MB Gates Discovered

This season the Middle Bronze (MB) city gate was identified at Tall el-Hammam. It is larger than anything previously known in MB city gates. It dwarfs the MB city gate at Tell Dan and all the other known MB gateways. Dr. Collins states in a newsletter:

"This morning Daniel took a photo with me [Dr. Steven Collins] standing in the left tower chamber and Leen [Ritmeyer] standing in the main gate passage (see photo). You can get an idea of how big this gateway complex is by how small we look! This evening I took that photo and 'shadowed' in some of the gateway features based on what we excavated this season. Each of the features you see has either a known foundation or partial mud brick superstructure, or both. There are several other structures and 'guide walls' in the foreground that I've left out so you can see all the way into the gate passageway in which Leen's standing."

The gate and towers were drawn by Dr. Ritmeyer based on the measurements taken of the foundation stones and what has been discovered thus far this season. Dr. Collins overlayed Leen's drawing over one of the photo's taken the final few days of the dig. The site of ancient Tall el-Hammam is coming alive.

In this photo Dr. Leen Ritmeyer is standing on the mud brick superstructure and pointing out the layout of the tower foundations. He was most helpful in drawing a mental picture for us and making sense of the structure that was uncovered. We will now need to wait until next season to do further examinations but what we have seen thus far has excited all of us.

If this is Sodom as Dr. Collins hypothesis proposes then these would be the towers and city gate of this ancient city described in Gen 14, 19. Regardless of whether it is Sodom or not this gate system is one massive gate complex and indicates that this was one incredibly large city state whatever it was. This discovery is truly monumental from all perspectives.