North of the site is the highest hill in the region, called Jebel Abu Ammar, where Joshua’s main force encamped. Today, one can see how the battle unfolded by looking at the topography around Khirbet el-Maqatir. Credit: Associates for Biblical Research () Khirbet el-Maqatir shown in relation to Bethel (el-Bireh) and Beth Aven (Beitin). 5 Geographically, it lies due east of Bethel/el-Bireh and only 1 mile southeast of Beth Aven/Beitin. Bryant Wood convincingly argued Bethel is indeed modern el-Bireh and Beth-Aven is modern Beitin and that only Khirbet el-Maqatir satisfies all of the above criteria. David Livingston identified Bethel as modern el-Bireh.
Archaeologist Gary Byers, who served as the administrative director of ABR’s excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir says there are three ways we can know that this is the site of Joshua’s Ai: it has the right stuff in the right place at the right time. 3 Between 19 the Associates for Biblical Research () excavated at Khirbet el-Maqatir and meticulously uncovered a fortified settlement from the time of Joshua that had been destroyed by fire. When Edwin Robinson explored the area in 1838, the local people pointed to a different site – Khirbet el-Maqatir – as Ai. Joseph Callaway, who excavated at et-Tell from 1964 –70 concluded: “Ai is simply an embarrassment to every view of the conquest that takes the biblical and archaeological evidence seriously.” 2 But what if they were looking at the wrong site? What if et-Tell is not the city of Ai that Joshua and the Israelites conquered? 1 Et-Tell, however, fails to meet the biblical criteria for the city. Albright’s article on the subject in 1924. Et Tell has been accepted as the default site of Ai since W.F.
Joshua 7 and 8 recount the First and Second Battles of Ai.
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