Khirbet Qeiyafa - Dating

Dating

Releasing the preliminary dig reports for the 2010 and 2011 digging seasons at Khirbet Qeiyafa, the Israel Antiquities Authority stated: "The excavations at Khirbat Qeiyafa clearly reveal an urban society that existed in Judah already in the late eleventh century BCE. It can no longer be argued that the Kingdom of Judah developed only in the late eighth century BCE or at some other later date."

Discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa are significant to the debate about the veracity of the Biblical account of the United Monarchy at the beginning of Iron Age II. As no archaeological finds were found that could corroborate claims of the existence of a magnificent biblical kingdom, various scholars have advanced the opinion that the kingdom was no more than a small tribal entity. Garfinkel, who said in 2010 that the debate could not "be answered by the Qeiyafa excavations", is of the opinion that "what is clear, however, is that the kingdom of Judah existed already as a centrally organized state in the tenth century B.C.E"