Monday, September 03, 2007

THE HAZOR ARCHIVE STILL HASN'T BEEN FOUND, despite excavation of the site since 1990.
A city of stature in days of old
By Ran Shapira (Haaretz)

About two weeks before the end of the last excavation season at Tel Hatzor, in July, a clay tablet with hieroglyphic was found. The tablet teaches how to forecast the future with an animal liver, a practice common in the ancient East.

The priests would examine the liver of an animal that had been sacrificed to the gods and use it to predict the future. The tablet found at Hatzor has not yet been deciphered, but its hieroglyphics are reminiscent of the style of early documents from the ancient kingdom of Mari on the Euphrates, in what is today Syria. Mari was an important political center during the Middle Bronze Age, in the years 2000-1500 B.C.E., and Hatzor was the only city in the Land of Israel that had connections with it at that time.

[...]
Clearly the writer means "cuneiform" not "hieroglyphic(s)."
In the coming seasons, Ben-Tur and Zuckerman are planning to dig under the houses close to the northern slope of the tel, in search of concrete evidence to prove the assumptions about the earlier layers from the Iron Age and the Bronze Age. They are hoping to find the Canaanite administrative palace and the archive of Hatzor, both of which the archaeologists have been seeking since they returned to the site.

[...]
We've been waiting a long time for that archive. Bring it on!

UPDATE (4 September): Duane Smith comments at Abnormal Interests.