Tel Hazor

This morning we set out as usual. Blacknephewo joined bso and myself for the trip to Tel Hazor. It's quite a way, up north, past Rosh Pinah. Hazor has an interesting history. It was originally a Canaanite city, founded somewhere around the third millenim BCE (the Bronze Age). It grew in size and was one of the more important Canaanite cities in the north, trading with its neighbors, it is mentioned in many documents and engravings. The city grew to about 15000 strong and spread down from the heights of the tel into the valley below. At some point around the eleventh century BCE (the Iron Age), the city became an Israelite center. The bible mentions that it was one of the cities conquered by Joshua on his whirlwind campaign to occupy Canaan after 40 years sweltering in the desert. The validity of this is hotly debated.

Hazor was one of the more important cities in the united monarchy and was possibly fortified by King Solomon (another hotly debated topic). Hazor was enlarged and further fortified by Ahab of the Kingdom of Israel (post Judah-Israel split). It fell to the Assyrians in 732 BCE (the excellently named Tiglath-pileser III) and its inhabitants exiled.
The coffee on the side of the road, waiting for the park to open at 8am.
This is part of the "Solomonic Gate", those black basalt rocks are parts of an earlier Canaanite temple.
Yigal Yadin did much of the excavation here (he also did Masada). The walls were made of mud bricks and so they are protected from the rain and elements by this nice structure.
I love basalt rock. It's hard stuff. I am not sure what this is, but I'm going to have to write an essay on a rock type of my choice and I figure it may as well be basalt. So this picture is for my paper.
There is an excellent water system that they dug 45 meters into the rock. We climbed down and up all those stairs.
This is the sheer face of the cistern. It must have been a huge job.
The views from the top of the tell were excellent. It was still a little hazy but the mountains around were very picturesque.
This is the "pillared house". I guess you see why its called that.
The lower city is cut into the side of the tell. I think it goes on into the fields beyond as it was quite big.

Nice place. A little less spectacular than I thought it would be. We have visited a lot of the sites close by us and so now the drives have become longer. So we ended up driving four hours to spend an hour or so at the site. All in a good cause I say.