One fine autumn day in 698 B.C.E., a real estate transaction took place. A man called Marduk-bela-usur bought a field from a man named Aya-shebshi and three of his associates. As was customary in seventh-century B.C.E. Mesopotamia, the transfer of title was conducted in front of seven witnesses and recorded on a clay tablet.
Surprisingly, this Akkadian document did not turn up in modern-day Iraq, as you might expect, but at Tel Hadid, a site in central Israel, not far from the Ben Gurion International Airport. Prior to the construction of a modern highway, salvage excavations conducted at this site from 1995 to 1997 under the auspices of Tel Aviv University revealed the remains of a late Iron Age settlement dated to the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E. Archaeologists unearthed several structures, including a well-preserved pillared building. Within two other Iron Age structures, this document and another tablet documenting a loan from the spring of 664 B.C.E. were found. The individuals mentioned in both documents have029 Akkadian (perhaps Babylonian) and Aramean names; no names with Yahwistic components (names formed on the divine name Yahweh) appear in the text. But what are these tablets doing here in Israel and not in some archive in Mesopotamia?
Since the Neo-Assyrian Empire controlled the region at that time, these tablets must reveal deportees from another conquered region who were brought here by the Assyrians in the late eighth and early seventh centuries B.C.E.1
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The community at Hadid was not the only one in the vicinity with newcomers. Gezer, located just a few miles south, had been a hub of the Kingdom of Israel for some time before the Assyrians conquered, destroyed, and eventually rebuilt it. The remains of the new town at Gezer revealed Assyrian-style architectural elements and cylinder seals, as well as two clay tablets with Assyrian texts that deal with land sales in the mid-seventh century B.C.E. Among the individuals mentioned in those texts, 12 had Mesopotamian names, five had probably Aramaic names, one bore an Egyptian name, and one had a name with the Yahwistic component Yhw—Netanyahu.2
The appearance of the foreign names in the documents, coupled with the scarcity of Yahwistic elements in them, points to the policy of forced resettlement for which the Neo-Assyrian state was notorious.3 The refugees’ displacement in times of war—a phenomenon, unfortunately, so familiar to us today—was coupled with forced movements of conquered populations. The kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire formulated and used this strategy for centuries. They grouped together and deported rivals from the center of the Assyrian heartland and from defeated polities alike. By isolating these groups within larger local populations, the Assyrian kings ensured loyalty to the state and minimized potential resistance among the common people, who were left to fend for themselves without their leaders and traditional social hierarchy.
Assyrian policy in the Levant from the days of King Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745–727 B.C.E.) onward had a great impact on local demography and completely reshaped Levantine societies (see 2 Kings 17:1, 2 Kings 17:24). Assyrian sources reveal that a considerable part of the population of the southern Levant had been displaced to other lands and that various foreign elements, mostly of Mesopotamian origin, had been resettled in their place.4
In recent years, scholars at several excavations have focused on the materials left behind by deportees in the southern Levant, including pottery, objects with cuneiform writing, and seals with Babylonian-style decoration.5 Our renewed excavations at Tel Hadid, however, additionally 031focus on another social dimension by tracing the lived practices of these deported communities. Given the organized nature of the Assyrian deportations and the forced settlement of deportees, we expect that archaeological analyses will reveal changes and transformations in the customs and behavioral patterns of the migrants, who sought to maintain their social structure. We see such tendencies today in migrant communities attempting to preserve traditional practices in their new resettled homes.
Our first two excavation seasons at Tel Hadid (2018–2019) have provided new information about the local community during its formative period. We are set to develop a framework for studying the materials left by the deportees to better understand the experience of forced deportation in various historical periods.
Upon beginning the excavation, we had to decide first where to excavate. A visitor standing on the prominent hilltop of Tel Hadid has a panoramic view of the Lydda Valley to the south and the west, the entire Tel Aviv metropolitan area farther westward and northward, the al-Jib Plateau to the east, and the rolling hills of Samaria farther to the northeast. In ancient times, whoever controlled Tel Hadid knew exactly who crossed the central Coastal Plain along the Via Maris (literally, “Way of the Sea”), the main trade route leading from the northern Levant to Egypt.
No wonder the Assyrians invested great efforts in reviving the settlements in the region following their conquest of the Kingdom of Israel. With its central location, the region of Tel Hadid and Tel Gezer played a crucial role connecting the Assyrian army and administration to the city of Gaza, a prime objective of the Assyrian colonial efforts ever since Tiglath-pileser III’s first campaign to the region, in 734 B.C.E.
Yet the Assyrian occupation of Tel Hadid is just one chapter of its history. Settled also during the Persian (521–332 B.C.E.; see Ezra 2:33; Nehemiah 7:37) and Hellenistic (332–53 B.C.E.) periods, Hadid maintained its strategic importance for generations. According to 1 Maccabees 12:38 and 13:13, Simon Maccabeus (d. 135 B.C.E.) fortified Hadid (Greek: ’´Αδɩδα) during the war with the Seleucid king Diodotus Tryphon. The battle between those armies took place in the valley below the mound.
According to the Jewish historian Josephus 032(Wars 4.486; 4.9.1), the Roman general (and later emperor) Vespasian (9–79 C.E.) decided to block the routes leading to Jerusalem and chose to fortify Hadid during the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.). These fortifications remained through the Byzantine period (fourth–seventh centuries C.E.), a time of growth and prosperity in the southern Levant.
Finally, according to a rabbinic tradition (Mishna Arakhin 9:6), Hadid was among the towns fortified in the days of Joshua, which would correlate with the end of the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I (1600–1000 B.C.E.). Although we have not been able to substantiate this tradition, the strategic importance of Hadid is easy to see.
Before embarking on our excavations, we could not help but notice a wide platform at the site, on the northern and western sides of the high mound, partially covered by a modern cemetery and an olive orchard. This wide platform, an artificial extension of the original hill, covers more than 2 acres and is delineated by massive walls. We decided to begin our explorations of the site in this part of the mound.
Our first excavation season yielded an impressive structure made of large walls, with two rows of large and roughly hewn stones forming a corner. This structure—partially damaged by modern joyriding in 4-wheel-drive vehicles—had been built at the same time as another structure with a stepped wall of large field stones and roughly hewn stones. Additionally, we have uncovered two steps of the outer face of what might be a revetment. The multitude of large potsherds from the late Hellenistic period (second–first centuries B.C.E.) that were found in the dark-brown fills behind the walls—and the absence of a single later potsherd—suggest that the platform was built around that time.
Who could have instigated such a massive construction activity? Could this be the Hasmonean fortified complex of Hadid? We will have to wait until next season to explore this question.
It seems that no matter what period we examine, Tel Hadid was of key interest to ancient peoples controlling the region. From the Israelites to the Assyrians, the Persians to the Greeks, the Hasmoneans to the Byzantine Christians, Tel Hadid controlled the intersection of major east-west and north-south trade routes in the fertile Lydda Valley. It was a place of economic prosperity due to its vibrant agriculture, commerce, and trade.
And with the goods came all of the people that moved them—merchants and traders, travelers and businessmen, soldiers and 033prisoners, immigrants and refugees, and exiles and repatriates. Now that we are beginning to discover the “what”—the objects that people left behind at Tel Hadid—we can begin to examine the “who”—the people who created these objects. For the peoples from the Assyrian period who were resettled here more than 2,700 years ago, we can also begin to ask the questions of “why” and “how”: Why did they try to recreate their traditional social atmosphere, and how did they accomplish it in this new land, so far from their ancestral home?
Perhaps it is appropriate that this location was chosen for Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, as it continues to represent the place where people enter and depart this multicultural land. Only future seasons of excavation at Tel Hadid will reveal more about those who first made the journey thousands of years before us.
When Assyria ruled supreme, it forcibly removed the ancient Israelites from their homeland and settled a new people group in their place. Explore discoveries related to these new deportees—and more—at Tel Hadid. This article includes a special supplement, Digging Deeper at Tel Hadid, to understand the site like the experts do.
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1. Nadav Naʾaman and Ran Zadok, “Assyrian Deportations to the Province of Samerina in the Light of Two Cuneiform Tablets from Tel Hadid,” Tel Aviv 27.2 (2000), pp. 159–188.
2. See Shawn Zelig Aster and Avraham Faust, “Administrative Texts, Royal Inscriptions and Neo-Assyrian Administration in the Southern Levant: The View from the Aphek-Gezer Region,” Orientalia 84.3 (2015), pp. 293–308.
3. See Josephus Antiquities 9.288, who claims that the Samaritans originated from this resettlement.
4. Karen Radner, “The ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in the Context of the Resettlement Programme of the Assyrian Empire,” in Shuichi Hasagawa, Christoph Levin, and Karen Radner, eds., The Last Days of the Kingdom of Israel, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 511 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019), pp. 101–123.
5. Nadav Naʾaman, “Locating the Sites of Assyrian Deportees in Light of the Textual and Archaeological Evidence,” in John MacGinnis, Dirk Wircke, and Tina Greenfield, eds., The Provincial Archaeology of the Assyrian Empire, Proceedings of the British Academy 143 (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2016), pp. 275–282.
