction layers is often debated, challenging the ability to accurately reconstruct the different military campaigns and raising questions regarding the historicity of the biblical narrative. Here, we present a synchronization of the historically dated chronological anchors and other destruction layers and artifacts using the direction and/or intensity of the ancient geomagnetic field recorded in mud bricks from 20 burnt destruction layers and in two ceramic assemblages. During the period in question, the geomagnetic field in this region was extremely anomalous with rapid changes and high-intensity values, including spikes of more than twice the intensity of today's field. The data are useful in the effort to pinpoint these short-term variations on the timescale, and they resolve chronological debates regarding the campaigns against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the relationship between the two kingdoms, and their administrations.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
01 Faculty of Theology > Institute of Jewish Studies |
UniBE Contributor: |
Münger, Stefan |
Subjects: |
200 Religion > 290 Other religions 200 Religion |
ISSN: |
0027-8424 |
Publisher: |
National Academy of Sciences NAS |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Pubmed Import |
Date Deposited: |
25 Oct 2022 10:06 |
Last Modified: |
05 Dec 2022 16:26 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1073/pnas.2209117119 |
PubMed ID: |
36279453 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
archaeointensity archaeomagnetic dating archaeomagnetic spike archaeomagnetism chronology |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/174057 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/174057 |
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