The City of Solomon's Cauldrons

In the Biblical land of Gilead, on the east side of the Jordan River, stands a flat-topped mound 140 ft. high called Tell es-Sa'idiyeh, the "Hill of Women of the Sa'id Tribe." Its surface is thinly littered with pottery fragments, and a sharp eye can pick out traces of ancient walls. Archaeologists have long suspect ed that the place has a formidable his tory, but they could do little more than guess until famed Digger James B.

Pritchard of the University of Pennsylvania started exploring there two months ago. Pritchard hit pay dirt so fast that he has hardly caught up with himself. He now suspects that in Biblical times the Jordan Valley was the richest and most civilized part of Palestine.

The oldest city on the site of Tell es-Sa'idiyeh may have been thousands of years old when Abraham first drove his flocks into the land of Canaan.

Burned City. After mobilizing 130 Arab laborers from nearby villages, Dr. Pritchard sank 30 pits at the northwest part of the mound. The much-eroded surface layer was probably the remains of the last city to occupy the mound, apparently abandoned about 700 B.C. A few feet below the surface were the floors, streets and wall-footings of an older city that was destroyed by fire. Grey wood ash was everywhere, sometimes mixed with charred beams and mud from fallen roofs.

One building must have been full of combustible material; the fire inside got so hot that it baked the clay walls into reddish brick. A line of 72 loom weights in one corner made Dr. Pritchard suspect that the structure was a primitive textile factory full of inflammable weaving materials. When his diggers removed the dirt near by, they found the regular streets of a carefully planned city with a community bakery. The dwellings had mud-brick walls and central columns to support the wooden roof beams. Mixed in the debris were many homely objects of ancient daily life--bowls, flasks, cooking pots, primitive safety pins, figurines, cosmetic palettes.

Dr. Pritchard thinks that the city that burned was probably Zarethan, which is mentioned in the Bible as the place where the great bronze cauldrons for Solomon's temple were cast. From potsherds found on the surface two decades ago, Archaeologist Nelson Glueck had already deduced that Tell es-Sa'idiyeh would prove to be Zarethan, but other experts thought it an unlikely place for bronze casting. The nearest copper mines of the time were south of the Dead Sea. Dr. Pritchard weakened this argument by digging up quantities of bronze, including a heavy cast cauldron with a jug and strainer. A bronze-founding industry may have grown up because of plentiful firewood in the nearby mountains. If the city was really Zarethan, its destruction by fire can readily be explained. An inscription on Egypt's Great Temple of Ammon at Karnak tells how Pharaoh Sheshonk I ravaged this part of Palestine a few years after Solomon's death.

Secret Tunnel. Dr. Pritchard thinks that Zarethan was a city of Canaanites who were ruled by the Hebrews in Jerusalem, but he is also convinced that its site was inhabited long before the Hebrew invasion. For one thing, it had plenty of water, a rarity in the Jordan Valley. After spotting springs that still flow from the foot of the mound, Dr. Pritchard knew by experience what to look for next. Leading down the side of the mound he uncovered 86 stone steps of a staircase with walls on either side and another in the center. Before erosion destroyed its upper parts, this was a secret tunnel for getting water when the city was under siege.

Below the thriving city of Solomon's time (961-922 B.C.) lie many earlier cities. While probing in a slightly lower part of the mound, Dr. Pritchard stumbled by accident upon his most spectacular find: a mud-walled tomb with the skeleton of a woman of high station, perhaps a local queen. She lay with rich grave goods still around her--500 beads of carnelian and 75 of gold, silver pins, a silver chain, four ivory boxes, an ivory spoon with a human head carved on it, and many objects of bronze and pottery. She must have died about 1200 B.C., not long after Joshua stormed the Promised Land.

With summer approaching in the worse-than-tropical Jordan Valley 750 ft. below sea level, Dr. Pritchard went home to Philadelphia to plan next season's dig. He is sure that the Hill of the Sa'id Women is entirely manmade, and he longs to get to the bottom of it. Perhaps when he has cut through city after city, he will turn up a neolithic village as old as Jericho on the other side of the Jordan, which now ranks as the oldest town on earth.

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