The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism of the Civic Forum in the Southern Levant by Daniel A. Frese (review)

City gates have long fascinated Near Eastern archaeologists, not only for the intrinsic complexity of their defensive architecture but also as the embodiment of a physical and symbolic border that marked the people living within its boundaries as part of a specific community. The importance of Iron Age city gates as symbolic and often propagandistic tools has been central to the academic discourse around Iron Age urban development in the ancient Near East, often stressing how city gates embodied a dichotomy by functioning both as defensive military architecture and public spaces for communities (Mazzoni 1997; Pucci 2008).

Frese’s new book touches on all of these different aspects to offer a compelling and integrated view of Iron Age city gates in the region of the southern Levant, specifically ancient Israel and her neighbors. While the topic has been previously discussed (Herzog 1976; May 2014), this volume offers a fresh perspective by analyzing and combing archaeological, iconographic, and written sources to present a comprehensive picture of gates as a complex social construction.

Frese divided his work into three distinct sections: the first focuses on gate architecture, the second on the functionality of gates, while the third discusses gate symbolism. This significant division allows the author to investigate different aspects of the built environment— architecture, functionality, and symbolic meaning— using a variety of sources while presenting clear evidence for his arguments regarding each topic. The case studies presented in the volume are appropriate to the topic, well documented, and represent the wide variety of Iron Age city gates actually discovered in the southern Levant.

In the first section, “Gate Architecture,” Frese does a masterful job of combining archaeological, iconographic, and written sources to provide a comprehensive picture of gates as complex built spaces. Chapter 1 provides an ample explanation of the ground floor structures of city gates, including doors and decorative elements such as metal bands, while the second chapter focuses on the description of the upper floors, ceilings, and roofing structures. Chapter 3 tries to address one of the most relevant archaeological questions regarding ancient Near Eastern gate architecture: What was the purpose of gate design? The author presents different hypotheses supported by other scholars before him, explaining why he disagrees with these previous accounts, and then provides his own explanation. His argument that the gate piers had a structural function and were used to shorten the distance that the wooden beams of the ceiling were required to span is sound and well supported by archaeological evidence (76–87). The data presented in favor of this hypothesis, from metrological data to comparisons with Israelite Iron Age domestic architecture, and by contrast to Middle Bronze Age gate designs, is comprehensive and well argued, adducing multiple case studies. The last two chapters in this section, 4 and 5, focus, respectively, on the possible uses of the gatehouses and how their design inserted itself into the urban planning of Iron Age centers, specifically in relation to plazas and public spaces.

The second section of the book, “Gate Functions,” segues nicely from the previous section to portray the multiple social functions associated with gates in ancient Israel. Chapter 6 describes the use of gates as public spaces with strong similarities to the conceptualization of public space that we also see in the northern Levant (i.e., public assembly, propaganda, display of body parts). Then city gates are connected to the “congregation of male elders” and general authority figures, who would sit at the gate to display their judicial and legal power as well as to exercise governmental functions (Ch. 7). Chapter 8 briefly defines all the other functions that could be linked to gates, namely, religious, commercial, and military display.

The third...