Tell el-Kheleifeh

Sparse ceramic findings without associated architectural remains might hint at a small settlement existing at the site or nearby during the 12th century BCE, and possibly into the 11th.[2] In any case, there are no material remains from ca. 1000–800 BCE, a time span that includes the time of both Solomon and Jehoshaphat.[2]

The first architectural remains are of a casemate fortress, tentatively dated by to the first half of the 8th century BCE.[1][2] A 45 × 45–metre offset-inset, or "salients and recesses" wall was abutted on the inside by a continuous row of rooms, these constituting the "casemate" element from its name.[1] In the centre of the courtyard stood a four-room building, almost square and measuring approximately 13 × 13 metres, possibly serving as a citadel.[1]

The earlier fortress was replaced by a radically different fortified settlement of much larger proportions, 56 × 59 × 59 × 63 m.[1] This was protected by an offset-inset wall and a four-chambered gateway.[1] Large parts of the older casemate fortress and its four-room building were preserved and used in the northwestern corner of the new, enlarged structure.[1] Finkelstein identifies it as the Assyrian fort of Ezion-geber, guarding the trade routes with Arabia along with the forts at Tamar (Ein Hazeva) and Khirbet en-Nahas, as part of a strategic Assyrian domination system built between the very end of the 8th and the first half of the 7th century BCE.[2] Finkelstein dates the end of this phase to the late 7th century, Pratico to the early 6th.[1][2]

Pottery and Aramaic ostraca attest to the presence of a settlement during the Persian period (5th–4th century BCE), but there is no certainty whether the fortress walls were still standing or if the buildings, of which not much remained by the time of the excavations, were erected on top of its ruins.[2] After this period, activity at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba is confined to Aila/Aqaba, some 500 metres southeast of the tell.[2]