Hazor Expedition

The pride of Hazor. “Lion! Lion!” excavator Amnon Ben-Tor cried out when he detected the outline of a giant crouching lion on this 1-ton basalt slab. Ben-Tor quickly recognized that the lion was the mirror image of one discovered by Yigael Yadin 40 years earlier outside a Canaanite temple in the lower city. The lions probably once flanked the temple entrance—a common practice in the ancient Near East. In the eighth century B.C.E., Ben-Tor’s lion was apparently moved across the tell and reused as a foundation stone in an Israelite building.