A Temple at Dor
Again the telephone rang. An antiquities dealer was calling the professor. From previous calls, Professor Nachman Avigad of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem knew the antiquities dealer. The two men had come to like and trust each other. Each knew what the other wanted and each was willing to supply it.
The professor wanted the opportunity to see what the antiquities dealer had, to study it, to photograph it and to publish it, so that it would not be lost forever to the scholarly world. The antiquities dealer wanted the professor to tell him if the article was a fake, and if it was genuine, what in fact it was or said. Finally, the antiquities dealer wanted the professor to publish the results of his study because this would add considerably to the object’s value on the market.
This time the antiquities dealer had a seal. From it, Professor Avigad would learn of a hitherto unknown Israelite temple which probably lies buried beneath the sands of ancient Dor (see illustration).
The seal is barely one-half inch wide and two-thirds of an inch long. It is somewhat unusual because it is inscribed on both sides. The language is Hebrew. The text on the first side is perfectly preserved. It says simply “Belonging to Tzadok, son of Micah”. On the reverse side, two letters are missing from the inscription, most probably the letter lamed—which means “belonging to”—and the first letter of the man’s name (which Professor Avigad believes was a “zayin” or “Z”). On this basis, Professor Avigad restores the text to read “[Belonging to Ze]charyau, priest of Dor.” There is no mistaking the last two words: “Cohan Dor”, “priest of Dor.”
Professor Avigad believes that the reason the seal is inscribed on both sides is that it was used by two generations of the same family—perhaps first by Tzadok, son of Micah, and then by Zecharyau. We know that seals were sometimes passed on as family heirlooms (which makes seals very dangerous artifacts by which to date an excavation stratum) and sometimes the descendant would engrave his name on the plain back of the seal. It is likely that Zecharyau is a descendant of Tzadok, son of Micah, because Zecharyau does not give his father’s name, that is, his patronymic.
The most intriguing aspect of the seal is the fact that Zecharyau was a priest of Dor. If there was a priest of Dor, there must have been a temple of Dor, reasons Professor Avigad.
On the basis of the forms of the letters (the professionals call this paleological evidence), Professor Avigad dates the seal to about the middle of the 8th century B.C. Perhaps the first user was on the far side of 750 B.C. and the second user on the near side.
Dor, which lies on the Mediterranean coast about 35 miles north of modern Tel Aviv, was an important Canaanite city at least since the time of the Exodus and possibly long before. It is mentioned several times in the Bible, as well as in extra-Biblical texts, including the Egyptian story of Wen-Amon, an ancient text dating from about 1100 B.C. Although Joshua defeated the king of Dor (Joshua 12:23), the Israelites were apparently unable to conquer the city or to expel the Canaanites (Judges 1:27). However, Dor fell into the hands of the Tjeker, one of the Sea Peoples associated with the Philistines. In King David’s time, Dor was conquered by the Israelites and probably served as the main port of the northern part of the united kingdom. King Solomon made Dor one of his twelve district capitals; its economic importance is reflected in the fact that Dor was governed by King Solomon’s own son-in-law (1 Kings 4:11). In 733 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria, conquered the city along with the adjacent coastal plain belonging to Israel. He then made Dor the capital of a new Assyrian province composed of this area.
After Solomon’s death, the united monarchy broke up into the kingdom of Judah in the south (with its capital and temple in Jerusalem) and the kingdom of Israel in the north. The split was not only political, but religious as well. The Bible mentions two rival sanctuaries to Jerusalem which were set up by King Jeroboam in Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:26–33). There the northern kingdom of Israel installed its own priests and set up golden calves. Archaeological as well as Biblical evidence suggests that other temples outside of Jerusalem operated not only in the northern kingdom of Israel, but in Judah as well. Amos mentions sanctuaries (which he condemns) at Gilgal and Beer-Sheva (Amos 5:5; 8:14) and, although it is not mentioned in the Bible, a sanctuary of Yahweh at Arad was recently discovered by Yohanan Aharoni.
The seal on which Professor Avigad found a reference to the priest of Dor suggests that there was also a temple at Dor—although, like the sanctuary at Arad, no mention of it is made in the Bible. Moreover, Avigad reasons, the temple of Dor was probably dedicated to the Israelite God Yahweh because the priest’s name, Zecharyau, contains within it the divine name in compressed form; that is, in the ending “yau”.a So-called Yahwistic names like this were common in this period. (Other names contained other divine elements, such as Nathaniel (El) and Ishbaal (Baal).)
Professor Avigad concludes that the Temple of Dor probably served the coastal region, while the sanctuaries at Dan and Bethel served the northern and southern extremities of the kingdom of Israel. Perhaps the temple of Dor, like its counterparts at Dan and Bethel, was founded by Jeroboam after the kingdom was divided following Solomon’s death.
Only trial excavations have been conducted at Dor, a beautiful site just north of Caesarea. These trial trenches were sunk in the 1920’s, long before techniques of modern excavation were available. With the new evidence that an Israelite temple lies buried there, the site of Dor now beckons archaeologists more tantalizingly than ever.