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'En Esur
'En Esur, also En Esur (Hebrew: עין אֵסוּר; [ʕen ʔesuʁ] eh-N eh-s-oor) or Ein Asawir (Arabic: عين الأساور, lit. 'Spring of the Bracelets'), is an ancient site located on the northern Sharon Plain, at the entrance of the Wadi Ara pass leading from the Coastal Plain further inland. The site includes an archaeological mound (tell), called Tel Esur or Tell el-Asawir, another unnamed mound, and two springs, one of which gives the site its name.
A 7,000-year-old Early Chalcolithic large village already showing signs of incipient urbanisation and with an open space used for cultic activities was discovered at the site below later, Bronze Age remains.
During the Early Bronze Age, around 3000 BCE, a massive fortified proto-city with an estimated population of 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants existed there. It was the largest city in the region, larger than other significant sites such as Megiddo and Jericho, but smaller than more distant ones in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The city was discovered in 1977, but its massive extent was realized only in 1993. A major excavation between 2017 and 2019 ahead of the construction of a highway interchange exposed the city's houses, streets and public structures, as well as countless artifacts including pottery, figurines and tools. Archaeologists announced its discovery in 2019, calling it the "New York of the Early Bronze Age".
The site is known in Arabic as Tell el-Asawir. The mound covers an area of around 5.5 acres with a maximum height of 11 meters above the plain. It appears in the 1799 map drawn by French geographer Pierre Jacotin. American archaeologist and biblical scholar William F. Albright visited the site during his 1923 trip to Mandatory Palestine. He recalled the opinion of German scholar Albrecht Alt that Tel Esur is the site of an ancient city called "Yaham", located just north of the Menashe Heights and mentioned in the sources of the 15th-century BCE Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III, who campaigned against a coalition of Canaanite city-states led by the king of Kadesh and gave battle at Megiddo. According to the Egyptian account, Thutmose III camped in Yaham before he marched on Megiddo and captured the city. Albright stated that the location of the site corresponds with the geographic descriptions of the Egyptian sources, and his discovery of Bronze Age pottery while surveying the mound further confirmed this identification in his opinion. Today however, Yaham is identified with a site located at the Arab village of Kafr Yama, since 1988 part of Zemer, some 10 kilometers south of Tel Esur.
The discovery of the larger site around Tel Esur and its springs occurred in 1977, during the digging of a water reservoir south of the mound. A salvage excavation was conducted by archaeologists Azriel Zigelman and Ram Gofna of the Tel Aviv University. They discovered two settlement layers, one from the Chalcolithic period (the last period of the Stone Age) and the Early Bronze Age. The former included the foundations of structures made of rough stones and some installations. These are dated to the Early Chalcolithic (c. 6000 years ago). The latter included the foundations of massive structures made of large stones. The widest wall measured 1.7 meters in width. The pottery there is dated to the Early Bronze Age I period (3300–3000 BCE).
The site was surveyed by Yehuda Neʾeman and by the Manasseh Hill Country Survey. A survey and an excavation was conducted in 1993 by Eli Yannai of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). It revealed the massive extent of the site during the Early Bronze Age, as well as settlement remains from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, and sherds from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
The site was excavated between 2000 and 2002 by a team led by A. Zertal. En Esur was excavated by professional and volunteer archaeologists between January 2017 and 2019, with the research overseen by archaeologists Itai Elad and Yitzhak Paz. The work was organized in part by the Israel Antiquities Authority and financed by Netivei Israel, Israel's national transportation infrastructure company. During the process of excavation, archaeologists found a temple within the city that was built approximately 2,000 years before the rest of the site.
In an announcement of their discovery, researchers called En Esur "cosmopolitan" and the "New York of the Early Bronze Age".
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'En Esur
'En Esur, also En Esur (Hebrew: עין אֵסוּר; [ʕen ʔesuʁ] eh-N eh-s-oor) or Ein Asawir (Arabic: عين الأساور, lit. 'Spring of the Bracelets'), is an ancient site located on the northern Sharon Plain, at the entrance of the Wadi Ara pass leading from the Coastal Plain further inland. The site includes an archaeological mound (tell), called Tel Esur or Tell el-Asawir, another unnamed mound, and two springs, one of which gives the site its name.
A 7,000-year-old Early Chalcolithic large village already showing signs of incipient urbanisation and with an open space used for cultic activities was discovered at the site below later, Bronze Age remains.
During the Early Bronze Age, around 3000 BCE, a massive fortified proto-city with an estimated population of 5,000 to 6,000 inhabitants existed there. It was the largest city in the region, larger than other significant sites such as Megiddo and Jericho, but smaller than more distant ones in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The city was discovered in 1977, but its massive extent was realized only in 1993. A major excavation between 2017 and 2019 ahead of the construction of a highway interchange exposed the city's houses, streets and public structures, as well as countless artifacts including pottery, figurines and tools. Archaeologists announced its discovery in 2019, calling it the "New York of the Early Bronze Age".
The site is known in Arabic as Tell el-Asawir. The mound covers an area of around 5.5 acres with a maximum height of 11 meters above the plain. It appears in the 1799 map drawn by French geographer Pierre Jacotin. American archaeologist and biblical scholar William F. Albright visited the site during his 1923 trip to Mandatory Palestine. He recalled the opinion of German scholar Albrecht Alt that Tel Esur is the site of an ancient city called "Yaham", located just north of the Menashe Heights and mentioned in the sources of the 15th-century BCE Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III, who campaigned against a coalition of Canaanite city-states led by the king of Kadesh and gave battle at Megiddo. According to the Egyptian account, Thutmose III camped in Yaham before he marched on Megiddo and captured the city. Albright stated that the location of the site corresponds with the geographic descriptions of the Egyptian sources, and his discovery of Bronze Age pottery while surveying the mound further confirmed this identification in his opinion. Today however, Yaham is identified with a site located at the Arab village of Kafr Yama, since 1988 part of Zemer, some 10 kilometers south of Tel Esur.
The discovery of the larger site around Tel Esur and its springs occurred in 1977, during the digging of a water reservoir south of the mound. A salvage excavation was conducted by archaeologists Azriel Zigelman and Ram Gofna of the Tel Aviv University. They discovered two settlement layers, one from the Chalcolithic period (the last period of the Stone Age) and the Early Bronze Age. The former included the foundations of structures made of rough stones and some installations. These are dated to the Early Chalcolithic (c. 6000 years ago). The latter included the foundations of massive structures made of large stones. The widest wall measured 1.7 meters in width. The pottery there is dated to the Early Bronze Age I period (3300–3000 BCE).
The site was surveyed by Yehuda Neʾeman and by the Manasseh Hill Country Survey. A survey and an excavation was conducted in 1993 by Eli Yannai of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). It revealed the massive extent of the site during the Early Bronze Age, as well as settlement remains from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, and sherds from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods.
The site was excavated between 2000 and 2002 by a team led by A. Zertal. En Esur was excavated by professional and volunteer archaeologists between January 2017 and 2019, with the research overseen by archaeologists Itai Elad and Yitzhak Paz. The work was organized in part by the Israel Antiquities Authority and financed by Netivei Israel, Israel's national transportation infrastructure company. During the process of excavation, archaeologists found a temple within the city that was built approximately 2,000 years before the rest of the site.
In an announcement of their discovery, researchers called En Esur "cosmopolitan" and the "New York of the Early Bronze Age".
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