Who are you, Jerubbaal? He is mentioned in a 3,100-year-old inscription found near Kiriath Ghat. Excavations by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the Macquarie University in Sydney. * According to archaeologists, “Judge Gideon Ben-Yosh’s biblical nickname was Jerusalem, but it is not known whether the inscription in ink belongs to him.”

First: An inscription from the time of the judges was found during an archeological excavation at Horbat al-Rai near Kyrgyzstan. The rare inscription bears the name “Jerubel” in the alphabet, and was written in ink on pottery around 1,100 BC, found inside a storage silo dug into the ground and lined with stones.

Mining at the site, located in the Jewish National Fund’s Sacharia Forest, has been carried out every year since 2015, and is now in its seventh excavation season. Prof. Joseph Garfingal, Sir Gonor, Drs. Kyle Khmer, Ph.D. Gil Davis. The study was supported by Joy Silver and Aaron Levy of the Institute of Archeology at the University of Hebrew, the Ruth Family Foundation Foundation in Sydney, and the Roger and Susan Hartog Center for Archeology.

The inscription is written in ink on a jug – a small individual vessel made of earthenware, about 1 liter in volume, which may contain a valuable product such as oil, perfume or medicine. It sounds like – like today, the owners of the device wrote his name on the device so they knew it belonged to him.

Christopher Rolston, professor of epigraphy at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., understood the text. The inscription clearly shows iodine (broken at the top), the remains of the rhubarb, house, eye, study, and other letters, indicating that the inscription is too long.

Prof. According to Garfingel Wagner, “In the biblical tradition of the book of Judges, Jerubel is the second name of Judge Gideon Ben Yosh, who came from all over Jordan and plundered the crops of the farmers.”

Between Shephelah and the Valley of Jezreel, it is possible that the inscription refers to another Jerubel, not Gideon of biblical tradition, but the possibility that this ship belonged to Judge Gideon. However, the name Jerubel seems to reflect a reality from the time of the judges, in which the name was adopted. “

Inscriptions from the time of the Judges are very rare and have not been heard of in the archeology of the land of Israel. Among the few inscriptions found earlier were several letters that could not be linked. This is the first time the name Jerubel has been found outside the Bible as an archeological find – on an archeological level, in 1100 BC.

“As everyone knows, there is a great deal of debate as to whether the biblical tradition reflects reality and whether it is faithful to historical recollections from the time of Judges to the time of David,” say the scholars. “The name Jarbuel appears only in the biblical tradition in the time of the Judges, and now it is revealed in archeological finds and in a layer from the time of the Judges. Similarly, the name Ishbal appears only in the biblical tradition in the time of King David.”

The site has been excavated at Horizon Kiafa since the time of King David. The names of people in the Bible and the inscriptions revealed in the archeological excavations indicate the preservation of a memory passed down through the generations.

The inscription of Jerubel also helps to understand the spread of the alphabet In the transition from the Canaanite period to the Israeli period. The alphabet was developed by the Canaanites under Egyptian influence in the Middle Bronze Age in 1,800 BC. The Canaanite city of Lachish was the center for preserving and preserving the writing tradition of the alphabet. By 1,150 the Canonite Lachish had been destroyed. BC, desolate for about 200 years. It is not yet clear where the tradition of writing the alphabet after the destruction of Lachish has been preserved.

Revealed inscription indicates that in Horbat al-Rai, 4 km from Malkish, was the main site of the region during the time of the judges, and the writing tradition was preserved, from which the Canaanite culture of the period of Israel and Judea came into being.
During the monarchy, from the 10th century BC, more inscriptions are known in the lowlands: two inscriptions from the ruined Kiafa, and inscriptions from the sites of Tel Tsafit and Tel Beat Shemesh.

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