Tell el-Hesi (), or Tell el-Hesy, is a archaeological site in Israel. It was the first major site excavated in Palestine, first by Flinders Petrie in 1890 and later by Frederick Jones Bliss in 1891 and 1892, both sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). Petrie's excavations were one of the first to systematically use stratigraphy and seriation to produce a chronology of the site. Tell el-Hesi is located southwest of the modern Israeli city of Qiryat Gat.

History The site was occupied from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period to the Hellenistic period, though not continuously.

Early Bronze Age Early Bronze IIIA Tell el-Hesi had its main occupation in the Early Bronze Age. Settlement seems to have started at the beginning of the EB IIIA or earlier. Radiocarbon dating of emmer samples calibrated to 2890-2590 and 2900-2620 BC.Anderson 2006, Southern Palestinian Chronology: Two Radiocarbon dates for the Early Bronze Age at Tell el-Hesi (Israel) By the EB IIIA (c. 2750-2500 BCE) the fortified city that reached a size of . It was located along the Wadi el-Hesi which was a stream at the time. The economy was based on animal husbandry (cattle herding) and grain production, at it may have been a center for trade. There were workshops for incised bone tubes. Contemporary with the 3rd and 4th dynaties of Egypt.

Late Bronze Age It then fell into disuse until the middle of the 2nd millennium during the Late Bronze Age when it was rebuilt, staying in use for around a thousand years. W. J. Bennett, Tell El-Hesi: The Persian Period, Eisenbrauns, 1990, A military trench system was dug into the top of the mound during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Speculations about city name Petrie identified Tell el-Hesi as the Biblical site of Lachish, and Bliss accepted this identification, but it is no longer accepted. In 1924 William F. Albright proposed that Tell el-Hesi was Biblical Eglon, an identification still accepted by Yohanan Aharoni in the 1970s. This identification, too, is unlikely and the site should be considered unidentified.

Archaeology

The site was first described in 1838 by Edward Robinson.Robinson and Smith, 1841, vol. 2, pp. 390–392 It is 61 meters above the land in the East and 18 meters high in the other directions. The mound was roughly square with 61 meters on a side in Robinson's time but has been reduced by excavations and military action.

It was originally excavated between 1890 and 1892 by the PEF during five excavation seasons.* The first season was under Petrie. After brief training under Petrie at Meydum in Egypt, Bliss began four seasons of work at Tell el-Hesi. Using Petrie's ceramic sequence and the pioneering concept of a sequence of 'cities', Bliss was able to establish not only the archaeology of this specific site, but the sequential framework for Levantine archaeology. Bliss opened a large wedge on the northeast corner of the upper tell, still visible today and known as "Bliss's Cut". The final reports were published in 1891 and 1894.Bliss, F. J., "Excavating from Its Picturesque Side", PEFQS 23, pp. 291–98, 1891 Bliss, F. J., "Report of the Excavations at Tell el Hesy from the Autumn Season of Year 1891", PEFQS 24, pp. 95–113, 1892 * Among other discoveries was the remains of what was identified as a blast furnace, with slag and ashes, which was dated to 1500 BC. If the theories of experts are correct, the use of the hot-air blast instead of cold air was known at an extremely early age. Aside from some inscribed pottery of various periods, the significant epigraphic find was a single cuneiform tablet. This tablet is closely related to the Amarna Letters and mentions a person noted as the governor of Lachish in those letters.

A second series of excavations began in 1970, at the behest of the American Schools of Oriental Research and its President G. Ernest Wright, the Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi. The original core staff of directors for the project included John Worrell - Director; Lawrence Toombs - Senior Archeologist, Phillip King - Administrative Director, Tom Frank - Education Director, and W. J. Bennett Jr. and Lawrence Stager as Field Directors. The team excavated at the site from 1970 to 1983 for eight summer seasons. The project emphasized excavation in two parts of the site: the acropolis and its associated wall system (Fields I and III), and the Early Bronze III (EB III) wall system of the lower city (Fields V, VI, and IX).Lawrence E. Toombs, "Tell El-Hesi, 1970–71", Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 106, iss. 1, 1974 D. Glenn Rose & Lawrence E. Toombs, "Tell El-Hesi, 1973 and 1975", Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 108, iss. 1, 1976 Kevin G. O'Connell, D. Glenn Rose & Lawrence E. Toombs, "Tell El-Hesi, 1977", Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 110, iss. 2, 1978 Kevin G. O’Connell & D. Glenn Rose, "Tell El-Ḥesi, 1979", Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 112, iss. 2, 1980 Lawrence E. Toombs, "Tell El-Ḥesi, 1981", Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 115,iss. 1, 1983 Ralph W. Doermann & Valerie M. Fargo, "Tell El-Hesi, 1983", Palestine Exploration Quarterly, vol. 117, iss. 1, 1985

Excavations on top of the tel revealed traces of Late Ottoman infant jar-burials, commonly associated with nomads or itinerant workers of Egyptian origins.Taxel, Y., Marom, R., & Nagar, Y. (2025). An Infant Jar Burial from Zarnūqa: Muslim Funerary Practices and Migrant Communities in Late Ottoman Palestine. 'Atiqot, 117, 269–293.

In 2004, the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University initiated the Hesi Regional Survey project, which concluded in 2010.https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.5615/neareastarch.75.1.0020 The "Phase IV" investigations of a nearby satellite site named Khirbet Summeily began in 2011; excavations are co-directed by Dr. James Hardin and Dr. Jeffrey Blakely and most recently occurred during the summer of 2023.

See also Lachish Cities of the ancient Near East

References

Bibliography

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Geoffrey E. Ludvik, Jeffrey A. Blakely. (2020) The Early Bronze Age of Tell el-Hesi and its environs: From Petrie's initial discovery to today's understanding. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 152:4, pages 304–331. Kara Larson, James W. Hardin, Sara Cody. (2020) Cultural Modification Analyses on Faunal Remains in Relation to Space Use and Direct Provisioning from Field VI EBIIIA Tell el-Hesi. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 152:4, pages 365–388.

External links The Tell el-Hesi Joint Archaeological Project Survey of Western Palestine, Map 20: IAA, Wikimedia commons