The Iron Age Inner City Gate and Gate Shrine at Tel Lakhish (Lachish)

An excavation carried out on the southern side of the six-chambered inner gatehouse at Lakhish exposed the gate passage, four piers and three chambers. The eastern chamber comprised two rooms, with a cultic niche in one of the room’s back wall and an altar in front of it. The chamber probably served as a gate shrine, and was desecrated during Hezekiah’s cult reform, when a toilet seat was placed next to the altar and the altar horns were trimmed. Evidence of Sennacherib’s destruction in 701 BCE was manifest by the presence of arrowheads, slingstones and collapsed burned mud bricks. The pottery assemblage aligns with previous finds from Lakhish Level III, with all vessel forms known from Iron IIB strata in Judah.