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Document Details : Title: Tel Motza Subtitle: Un centre économique et cultuel de l'âge du Fer II (période du Premier Temple) Author(s): KISILEVITZ, Shua , LIPSCHITS, Oded Journal: Semitica Volume: 64 Date: 2022 Pages: 297-321 DOI: 10.2143/SE.64.0.3291278 Abstract : The ongoing discovery of Iron Age temples at Tel Moẓa near Jerusalem along with the synchronization of remains and finds excavated at the site in salvage excavations carried out intermittently between 1993–2013 is providing valuable information regarding the development of cult and religion in Judah from its early days. The remains indicate that while the site was established as an industrial and economic center for a local agrarian population in the early Iron Age, it quickly became a cultic center as well, initially with the construction of a small temple at its heart and later with the construction of a monumental in antis temple above, both built in the Iron IIA (10th–9th centuries BCE). The continued growth and complexity of the cultic precinct during the Iron II reflect the development of a hierarchy of cultic personnel and functions carried out at the temple and mirror the intensification and industrialization of the economic sphere. The finds attest that temples prevailed throughout the region throughout most, if not all, of the Iron Age and that the cultic traditions maintained many of the ancient Near Eastern religious conventions, and also that state-sanctioned cultic activity was not restricted to the temple in Jerusalem. |
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