After some months of excavation, Dr. Petrie was obliged to discontinue his work here for engagements elsewhere, leaving further explorations in the hands of Mr. Bliss.
[[4]]The result of Dr. Petrie’s labors had been to establish known facts in the history of ancient Lachish. The lowest and earliest town must have been of great strength and importance. The remains of the walls are twenty-eight feet and eight inches in thickness, of bricks unburnt, with two successive patchings of rebuilding occupying thirty-nine of the sixty feet in the height of the mound. At this level the fragments of pottery were distinct and peculiar, very different from the relics of the cities above and which, from relics elsewhere obtained, give the period of their use and manufacture at 1500 B. C.
The next level indicated a barbaric invasion when rude huts were piled up, to fall soon after into ruin. After this comes successive strata of Jewish cities until about 400 B. C., since which time Lachish passed out of history and no later relics are found.
Of these things Dr. Petrie says: “The Amorite pottery extends from 1500 B. C., to 1000 B. C. Phœnician and Cypriote begins about 1000 and goes to 700 B. C. Greek influence then begins and continues to the top of the town.”
Upon leaving, he pointed out to Dr. Bliss the indications that the lower portions of the tel would bring to light the ruins of a city destroyed by the invading Israelites.
Among the early relics found by Mr. Bliss, when the lower stratum of cities was more thoroughly explored, were a number of Egyptian beads and scarabs of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, on one of which the name of Queen Teie, wife of Amenophis III and mother of Amenophis IV, appears.
There were also a number of seal cylinders, some of Egyptian and some of Babylonian manufacture, of the same period or earlier.
The most wonderful discovery, however, was to come, verifying the predictions of Prof. Sayce and the judgment of Dr. Petrie, but in a way to astonish even these eminent scholars to whom all things seem possible. This was the discovery of a clay tablet inscribed in cuneiform characters similar in size, form and other peculiarities, to the letters from Lachish in the Tel-el-Amarna documents.
It is written in the Babylonian language and with the Babylonian syllabary, and what is still more astonishing, the name of Zimrida appears upon it.
It proves to be a letter addressed to an Egyptian officer, received at Lachish about the time Zimrida’s letter was sent to the king of Egypt. In this the name of Zimrida, who, according to the Tel-el-Amarna dispatches was governor of Lachish, is twice mentioned.