Bible Lands

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The prophet Amos seems to have known the Carmel forests when he said: “Though they [the sinners] hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search out and take them” (Amos 9:3). In biblical times, thick forests of pine, oak, carob, arbutus and other trees covered the Carmel, all of which still grow today in their natural habitat.

Looming above the Mediterranean, the Carmel ridge is a wedge dividing Israel’s northern and southern coasts. The Carmel ridge can be pictured as two superimposed triangles. The northern apex of both triangles is the Mediterranean port city of Haifa. The smaller triangle encloses the high wooded area of the Carmel ridge; its western point is the city of Zichron Ya’akov about 19 miles from Haifa; its eastern point is marked by the remains of the ancient fortified city of Yoqne’am. The 11-mile-long base of the small triangle follows the Wadi^a Mileh (Nahal^b Yoqne’am), now marked by a modern road. The base of the larger triangle is the Wadi ‘Ara (Nahal ‘Iron [ee-RON]) with Hadera at its western entrance and ancient Megiddo guarding its eastern egress to the Jezreel Valley.

At the northern end of the Carmel, the bay of Haifa curves north to the city of Acco. Into the bay flows the Kishon River, which rises in the fertile Jezreel Valley on the eastern flank of the Carmel.

Topographically, the Carmel is the northwestern extension of the Samaria highlands, the central mountain ridge of Israel. In terms of geological time, this land mass is young, formed about a half million years ago beneath the sea. In some places the rock is limestone, in other places it is a soft chalk and in several locations hard volcanic rock overlies the limestone. The relatively high elevation of the Carmel—its highest point, near the village of Isfiya, is 1,742 feet above sea level—accounts for the fairly cool summer temperatures and the substantial annual rainfall (about 36 inches) that give rise to the Carmel’s abundant and varied vegetation.

From ancient times, the Carmel has been an obstacle to caravans and armies traversing the route between Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. People with beasts of burden, wagons or war chariots were forced to cross the Carmel ridge to reach their destination. With the exception of the mountains at the Ladder of Tyre (modern Rosh ha-Niqra), the Carmel is the only mountain ridge in Israel that reaches the sea, as mentioned in Jeremiah 46:18. The Carmel stands directly on the main road, and to continue traveling past it one can either go around it, or find a relatively comfortable pass through it. To go around this land 048mass, one could take the long and costly route through the Dothan Valley. In antiquity, the narrow coastal plain was probably impassable. A better way would have been to traverse one of two mountain passages that follow the course of wadis. These wadis came about because the soft chalk along their routes eroded more quickly than the harder limestone of the rest of the ridge.

The northernmost passage through the Carmel is the Wadi Mileh, leading from the coastal plain near modern Zichron Ya’akov to the Jezreel Valley on the east. From the 18th century B.C.E.,^c the eastern end of the wadi was guarded by a city named Yoqne’am; its remains, buried in a tell, are a visible landmark today. Extensive excavations^d on the tell have revealed a possibly fortified town from Middle Bronze II B (1750–1550 B.C.E.) and remains of a Late Bronze (1550–1200 B.C.E.) unfortified town, which came to its end by a fiery destruction. The site was reoccupied during Iron I (1200–1000 B.C.E.) and was twice again fortified during Iron II (1000–800 B.C.E.). Occupation of the site continued in subsequent periods: Late Iron, Persian, Hellenistic, Byzantine, Early Arab, Crusader and Mameluke, until the site’s final demise in the 14th to 15th centuries C.E.^e

The Wadi Mileh pass connected the southern coastal section of the ancient roadway along the sea, the Via Maris, with its northern continuation, which crossed the Jezreel Valley and turned toward Acco and Tyre. About eight miles south of Wadi Mileh, Wadi ‘Ara (Nahal ‘Iron) offered an alternative route from west to east. Its eastern egress was guarded by the massive fortifications of Megiddo, where one branch of the road continued east and crossed the Jordan River and the other led north via Hazor to Damascus and Mesopotamia. At Megiddo, excavations¹ revealed that the site was occupied from at least as early as the Chalcolithic period (c. 3300 B.C.E.). The city was fortified in the Early Bronze (3000–2500 B.C.E.). Megiddo’s most famous ancient structures are its tenth-century B.C.E. Solomonic gateway, similar to those at Gezer and Hazor, and the elaborate water system designed to protect Megiddo’s water source in time of siege. The water system is post-Solomonic, but not later than the Omride dynasty (885–843 B.C.E.).

About five miles southeast of Megiddo stood Taanach, which did not directly guard one of the passes, but in certain periods lent support to Megiddo. Taanach was conquered by Tuthmosis III in 1468 B.C.E. and by Shishak I in 918 B.C.E. The city is mentioned in the 14th-century B.C.E. Amarna letters from Egypt, and excavations at the site yielded several similar tablets. Taanach is also mentioned, together with Megiddo, in the account of the war between Barak and Deborah against Jabin and Sisera (Judges 4–5).

The settlement history of the Carmel began tens of thousand of years before the fortifications at Megiddo, Taanach and Yoqne’am. In three caves located on the southwestern side of the Carmel ridge, Dorothy Garrod in the 1930s found some of the earliest human remains in Israel. The caves contained skeletal remains, jewelry and flint tools, testifying to the use of these natural shelters by hunters and gatherers from as early as 150,000 years ago until the Natufian period (c. 10,000 B.C.E.), when agriculture began.

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The Bible contains numerous references to “Carmel,” referring to the ridge and to its highest peak.^f Several passage suggest the lushness of the vegetation of Carmel by linking it with other regions of abundant vegetation. Isaiah (35:2) speaks of the “splendor of Carmel and Sharon.”^g When Jeremiah (50:19) declares God’s promise to restore his exiled people to their land, he says that God “will lead Israel back to his pasture, and he shall graze in Carmel and Bashan, and eat his fill in the hill country of Ephraim and in Gilead.” When Isaiah (33:9) portrays the desolation of the land of Israel, he says: “The land is wilted and withered; Lebanon disgraced and moldering, Sharon is become like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.”

When the land of Israel was divided between the 12 tribes of the sons of Jacob, the Carmel became part of the inheritance of the tribe of Asher. However, it seems that the Carmel stayed under Canaanite domination until the time of David and Solomon, when it came under Israelite control.

It was during the reign of the Israelite king Ahab (873–851 B.C.E.) that the most dramatic biblical event related to the Carmel occurred. In the story of the showdown between the prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal and Asherah (1 Kings 18),^h the Bible explicitly describes the geographic setting of the mountain. During a devastating drought and 050famine, Elijah charges that Ahab has “brought trouble on Israel … by forsaking the commandments of the Lord and going after the [prophets of Baal].” Elijah orders Ahab to “summon all Israel to join me at Mount Carmel, together with the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah” (1 Kings 18:18–19).

Elijah declares the test. Each side will slaughter a young bull and lay it with wood on an altar, but they will not apply fire. “You will then invoke your god by name, and I will invoke the Lord by name; and let us agree: The god who responds with fire, that one is God” (1 Kings 18:24).

The prophets of Baal prepare their bull first and invoke Baal’s name from morning until noon, but, even though they “gashed themselves with knives and spears, according to their practice” there is no response (1 Kings 18:28–29).

“Then Elijah took 12 stones, corresponding to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob … and built an altar in the name of the Lord” (1 Kings 18:31–32). He douses the bull and the wood with 12 jars of water, just to make it more difficult, and then calls on the Lord to answer him. “Then the fire from the Lord descended and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones and the earth; and it licked up the water …. The people flung themselves on their faces and cried out: “The Lord alone is God!’ ” (1 Kings 18:38–39).

Standing on the Carmel, Elijah tells the people of Israel to seize the prophets of Baal and take them down to the Kishon River and slaughter them there. Elijah then climbs to the top of the Carmel where he tells his servant to look toward the sea (the Mediterranean). When he looks for the seventh time the servant reports that a small cloud is rising in the west. Elijah instructs the servant to tell Ahab that he must hitch up his chariot and go down off the mountain before the rain can stop him. The king drives off in his chariot toward the valley and “the hand of the Lord [comes] upon Elijah” (1 Kings 18:46) and, in a burst of ecstatic energy, Elijah runs in front of Ahab all the way to Jezreel.

Outside the Bible, we find ancient Egyptian sources that do not mention the name Carmel specifically, but which make references to the mountain and to 051its particular topographical features. Uni, an Egyptian military commander under Pepi I (c, 2375 or 2350 B.C.E.), conducted a campaign in Canaan against “the Asiatics Who-are-Upon-the-Sands.”² One of the battles took place near a mountain range coming down to the sea, referred to as “Antelope-Nose.” The context suggests that Egyptian sailors may have given that name to the Carmel range because of its profile.

The military annals of the Egyptian pharaoh Tuthmosis III (l490–1436 B.C.E.), carved on the walls of the temple in Karnak, vividly describe the formidable obstacle that the Carmel presented to armies seeking to cross it. A conversation is recorded between the officers of Tuthmosis and their commander, evidently standing on the western side of the Carmel, as they prepare to traverse the Wadi ‘Ara pass in order to attack Megiddo at its eastern end:

”What is it like to go [on] this [road] which becomes (so) narrow? It is reported that the [Canaanite] foe is there, waiting on the outside, while they are becoming more numerous. Will not horse have to go after horse, and the army and the people similarly? Will the vanguard of us be fighting while the rear guard is waiting here in Aruna [possibly modern Tell ‘Ara, in the pass], unable to fight? Now two other roads are here. One of the roads—behold, it is to the east of us, so that it comes out at Taanach. The other—behold, it is to the north side of Djefti [an unidentified], and we will come out to the north of Megiddo. Let our victorious lord proceed on the one of them which is satisfactory to his heart, but do not make us go on that difficult road!”³

The outcome of this discussion was that Tuthmosis decided to take the shorter and harder pass of ‘Iron (‘Ara) and surprise the Canaanite forces that awaited him at the other, more easily traversable, passes. He pitched his camp south of Megiddo; two days later the Egyptians soundly defeated Megiddo and its allies in battle.

During most of the Second Temple period (536 B.C.E.–70 C.E.), the Carmel region was under Phoenician control. The Phoenicians were seafaring people engaged in commerce around the Mediterranean. They were well established in cities such as Tyre and Sidon (now in modern Lebanon), and reached out to other parts of the Mediterranean basin as far as Carthage (in modern Tunisia) and the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain). One of their settlements on the Carmel coast, less than a mile south of the Carmel cape, is Tell Shiqmona, originally settled in the Late Bronze (l500-1200 B.C.E.) and well occupied in the Iron II (tenth-sixth centuries B.C.E.). During the Persian period (sixth-fifth centuries B.C.E.) an unfortified town was established at Shiqmona. After its destruction, the site was reoccupied and fortified in the fourth century B.C.E. A fortress continued at Shiqmona during the Hellenistic and Roman periods (fourth century B.C.E.–second century C.E.).

The Carmel came under Jewish control during the reign of the Hasmonean king Alexander Janneus (103–76 B.C.E.), who captured the area from the Syrian Seleucids. Jews continued to occupy this region in the period following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Large numbers of wine and oil presses found carved in bedrock testify to the successful growing of grapes and olives on the Carmel. Carmel wine was well known. The Talmudⁱ compares it in quality with wine from the grapes of the Sharon plain.

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Synagogue remains dating from the fourth and fifth centuries C.E. have been found near the present-day Druze villages of Isfiya and Dalyat el-Carmel in the central, high elevations of the Carmel. The synagogues and the similarity of names suggest that these villages mark the towns of Hussifah and Beit-Dali, mentioned in texts from the Mishnaic period.^j4

During the 12th century, control of Mt. Carmel became important to the Crusaders for the protection of their vital harbors at Caesarea to the south, Atlit to the west and Acco to the north. The remains of several Crusader fortifications can still be found on the Carmel and its slopes. During that period, the Carmelite order of monks was established and was named Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. In England they were known as the White Friars because of the white hood they wore. The Carmelites built a monastery on the eastern side of the Carmel, south of Isfiya. Called Keren Carmel in Hebrew (Muhraka, in Arabic), the monastery site is believed to be the place of the encounter between Elijah and the priests of Baal. A Carmelite monastery still stands on the foundations of a series of earlier monasteries.

Today, the Carmel range is heavily settled and cultivated. Sprawling across its northern tip and down the flanks on the west side is Haifa, Israel’s third largest city and principal port. The mountain’s stone is quarried and made into cement, its grain silos serve the bustling deep water port of Haifa, and oil refining and metalworking are but two of its industries. But large portions of Mt. Carmel outside the city of Haifa are preserved as a natural habitat where the native animals—the hyrax or coney, gazelle and others—still live undisturbed among the oak and pine trees. Altered though it is by technology and modern settlement, the Carmel still preserves the “splendor” seen by Isaiah.

046 The prophet Amos seems to have known the Carmel forests when he said: “Though they [the sinners] hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search out and take them” (Amos 9:3). In biblical times, thick forests of pine, oak, carob, arbutus and other trees covered the Carmel, all of which still grow today in their natural habitat. Looming above the Mediterranean, the Carmel ridge is a wedge dividing Israel’s northern and southern coasts. The Carmel ridge can be pictured as two superimposed triangles. The northern apex of both triangles is the Mediterranean port […]