The burning of Hazor
Hazor was the largest Canaanite city in the region and was destroyed by fire in the Late Bronze Age, with its statues mutilated.
DisputedExcavated site13th century BC
The largest tell in the country, with a Canaanite city of some eighty hectares destroyed by a fire fierce enough to vitrify mudbrick. Statues of gods and kings in the palace were deliberately decapitated. Joshua says of Hazor alone among the northern cities that Israel "burnt it with fire", and calls it "the head of all those kingdoms".
For Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms… and he burnt Hazor with fire.
- Found
- Tel Hazor, upper Galilee, Israel, 1955 — Yigael Yadin's excavation; renewed under Amnon Ben-Tor
- Now held at
- In place; finds in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
The destruction is not in doubt. Who caused it — Israelites, Sea Peoples, Egyptians, or a rival Canaanite city — is genuinely argued, and the date does not fit every proposed chronology of the conquest.
How historians use it
A central site in the debate over the end of the Bronze Age in Canaan; excavators differ openly on the destroyer.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Ben-Tor, Hazor: Canaanite Metropolis, Israelite City (2016)
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.