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The civic forum in ancient Israel : the form, function, and symbolism of city gates

Abstract

The gateway into a town of the southern Levant was more than a mere entrance; it was the civic forum, the heart of the city. The gate and its associated plazas served inter alia as a marketplace, a legal court, an execution chamber, a cultic center, a political stage, a social gathering place, a defensive military structure, and a three- dimensional piece of royal propaganda. Gates were also symbolic : of royalty and independence, of community well- being, of metaphysical boundaries, and of Israelite society itself. In short, the civic forum was an institution central to the social identity of ancient Israel. Fortunately, the available sources of information about ancient city gates are numerous and robust : gates are referred to hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts, and over 40 gatehouses have been unearthed in the excavations of the southern Levant during the past century. Numerous pictorial representations of gates have also survived from the Bronze and Iron Ages. This dissertation is a wide-ranging treatment of Iron II period gate complexes in the southern Levant, covering their architecture and reconstruction, their various functions in Israelite society, and their conceptual significance in Israelite thought. I begin by discussing gate terminology in the Hebrew Bible, and then move on to the construction of a typical Iron II gate compound, giving special attention to the purpose of the gatehouse's well-known pier-and-chamber floor plan and the reconstruction of its superstructure. I then discuss the role of the gate complex in urban planning, and the gatehouse form's possible origins. The following chapters survey the numerous functions of the city gate complex, with reference to the Hebrew Bible, other ANE texts, and archaeological data where relevant. Finally, I turn to the idiomatic speech and symbolism related to gates in the Hebrew Bible, and conclude with an evaluation of the gate as a symbolic boundary and liminal space

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