Credit: Survey Of Israel
“The ‘foot’ structures that we found in the Jordan valley are the first sites that the People of Israel built upon entering Canaan and they testify to the biblical concept of ownership of the land with the foot,” said archaeologist Prof. Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa, who headed the excavating team that exposed five compounds in the shape of an enormous “foot”, that it were likely to have been used at that time to mark ownership of territory.
On the eve of the Passover holiday, researchers from the University of Haifa reveal an exceptional and exciting archaeological discovery that dates back to the time of the People of Israel’s settlement in the country: For the first time, enclosed sites identified with the biblical sites termed in Hebrew “gilgal”, which were used for assemblies, preparation for battle, and rituals, have been revealed in the Jordan valley. The researchers, headed by Prof. Adam Zertal, exposed five such structures, each in the shape of an enormous “foot”, which they suppose functioned during that period to mark ownership on the territory. “I am an archaeologist and only deal with the scientific findings, so I do not go into the additional meanings of the discovery, if there are any,” Prof. Zertal said.
The Hebrew word “gilgal” (a camp or stone-structure), is mentioned thirty-nine times in the Bible. The stone enclosures were located in the Jordan valley and the hill country west of it. To this day, no archaeological site has been proposed to be identified with the gilgal. Between the years 1990 and 2008, during the Manasseh Hill-Country Survey that covers Samaria and the Jordan Valley, five such enclosures were found and excavated, all designed in the shape of a human foot. All of these sites were established at the outset of the Iron Age I (the 13th-12th centuries BCE). Based on their size and shape, it is clear that they were used for human assembly and not for animals.
Two of the sites (in Bedhat esh-Sha’ab and Yafit 3) were excavated in the years 2002-2005, under the directorship of Dr. Ben-Yosef and the guidance of Adam Zertal. The findings, mostly of clay vessels and animal bones, date their foundation to the end of the 13th century BCE, and one of them endured up to the 9th or 8th century BCE without architectonic adjustment.
In at least two cases, paved circuits, some two meters wide, were found around the structures. These were probably used to encircle the sites in a ceremony. “Ceremonial encirclement of an area in procession is an important element in the ancient Near East,” Prof. Zertal says, adding that the origins of the Hebrew term “hag” (festival) in Semitic languages is from the verb “hug”, which means “encircle”. Thus, this discovery can also shed new light on the religious processions and the meaning of the Hebrew word for festival, “hag”.
Prof. Zertal emphasized that the “foot” held much significance as a symbol of ownership of territory, control over an enemy, connection between people and land, and presence of the Deity. Some of these concepts are mentioned in ancient Egyptian literature. The Bible also has a wealth of references to the importance of the “foot” as a symbol: of ownership over Canaan, the bond between the People of Israel and their land, the link between the People and God’s promise to inherit the land, defeating the enemy ‘underfoot’, and the Temple imaged as a foot.
“The discovery of these ‘foot’ structures opens an entirely new system of linguistic and historical perceptions,” Prof. Zertal emphasizes. He explains that the meaning of the biblical Hebrew word for “foot” - “regel” – is also a “festival”, “holiday”, and ascending to see the face of God. As such, the source of the Hebrew term “aliya la-regel”, literally translated as “ascending to the foot” (and now known in English as a pilgrimage), is attributed to the “foot” sites in the Jordan valley. “Now, following these discoveries, the meanings of the terms become clear. Identifying the ‘foot’ enclosures as ancient Israeli ceremonial sites leads us to a series of new possibilities to explain the beginnings of Israel, of the People of Israel’s festivals and holidays,” he stated.
According to Prof. Zertal, the “foot” constructions were used for ceremonial assemblies during Iron Age I (and probably after). When the religious center was moved to Jerusalem and settled there, the command of “aliya la-regel” (pilgrimage) became associated with Jerusalem. The source of the term, however, is in the sites that have now been discovered in the Jordan valley and the Altar on Mt. Ebal. “The biblical text testifies to the antiquity of these compounds in Israel’s ceremonials, and the ‘foot’ structures were built by an organized community that had a central leadership,” Prof. Zertal stated. He stressed that there is a direct connection between the biblical ideology, which identifies ownership over the new land with the foot and hence with the shape of the constructions.
Material provided by the University of Haifa
April 8th, 2009 at 4:13 am
I believe it is the remains of an enclosure to keep out the bombers of the time. It is well documented how suicide bombers would touch off gaseous, sun-ripened dead goats in the marketplace. – Thus contaminating the food supply with “goat bloat,” as they called it at the time.
April 8th, 2009 at 5:57 am
Oh dear sounds ominous, people of Israel and Jordon. Does this mean Jordon is on the list for imminent attack?
April 8th, 2009 at 6:37 am
I wonder if there’s any correlation between this and the tradition of the throwing a shoe at someone…or taking your shoe off and beating a statue with it. I find something curious though….the shape of the shoe looks pretty modern to me, and I have to admit at first I thought it seemed a little bit of a sketchy shape all around, some area clear, some not so clear….kind of like seeing anything in a cloud formation.
April 8th, 2009 at 7:15 am
That’s not the outline of a foot - it’s the outline of a giant pretzel dropped by Jehovah as he sat watching the Jews fighting with whoever owned that land before they moved in. The Hebrew word “gilgal” is actually drived from a root meaning ‘munchies’. This is the first evidence of a supreme being pigging-out whilst watching a reality show. Check the surrounding hills and you’ll see the huge crescent dent in the ground from his ‘big slurp’ too.
April 8th, 2009 at 8:53 am
Sam, I would agree-it is a bit sketchy-but when five are found, and all keep that general shape, it seems pretty obvious that there was an intention there. It looks like part has been lost due to time or damage, but a majority of the outline, and the very clear line there, seems to make the finishing of the shape simple
Fascinating stuff.
April 8th, 2009 at 9:55 am
In Deuteronomy we read:
“Every place, whereon the soles of your feet shall tread shall be
yours; from the wilderness and Lebanon, from the river, the river of
Euphrates, even unto the attermost sea shall your coast be.”(Dt.11:24)
It looks abvose the jews followed what they were taught in the Holy Scripter.
They wanted their footprints to be seen on the ground.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:29 am
I wonder if these five (5) footprints - if viewed aerially - have any type of *pattern*? Can one of you guys jump in your plane or ‘copter and have a look? I’m very curious! Gracias!
April 8th, 2009 at 11:55 am
an ancient overleveraged foreclosed housing tract
April 8th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Lordy… Lordy! The Bible was right! There were giants in the Olden days. Are all the footprints “rights”?… Or… are some of them “lefts”?
April 8th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Supports the Jewish/Hebrew contention that this land was “conquered and subdued” by the Israelites as the Bible says. The people who Israel defeated were not Arabs. This has been questioned due to lack of areceological evidence as recent as 1995. It is interesting how people react questioning if Israel will attack Jordan (I know it was said in jest but indicates a mind set). Israel has only been attacked and defended from my perspective and I’m not a Jew.
April 8th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
This article points to archaeological discoveries which could add even more provenance to the significant amount of evidence already gathered which tends to back up, sometimes in detail, Biblical accounts of Jewish entry into Palestine in the 15th-14th century BCE. It is amazing to find that in many cases which are far more certain and significant than this, we are finding, after a century or more of lessening trust of archaeologists in the historicity of the Torah, that it is archaeology itself which is in so many cases shoring up the credibility of the ancient holy scriptures. As new sites are found, digs progress and finds mount up, it appears we are seeing real and surprising arhaeological evidence in many cases of the Jewish entry into and settlement and control of the lands constituting Israel and Judah in the 11th- and 10th-centuries BCE as related in the Bible.
While many scientists in past decades may have derided ancient Jewish Biblical claims as nothing more than the myth of a nomadic people entirely unsupported by the archaeological record, we are now learning things and making finds about which the earlier searchers had no knowledge, had themselves overlooked, misunderstood and mis-translated or had mis-characterized, sometimes in bad faith. And surprise of surprises! We see after all that the Bible can indeed under appropriate circumstances be a useful aid to the open-minded and unbiased professional undertaking a search for the true past regardless of dogma or ideology.
And in the face of all that, fully half of the commenters here find it appropriate to post lame little chuckle-getters. It’s just silly and wasteful.
April 8th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
This image looks more like the sole of a sandal rather than the foot itself. It may also indicate legal intention by showing the right foot instead of the left, as when we take an oath by raising the right hand.
April 9th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Yes. TransJordan was once part of the Biblical land of Israel with some of the 12 tribes living there. It also was part of the British mandate and part of the 1917 Balfour Declaration promising all of the Mandate to the Jews for a national homeland until GB reneged acquiescing to the Saudis and giving TransJordan to their Hashemite branch as consolation for having given Lebanon to the French as they dismembered the Ottoman Turkish Empire after WWI.