Digging Over Solomon’s Gates

Dr. David Parks

            While digging the pit for our toilet, my shovel shot down into an empty space. We poked a long pole down and down until, about 10 feet into the dark, we finally heard it go “tunk, tunk” on something solid. “Good. This toilet pit will be plenty big.”

            In 1985, we first lived beside Tel Tamar in old beat up house trailers (“caravans” in Israeli English) and then in a building on the tel top. Archeologists had not yet started to dig, and Tamarisk and palo verde trees still covered it. It held Grandpa Harry and Grandma Rose’s caravan, three block buildings left by the British army, and a set of public toilets. Each building stood about 14’ x 32’, with cement block walls and a tin roof. Harry and Rose’s son, Simca, did synagogue rituals in one, we stored supplies in one, and we live in one.

            Inside, Delphine hung curtains and pictures, and arranged flowers and pillows. Outside, I built our small toilet and a shower. That’s all the digging we had time for, but each day, we glanced at the set of grinding wheels that somebody had dug up when they built the public toilets.

            One day an archeologist stopped in and told us those wheels were volcanic basalt. He said the nearest basalt quarry was on the Golan, about 200 miles north. I only knew I couldn’t carry one of those stones 200 feet in any direction. They reminded me of Jesus’ warning that if I give a child (or a childlike believer) a hard time, I’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with one of these around my neck.

            Today the belly of the tel lies exposed. The trees, two of the buildings, the toilets, and Harry and Rose’s trailer are gone. Instead of visiting the hill where I used to live, I stumble over a complicated set of fortifications that eight civilizations took 2,600 years to build. In a few places, they rebuilt an old wall, but usually each new occupier tumbled the old walls over and laid stones to a new line.

            The result is a jumbled confusion of pits and parapets that at first glance I want to fill back in with sand. “Just cover it with acacia trees and picnic tables, OK?” But Brother Matthias takes us on a tour of the dig, explaining the Roman baths, the Nabataean pottery, Edom’s altar, and Solomon’s gates. When he’s done, we want to brace the weak points, put up informational plaques, and protect it with a roof.