Gorgon Excavated at Dor

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It was a fitting climax. We had been excavating at Tel Dor—an 80-acre tell, or mound, on the Mediterranean coast of Israel—for 20 exciting years. This was to be our last season. It was near the end of the dig when we found evidence of a Greek temple—the first ever discovered in ancient Palestine or Phoenicia.

On this gorgeous site overlooking the sea, we had uncovered layers (or strata, to use the archaeological term) from at least eight civilizations spanning 3,000 years: Canaanite, Sikil (one of the Sea Peoples, Aegean tribes that migrated to ancient Israel), Phoenician, Israelite, Assyrian-Persian, Hellenistic-Greek, Roman and Crusader.

From the combined evidence of both written documents and archaeological remains, it appears that, even before the seventh century B.C.E., but mainly during and after it, Greek traders and mercenaries penetrated into Palestine. This Greek presence seems to have been a result of more than trade relations alone, as has recently been suggested.¹

Archaeological evidence from the seventh to sixth centuries B.C.E. in Phoenicia, and also 052in Israel, gives the impression of a basically Phoenician area with a strong Greek element. The Greek population did not constitute a majority of the inhabitants in these areas, as they did in the Greek colonies in the western Mediterranean. Rather, there appears to have been an Enoikismos—a settlement of Greeks coexisting more or less peacefully within the greater Phoenician community.

For several years we have known that Greek merchants, sailors and settlers had been at Dor. As early as 1983, we discovered (in our area C, on the eastern side of the mound) a favissa, a pit for storing cult objects, that contained clay figurines clearly fashioned in a Greek style.² The pottery from the favissa was also Greek. Many other favissae have been found on the Palestinian and Phoenician coast, but this one was the first that contained purely Greek material. The others were of an Eastern character—mainly Phoenician, but with Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Cypriote elements. The Dor favissa was our first indication that there had been a substantial Greek presence here. Could there be a Greek temple nearby?

Although the experts differed somewhat as to the date of the favissa, the consensus placed it somewhere in the latter half of the fifth century B.C.E., between 450 and 400 B.C.E., when Dor was a Phoenician city.

A decade passed before we were able to add any significant information to our account of the Greeks at Dor. In 1993, we came across another favissa, this time on the other side of the tell (in our area D2), above the main harbor. It, too, contained intriguing material.³ The prize from this favissa has already been described in BAR: a cow scapula (shoulder blade) incised with a sophisticated Phoenician maritime scene incised on one side and, on the back, a Greek inscription in a classical Cypro-syllabic script.^a It was dedicated to the Greek goddess Aphrodite. The late Professor Olivier Masson of the University of Paris, an expert in this script, concluded that the piece probably came from the 053eastern part of Cyprus. The maritime scene was likely incised at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the sixth century B.C.E. The Cypro-Greek dedication inscription was added somewhat later in the sixth century.⁴

Was this favissa also associated with a nearby Greek temple, perhaps a second, even earlier one? Or were these two favissae simply evidence that Greeks were here and visited Phoenician temples, leaving behind their own cult objects?

In 1995, we discovered a third favissa about 50 feet from the second one. It was a mixed assemblage—some local pottery, a stunning Egypto-Phoenician faience amulet and more Greek pottery.

Especially tantalizing was what we took to be (wrongly, as it turned out) a huge clay mask, much larger than an ordinary human face. All that was preserved, however, was a gigantic eye, with an eyebrow and part of the forehead. It was painted in strong colors—the forehead in red and the eyebrow in blue. We had discovered a number of Phoenician cult masks, an essential part of the popular Phoenician cult (mainly apotropaic, or protective, in character) that was practiced up and down the coast. We thought this was simply another one. Indeed, that is how I interpreted it in the popular book on Dor that I published in 2000, but had written somewhat earlier.⁵

I should have known better. The “mask” of which the fragment was supposed to be a part was much, much larger than others discovered in Phoenician settlements.

What corrected the erroneous interpretation of the fragment was another fragment, which was found in the fourth and last favissa of the same period, also unearthed in this same area of the site. The upper part of this favissa had been obliterated by later construction and even the borders of the pit were not clear, because it had no supporting walls. It was difficult to date because the pit was dug into a lower, earlier stratum. We assume, however, that it dates to the same period as the other favissae—from the late sixth to the end of the fifth century B.C.E.

In this last favissa we found fragments of a large, impressive monster’s head. One of the first pieces was a large eye. I immediately connected it, again incorrectly, with the other eye we had previously found. But it soon became clear that they were unconnected: Both were left eyes. Their dimensions were different as well—the first one was larger than the second.

We continued to excavate the favissa and recovered teeth, a tongue and almost an entire side of a face, which allowed us to reconstruct the other side accurately. Finally, we had enough to assemble the pieces and create an image: It was a well-known Greek mythological monster called a Gorgon. The additional parts showed that the monster had wild boar’s teeth and a tongue that stuck out.

We now concluded that we had two Gorgon’s heads: the larger one, of which only the eye was preserved, and the second, somewhat smaller one, which could be entirely reconstructed except for the ears and the hair (which is always rendered in the form of snakes).

But the most significant thing was that this largely complete Gorgon’s head was not simply free-standing; it was part of a roof tile. We could tell that the tile was about a foot tall and 11 inches wide. In Greek temples such Gorgon-headed tiles were quite common. They even have a Greek name: Gorgoneion.

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There are actually three Gorgons in Greek myth, the best-known of whom is Medusa (“queen”). The other two are Stheno (“the mighty”) and Euryale (“the wide-wandering one”). These sisters dwell on the farthest shore of the ocean, in the domain of Night. Originally Medusa was a fair maiden with luxuriant hair. She made the mistake, however, of desecrating Athene’s sanctuary. In revenge Athene turned Medusa’s hair into a cluster of writhing snakes. Anyone who looked at her, or her sisters, would turn to stone. Later, Athene sent the hero Perseus to kill Medusa, for unlike her sisters, Medusa was mortal. Perseus cut off her head and gave it to Athene; the goddess then put it into her shield, which frightened all her enemies (or, according to some accounts, turned them to stone). Even a lock of Medusa’s hair was enough to terrify an enemy. Soon the belief spread that a representation of Medusa or her sisters would protect whomever displayed it.

Aside from having serpents for hair, the Gorgons are depicted as repulsive in other ways—they grin hideously, baring enormous teeth and sticking out their tongues. (Some representations from the third century B.C.E. and later, however, portray them as beautiful, although still snake-haired.)

Representations of Gorgons became popular not only on shields and breastplates, but also on walls and gates and roofs, as ordinary Greeks came to regard the images as protective (apotropaic), especially against bewitchment. In this function Gorgons often appear on amulets, decorative furniture and various costly ornaments.

Roof tiles decorated with Gorgons were very common throughout the Greek world, including the 055eastern Mediterranean, the coast of western Anatolia and Greek settlements in southern Italy. Gorgon-headed clay tiles were used in all of these places to adorn the roofs of Greek temples. The temples’ roofs were first lined with plain tiles (tegulae) and then covered with half-rounded tiles (imbrices). At the outer edges of the rows of rounded tiles stood decorative tiles (antefixes) which closed the openings at the edge of the rows. These tiles often took the form of a Gorgon’s head, or some other head. They were used from the late seventh century B.C.E., but their main distribution occurred during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E.

One recent study distinguishes nine different styles of Gorgons, according to geographical region.⁶ If our Gorgon resembled any of these styles, we suspect that it would be of the type found closest to Dor—that of the eastern Greek islands (some of the Greek pottery in the favissae came from these 057islands) and Anatolia (modern Turkey). But it is not clear that this is the case. Maybe we lack the expertise to make the comparison. Or perhaps ours is a tenth style of Gorgon representation, the Phoenico-Palestinian style: A petrographic analysis of our Gorgon concluded that the clay came from the Phoenician coast.⁷

The Gorgon from Dor indicates that a Greek temple was built here, probably sometime in the fifth century B.C.E. or as early as the late sixth century B.C.E. As purely Greek decorations, Gorgon-headed tiles would not have been placed on the roofs of Phoenician temples, which were built according to a completely different architectural tradition.

It is even possible that we have evidence for two Greek temples at Dor. The lone eye-fragment of a Gorgon is also part of a roof tile. On the other hand, the Gorgon with only one huge eye extant may have come from a different part of the same temple as the smaller Gorgon. The answer may be revealed only when another archaeologist in the future excavates at Dor.

It was a fitting climax. We had been excavating at Tel Dor—an 80-acre tell, or mound, on the Mediterranean coast of Israel—for 20 exciting years. This was to be our last season. It was near the end of the dig when we found evidence of a Greek temple—the first ever discovered in ancient Palestine or Phoenicia. On this gorgeous site overlooking the sea, we had uncovered layers (or strata, to use the archaeological term) from at least eight civilizations spanning 3,000 years: Canaanite, Sikil (one of the Sea Peoples, Aegean tribes that migrated to ancient Israel), Phoenician, Israelite, Assyrian-Persian, […]