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to the Mid-Bronze Age (Gophna: 137). The refer-ence in Ezek 47 : 16 describes the prophet envision-ing a new creation following the exile (Sweeney:222). The vision specifies the measurements and di-vision of the land into the twelve tribal allotments.Hazer-Hatticon is labeled as a northern town.

Bibliography: ■ Gophna, R., “The Intermediate BronzeAge,” in The Archaeology of Ancient Israel (ed. A. Ben-Tor; NewHaven, Conn. 1992) 126–58. ■ Sweeney, M., Reading Eze-kiel: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, Ga.2013).

Benjamin T. Laie

HazerothHazeroth (MT ḥăṣērōt) is a wilderness waypoint no-table for being the site of Miriam and Aaron’sgrumbling against Moses’ authority, resulting inMiriam being punished with leprosy (Num 12 : 1;33 : 17–18). The implied location is in the easternpart of the Sinai wilderness since the next destina-tion is Paran, from which Moses sends spies intoCanaan. Historians have attempted to identify Ha-zeroth with modern sites such as �En H� udrat, butany identification must be uncertain because thename is a general term meaning “courts.”

Bryan Bibb

HazielThe character bearing the name Haziel (MT Ḥăzî�ēl;LXX Α�ιηλ in Codex Alexandrinus; Ιιηλ in CodexVaticanus) appears in the Bible only in 1 Chr 23 : 9,in a story that tells how King David organized theLevites according to their affiliation with the de-scendants of the three sons of Levi (Gershon, Qe-hath, and Merari). Such a repartition is, however,not mentioned in the books of Samuel. Conse-quently this verse does not contain historical infor-mation but reflects issues of the late Persian period.As a member of Gershom’s offspring, Haziel seemsto be a son of Shimei but the text is probably cor-rupt since Shimei’s sons appear in the next verse.Assuming a textual corruption (Klein: 451), Hazielcould be understood as belonging to Ladan’s family(1 Chr 23 : 8a, 9c).

Bibliography: ■ Klein, R. W., 1Chronicles: A Commentary(Minneapolis, Minn. 2006).

Jean-François Landolt

HazoHazo (MT ḥăzô) is the son of Abraham’s brother Na-hor and his wife Milcah (Gen 22 : 22). Hazo appearsin a list of twelve sons of Nahor, perhaps epony-mous ancestors of Aramean tribes. Some have seena connection with the Arabian region of Hazûnamed in Assyrian records from the time of Esar-

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haddon, or with the area of al-H� asa on the Easterncoast of Arabia. However, considering that Gen24 : 10 situates the city of Nahor in Aram-naharaim,a location in the north-eastern Levant is more likelythe intended reference.

Bryan Bibb

Hazon Gabriel/Gabriel, Vision of

HazorHazor, located in Upper Galilee (map reference203.269), was first identified by Josias Leslie Porterin 1875 with Tell el-Qedah, some fourteen kilome-ters north of the Sea of Galilee.

The site consists of two distinct parts: themound proper (Hazor’s acropolis), rising 40 mabove the surrounding plain and measuring somesixty dunams in area, and a lower part (Hazor’slower city), extending to the north of the moundand encompassing some 800 dunams in area. Thesereflect two chapters in the history of Hazor: the ear-liest settlement – that of the Early Bronze Age –was confined to the upper part of the city, whereasin the 2nd millennium BCE, i.e., in the Middle andLate Bronze Ages, both the mound and the lowercity were occupied, giving rise to the largest site insouthern Canaan, with an area of some 700 dunamsand an estimated population of 15,000–20,000.This chapter in the site’s history is referred to as“Canaanite Hazor.” Following a short gap in occu-pation after the site’s destruction sometime in themid-13th century BCE, the acropolis of Hazor wasre-settled in the middle of the 11th century BCE;from this point onward, occupation was confinedto that part of the site (named “The James A. deRothchild Expedition at Hazor”). This settlement,referred to as “Israelite Hazor,” was much smallerin size and in population than “Canaanite Hazor,”but certainly no less significant.

In 1928, John Garstang conducted several trialsoundings at Hazor. Large-scale excavations in bothparts of the site were conducted in the 1950s andthen again in 1968 by a team led by the late YigaelYadin on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusa-lem. In 1990, thirty-five years after the initiation ofexcavations at Hazor by Yadin and six years afterhis death, renewed excavations commenced at thesite. These excavations, named “The Selz Founda-tion Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin”and sponsored by the Institute of Archaeology atthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the di-rection of Amnon Ben-Tor, are confined to the acro-polis of Hazor. As of 2012, twenty-three seasons ofexcavations have taken place at the site, and severaladditional seasons are planned.

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441 Hazor

1. The Early Bronze Age. Although remnants ofthe earliest settlement at the site, confined to theacropolis alone, have only been reached on a verylimited scale thus far, it is clear that by the middleof the 3rd millennium BCE, Hazor was already asite of considerable importance, as evidenced by re-mains of monumental architecture and by finds in-dicating contacts with distant geographical regions.

2. The Intermediate Bronze Age. With the de-cline of urban life in the entire region during thistransitional period, a village, still confined by theacropolis, characterized by relatively poorly con-structed houses and installations of a domesticcharacter, replaced the former city. External con-tacts with the regions to the north were, however,maintained.

3. The Middle Bronze Age. This period, coupledwith the subsequent Late Bronze Age, was the eraof Hazor’s glory; this is most probably the city re-ferred to in the book of Joshua as “the head of allthose Kingdoms” (Josh 11 : 10).

Both the mound and the lower city were occu-pied, constituting the largest city in southern Ca-naan. Monumental fortifications were constructed,along with several temples in both parts of the city.The administrative and cultic center is located onthe acropolis of Hazor. The city’s wealth and far-reaching commercial and political relations aremanifest in finds such as statues, jewelry, and vari-ous works of art. The city maintained close relationswith Mari, as evident by nearly twenty documentsin the Mari archive that mention dealings withHazor. One of those documents was sent to Hazor’sking, who bore the name ibni-addu. This is the Baby-lonian form of the name Yabni-Hadad, from whichthe name Jabin (Heb. form: Yābßîn) of the king ofHazor who later confronted Joshua (Josh 11 : 1) isderived. Indeed, Jabin may have been the dynasticname of a line of rulers of Hazor. Noteworthy areseveral documents written in Akkadian on clay tab-lets, including economic, school, and legal texts. Ofspecial significance is a fragment of a code of law,the only such text found so far in the Levant (seefig. 10). The laws pertaining to relations betweenmaster and slave are very similar to the laws of theHammurabi Code belonging to the same period, onthe one hand, and to the biblical laws regarding theissue (Exod 21 : 26–27), on the other.

4. The Late Bronze Age. Hazor, like most of Ca-naan, came under Egyptian rule in this period, butlife continued uninterrupted. As a result of a prob-able change of the ruling dynasty, the entire centralsection of the acropolis was re-built and a new cere-monial precinct constructed, consisting of a palaceand a temple which probably served as the “King’sChapel” (Amos 7 : 13). Various changes in plan arealso evident in the other temples, both on the acro-polis as well as in the lower city. The most notewor-thy of these are the changes that took place in the

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Fig. 10 Hazor’s Code of Law (Middle Bronze Age)

northernmost temple (Area H). The building hadthree rooms, a porch, a main hall, and a holy ofholies, situated one behind the other with all of theentrances on the same axis, and with two pillarsplaced on either side of the entrance from the porchto the main hall. This plan is closely related to thatof other northern Canaanite temples and mostprobably also inspired the plan of Solomon’s tem-ple, which consisted of three parts (biblical �ûlām,hêkal, and dĕbîr), situated one behind the other withtwo pillars (biblical Jachin and Boaz) on either sideof the entrance from the first space to the second(1 Kgs 6–7). Hazor is the subject of several docu-ments known as the Amarna archive of the 14thcentury BCE, and its importance at the time is evi-dent from the fact that its king, Abdi Tirshi, is theonly one of the monarchs of the land who is re-ferred to by the title “king.”

Clear signs of decline and neglect during the13th century BCE are evident in several of Hazor’stemples, as well as in the ceremonial precinct onthe acropolis. These are most probably the result ofclose to 250 years of Egyptian oppressive rule andintensive economic exploitation of the land.

Hazor was destroyed by a huge conflagrationsometime during the 13th century BCE. Traces ofintense fire, fallen mud-bricks, and other occupa-tional debris found throughout almost the entire

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443 Hazor-Hadattah

acropolis and lower city, are a clear indication ofthe city’s end. The lower city was abandoned, andwhen Hazor arose from the ashes, settlement wasconfined to the acropolis alone.

A fragment of an Egyptian offering table, placedat Hazor by one of the officials of Rameses II, evi-dently while the city was still functioning, indicatesthat Hazor’s destruction should be dated to themid-13th century BCE. The question of who wasresponsible for this destruction is still under de-bate. The only indication in any text of the identityof the destroyers is given by the biblical record:“Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor,and struck its king down with the sword … and heburnt Hazor with fire” (Josh 11 : 10–11). However,in several scholarly publications, the reliability ofthat passage in the biblical narrative is questioned,and the destruction of Hazor is claimed to havebeen caused by the Egyptians, by the Sea Peoples,or by wandering nomads, or alternatively, as the re-sult of a revolt of its own inhabitants. Since noneof the above suggestions has been convincingly sub-stantiated to date, there seems to be – at least atpresent – no valid reason to reject a priori the bibli-cal record of the event.

5. The Iron Age. After a hiatus of approximately150 years, human activity was resumed at Hazor.Fragmentary and poorly constructed walls, spreadover the western part of Hazor’s acropolis and prob-ably indicating habitation in shacks or tents, char-acterize this renewed settlement at Hazor, alongwith numerous pits. Similar pits, the use of whichis not known, were found in various sites through-out Israel and are characteristic of the 12th–11thcenturies BCE. Since this period is considered to bethe time of the settlement of the Israelites in theland, these pits are also known as “settlement pits.”A cultic installation, uncovered at the highest pointof the mound, consists of an open space surroundedby low stone-built walls; an unworked standingstone – the biblical maṣṣēbâ – was placed in one ofits corners. Broken cultic vessels, such as clay in-cense burners, were found here, along with whatseems to have been an offering gift – a jug filledwith several copper tools and a statuette of a Ca-naanite deity. The early Israelite worship of maṣṣēbôtand of Canaanite deities is often mentioned andcondemned in the biblical record (Judg 17 : 4–5;1 Kgs 14 : 23).

Hazor arose from the ashes in the 10th centuryBCE, when the western part of the acropolis wassurrounded by a double fortification wall and thecity was entered via a six-chambered gate. The pot-tery uncovered in a building adjacent to the fortifi-cations dates the construction of this building andof the new fortifications to the 10th century BCE.Similar fortification systems are known from othersites, including Megiddo and Gezer; in the biblicalrecord, all three sites are mentioned as having beenbuilt by King Solomon (1 Kgs 9 : 15).

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The 9th century BCE, the days of the Omridedynasty, is the time of Hazor’s floruit, when the cityexpanded eastward, now occupying the entire acro-polis. A new solid defensive wall was erected, a cita-del was built on the western edge of the city, and awater system, enabling access to the springs outsidethe fortified city, was constructed. An administra-tive center, built in the center of the city, consistedof several huge storehouses, indicating the prosper-ity of Hazor and pointing to its function as a redis-tribution center of agricultural produce for the en-tire region.

During the 8th century BCE, Hazor maintainedits important role as a regional center, but under-went a process of gradual decline, probably due tothe pressures on northern Israel exerted by the As-syrians and Arameans. Israelite Hazor came to anend in 732 BCE, when “King Tiglath-pileser of As-syria came and captured Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Ja-noah, Kedesh, Hazor, Gilead, and Galilee, all theland of Naphtali; and he carried the people captiveto Assyria” (2 Kgs 15 : 29). Evidence of a violent de-struction can be observed wherever remains ofHazor’s Stratum V, the final Israelite city, are un-covered.

Bibliography: ■ Ben-Ami, D., “Early Iron Age Cult Places:New Evidence from Tel Hazor,” Tel Aviv 33 (2006) 121–33.■ Ben-Tor, A., “The Fall of Canaanite Hazor: The ‘Who’ and‘When’ Questions,” in Mediterranean Peoples in Transition:Thirteenth to Early Tenth Century B.C.E. (ed. S. Gitin et al.;Jerusalem 1998) 456–67. ■ Ben-Tor, A., “Hazor,” NEAEHL5 (ed. E. Stern; Jerusalem 2008) 1769–76. ■ Ben-Tor, A./D.Ben-Ami, “Hazor and the Archaeology of the Tenth Cen-tury,” IEJ 48 (1998) 1–37. ■ Horowitz, W., “Hazor: A Cu-neiform City in the West,” NEA 76.2 (2013) 98–101. ■ Ya-din, Y., Hazor: The Head of All Those Kingdoms (The SchweichLecture Series of the British Academy; London 1972). ■ Ya-din, Y./A. Ben-Tor, “Hazor,” NEAEHL 2 (ed. E. Stern; Jerusa-lem 1993) 595–606. ■ Zuckerman, S., “Anatomy of a De-struction: ‘Crisis Architecture’: Termination Rituals and theFall of Canaanite Hazor,” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology20.1 (2007) 3–32.

Amnon Ben-Tor

Hazor-HadattahHazor-Hadattah (Ḥāṣôr ḥădattâ “New-Hazor”) is atown in the Negeb at the southern border of Judah,between Bealoth and Kerioth-Hezron, the latter be-ing qualified as another Hazor (= “homestead”).The Aramaic adjective ḥădattâ “new” is used to dis-tinguish both places (Josh 15 : 25). There are fiveplaces in Josh 15 : 21–32 with the name Hazar/Hazor, which could be variants of the same place ortemporary settlements. Hazor-Hadattah is lookedfor in the region of el-Hud� ēra (1690.0869). Jeromementions a village called Asor – interpreted as “ar-row of light” (Nom. hebr. 23.23) – in the eastern ter-ritory of Ashkelon maybe Yās�ūr (1262.1305), to bedistinguished from Asor Nova (Onom. 21.2–5).

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