Was Dor Capital of an Assyrian Province?

Tel Aviv Vol. 36, 2009, 95–109

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Was Dor the Capital of an Assyrian Province?* Nadav Na’aman Tel Aviv University

The article discusses the status of the city of Dor under the Assyrian empire. Three kinds of evidence are analyzed in detail: the textual evidence, the archaeological results of the excavations conducted at the site and the status of Dor along the axis of time. The textual and the archaeological evidence reveal the importance of Dor’s harbour for the Assyrians and its importance in the maritime trade along the east coast of the Mediterranean in the 7th century BCE, but they provide no decisive evidence about its place in the Assyrian province system. An examination of the status of Dor during the 11th–5th centuries BCE indicates that it was always the capital of a political entity, or of a distinct district within the larger province system. The analysis opens the door to the possibility that Dor was the capital of a separate Assyrian province that encompassed the coastal area between Mount Carmel in the north and the Jarkon River in the south, but more evidence is needed to decide whether this was indeed the case, or that Dor was a port in the confines of the province of Megiddo. keywords Dor, Megiddo, Assyrian province, ‘Assyrian-style’ vessels, ‘Longue durée’

In his seminal work on the system of Assyrian provinces, Forrer stated that Tiglath-pileser III conquered the kingdoms of Damascus and Israel in 733–732 BCE and annexed the territory of Damascus and most of the kingdom of Israel. Subsequently, the city of Dor became the capital of an Assyrian province that encompassed the entire coastal region between Mount Carmel and the Jarkon River. He found support for this presumed status in the references to the city (written as Dual 1979: 285–286; Gilboa 1996: 131–133). Since the 1920s, there has been no thorough discussion of the Assyrian documents on which the assumptions that Dor was an Assyrian province were based. In view of the considerable progress made in understanding them, it is time to discuss these documents anew, and consequently to try to evaluate the archaeological findings made in the excavations at the site. I begin with a detailed survey of the Assyrian documents, followed by a critical examination of the archaeological arguments, which appear to substantiate the assumption that Dor was the capital of an Assyrian province, and finally try to determine the status of the region of Dor in the ‘longue durée’, in keeping with the methodology proposed by Alt.

Dor in the Assyrian documents 1. The discussion should open with the seemingly-decisive text on the question of Dor’s status under Assyrian rule. The name of the province of the Assyrian governor Iddin1



2



Jirku correctly argued that the rendering “Gilead” (Gal->a-za) in tablet ADD 919+ is erroneous and the cuneiforms should be read GAL KAR. There has not so far been any foundation in the Assyrian documents for an Assyrian province named Gilead, and Jirku’s criticism of Forrer in this matter was justified. Based on his analysis of the ‘longue durée’, Alt (1929: 238–242) proposed the existence of an Assyrian province in the Gilead, and many scholars supported him. For example: Tadmor 1962: 121–122; Aharoni 1967: 331–333; Otzen 1979: 252, 256; Weippert 1982: 398; Donner 1986: 308; Miller and Hayes 1986: 332–333. But it is not possible to assert whether a distinct Assyrian province was established in the Gilead, or whether it was included in the Karnaim province (Assyrian Qarnina) to its north.

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ahhe, who served as eponym (līmu) in 693, has not survived in any text. Millard (1994: 19, 50, 61, 95), who published a new edition that includes the lists of Assyrian eponyms, proposed transliterating the place-name [êi-mi]r-r[a] or [Dur-Sharr]uk[in]. Finkel and Reade (1998: 253), on the other hand, dismissed these readings and suggested deciphering the fragmentary signs Dúr(KU)-r[u]. Extrapolating from the name of the woman Du-raa-a-te, which they interpret as meaning “a woman of (the city of) Dor”, they assumed that Iddin-ahhe was the governor of Dor, thereby demonstrating that Dor was a separate province. But this proposed reading of the cuneiform signs is uncertain. The spelling Dúr-ru for the name of Dor has no parallel in cuneiform inscriptions, nor is it certain that the name Du-ra-a-a-te means “a woman of Dor”. Moreover, the reconstruction would indicate that of all the governors of Assyrian provinces established in the reigns of Tiglath-pileser and Sargon, the governor of Dor was the second to be honoured as an eponym (the first was the governor of Damascus in 694), preceding the governors of far more important provinces such as Arpad, Carchemish, Samaria, Hatarikka, êimirra and Megiddo. In view of these problems, we ought to question the reconstruction proposed by Finkel and Reade, and look for another option for the location of the governor who served as eponym in 693. I suggest reconstructing the place where Iddin-ahhe officiated as K[UR] Ku-m[u?!-hi] –‘Land of Kummuhi’. Kwasman and Parpola (1991: No. 41) read in ADD 240: mIddin[ahhē] lúšá-kìn K[UR…]; the sign after KUR is clearly KU as observed by Finkel and Reade; and Ungnad (1938: 427) read (under a question-mark) the following sign: m[u]. Kummuhi, located in southern Anatolia, west of the Euphrates, was one of the most important provinces created by the Assyrians in the west, and its listing after Damascus and before the other western Assyrian provinces is consistent with this status. 2. Document ADD 919+ was for many years believed to be a list of Assyrian provinces, because all the place-names identified in it functioned as such. Indeed, it appears under the heading “List of Provinces” in the new edition of administrative documents published by Fales and Postgate (1995: 6). Dor appears in the list after Samaria and Damascus and before Megiddo, Man§uate and êimirra. But recently, in a discussion about the places dubbed kāru (a term meaning port, emporium or administrative centre) in the Neo-Assyrian documents, Yamada (2005: 80–81) proposed reconstructing in column I, lines 5–6 of the document: “[Kishe]ssu, [the city of the chief] of trade”; and in column II, lines 6–7: “êimirra, [the city of the ch]ief of trade”. Thus the two cities, one (Kishessu) in the east of the empire and the other (êimirra) in its west, were the seats of Assyrian officials responsible for the trade in the two regions. In an article published recently (Na’aman 2007), I suggested restoring in column II, line 8, of this document the name of the city [Ha]suati. The city belonged to the province of Hatarikka and was not a provincial capital. In view of this, I proposed reconstructing the heading of the document (column I, line 1): “[The trading post]s (or [custom house]s) of the king”. Accordingly, the list of cities included ports, emporia and administrative centres connected with the Assyrian trade and supervised by the two Assyrian officials mentioned in the document. Dor appears in this document along with other commercial centres in the east and west of the empire, and there is no

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indication if it was a provincial capital or a port city in the province of Megiddo, which is listed immediately after it. 3. Another document which mentions Dor (K 4384) includes a long list of the names of provinces, as well as of kingdoms, sub-regions, mountains and tribes, some lying outside the empire’s borders (Forrer 1920: 52–53; Kessler 1980: 126–130; Fales and Postgate 1995: XIII–XIV, 4–6). Given the wide range of toponyms, which sometimes appear in two different spellings, Landsberger (1948: 81 n. 212) concluded that the tablet was a school text and not an administrative document. Based on the division between the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylon, Forrer (1920: 53–54) dated the document to the reign of Ashurbanipal, a suggestion accepted by other scholars (Landsberger 1948: 81 n. 212; Rainey 1981: 147; and with reservations also Fales and Postgate 1995: XIII). To my mind, the text should be dated to the reign of Sargon II, and that in addition to the Assyrian provinces, it lists kingdoms and cities which were subject to his rule or adjoined his realm (Na’aman 1999: 426). Dating it to the end of Sargon’s reign would explain why it opens with a list of Babylonian cities he conquered in 709 BCE, and concludes with Dur-Sharuken, the new capital which Sargon built and inaugurated in 707. It could be that the list served as a source for the scribes who composed the Sargon inscriptions commemorating the inauguration of the new capital, which is why it mentions so many of the places also mentioned in the Assyrian ruler’s inscriptions. How to interpret the mention of Dor in document K 4384? The list of names in this text is neither uniform nor consistent (e.g., Megiddo is absent). It is of course possible that Dor is mentioned because it was a province, but the list includes cities which lay within the Assyrian empire but were not provincial centres (for example, Hamatu and Dur-Balihayu, which are listed after Dor). Obviously, then, no definite conclusion can be drawn from this document concerning Dor’s status under the Assyrian empire. 4. Finally, it is necessary to discuss the treaty between Esarhaddon and the king of Tyre, whose text mentions Dor (Borger 1967: 106–107; Reiner 1969: 533–534; Parpola and Watanabe 1988: 24–27; Na’aman 1994: 3–5). The treaty is made up of clauses which detail the obligations imposed on the king of Tyre and the rules of permitted and prohibited actions in his relations with his overlord. The clause mentioning Dor appears between one that stipulates the powers of the royal Assyrian official stationed in Tyre and the limitations imposed on its king, and a clause defining the rights of aliens entering the territory under the latter’s rule. I shall translate first the two clauses which touch on the status of Dor, then evaluate their contribution to the subject of the present article. If a ship of Ba>al or of the people of Tyre is shipwrecked off the land of the Philistines or within Assyrian territory, everything that is on the ship belongs to Esarhaddon, king of Assyria; however, no harm may be done to persons on board the ship, but they must all be returned to their country.



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These are the ports of trade and the trade routes which Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, en[trusted] to his servant Ba>al: toward Acco, Dor, in the entire district of the Philistines, and in all the cities within Assyrian territory on the sea coast, and in Gubla, the Lebanon, all the cities in the mountains.

The second clause lists the ports at which the king of Tyre’s ships may sail, and with which he may trade, while the first clause states that if a Tyrian ship should be wrecked in one of these ports, its cargo would belong to the king of Assyria. The wording of these two paragraphs shows clearly that the most important ports outside the boundary of the Assyrian empire were in Philistia (note the opposition between “the land of the Philistines” and “within Assyrian territory”) and Gubla, which was never annexed by the Assyrians. The treaty does not mention Sidon, indicating that it was drawn up after the city’s annexation by Esarhaddon in 676 BCE. Prominent among the ports listed as open to Tyrian trade is Acco. This city was for many years included in the realm of Tyre, and its listing in the treaty indicates that it had already been seized from Tyre, either by Sennacherib after the revolt of Luli, King of Sidon, or by Esarhaddon, and annexed by Assyria. Acco therefore became the centre of Assyrian rule, and the entire plain of Acco must have been annexed with it (Na’aman 1994: 6). Dor is the only city in the list which lies between the plain of Acco and Philistia, indicating its importance for trade. But her status in the system of Assyrian provinces in Palestine cannot be determined from this text. In summary, none of the written sources can either substantiate or disprove the supposition that Dor had become the centre of an Assyrian province. We must therefore pass on to the archaeological data to see if a conclusive answer to this question can be found in them.

The archaeological findings from Dor The excavations conducted at Dor exposed parts of the city that were built under Assyrian dominion, and unearthed various findings, primarily pottery vessels pointing to the Assyrian control of the site. The excavators analyzed these findings, which led them to the conclusion that Dor was the principal Assyrian port between the Carmel range and Philistia, and that its position in the sea trade accounted for the nature of the findings discovered. However, they did not agree on whether these data indicate that Dor was the administrative centre of an Assyrian province. Stern (2000: 138–139) assumed that the findings showed that Dor was a provincial capital, but Gilboa (1996: 131–133) argued that they did not amount to conclusive evidence on this issue. Three main archaeological findings are associated with the question of Dor’s status―the pottery found at the site, the Assyrian seals and the city’s fortification (for a thorough discussion of the archaeological evidence, see Gilboa 1996: 122–131).

The pottery Gilboa has shown that the distinctive appearance of the ‘Assyrian-style’ pottery in the repertoire of vessels unearthed at Dor is practically unparalleled compared with other

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sites in Israel and Philistia and must therefore reflect Assyrian presence there. The vessels are not imitations produced by local Palestinian potters, but rather the work of potters who were directly acquainted with the production technique of Assyrian pottery. She further associated the many ‘commercial jars’ unearthed in the settlement strata of the Assyrian period at Dor with the extensive trade in the region from the end of the 8th century BCE on, and suggested that they reflected the city’s key position in the regional trade (ibid.: 129–131). Dor was the main port in the entire stretch between Mount Carmel and Philistia, and the large quantity of ‘Assyrian-style’ vessels, as well as the ‘commercial jars’ found at the site, indicated the “supervisory presence of the Assyrian administration” in the place (ibid.: 133). It follows that the large quantity of ‘Assyrian’ vessels cannot settle the question of the city’s status in the system of provinces created by the Assyrians in the Levant. How should we interpret the relatively large number of ‘Assyrian-style’ vessels at Dor and the presence of potters acquainted with the production technique of ‘Assyrian’ pottery? Gilboa (ibid.: 129) suggested that the potters hailed from one of the production centres in Assyria. But why should the Assyrian provincial government send potters from Assyria to the remote trade centre of Dor in order to produce Assyrian pottery? There is no evidence for the dispatch of Assyrian craftsmen to remote provinces to produce Assyrian artefacts, nor for the place of the ‘Assyrian-style’ vessels unearthed at Dor in the regional trade. I would suggest a different solution: The vessels were produced by deportees who had been transferred from regions on the outskirts of the land of Assyria, and they produced the pottery according to the ancestral tradition in the area from which they had been deported, where it was used in daily life. Assyrian sources indicate that the Assyrians carried out deportations to all the provinces established along the Mediterranean coast. In his annals of the 8th year (738 BCE), Tiglath-pileser III wrote that after the annexation of the provinces of Unqi and êimirra he deported there population from areas east of the Tigris and the outskirts of the Iranian plateau (Tadmor 1994: 66–67, lines 3–6). Indeed, in a letter sent to the king by Qurdi-Aššur-lāmur, governor of êimirra, he mentions deportees who had been transferred from Iasubu, a region east of the Tigris (Parpola and Porter 2001: Map 11), to the southern end of the province of êimirra (Postgate 1974: 392, lines 43–49). Sargon II wrote that after the annexation of Ashdod (711 BCE) he “settled therein people from the regions of the East” (Fuchs 1994: 221, lines 108–109). After the annexation of Sidon (677 BCE), Esarhaddon settled in its cities “people from the mountain regions and the sea (shore) of the East” (Borger 1967: 48–49, II 65–III 19). In this light we may safely assume that deportees were also transferred to the port city of Dor, although the deportation is not mentioned in the Assyrian sources. Gilboa (1996: 123–124) noted the close resemblance of certain vessel types unearthed at Dor to those found in the Habur triangle (Tell Halaf) and in the Assyrian-Urartean border zone, so these might have been the areas from which the deportees were transferred. Potters among the deportees must have started producing the Assyrian-style pottery in the manner of their ancestral tradition, just as builders, possibly deported from the Iranian plateau, followed their ancestral tradition in building the doorways covered

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by rib vaulting between rooms at Tell Jemmeh. In addition, potters who lived at Tell Jemmeh produced the so-called ‘Assyrian Palace Ware’ found in large quantities (Van Beek 1993: 669–672; Na’aman 2001a: 264).3 In my opinion, the presence of deportees might well explain the appearance and distribution of the Assyrian-style pottery in many regions of Palestine. Like the Philistines, who settled in southern Canaan in the second half of the 12th century BCE and began producing pottery in the style of their homeland, potters deported from regions around Assyria produced the Assyrian-style pottery according to their ancestral tradition, and later other potters began imitating them. Thus, gradually, vessels produced in this style were distributed all over the country. This might explain why all ‘Assyrian-style’ vessels examined in laboratories were found―contrary to the assumption that they were produced in Assyria―to have been made locally. It may further explain why the excavations at Megiddo, the capital of an Assyrian province, where deportees must have been brought in from areas located far away from the land of Assyria, produced a relatively small number of ‘Assyrian’ vessels, whereas in Dor these vessels were found in large numbers. We had best abandon the idea that ‘palace ware’ arriving from Assyria served as a model for the bulk of the so-called ‘imitations of Assyrian vessels’ in Palestine. Moreover, since the vast majority of the vessels discovered in the Levant are imitations of local pottery produced by deportees, we should avoid considering them prestige items, ostensibly reflecting the acculturation of the local elite to the Assyrian influence. These conclusions have a direct impact on the discussion of the so-called ‘imitations of Assyrian vessels’ unearthed at Tel Beersheba Strata III–II and Tel Arad Strata X–VIII. Singer-Avitz (1999: 54–57; 2002: 159–180; 2007) and Herzog (2001, 2002: 67, 96–99) suggested dating these strata to the late 8th century BCE. However, the earliest documented Assyrian deportation to Palestine took place in the sixth year of Sargon II (716 BCE) (Tadmor 1958: 77–78; Na’aman 1993: 108–109), and it is clear that at that early date, vessels in the new style had not yet been produced and certainly not imitated at Judahite sites. Imitations of Assyrian vessels could have been produced at Judahite sites no earlier than the last years of the 8th–early 7th century, some years after the deportees had been settled in the provinces of the former kingdom of Israel and the coast of Philistia and began producing pottery in their ancestral tradition. Singer-Avitz and Herzog’s conclusion that vessels unearthed at Tel Beersheba Strata III–II and Tel Arad Strata X–VIII imitated Assyrian pottery, and that Tel Beersheba Stratum II and Tel Arad Stratum VIII were destroyed in 701 BCE, is highly unlikely. Either the typological origin of the so-called “imitations of Assyrian vessels” from these strata should be sought in Transjordan, and Tel Beersheba II and Tel Arad VIII were destroyed in 701 BCE (as suggested by Na’aman and Thareani-Sussely 2006), or



3

Another case in point is the so-called ‘wedge-shaped decorated’ bowls/graters, discovered in many sites on both sides of the Jordan (see Zertal 1989; London 1992; Daviau 2001: 234–235 and n. 73). The bowl was probably first produced by potters deported from southern Mesopotamia and later imitated by other potters and distributed to many additional places in the country.

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Tel Beersheba II and Arad IX–VIII should be dated to the first half of the 7th century (as suggested by Knauf 2002; 2005: 184–185; cf. Edelman 2008: 421).

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The seals Two seals in a Neo-Assyrian style were found at Dor (for a description, see Ornan 1997: 304 No. 16, 357–358 No. 152; Stern 2000: 140–143). Ornan (1997: 220; 2001: 244–246) noted that both the cylinder seal and the stamp seal found at the site were local imitations of Assyrian seals, casting doubt on the assumption that officials of Mesopotamian origin were stationed at the site. It must be kept in mind that Dor was an Assyrian port, hence also the location of Assyrian officials; consequently, the presence of seals―even if used by locally-stationed officials (as suggested by Stern―2000: 142)―cannot testify to the status of the city in the system of Assyrian provinces. Moreover, the quantity of other Assyrian artefacts found at Dor is relatively small when compared to the large number of such findings discovered at Gezer, a city that was a secondary administrative centre in the province of Samaria (Reich and Brandl 1985). None of the findings discovered at Dor clearly belongs to an Assyrian governor or the administration of an Assyrian province, and they cannot support an argument about the city’s status under Assyrian rule.

The fortifications During the Iron Age IIb (from the late 9th–early 8th century to the Assyrian conquest in 732 BCE), Dor was fortified with an offset-inset wall, built partly of stones and partly of bricks. Its exterior was covered with a brick glacis and plastered. The city gate was of the four-chambered type, probably fronted with an external gate. Its foundation was built of enormous chunks of rock and filled in with small stones, and its superstructure was faced with ashlars. The pottery findings date the destruction of the gate to the Assyrian conquest in 733/32 BCE (Stern 1990: 17–22; 1993: 138–142; 2000: 111–116). The offset-inset town wall continued to serve under Assyrian rule, but over the fourchambered gate a new two-chambered gate was constructed. Being shorter but wider than the former gate, the old wall had to be cut on either side of it in order to fit in. A plaza was uncovered in front of the gate, which presumably had an outer gatehouse in front of it. A basalt slab with a carved socket, typical of Assyrian architecture, which served as the base of the protruding hinge-pin of the southern door, was also found (Stern 1990: 22–25; 2000: 132–139). The date of the gate’s construction is not known, but it is likely to have been built not long after the Assyrians captured the place. Stern noted the parallels between the fortification and gate uncovered at Dor and those of Stratum III at Megiddo, and concluded that “the resemblance between the two cities’ fortifications at this period is probably due to the Assyrians assigning a similar function to both: provincial capitals and seats of the Assyrian governor” (ibid.: 138). He regarded the Assyrian findings discovered at Dor, notably the seals, as additional support for his argument that Dor was the capital of an Assyrian province. But does the similarity between the fortifications at Dor and Megiddo indicate that Dor was also a provincial capital? Did the Assyrians fortify only the capitals of the provinces they created in the region? Is there a type of fortification built in province capitals which

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differed from those erected in secondary cities? Fortification is associated with the function of the location in the system of government and the dangers it faced from outside forces. This may be observed in regional centres fortified by the Assyrians on the eastern and southern frontiers of the empire (Tell Jemmeh, Kadesh Barnea, >En Ha§eva, Tell el-Kheleifeh, Buseirah), on account of the danger posed them by the nomads in the region. They also fortified a series of locations along the coast (Ashdod-yam, Blakhiyeh, Ruqeish—Finkelstein and Singer-Avitz 2001: 249–252; Na’aman 2001a: 260–270). Assyria did not have a navy capable of defending its coastal cities and had to rely on the navies of its vassal kingdoms. Revolts were known to break out in the vassal states, and there was also the threat of pirates.4 Therefore the fortification at Dor should be ascribed to the defence of an important Assyrian port against an attack or an assault from the sea, and have nothing to do with the status of the city in the system of Assyrian provincial capitals in the region. Two Assyrian letters from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III shed light on the fortification of Assyrian port cities in the province of êimirra on the coast of Lebanon. The first (ND 2737) is broken and the writer’s name is lost (Saggs 2001: 166–167; Na’aman 2004; Yamada 2008: 305–306). The writer―possibly Qurdi-Ashur-lāmur, governor of the province of êimirra―reported to the Assyrian ruler that his workers had finished digging a moat on one flank of the external wall of the fortress (birtu), and were now digging it on the other side. While the work was in progress, there was an attack and the writer set out in pursuit of the attackers. He reported on the occurrence, stressing that the assault took place before he had completed the fortifications at the site. The second letter (ND 2715) was sent by Qurdi-Ashur-lāmur, governor of êimirra (Saggs 1955: 127–130; 2001: 155–158; Postgate 1974: 390–393; Yamada 2008: 301–302). In the first part (lines 3–29) the governor describes the difficulties that arose following the imposition of tax on the trees felled by the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon on Mount Lebanon. The second part discusses the construction work carried out by the Assyrian governor and the problem of the manpower put at his disposal to complete the work (lines 30–43): About the men of the town of Kashpuna, of whom the king ordered me, ‘Why were you late in giving them?’—while they had still not written to me from the palace, I started to do the work. After that, they sent me a sealed letter (which) did not reach (in time) to me. Afterwards I shifted my hands from the erection of the towers, and have not built the inner gate, (but) I broke off and left, and recruited the ‘king’s men’ of them, and they came with me. I appointed a eunuch as fort-commander over them, and sent thirty troops of the town of Siannu to keep guard, (and) thirty (other) troops will relieve them.

In this portion of the letter the governor explains his delay in carrying out the king’s demand to transfer the “king’s men” from Kashpuna, a city in the southern end of the province of êimirra, to another, unnamed, place. He reports on the construction work he

4

Attacks from the sea on cities on the coast of Lebanon are mentioned in two letters from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (ND 2370; 2737—see Na’aman 2004; Rollinger 2007: 67–71, with additional literature).

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had carried out in the city before receiving the order, the transfer of the “king’s men” to the place where they were needed, the appointment of a eunuch as local commander and the introduction of soldiers from another city (Siannu) to replace the departed troops and to guard the city. The construction work mentioned included towers, perhaps for the outer gate, as well as a big inner gate. An examination of the findings from Dor and Megiddo reveals a marked similarity in the construction work at all three places. At Megiddo and Dor, and possibly also at Kashpuna, the former wall was retained, and into it was inserted a new inner gate, and in front of it was constructed an outer gate (if indeed the towers mentioned in the letter refer to it). The first letter (ND 2737) mentions the digging of a moat at the foot of the outer wall of an unnamed city (Kashpuna?). At Dor a new glacis was erected at the foot of the wall, but we do not know if a moat was also dug there. In the light of the above, we may conclude that fortifications were carried out in accordance with the particular circumstances of each location, and that the existence of a type of fortification cannot indicate the status of the place in the system of Assyrian provinces. The findings at Dor cannot resolve the dispute about the city’s status under Assyrian rule.

The status of Dor in view of the ‘longue durée’ To support his argument that Megiddo became the centre of an Assyrian province encompassing the whole area of Galilee, Alt (1929: 230–234) pointed out that even in periods following the collapse of the Assyrian empire, the city was the government and administrative centre of the regions on its north, and was not connected administratively with the mountain region on its south. In this way he showed that the dispositions made by the Assyrians after they conquered the country were of a formative nature and longlasting, and shaped a political-administrative structure that would persist in later periods. He also pointed out that after the fall of the Assyrian empire, the history of the coastal region between the Carmel range and the Jarkon River differed from that of the provinces of Megiddo and Samaria. In his opinion, this fact reinforced the assumption that Dor, too, was a separate Assyrian province (Alt 1929: 234–237). Alt’s methodological approach seems valid today, making it reasonable to examine Dor’s status during the Assyrian rule in the light of the status of the coastal region before the Assyrian annexation and after it ended. We may start with the mention of Dor in the story of Wen-Amun, and the archaeological findings at Dor, which indicate that the city was flourishing in the Iron Age I. There is no dispute about the predominance of Dor in the coastal region between Mount Carmel and the Jarkon River during this period, and it is likely that the Iron Age I Sikila city ruled over the entire Sharon Coastal Plain. This conclusion is consistent with the picture that arises from the analysis of the system of Solomonic districts (1 Kings 4:7–19). It appears that the system reflects the districts of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the 8th century BCE (Na’aman 2001b: 430–432, with earlier literature), and that the fourth district (“all the region of Dor”; v. 11) encompassed the entire littoral between the Jarkon River and

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the Carmel range (Albright 1925: 29, 31–32; Fritz 1995: 22). The third district (“The son of Hesed in Aruboth; to him belonged Socoh and all the land of Hepher”; v. 10), on its eastern border, included the eastern Sharon and the ‘via maris’ along its length, so that the western district encompassed only the western Sharon. This district included Dor, its capital, the port of >Atlit (for the findings from the new excavations conducted at >Atlit port, see Haggi 2006), other small settlements (notably Shiqmona) and anchorages big and small along the coast. An inscription on the sarcophagus of Eshmunazer, king of Sidon, who reigned in the middle of the 5th century BCE, says the following (Rosenthal 1969: 662, lines 18–20): “Furthermore, the Lord of Kings gave us Dor and Joppa, the mighty lands of Dagon, which are in the Plain of Sharon, in accordance with the important deeds which I did. And we added them to the borders of the country, so that they would belong to Sidon forever”. Evidently the territory given by the Persian king to Eshmunazer as a reward for his aid incorporated two areas: the Sharon coast between the Carmel range and the Jarkon River, and the district of Joppa between the Jarkon and the northern boundary of Ashdod. This suggests that prior to that time the Sharon coast remained a separate territorial entity, with Dor as its centre, and that in the 5th century it was attached to the territory ruled by the king of Sidon.5 Finally, it should be noted that none of the provinces created by the Assyrians along the Mediterranean coast was attached to the inland districts on their east. Thus the province of êimirra, which prior to Tiglath-pileser’s campaigns to the west was part of the kingdom of Hamath, became a separate province after its conquest and annexation in 738 BCE. Likewise, the kingdom of Sidon, which was annexed in 676, became a separate province. The province of Tyre, whose inland territories were taken away from it after its revolt against Assyria in 671 and were probably attached to Acco, lay along the coast between the province of Sidon and the Carmel range (Na’aman 1994: 7). It should be remembered that Mount Lebanon and Jebel An§ariyeh divided the coastal provinces from the inland regions on their east, so that the separation between the coastal and the inland regions suited the region’s geography. But it is worth noting that nowhere did the Assyrians attach coastal regions to inland ones, and it is reasonable to assume that this also applied to the Sharon coast. An examination of the ‘longue durée’ reveals that between the Sikila settlement at Dor of the Iron Age I and the Persian period, the Sharon region was not connected administratively to the highlands region on its east. While this is not incontrovertible proof that the Assyrians did not combine them into one, given that in the kingdom of Israel the region of Dor was an administrative district in a large kingdom made up of many districts, it does leave open the possibility that Dor remained a separate province and that the Assyrians treated it as they treated all the provinces along the coast and did not attach it to the inland province on its east. In summary, there is no source that unequivocally corroborates the suggestion that Dor was a separate Assyrian province, but it still remains a reasonable possibility. Two

5

For the South Arabian god >Ashtarim ‘of the Sharon’ (l‘štrm zy dšrn’) in the 5th century BCE see Deutsch and Heltzer 1994: 79–83; Kottsieper 2001.

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sources (ADD 919+ and the Esarhaddon treaty) demonstrate the importance of Dor as a port city and an Assyrian emporium, and a third (K 4384) lists Dor among provinces and secondary cities within the boundaries of the Assyrian empire (alongside neighbouring kingdoms, mountains and tribes), but does not positively attest that it was a separate province. The archaeological findings discovered in the excavations at Dor testify to the Assyrian presence at the site, possibly indicate that deportees transferred from northern Assyria were settled in the city, and manifest the centrality of the city in the trade ofthe 7th century BCE, but they do not help to determine its status in the system of Assyrian provinces in the region. An examination of the status of Dor over time indicates that it was the capital of a political entity, or of a distinct district within the larger province system, through many periods. This fact makes it possible to assume that in the framework of the Assyrian empire, too, Dor may have enjoyed a similar status as the capital of a separate administrative district, but it does not prove that this was so. In the light of the existing data, we cannot give a definite answer to the question posed in the article’s title, and only additional documents or archaeological findings may alter the balance of evidence one way or another.



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