Yadin’s Popular Book on Hazor Now Available

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Yigael Yadin’s popular volume on Hazor has now been published by Random House. Titled Hazor, The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible, the book is priced at $20.00. In format and style, it follows the author’s highly successful accounts of his excavations at Masada and in the so-called Bar-Kokhba caves on the shores of the Dead Sea.

The new book covers the same material as the Oxford University Press volume entitled “Hazor, ‘The Head of all Those Kingdoms’” (reviewed in “Yigael Yadin on ‘Hazor, The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” BAR 01:01), but in a far less technical manner.

Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of pictures, many of them in color, it is the next best thing to a slide lecture by Yadin himself. Even the excavation plans are in two and three colors to allow the reader easy understanding of the superimposed layers. And the related text follows the illustrations page for page making it much easier to follow the story. Which brings us to the writing itself: Yadin is simply the best popular archaeological writer working today.

After serving as operational head of the Haganah during Israel’s War of Independence, Yadin became Commander-in-Chief of the Israel Defense Forces when the new state was founded. Then he returned to his first love, archaeology. Many believe that he could easily have been Prime Minister of Israel had he chosen a political career instead of an archaeological one. Now director of Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, he is considered by many to be Israel’s foremost archaeologist. Despite a highly successful career as a military leader and as a scholarly archaeologist, he is one of the few professional archaeologists who has devoted a substantial effort to opening up the sometimes arcane archaeological world to the nonprofessional reader. Yadin is clearly a man of many parts—and the general reader, as well as the professional archaeologist, is in his debt.

Yadin writes about an archaeological dig as if it were a mystery story: He decides to tackle the big one, often reluctantly. He hopes for an easy solution. Initially, he is thwarted. Additional effort is required under adverse circumstances. Diligence and perseverance ultimately pay off and the finds exceed even his fondest hopes.

He writes with verve and excitement— sometimes almost breathlessly. Each chapter has at least one exclamation point! The reader can follow the chase almost shovelful by shovelful. And there to lead us is Yadin himself, making decisions, taking criticism (ultimately being proved right), directing operations, being lowered into caves, pointing the way, and even graciously thanking his critics for spurring him 015on to pin down beyond cavil the correctness of his own views. If this sounds critical, let me assure you that Yadin is big enough and knowledgeable enough and writes well enough to pull it all off. It is a virtuoso performance.

In addition to Hazor, Yadin takes us for short excursions to Gezer and Megiddo, where his Hazor excavations paid unexpected dividends. Among the major finds at Hazor was a city gate comprised of six chambers—three on each side—and two entrance towers (see plan). In these chambers guards were presumably stationed and wise men held forth, giving judgment. Perhaps nearby the major business deals of the city were struck. Long before the entire gate plan of Hazor emerged, Yadin recognized the similarity of this city gate to the Solomonic gate at Megiddo (see plan). Indeed certain aspects of the two gates were identical in measurement and construction, suggesting not only that they were from the same period but even that the same royal architect designed them. With his knowledge of the Megiddo gate, Yadin was able to astound his workmen by tracing the Megiddo plans on the ground at Hazor and then telling the laborers, “Here you will find a wall” or “There you will find a chamber.”

That the Hazor gate was indeed Solomonic was assured by Yadin’s use of the most careful and expert stratigraphic method of excavation. And this helped allay any doubt as to the date of the Megiddo gate. The attribution of these gates to King Solomon was also consistent with the Biblical account of Solomon’s building activities in which we are told that Solomon conscripted a levy to build “Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer” (1 Kings 9:15).

That Solomon built almost identical city gates at Hazor and Megiddo led Yadin, naturally enough, to wonder about Gezer, 016which the Bible links to the other two Solomonic cities.

Gezer had previously been excavated by an Irish archaeologist, R. A. S. Macalister, between 1902 and 1909. His methodology was so primitive by today’s standards that little confidence can be placed in his stratigraphy or chronology. However, much to his credit, he promptly published three handsome volumes of excavation reports containing extensive drawings and photographs. Yadin went back to Macalister’s reports and scoured them for any sign of a gateway similar to those found at Hazor and Megiddo. On page 217 of Volume I, Yadin found a plan identified by Macalister as a Maccabean castle (see plan). There Yadin’s trained eye saw a gateway with three chambers that looked like one-half of the Solomonic gates of Hazor and Megiddo. Moreover, the Gezer gateway was attached to a casemate wall,^a as was the Solomonic gate at Hazor. Macalister had identified all the structures in the plan as Hellenistic. The gateway, according to him, was a private entrance to the city for the occupant of the large complex to the right, who, according to Macalister, was probably the military governor of Gezer. A study of Macalister’s plan led Yadin to conclude that the three chambers of the gateway were in fact from an entirely different level than the building complex and that the three chambers of the gateway had no raison d’etre without a corresponding row of chambers on the other side; Yadin also concluded that the Gezer gateway was in fact Solomonic, that it connected to a casemate wall which was also Solomonic; and that the other half of the Solomonic gate at Gezer could be found under the long building Macalister had associated with his “Maccabean castle.” Yadin even sketched out where the second half of the Gezer gate should be found (see plan).

In 1965 Hebrew Union College began a major re-excavation of Gezer under the able direction of Dr. William G. Dever, who later became Director of the William F. Albright School for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. The purpose of HUC’s re-excavation of Gezer was to clarify the confusing picture left by Macalister’s expedition. When Dever’s team, led by John A. Holladay, lifted the structures to the east of what Yadin had identified as one-half of a Solomonic gate, they found, as Yadin had predicted, the other half of the gate (see illustration). As Dever put it, “Solomon did indeed re-build Gezer!” When the Bible linked “Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer” as having been built by King Solomon, it accurately reflected historical fact. Indeed, so nearly identical are the three gates that the royal builders appear to have used the same set of plans for each of them, making minor changes only to accommodate differences in terrain. Archaeological evidence can sometimes provide the basis for propositions of broader historical generality, and this is such a case. The fact that the same plans were used in at least three locations is solid evidence of Solomon’s efficient, centralized administration.

The beautiful symmetry of Yadin’s conclusion however was marred by one irritating point: While the gates at Hazor and Gezer were linked to a typically Solomonic casemate wall, the Megiddo gate was attached to a solid, offset-inset wall. (An offset-inset wall is a solid wall characterized on both sides by squared-off insets and offsets.) (See Megiddo plan).

Megiddo had been excavated in the 1930’s by a splendidly-financed expedition from Chicago University’s Oriental Institute. However, the venture was plagued by 017almost constant changes of directors and in the end the overall stratigraphy of the tell was left in considerable doubt. So Yadin decided to return to Megiddo himself to sink a few trial trenches. In one such trench, Yadin removed the foundation of the offset-inset wall and “beneath it a casemate wall emerged!” Yadin proceeded to excavate over 100 feet of this casemate wall and established that it, not the offset-inset wall, was properly associated with the Solomonic gate.

Thus he was able to show that the three sites mentioned in the Bible as having been built by Solomon each had an identical gate attached to an identical casemate wall.

The excavation of the casemate wall at Megiddo led to the demise of another archaeological myth. The University of Chicago excavators had found a number of buildings at Megiddo which they had identified as stables, complete with individual stalls, hitching posts and beautifully chiseled stone troughs for feeding the horses. The same chapter of Kings that tells us that Solomon built Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, also notes that King Solomon built cities for his chariots and horses (1 Kings 9:19). The next chapter tells us he had 1,400 chariots which he stabled in his chariot-towns (1 Kings 10:26). The inference was 032too attractive to resist: The Chicago excavators at Megiddo concluded that they had uncovered “Solomon’s Stables.” And so they have been known ever since.

However, when Yadin followed the Solomonic casemate wall, he found that it led underneath the stable complex; the stables were built over the casemate wall and must therefore date from a later period. So there goes “Solomon’s” stables. Yadin believes the stable complex was probably built by King Ahab. However, Yadin’s suggestion that the stables be renamed “Ahab’s Stables” has not proved a popular one, especially with the Israeli Ministry of Tourism which persists in referring to “‘Solomon’s’ Stables”, although carefully placing “Solomon” in quotation marks. (Yadin does not treat the heated debate now raging over whether the buildings identified as stables are in fact storerooms rather than stables, a question which will be the subject of a forthcoming BAR article.)

This is only a sample of what this popular book on Hazor contains. It is highly recommended for any amateur who wants to find out in a very specific way what Biblical archaeology is all about.

Yigael Yadin’s popular volume on Hazor has now been published by Random House. Titled Hazor, The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible, the book is priced at $20.00. In format and style, it follows the author’s highly successful accounts of his excavations at Masada and in the so-called Bar-Kokhba caves on the shores of the Dead Sea. The new book covers the same material as the Oxford University Press volume entitled “Hazor, ‘The Head of all Those Kingdoms’” (reviewed in “Yigael Yadin on ‘Hazor, The Head of All Those Kingdoms,’” BAR 01:01), but in a far less […]