The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan

Home > Magazines > BAR > September/October 1981

In the summer of 1979 an astounding structure was uncovered at Tel Dan in northern Israel. Excavators from the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion expedition found a huge mudbrick gateway consisting of two towers joined by a completely intact mudbrick arch. The complex is dated to the Middle Bronze II A-B period, about 1900–1700 B.C. The exact date is not yet known but it is probably earlier than 1700 B.C. That the mudbrick towers were preserved to a height of almost 20 feet (very nearly their original height) was amazing enough. That the three courses of the mudbrick […]

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Footnotes

There are also other possibilities. The grooves appear to be too shallow to catch much water.

Endnotes

See Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel, Volume 2, “Religious Institutions,” (McGraw Hill, New York: 1965), pp. 284–88.

See most recently his “Tel Dan: Five Years Later,” Biblical Archeologist, 43:175, 1980.

See the discussion by Avraham Biran, Israel Exploration Journal, 26:204–205, 1976.