Overview

Bibliography

Lachish, also known as Tell ed-Duweir, is located in the Shephelah, along a route leading from the coastal plain into the Hebron hills of Judah. The site has been identified with certainty with biblical Lachish. During the Late Bronze age, Lachish was perhaps the residence of an Egyptian governor. Lachish was the second most important city in the Kingdom of Judah during the Iron Age. It was destroyed by Sennacherib, king of Assyrian, when King Hezekiah of Judah rebelled against him. Sennacherib's assault on the city was celebrated in a series of large reliefs erected in one of the most important rooms of his palace in Nineveh. The city was again destroyed by the Babylonians. A large palace (the "Residency") suggests that the city might have functioned as an administrative center during the Persian period (or perhaps even earlier for the Assyrians). The Persian period Solar Shrine is laid out in a plan similar to the earlier Judean temple at Arad, attesting to the continuity of the Judean tradition into the Persian Period.

Lachish was first excavated in the 1930s by J. L. Starkey, during which the city gates of Strata I and II, the Stratum I palace (the "Residency"), the "Solar Shrine," the Judean palace-fort, and the Fosse temple were uncovered. After two small-scale excavations in 1966 and 1968 by Y. Aharoni, full-scale excavations were resumed in 1973 and continued until 1987 under the direction of David Ussishkin. These excavations uncovered earlier levels of the city gate, the construction of the Judean palace-fort and the monumental Bronze Age structures underlying it, and the Assyrian siege ramp and the Judean counter-ramp.

Although settlement on the mound extends back to at least the Early Bronze II period, all the visible remains date to the Judean period of Strata II - IV and the Persian period.

The archaeological strata uncovered at the site, as illustrated in the site plan, date to the following periods:

	Stratum I, Persian Period
	Stratum II, Iron Age
	Stratum III, Iron Age
	Stratum IV, Iron Age
	Stratum V, Iron Age
	Late Bronze Period