Mount Gerizim 1998

W.J. Bennett and R. Bull, Tell er-Ras, Publication of Archaeological Materials and Data from Mt. Gerizim, West Bank

Tell er Ras is the name given to the peak which forms the northern extremity of Mount Gerizim. This portion of Mount Gerizim rises abruptly some 300m above the floor of the narrow pass between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. The area encompassed by this site measures ca. 120m by 80m. When the initial investigations at this site were undertaken political control of this area was exercised by the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan. Effective political control of the area passed into the hands of the State of Israel in 1968.

Several contemporary graphic and documentary descriptions of the site are preserved. The graphic descriptions exist primarily in the form of images on coins struck at the Roman mint in Neapolis (modern Nablus) situated at the foot of Mount Gerizim. The earliest known of these coins were struck under Antoniunus Pius (138-161 CE) illustrated on the front cover of this submission. These illustrate a massive temple with associated buildings and statuary and a well-constructed stairway leading up from the valley floor to the temple. While less certain, the mosaic at the Church of St. Stephen in Jordan contains a representation of a major Christian structure at Neapolis which may be a representation of the later rebuilding and use of this structure and/or location.

Documentary descriptions of the site can be found in the Bordeau Pilgrim (ca. 333 CE) who recorded that a stairway of 300 steps ascended to the summit of the mountain. Later in that century Epiphanius wrote that there were "more than 1500" steps leading up the side of Mount Gerizim. Procopius of Gaza, writing a century and a half later than Epiphanius also noted the existence of this extensive stairway. A later writer, Marinus of Neapolis (mid 5th Century CE) noted that there had once been a temple to Zeus Hypsistos constructed at this location by the Emperior Hadrian.

The archaeological record documented by the ASOR sponsored excavations at Tell er Ras includes three separate architectural elements. These are described in greater detail in Bull (1968 ).

The latest of these is confined to very badly disturbed, near-surface elements related to the Byzantine and later use of this site. Disturbances related to the quarrying and reuse of stone materials have been extensive.

The vast preponderance of the archaeological record is associated with the construction and use of the Roman temple built during the reign of Hadrian. This structure (ca. 2 1 m by 14m) included a three-stepped stylobate, pronaos, naos, Aswan granit columns and Corinthian capitals. This tetrastyle, prostyle, pseudoperiptal temple was centered on a platform measuring ca. 65m by 44m. The platform, constructed of earth, rubble and cement, was encompassed by a rectangle of stone walls 9m high and 2m thick. At the northern end of the platform, a staircase nearly 8m in width descended to a broad esplanade of green marble squares and areas of patterned mosaic. The esplanade served as the upper terminus of another very long and steep stairway that led down to Neapolis. A particularly important segment of this portion of the archaeological record is a series of cisterns structurally integrated with the temple-complex's northern wall during the third century. The deposits sealed in the bottom layers of these cisterns bv the collapse of their vaulted roofs contained one of the most important inventories of Late Roman ceramics in the region; made all the more significant by the association with an extensive and closely dated collection of Roman period coinage. The lowest elements of the archaeological record predate the Roman temple complex. The most striking of these is a massive stone structure over which the Roman temple complex had been constructed. This structure is 21 m (ns) and 20m (ew) and 8.5m high. Founded on leveled bedrock the structure currently stands 18 courses high and consists almost entirely of unhewn limestone slabs taken from the local geological bedding planes and seated without mortar to form a massive stone structure without internal rooms or partitions. This structure stood in the center of a rectangular courtyard enclosed by stone walls (60m x 40m and 1.5m thick) also constructed with dry-laid, unhewn limestone blocks. The second major element of this portion of the archaeological record is a cistern dug directly into bedrock at the northern end of the structural complex which contained significant quantities of mid-to-late Hellenistic ceramic materials.