Published: 28 October 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
New archaeological data discovered by Israeli universities verifies the Biblical accounts of military campaigns against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
A new study has accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth's magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants.
The new data verifies the Biblical accounts of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Other geomagnetic findings reveal that the cities in the Negev were destroyed by the Edomites, who took advantage of the destruction of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Judah by the Babylonians.
The ground-breaking interdisciplinary study by Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers explain that geophysicists, attempting to understand the mechanism of earth's magnetic field, track changes in this field throughout history. To this end they use archaeological findings containing magnetic minerals which, when heated or burned, record the magnetic field at the time of the fire.
In a 2020 study, researchers reconstructed the magnetic field as it was on the 9th of the month of Av, 586 BCE, the Hebrew date of the destruction of the First Temple and the City of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian army.
Now, using archaeological findings unearthed over several decades at 17 sites throughout Israel, alongside historical information from ancient inscriptions and Biblical accounts, the researchers were able to reconstruct the magnetic fields recorded in 21 destruction layers. They used the data to develop a reliable new scientific tool for archaeological dating.
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