Khirbet Beit Lei

31.56361111111134.928055555556Koordinaten: 31 ° 33 ' 49 "N, 34 ° 55' 41" E

Khirbet Bet Ley is an archaeological site in Israel eight kilometers east of Lachish near the Green Line.

For road construction work in 1961, two rock-hewn chamber tombs were found on the eastern slope of Khirbet Bet Ley. One of the two caves comprises an entrance hall and two side grave chambers (south and west ) with surrounding stone benches. A third, northern chamber is unfinished, there is only the hewn door frame. In the chambers of skeletons and smaller pieces of jewelry were found as grave goods in situ. In the anteroom drawings of warriors and ships and seven short inscriptions carved into ancient Hebrew language in the limestone. Because of the material and the apparently volatile execution of these inscriptions are difficult decipherable and interpretable and paleographically hard to determine. Many researchers, however, some authors Nevertheless date the inscriptions in the period around 700 BC, in the late king time or even in the fourth century BC Since even no pottery was found in the grave, a temporal classification is archaeologically difficult. The type of grave system corresponds more to the pre-exilic model. Temporal Persian ceramics from the grave might have come only after the sealing of the tomb, into her place, and thus more of a terminus ante quem represent.

Often the drawings, particularly the representation of a possibly Assyrian army camp with the conquest of the kingdom of Judah by Sennacherib to be associated. The content of the inscriptions, however, is not specific enough to provide evidence of this.