Hazor is the largest archeological site in Israel. It has an extensive history, going back before the dawn of civilization.
As with many sites in Israel, Hazor was initially excavated during the British Mandate by John Garstang. But the best-known excavations of Hazor were those carried out by the famous Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin, in the 1950s.
Yadin had already made a name for himself in a number of fields. While barely in his 30s, he had commanded the Haganah during the War of Independence in 1948. Shortly thereafter he would get his PhD and obtain an important number of Dead Sea scrolls for Israel. Yadin would go on to win even greater fame after he finished his dig at Hazor when he undertook the excavations of Masada.
But it was Hazor that first established Yadin’s reputation as an archeologist. At Hazor, Yadin would put to good use the organizational skills he had developed as commander of the Haganah. The Hazor excavations were also a training ground for a new generation of young Israeli archeologists who were emerging after the founding of Israel. Among those archeologists who worked at Hazor was Yohanan Aharoni, the founder of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Ruth Amiran, another Hazor alumnus, would go on to write the classic, Ancient Pottery of the Holy land. Trude Dothan and her husband, Moshe, would establish themselves as world authorities on the enigmatic Sea Peoples, among whose number are the Philistines of the Bible. These young archeologists would go on to establish the discipline in the new country.
The Hazor excavations would also make a major contribution to one of the crucial ongoing debates in biblical archaeology – the issue of the Israelite conquest. There were two opposing opinions regarding the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, one used the Book of Judges as its major source of evidence and espoused a gradual subjugation of the land over a long span of time. The other view took as its model the Book of Joshua, in which the conquest was presented as a quick, blitzkrieg-like event. The evidence found by Yadin appeared to support the latter view. There was a huge destruction layer uncovered by Yadin, which he dated to the second half of the 13th century BCE, the time most traditional scholars ascribe to the Israelite conquest. The current excavator of Hazor, Amnon Ben Tor, also found the same debris in his excavations, but he prefers to leave both the date and cause open for the time being.
Hazor was important enough to merit mention in the Egyptian execration texts of the late 12th and early 13th dynasties, which are dated to the early second millennium BCE. The city is also mentioned a number of times in the Mari archives, which can be dated to no later than the 18th century BCE, since Mari was destroyed by the famous Hammurabi of Babylon circa 1750 BCE. The fact that at least 14 of the Mari documents mention Hazor attest to its importance as a major trading centre in the Near East at this time.
What is even more intriguing is that a number of inscribed clay tablets have been found on the site, teasing the excavators with the possibility that somewhere in the tell is a hitherto undiscovered archive. Yadin was so tantalized by this that he decided to go back to Hazor to search for it. He was convinced that he knew where the elusive archive was, but sadly he died before he could prove it. Ben Tor has his ideas as well, but so far Hazor has kept its ancient secret to itself. The question remains – will the Past come Forward to tantalize us again?