Palestinian site and biblical city with its most
important period of occupation in the Middle Bronze Age circa the 17th century BC when it was given a great insloping wall of cyclopean masonry. To the same period belongs a stone
plaque bearing one of the earliest known alphabetic inscriptions. The town was destroyed at the end of the Middle
Bronze Age and not reoccupied until the 16th century BC. The
site included a glacis of the Hyksos period when it probably controlled the territory from Megiddo to Gezer. It was clearly an important city in the Late Bronze Age and it figures
prominently in the Amarna letters. At that time fortifications and a temple with a massebah (sacred pillar or stone monument) were erected. The town was
destroyed in the 12th century BC and there was another break
in occupation until the 10th century BC when it became an
Israelite city and the short-lived capital of the kingdom of Israel. This was destroyed by the Assyrians in 720 BC after which there was intermittent occupation until its final destruction in 101 BC. The Romans abandoned the original site and built a new city to the west in AD 67 calling it Flavius Neapolis. The Greek name Neapolis ("new city") later became enshrined in Arabic as Nablus. In Hebrew the city is still called Shekhem. There was also some occupation in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (1).
Palestinian site and biblical city with its most
important period of occupation in the Middle Bronze Age circa the 17th century BC when it was given a great insloping wall of 
