The tool, researchers said, has allowed the verification of the accounts of the Aramean, Assyrian, Babylonian and Egyptian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

A method for dating burnt archaeological remains based on the snapshots they preserve of the Earth’s shifting magnetic field has helped verify a number of Biblical narratives. This is the conclusion of a study by a team who reconstructed the direction and intensity of the field as recorded in 21 “destruction layers” at 17 archaeological sites across Israel. By taking past geomagnetic field readings from sites whose destruction is precisely dated in historical records, the team were able to associate magnetic shifts with a reliable chronology. This allowed them to confirm, for example, that the destruction of Gath — one of the five royal cities of the Philistines — by Hazael, King of Aram-Damascus in 830 BC was contemporaneous with the razing of Tel Rehov, Tel Zayit and Horvat Tevet, suggesting they were likely all torn down as part of the same military campaign. In contrast, however, the study refuted the popular hypothesis that Hazael was also responsible for destruction at the town of Tel Beth-Shean, with the archaeomagnetic date instead suggesting this occurred some 70–100 years earlier, potentially during the campaign of the 22nd Dynasty ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq I. Shoshenq I’s military campaign is described in both the Hebrew Bible and an inscription on the wall of the Temple of Amun in Karnak, Egypt — and detail Beth-Shean as one of his conquests.

Paper author and geophysicist Professor Ron Shaar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said: “The geomagnetic field is generated by Earth’s outer core, at a depth of 2,900 kilometres [1,802 miles], by currents of liquid iron.

“Due to the chaotic motion of this iron, the magnetic field changes over time.

“Until recently, scientists believed that it remains quite stable for decades, but archaeomagnetic research has contradicted this assumption by revealing some extreme and unpredictable changes in antiquity.

“Our location here in Israel is uniquely conductive to archaeomagnetic research, due to an abundance of well-dated archaeological findings.

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