LACHISH, EXCAVATIONS AT.
The importance of the excavations at Lachish is worthy of a separate article. Nearly four thou sand years after the founding of the first city the tide of warfare and the passing centuries had left only a great mound called a tell and which the Arabs called Tell el-Hesy. The identifica tion of the locality was for a long time undecided, but Major Conder claimed that this must be the site of the original Lachish from the fact that the situation commands the only springs of water in the region except those which lie some three or four miles away, and also because its position corresponds with the account in the "Onomasti con" of the location of Lachish, which was in the district of Daronia, seven miles from Eleuther opolis, or Beit Jibrin. Between April of 1890 and January of 1893, the officers of the Palestine Ex ploration Fund excavated the great mound and they succeeded in restoring to the original level, a portion of it. The work was begun under the able leadership of Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie whose "ten years' digging in Egypt" together with his profound scholarship had given him a wonder ful adaptability for the work. He was enabled to largely reconstruct the history, and determine the various periods, from remains which to the inex perienced eye would seem entirely without sig nificance. Later the work was pursued by Mr. F. J. Bliss and a portion of the remains of one city after another were slowly uncovered by Arabian workmen, while the women of the tribes carried away the dirt in baskets.
As layer after layer was removed the various forms of pottery ‘'vere discovered which enabled the explorers to assign the age of each particular city with more or less certainty. In one era the decorations and ornaments indicated the luxurious days of Solomon, and the slabs bearing pilasters in low relief probably date from his time. Much of the pottery which was found belonged to the period of the Jewish kings, and certain forms of idolatrous worship seem to have originated here, for we read that Lachish was "the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion; for the transgres sions of Israel were found in thee" (Micah i:t3).
The first city explored was necessarily the last one built, and the scanty remains here found as signed its period to about 400 B. C. The city fol lowing this was No. X, and it was assigned to about 5oo B. C., on account of the prevalence of polished Greek ware. City IX was assigned to 800 B. C., and VIII to the period between goo and woo B. C.
After all traces of No. VIII had been cleared away they had again a smooth platform to ex plore, and below it in City VII was a fine range of rooms, but into them the people who built the town above them had dug pits for their ovens, and hence they c-ontained several of the pit ovens which are still so common in Pales tine. Below this layer the workmen found a vast amount of debris, and they dug almost ten feet before they came to City VI. It was only about four feet, however, below the foundations of these buildings that they reached the top of the walls of City V.
Still lower than this, in City IV, the walls of a large building were traced by a bed of yellow sand which lay directly under them, never extending either into the rooms or into the streets. In City III the ruins of the rooms were covered with a great bed of ashes which still remain a mystery. Petrie ascribed them to alkali-burners who may have plied their trade on the then deserted hill, while Miss inclined to a different view based upon the furnace which was found just below. This ruined town lay about fifteen feet lower than the one above it, and covered considerably more ground ; indeed the general outline of the whole Tell from this point upward was somewhat in the shape of a peak, each city covering less space than did its predecessor. This third city had evi dently been sacked as well as destroyed, and the work here was almost barren of results except the few objects which were found in the debris outside of the rooms.