The Gezer fireplace that broke out on Monday in Israel’s Biblical Tel Gezer Nationwide Park was fierce and swift. Preliminary experiences of the fireplace at Gezer “proclaimed” widespread injury to this protected and illustrious archaeological website. Tel Gezer has 26 settlement layers going again almost 5,500 years! Fortunately, precise assessments on Tuesday morning revealed no everlasting injury to the antiquities on the website.

Some 3,000 years in the past, Gezer was a significant Canaan metropolis and settlement, and the 25 layers of habitation at this website present a window into the fascinating historical past of this space of the Levant, experiences Haaretz.

The fireplace at Gezer razed all the archaeological website but it surely was a grass fireplace, so simply intense warmth and scorching however not for lengthy. This picture reveals a part of historic Tel Gezer and the Gezer kibbutz within the background. (Hunter / Adobe Inventory)

The Gezer Hearth: Saved by the Firefighters

Israel Nature Parks and Authority (INPA) Sharon Regional Director Roee Shtrauss stated:

“This morning we got here with our restoration and conservation crew to evaluate the injury and although we see that there was injury finished, till now we now have not seen any irreversible injury. We might want to restore and clear the antiquities which have been burnt, however we have to do a extra thorough examine of the state of affairs with a view to higher decide what must be finished.”

He added that 20 firefighters, with 4 planes and a couple of helicopters battled the raging fireplace, efficiently ultimately. There have been 1,100 scouts tenting within the neighborhood who have been safely evacuated, with no accidents or casualties reported.

And fortunately, no injury was finished to the traditional water work system, which is the most important water system ever found within the Canaanite area, experiences The Jerusalem Post. This water system was opened to the general public solely final 12 months.

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“We are going to make a injury report, and with our consultants who’re assessing the state of affairs, we are going to work on restoring the location and do all the things potential in order that will probably be able to reopen by subsequent spring,” added Shtrauss, who defined that local weather change had a task to play on this fireplace. Windy, sizzling, and dry circumstances, exacerbated by the drought like state of affairs in western Asia during the last twenty years, added gasoline to the fireplace, metaphorically.

It was additionally the careless conduct of a farmer burning particles for clearing land for cultivation that brought about the fireplace within the first place, however the unfold was because of the opposed weather conditions. Normally, most fires on this area in Israel are the results of some human exercise, careless or intentional.

The Gezer Excessive Place, with massebot standing stones and the sq. basin, was additionally very a lot burned to the bottom within the latest Gezer fireplace, however stone survives all! (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gezer: 5,500 Years of Historical past in 26 Layers!

Gezer’s earliest buildings, constructed round 5,500 years in the past, are referred to within the Bible, and apparently, there’s one other pyro reference at Gezer within the Bible. The Bible recounts how the king of Egypt “had taken Gezer and burnt it with fireplace,” giving it as a loving wedding ceremony present to his daughter who married King Solomon (1 Kings 9:16). Solomon is credited with subsequently rebuilding town of Gezer, although the water work system predated his reign by about 600 years.

Gezer was a strongly fortified city-state within the Center Bronze Age. The positioning unfold over 32 acres (13 hectares). Right here, 26 layers of settlement from the Chalcolithic interval to the early Roman Interval (roughly from 3500 BC to 100 BC) have been excavated.

The positioning has been beneath excavation since 1900, making it one of the vital excavated locations in Israel. Nonetheless, it was solely in 2013 that the proof for one of many first pre-Solomonic layers was found.

There was one other fireplace at Gezer 3,200 years in the past, based mostly on proof present in 2017, together with our bodies of a mom and a baby. Maybe this was proof for Pharaoh Merneptah’s lofty declare of laying siege to this metropolis, or maybe one other wildfire? Extra work on the Gezer website will make clear this declare.

The positioning was clearly a strategically good one, with its positioning within the foothills of the Judaean mountains on the border of the Shfela area, roughly halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It might acquire significance once more on the time of the traditional Egyptian Empire, because it grew to become a crossroad cease on the traditional coastal commerce route that linked Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. For the Romans , Gezer was an necessary cease on their “ By way of Maris” or Sea Highway, linking Rome to Jerusalem. Lastly, it was additionally on an important commerce and pilgrim land route that related Jerusalem and Jericho.

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Gezer’s spectacular ruins embody a Canaanite guard tower, a cultic heart with an enormous array of monoliths, and the stays of a temple. The Egyptians sacked town within the tenth century BC.

Additional excavations are deliberate on the website to get make clear the function that the Egyptians performed within the pre Canaanite ransacking of Gezer. Possibly the Gezer fireplace occurred twice: in Biblical occasions greater than 3,000 years in the past, and only a few days in the past. Clearly the primary fireplace at Gezer was catastrophic for human life and constructing destruction.

Prime picture: The aftermath of the Gezer fireplace of early July 2022 proven on this picture reveals that historic stone ruins can survive grass fires, however that local weather change is making extra fires general. Supply: Roee Shtrauss / INPA

By Sahir Pandey