Hazor: A brief stop at Canaan's largest city |
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Written by Stephen Langfur |
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Until recently visitors have given short shrift to Hazor, the largest ruin found in Israel, because they could see many of the same kinds of things at Megiddo: a huge water system, an Israelite gate and the foundations of a palace. Given the association with Armageddon, Megiddo has taken precedence.
Thanks to the new excavations at Hazor, this may soon change, especially if archaeologists discover the city archive. There must be an archive! At Mari on the Euphrates, a collection of almost 25,000 clay cuneiform documents turned up, dating to the 18th century BC. Most are commercial in nature. According to the Biblical Archaeology Review (May-June 1999), about twenty of these mention Hazor:
If Mari kept its documents, then surely Hazor kept some too. Excavating the Canaanite royal palace in recent years, archaeologists have found a few, but they still seek the big trove.
The other option was to keep close to the Naftali ridge, skirting the swamp, then head east around the major springs of the Upper Jordan at Dan, continuing around the southern edge of Mt. Hermon and up to Damascus. If the destination was a city near the Tigris, of course, the traveller would not turn east to Dan. Rather, he or she would continue north from Hazor toward Aleppo, Carchemish, Haran and Nineveh. Both options met at Hazor. It was therefore an essential station on the Great Trunk Road. ![]() As we noted above in connection with Mari, commerce from the Euphrates reached this far south in the 18th century BC. There was also contact from the Nile. Hazor was important enough to Egypt to come in for a curse in the Execration Texts of the 19th century BC. At that time, then, Hazor alone, among all Canaanite cities, was of interest both to Egypt and Mesopotamia. Recently the palace - or better, palace/temple - has been unearthed. It is an exciting reconstruction for anyone interested in the ancient world before the great upheaval that preceded Biblical Israel. This is the only instance we have in the land of a large Late Bronze palace that is partly restored and accessible, despite the archaeologist's necessarily destructive hand. Indeed, to excavate it the diggers had first to move a well-preserved Israelite building that stood above. (This four-space Israelite house is now visible north of us on the edge of the tell.) The palace/temple was built in the 15th century BC and destroyed, along with the rest of the city (and most of civilization) in the 13th. Out front, to the east, are the remains of an open-air platform, probably the base of an altar. It was surrounded by dirt and animal bones. Looking west beyond the altar, we see the line of basalt slabs (orthostats) that surrounded the palace, and, just beyond them, two round basalt bases that supported pillars. The orientation toward the west, the placement of the altar, and the two pillars in front of the building all bring to mind the description of Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 7:15-22). ![]() Yet it was a palace - or also a palace - with a big central hall (the throne room, probably) and rooms around it. On the floor the diggers found a thick layer of ash, thought to be of cedar. The basalt slabs above the foundation, inside and out, were cracked from fire that destroyed the entire city. The heat must have reached 1300 degrees. Above the slabs on the inside ran a line of cedar beams, and above this line, in turn, were mud bricks (no doubt plastered and painted). Those we see have been restored by mixing straw with the original mud. Four cuneiform documents have been found in the structure, two of which mention Mari. This is nowhere near the quantity we would expect, for LB palace officials elsewhere are known to have kept punctilious records. On the other hand, in the rooms on the right were found treasures of ivory (a box and plaques), small bronze statues and cylinder seals. These resemble items found in LB cities at Delos, Mycenae, Athens and Megiddo. The art, in other words, was international. Curiously, however, very little pottery from Mycenae or Cyprus has turned up so far at Hazor. ![]() Why do we start out with something that resembles a temple and then find ourselves in a palace - but with a statue of Baal? Because in the Late Bronze civilizations that we have been talking about (1550-1200 BC) - stretching from Greece to Mesopotamia and Egypt - the king was believed to be divine or semi-divine and lived with a deity. In mentioning the might of Hazor, "formerly head of all those kingdoms," the Bible tells us the name of its king: Jabin (Joshua 11:1, Judges 4:2). He would have been the last to sit on the throne of this palace. A palace that is similar in layout at Pylos in Greece yielded a great many documents, which enabled Webster to imagine everyday life there. His description can probably be applied as well to this palace at Hazor: ![]() Near the palace the expedition found a huge lion carved in relief in basalt. Its mate had earlier been discovered deliberately buried in a pit near a temple a kilometer away in the lower city. The two originally formed the jambs of a gate, perhaps of that lower-city temple. On the other hand, a monumental staircase has been discovered connecting the mounds, and the two Hazor lions may well have formed part of a gate there. ![]() All this came to an end with the great upheaval that overthrew the civilizations of Mycenae, Asia Minor and the Levant, down to the borders of Egypt - from Pylos to Ugarit, from Hattusas to Hazor. The tell of Hazor remained empty for more than a century, until the first modest Israelite settlement appeared. Even Solomon, whose construction at Hazor wins Biblical mention, did not develop the entire upper mound, and the enormous lower city was never inhabited again. Logistics:
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