t be counted among the rebels—would abandon his kiln and forsake 22 of his valuable wares that would provide his livelihood upon relocating to a

Ben-Tor was not the first to find evidence of the violent destruction of LB-I Hazor atop the tel, as Yadin found it also. Adjacent to the king’s palace in Area A, a rectangular building dubbed the Long Temple was uncovered during Yadin’s excavations. The plan of this possibly “royal temple” is architecturally similar to that of Megiddo VIII, and it had an east-west orientation with an entrance on the eastern side. Several cultic installations were found all around the perimeter of the ruined temple, and particularly noticeable were many pits containing sacrificial remains (animal-bones, and large quantities of votive bowls within and outside the building). The remains of this important LB-I temple were covered by a thick layer of brick debris, indicating not only its destructive end but its abandonment and non-use in subsequent periods. While Yadin believed that the Long Temple was used in both the MB II and LB I Age (Yadin, The Head, 102–103), a closer analysis of this structure and related architectural elements has demonstrated that it was constructed in and confined to the LB I Age, not to mention the fact that the temple was found to be built on LB-I remains, which prohibits its use during the MB Age (Ruhama Bonfil and Raphael Greenberg, Hazor V: An Account of the Fifth Season of Excavation, 1968, ed. Amnon Ben-Tor and Ruhama Bonfil (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1997], 85, 89; Aren M. Maeir, In the Midst of the Jordan:: The Jordan Valley during the Middle Bronze Age [Circa 2000–1500 BCE], Archaeological and Historical Correlates [Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2010], 44–45). In fairness to Yadin, he was correct, and the later authors of Hazor V, who suggest that the temple was not abandoned until the LB II period, were in error regarding the terminal use of the temple. All of the vessels on the temple’s floor date to the LB I phase, and the only LB-II vessels found in the vicinity were on the course of the broken wall. In addition, the placement of a later “installation” that was used during both phases of LB II—in which a tall basaltic stele dating to the earlier phase and several small stelae dating to the later phase were found—in the immediate vicinity of the Long Temple should not be used as a basis for declaring the temple’s continued use into the LB II Age.50. Yadin, The Head, 141.51. See “2000 Excavation Report,” on the webpage http://unixware.mscc.huji.ac.il/~hatsor/hazor.html. Bracketed insertions were added in order to clarify various identifications that are not discernable without the entire context of the excavation report.52. See “2001 Excavation Report,” on the webpage http://unixware.mscc.huji.ac.il/~hatsor/hazor.html.53. See the webpage http://exegesisinternational.org/index.php?option=com_deeppockets&task=contShow&id=2&Itemid=30 for several examples of this burnline and other burned remains.54. In his discussion of the upper city during the Late Bronze I Age, Yadin laments that many conclusions regarding the evaluation of structures, installations, and finds are difficult to make, owing to the enormous amount of leveling and looting that took place on the tel during the Solomonic period (Yadin, The Head, 125).55. Wood, “Let the Evidence Speak,” 78.56. Amnon Ben-Tor, “News and Notes,” IEJ 51:2 (2001), 238.57. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 160.58. Yadin, The Head, 200.59. James B. Pritchard, ANET (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 242. Hazor is mentioned in a topographical list of Amenhotep II at Karnak (Bienkowski, “Role of Hazor,” 54).60. Omar Zuhdi, “Combined Arms Egyptian Style: Thutmose III Crosses the Euphrates,” KMT 18:3 (Fall 2007), 56.61. Pritchard, ANET, 239.62. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 158.63. Hoffmeier emphasizes that the conquest list of Thutmose III for this campaign was not a record of destroyed cities (James K. Hoffmeier, “Reconsidering Egypt’s Part in the Termination of the Middle Bronze Age in Palestine,” Levant 21 [1989], 187).64. As Hoffmeier correctly explains during his discussion of the primary battle of this campaign, which was fought at Megiddo, “While it is true that Thutmose III was concerned to have order and loyalty in Canaan, he was not going to destroy cities that could be useful to him” (Ibid., 187). For this reason, Hoffmeier concludes that Megiddo was not razed either, despite this city’s distinction of being the site from where the king of Kadesh launched his rebellion against the Egyptians at the outset of Thutmose III’s sole rule.65. Thutmose III undoubtedly would have followed the same foreign policy as that of the earlier pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, including his grandfather, Thutmose I, who set the precedent for his progeny by venturing through Canaan and into Mesopotamia. “Because of Egyptian economic interest in the region, it would make little sense to adopt a scorched earth policy in Canaan. . . . [W]hen Thutmose I acceded the throne, he was able to march, apparently unmolested, all the way to the Euphrates river” (James K. Hoffmeier, “Aspects of Egyptian Foreign Policy in the 18th Dynasty in Western Asia and Nubia,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Antoine Hirsch [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 133).66. One author calls the Egyptian advancement into upper Syria a direct attack on Mitanni, “which must long have been seen as one of Thutmose’s manifest goals” (Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 159). Another writer suggests, in reference to Thutmose III’s renowned campaign into Mesopotamia, that “[t]his campaign was perhaps intended as a capstone ending a series of military operations begun twelve years earlier with the daring strike through the Aruna Pass at Megiddo” (Zuhdi, “Combined Arms,” 55).



The Gebel Barkal Stele of Thutmose III states that this
conquering pharaoh “crossed the Euphrates after the one who had attacked him, at the head of his armies seeking that feeble enemy [from] the land of Mitanni.” The subsequent victory caused Thutmose III to boast, “There is no opponent of mine in the southern lands, northerners come bowing because of my awe. It was Re who ordained it concerning me, I having bound together the Nine Bows, the islands in the midst of the sea, the Aegean and rebellious foreign lands” (Thutmose III, “The Gebel Barkal Stela of Thutmose III,” in Context of Scripture, vol. 2 [trans. James K. Hoffmeier], 15). All of this causes Hoffmeier to look back on this pharaoh’s first campaign and conclude that it already “suggests that Egypt was moving towards an imperial model of domination” (Hoffmeier, “Egyptian Foreign Policy,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean, 134).67. Hoffmeier, “Egypt’s Part,” 187.68. Yadin, The Head, 32. Yadin’s referenRosetta Stone German