BETH-SHEAN bĕth she’ ən (בֵּית־שְׁאָ֣ן, place of quiet); BETH-SHAN (בֵּ֥ית שָֽׁן). A city and important stronghold in the valley of Jalud, near the junction of the Valley of Jezreel with the Jordan Valley.

Only a few perennial streams join the Jordan on its W bank, and the most important is the Jalud. Hence this valley was densely settled in the Canaanite and Israelite periods, though the principal city was at Rehob, not mentioned in the Bible, and five m. S of Bethshean. The valley of Jezreel is a minor rift valley leading into the broader Plain of Esdraelon and the Mediterranean coast. The huge pyramid of Tell el-Ḥuṩn, site of ancient Bethshean, is located at a step in the narrow Jezreel trough, in a nodal position of great military importance. It commanded thus the routes S along the Jordan, N to Syria by way of the Sea of Galilee and W to the coast of the Mediterranean. It is situated at c. 350 ft. below sea level, but Tell el-Husn commands a wide prospect on a promontory between Jalud Valley to the N, and a converging valley to the SE, high above the Jordan.

The name is frequently alluded to in the Bible. It was assigned to Manasseh (Josh 17:11; Judg 1:27), though it was located in the territory of Issachar (Gen 49:14, 15). Beth-shean never seems to have been integrated into the life of Israel. The Canaanites were not driven out of it in the life of the Judges, and here the Philistines hung the bodies of Saul and his sons on the wall of the city after their defeat at Gilboa (1 Sam 31:10, 12). Thanks to David’s power, Solomon was able to incorporate Bethshean in the district allotted to Baana (1 Kings 4:12). It also figures in the conquests of Sheshonq or Shishak (1 Kings 14:25); but it plays little or no other role in Israelite history. During the Gr. period it was known as Scythopolis (“City of the Scythians”) possibly from a force of Scythian cavalry in the army of Ptolemy II. Then under the Seleucids in the 2nd cent. b.c., it acquired the name of Nysa. The primitive name was retained by its native peoples, and the Arab. Beisān is maintained in a neighboring village to the Tell. In the Hasmonaean and succeeding period it attained considerable prosperity as the only city of the Decapolis on the W side of Jordan (1 Macc 12:40; Jos. Antiq. XIV, v. 3). Apart from its geographical location and Biblical references, the name occurs with several linguistic variations in Egyp. and Akkad. documents from the 15th cent. b.c. onward.

The Tell has been excavated by several archeological expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania: C. S. Fisher (1921-23), Alan Rowe (1925-28) and G. M. Fitzgerald (1930-33). At one point a sounding to virgin soil was dug down for seventy ft., through eighteen main occupation levels, to Chalcolithic occupation of the mid-fourth millennium b.c. It was an importaant Canaanite town in the early and Middle Bronze Age, but in the period from c. 3300 b.c. to 1500 b.c. the evidence suggests the town was unwalled. In the late Bronze Age Beth-shean became an important stronghold of the Egyp. Empire. Egyptian influence began about the 15th cent. b.c. in Level X of the site. Level IX, dating from the 14th cent., shows first evidence of a town wall and gateway of stone construction. In Level VIII, two royal stelae of Seti I refer to an attack by neighboring petty kings and one made by the ’Apiru or nomadic peoples. Level VII (13th cent. b.c.) contained a temple of Rameses II, which continued through into Level VI in the 12th cent. b.c. In ground plan these temples resemble shrines at Tell el-Amarna. The goddess of fertility—Anat or Antit—is alluded to, and also a Babylonian deity. In Level V (c. 11th cent. b.c.) two temples have been discovered, the southern one dedicated to the god Resheph, and the other to the goddess Antit—perhaps referred to in 1 Samuel 31:10. A great number of Canaanite cultic objects have been discovered at this level. There is no certain evidence when Beth-shean fell into the hands of the Israelites, possibly in Level IV. Then at this Iron Age period, the site was occupied only between c. 815 to 700 b.c., followed by a long period of desertion before its renewed occupation in the Hel. period (Level III). Only a few figurines, once regarded as evidence of Scythian occupation have suggested the possibility that it had a hill-top shrine, under the Persians, but this is conjectural. In Level III a peripheral temple was excavated, prob. Rom., with an adjoining cistern adorned with the head of perhaps Dionysius. Levels II and I represent the Byzantine and Arab periods. In Level II, there are remnants of a circular Christian church, a monastery of the 6th cent. a.d., and the restored city wall. The city finally fell to the Arabs in 636 a.d.

Bibliography Publications of the Pal. section of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (1930-40); I. A. Rowe, The Topography and History of Beth-shan (1930); G. M. Fitzgerald, Beth-shan Excavations 1921-23, Arab and Byzantine Levels (1931); G. M. Fitzgerald, Beth-shan, Sixth Century Monastery (1939); A. Rowe, Bethshan, Four Canaanite Temples (1940); See also, D. Winton Thomas (ed.), Archaeology and Old Testament Study (1967), article by G. M. Fitzgerald, “Beth-shan,” 185-196.