Editing Openai/680fb62a-7c94-8002-8f67-b9a2a8c7c7ef (section)

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Tell el-Ajjul was extensively excavated between 1930 and 1934 by Sir Flinders Petrie, who initially misidentified the site as the biblical “Ancient Gaza.” Petrie’s team (including Olga Tufnell) uncovered massive mud-brick fortifications, multiple strata of a wealthy Canaanite city, and three hoards of elaborate gold jewelry. These finds – among the richest Bronze Age treasures in the Levant – included repoussé gold pendants, deity plaques, and jeweled Astarte figurines (now in the British Museum and Rockefeller Museum). Petrie also unearthed dozens of inscribed scarab seals naming Hyksos-period Pharaohs like Apepi (Apophis) and Sheshi, rulers of Egypt’s 15th Dynasty. Such Egyptian objects in Gaza’s soil dramatically illustrated cross-cultural links during the Second Intermediate Period.

However, Petrie’s field methods were typical of his era – rapid digging with minimal stratigraphic control. Many loci went unrecorded (the “Lost Loci” of Ajjul), and vast portions of the port’s layout remain only sketchily documented in Petrie’s Ancient Gaza reports. In recent decades, archaeologists have revisited Petrie’s notes and unpublished finds to fill gaps. For example, correspondence and photographs in Olga Tufnell’s archives (published 2021) reveal nuanced details of palace architecture and tomb assemblages that were overlooked. These archival “digs into the dig” help modern scholars reconstruct Ajjul’s urban plan and trade connections more accurately.

===== After decades of dormancy, Tell el-Ajjul saw renewed investigation in the late 1990s through joint Palestinian-European rescue projects. In 1999–2000, a collaborative team from the Palestine Department of Antiquities and University of Gothenburg (led by Moain Sadeq and Peter Fischer) conducted new excavationsen.wikipedia.org<ref>{{cite web|title=en.wikipedia.org|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_el-Ajjul#:~:text=Plans%20for%20new%20investigations%20at,22|publisher=en.wikipedia.org|access-date=2025-12-13}}</ref>. Their work, though cut short by the Second Intifada in 2000, confirmed Ajjul’s importance as a cosmopolitan trade entrepôt. For instance, the joint team documented a large assemblage of imported Cypriot pottery (details below) and evidence of metalworking, indicating on-site production of trade goods. Around the same time (1996–2000), the Gaza Research Project by a French-British team surveyed el-Moghraqa, an area of sand dunes just 700 m north of Ajjul. There, they discovered a late Bronze Age installation with Egyptian New Kingdom connections, including terracotta cones stamped with Pharaoh Thutmose III’s cartouche – unique evidence of Egyptian royal presence in Canaan. These rescue excavations, though limited, underscored that much of Gaza’s archaeological record lies just beneath fields and dunes, requiring urgent documentation. =====

(Notably, all modern excavations coordinate with local authorities to ensure finds are recorded in situ. Precise coordinates of sensitive features like tombs and fortifications are omitted here for security.)