The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology recently published a paper highlighting a historical discovery made by Shelley Wachsmann, Meadows Professor of Biblical Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University.
On an excavation in Jaffa, an ancient maritime city located in Israel, Wachsmann was able to uncover evidence of a body of water that may have been used as a harbor during the Bronze Age. This harbor, buried for centuries under layers of sediment, provides archaeologists with a piece to the puzzle of understanding the rich geographical history of the Bible and early navigation.
Wachsmann originally was invited to Israel by Aaron A. Burke, a professor from the University of California, Los Angeles’ Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and a co-author on the team's paper. Burke, who was working on The Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project, was focused on Ramesses II monumental city gate and requested Wachsmann’s aid with the nautical dimension of the project.
According to Wachsmann, the excavation began on the tel, a "mound of many cities." The area being researched was an ancient Egyptian fortress in Canaan, making it one of the most interesting tels in Israel.
Wachsmann’s curiosity was focused upon the poor condition of the modern rocky harbor at Jaffa, which had been widely referenced in the Bible as a notable location for seafaring.
“If you ever visit Israel, Jaffa’s harbor is a great place to have a fish dinner and whatnot, but the harbor is absolutely terrible,” said Wachsmann, a member of Texas A&M's Nautical Archaeology Program and chair of the archaeological committee for the Institute of Nautical Archaeology. “So, there’s something that just doesn’t make sense here.”
When Wachsmann arrived at the excavation site, he searched for a geological depression that could explain the famous biblical stories referencing traveling to and from Jaffa’s harbor (2 Chronicles 2:16; Ezra 3:7; and Jonah 1:3).
Wachsmann divided the project into two parts: a geoarchaeological survey on land and a nautical survey along the coast. His original plan involved a field school that would allow for Texas A&M students to partake in the excavations.
As fate would have it, a war between Israel and Hamas in 2014 led to the cancellation of student participation in the land survey. However, it did not stop Wachsmann and his team from drilling a series of cores down to 43 feet into the ground in an attempt to determine the site’s geoarchaeological history.
“We ended up actually doing the coring on the last day of the war, and we had a rocket shot down right above our heads,” Wachsmann said. “But we still managed to get this done in two days.”
What they discovered made both the danger and the deadline worth it.
“There is evidence of a body of water,” Wachsmann said. “We can’t prove it was a harbor, but it would’ve been irrational not to use it. It would have existed probably during the Bronze and Iron Ages.”
With the help of a paleontologist and other members of the team, they were able to uncover specific information from the sediment regarding past environments that existed thousands of years ago. After additional survey information was gathered and more research was done, the team was confident that they had discovered a body of water that existed during the Bronze Age until the middle of the first millennium B.C., around 500 B.C., that could have been used as a suitable harbor.
“What we’re doing is basically reconstructing the environment of the Bible,” Wachsmann said. “Now, when you think about Jonah, or you think of these stories about seafaring, it adds an entirely new understanding.”
Wachsmann and his team’s discovery provides a new and unique view into the way in which travel to and from Jaffa’s harbor may have occurred during biblical times. Although a piece of the puzzle that is the past has finally been put into place, Wachsmann cautioned that there is still much more to do before archaeologists fully understand the complex history of the world.
“It’s a small part of reconstructing the past,” Wachsmann said. “It doesn’t change the world as we know it, but it adds to our understanding of the past and to our understanding of the Bible.”