City
Ai
EYE · Modern Traditionally identified with et-Tell, though the identification is disputed; Khirbet el-Maqatir has been proposed as an alternative, West Bank · Also called Hai
Ai is a city of the biblical world, known today as Traditionally identified with et-Tell, though the identification is disputed; Khirbet el-Maqatir has been proposed as an alternative, West Bank.
What is known
- The name 'Ai' means 'the ruin/heap' in Hebrew, and et-Tell shows no significant occupation during the Late Bronze Age, creating a long-standing archaeological puzzle for correlating the site with Joshua's narrative
- B. G. Wood and Associates for Biblical Research proposed nearby Khirbet el-Maqatir as a better candidate, citing a small fortified site with Late Bronze I material about a kilometre west of et-Tell, and excavated it across fourteen summer and five winter seasons between 1995 and 2016; the identification has not been accepted by the field, and R. A. Mullins and A. M. Maeir have published against it. D. Livingston, who founded the same organisation to solve this problem, backed a different site, Khirbet Nisya — which his own organisation now rejects
- In the biblical narrative, Israel's first attack on Ai fails due to Achan's sin, and the city falls only after a second attempt using an ambush strategy
- Because of the unresolved site identification, this location entry should be read as approximate — its exact position is genuinely disputed among scholars. J. A. Callaway, who dug et-Tell across nine seasons from 1964, proposed in 1968 that Joshua 7-8 preserved the capture of the small unwalled Iron Age village on the mound, and in a 1987 essay abandoned that thesis and acknowledged the contradiction between the narrative and the finds. The app's article The Search for Ai sets out the fork this leaves and the proposals for getting round it
History
- Founded
- et-Tell was a substantial Early Bronze Age city but appears to have been abandoned centuries before the traditional conquest period, which is the central puzzle in identifying biblical Ai
- Industry
- In its Early Bronze Age heyday, a fortified urban center; the identification problem means little can be said with confidence about its status during the conquest era
- Coordinates
- 31.9256° N, 35.2683° E
Scripture references
- Joshua 7:2-5 — Israel's first, failed attack on Ai
- Joshua 7:1-26 — Achan's sin is uncovered as the cause of defeat
- Joshua 8:1-29 — Ai is conquered by ambush and burned
- Joshua 8:28 — Ai left as 'a heap of ruins forever'
- Ezra 2:28 — Men of Ai among the returning exiles
On a modern map
Further reading
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