Milton C. Fisher
Shades of Melchizedek! For a while it seemed this digger had a beginning to his life but no ending. References to his contributions to Palestinian archaeology are frequent, yet his story is not so dramatic as to rate fullscale treatment in the usual sources for our biographical sketches. The ponderous National Union Catalog of the library of Congress, list of authors compiled for 1967 to 1972, supplied the missing information.
Frederick Jones Bliss and his trademark, the pie-shaped Tell el-Hesi.
The point is that Bliss did not excavate extensively, except for two major projects during the closing decade of the 19th Century, but those two locations — Tell el-Hesi and Jerusalem — are important in themselves. His claim to fame, really, lies primarily in his follow-up link to his more famous predecessors, Sir Flinders Petrie at the former site and British army engineers Wilson and Warren at the latter.
The Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) engaged Petrie’s American assistant, Bliss, to work two more years following the amazingly productive six-week expedition of that exceptional Englishman. Bliss’ most significant contribution to the progress of Palestianian archaeology was his public support for Petrie’s suggestion that even fragments of pottery from various ages or periods of human occupation were of crucial value for the dating of ruins. Most
BSP 4:3 (Summer 1991) p. 67
others scoffed at Petrie’s method, even as qualified as he was by his acquaintance with datable Egyptian scarabs and pottery found at Palestinian sites.
“Nothing was left for me to do,” testifies Bliss, “but to cut down the mound itself layer by layer, in order to ascertain the number of occupations and the character of each” (M. Pearlman, Digging Up the Bible, p. 61). W. F. Albright faults Bliss, however, for short-sightedness in failing to follow through on the very technique he had commended. For while he had praised the brilliant campaign of his mentor, Petrie, as enabling him to frame an outline history of the city, Bliss failed to publish a correlation of Petrie’s detailed treatment of the sherds with his own stratigraphic results. Albright reasoned, a full generation later, that had he done so, the essentials of Palestinian pottery dating might have been established at the very beginning of the 20th Century.
Another mistake, shared equally by Sir Flinders Petrie and his successor at Tell el-Hesi, was their identification of the ruins as those of the prominent Judaean city, Lachish. Discovery there of the very first Akkadian cuneiform tablet found in all of Palestine probably encouraged that assumption. The true location of Biblical Lachish was established some 45 years later as being Tell ed-Duweir, some miles distant. Albright decided the now distinctively pie-sliced Tell el-Hesi must be Ekron, another of the five cities within Judah’s territory which joined to fight the invading Israelites at Gibeon (Jos 10:5). Yet, of late, even this identification has come into question.
Frederick Bliss worked at Tell el-Hesi from 1890 on into 1893, but upon expiration of the Turkish permit for excavating he was forced to stop, with about a third of the mound’s surface dug down to bedrock. Unlike Megiddo, where entire strata levels were removed at a time, this tell provided opportunity for later reexamination — much later, in fact. Excavation using improved equipment and methods were conducted at the tell from 1970 to 1984. Emphasis was then placed on anthropological archaeology — on home economics, if you will. How did the settlers at this site live? What did they wear, and how many “conveniences” did they enjoy?
As for Bliss, at the request of the PEF he next turned his attention to Jerusalem, ably assisted by an architect, A. C. Dickie. The two of them examined the remnants of ancient city walls on the south, along the edge of the Hinnom Valley. They started at what was probably the southern wall of the Herodian city, as it came around the western hill, called today “Mount Zion.” As with the work of Wilson and Warren, these early efforts at rediscovering ancient Jerusalem (1894–1897, in this case) were devoid of stratigraphy and pottery dating techniques. Plagued with the same daily interference from authorities and curiosity seekers, the men again had to resort to underground methods — shafting and tunneling.
After he wrote a memoir of the Jerusalem excavation, Bliss did return to excavate one of the four sites he examined along the Philistine Plain. Tell Sandahannah (Saint Anna) turned out to be Biblical Moresheth, home of Micah the prophet. He exposed the entire top stratum but stopped after just one sounding down through earlier strata.