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In 1956 Director Shmuel Yeivin of Israel's Department of Antiquities set 100 laborers digging into Tell Goliath, as it came to be called. On top they found a largely Arab cemetery. Below it were traces of Greek and Persian influence. Even lower was an Israelite layer, which showed signs of a great fire that Yeivin thinks may have raged in 586 B.C., during the Babylonian invasion under Nebuchadnezzar. Beneath was a city of the Canaanites, who occupied the Promised Land before Joshua's invasion.
Nowhere did Yeivin find evidence that the tell had ever been a Philistine city. It could not. therefore, have been Goliath's Gath. But what was it? How could so big a city exist for so many thousands of years without leaving a trace in history?
At last Yeivin found a dim identity for the mysterious tell. In the Israelite stratum he came across 15 pottery jar handles bearing the seal of the Jewish Kingdom of Judah. Two of them had in addition four Hebrew letters spelling Mamshat, the name of a Judean city whose site has never been identified.
Yeivin thinks that Tell Goliath may well be Mamshat. Other Israelis hope that he is right. The Hebrews of the Old Testament were hillbillies living in the mountains. The rich lowlands belonged to the Philistine "cities of the plain." Now the Judean hills belong mostly to Arabs, while the Israelis occupy former Philistine territory. If Tell Goliath proves to be Mamshat, it will be an exception: a city of the plain that was Jewish in ancient times and is today part of modern Israel.