Shiloh sits on a low tell in the hill country north of Bethel, positively identified with Khirbet Seilun. Excavations since the 1920s — most influentially Israel Finkelstein's work in the 1980s — have exposed a substantial Iron Age I settlement (roughly the 12th–11th centuries BCE) with pillared public buildings, collared-rim storage jars, and animal-bone deposits that point to organized cultic activity. That makes Shiloh one of the best-attested early Israelite worship centers, matching the Bible's memory of it as the place where the tabernacle stood before the monarchy. The site appears to have been violently destroyed or abandoned around 1050 BCE, a date many link to the Philistine wars of 1 Samuel. Centuries later Jeremiah still invoked Shiloh's ruin as a warning to Jerusalem.
- Where it is
- Central highlands, West Bank (biblical Ephraim)
- Scripture
- Joshua 18:1 · 1 Samuel 1:3 · Jeremiah 7:12