The entrance gate to the ancient Biblical city of Gath, home of the Philistines and the giant Goliath, was uncovered this week by archeologists.
"We knew that Philistine Gath in the 10th to ninth century [B.C.] was a large city, perhaps the largest in the land at that time," Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University in Israel,
told LiveScience.com in an email. "These monumental fortifications stress how large and mighty this city was."
In ancient times the city would have been situated between the Jewish kingdoms of Judah and Israel until it was besieged and destroyed by Hazael, King of Aram Damascus, in 830 B.C.
In modern times, the gates resided underneath the Arab village of Tell es-Safi until 1948. Archeologists have been digging in the area since 1899, however it is only in the last few decades that they realized how much of the city was preserved underneath the dirt.
The newly-discovered gate was likely part of a huge fortification wall that surrounded the city, and kept Judah from expanding westward.
Also uncovered in the dig was a Philistine temple and pottery. The designs are definitely Philistine, but show strong Israelite styles as well, suggesting that the cities had a more complex relationship than was often portrayed by narratives of war.
"This mirrors the intense and multifaceted connections that existed between the Philistines and their neighbors," Maeir said.
"We still have to do a lot of cleaning, defining, digging, and measuring to do, but it appears that there are really good chances we have truly landed on quite an astounding find," he noted on the team's blog,
The Daily Mail reported.
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