Hazor's Hidden Resource

A thousand years before Moses, a mighty city rose near what is now the city of Safad in northern Israel. Its name was Hazor (pronounced Hahtsor) and the Old Testament called it "head of all those kingdoms" of Canaan, the Israelites' Promised Land. Since archaeologists located the site of Hazor in 1875, they have uncovered 45-ft.-high walls, huge granaries, temples, citadels and cemeteries. But a basic question remained unanswered. Where were the waterworks capable of supporting such a metropolis in the arid Holy Land? The puzzle has now been solved by Archaeologist Yigael Yadin, a former chief of staff of the Israeli army. He has discovered a water system as impressive as the city itself.

Hands to the Sun. Yadin's earlier Hazor excavations, between 1955 and 1958, uncovered most of the known facts about the 22 successive cities that were built on the site from the third millennium until 200 B.C. Egyptians, Israelites, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians in turn laid siege to the city and built Hazor's fortifications anew. On various levels of the tell (an archaeological mound), Yadin has unearthed the remains of Solomon's mighty city gates, three separate Canaanite temples, basalt slabs engraved with hands praying to the sun, and an Israelite temple similar to Solomon's but built 300 years before his time. From the ruins, Yadin was able to establish the date of Joshua's conquest of Canaan as the late 13th century B.C. At one level, a thick layer of ash provided grisly evidence that Assyrian King Tiglath-pileser III had put Hazor to the torch in 732 B.C.

Yadin knew that ancient engineers dug deep tunnels under city walls to nearby springs. Once the source had been tapped and its waters brought underground into the city, the municipal water supply could not be cut off by besieging armies. When he surveyed the Hazor tell last fall, Yadin saw at its foot a network of seeping springs. Above them, atop the tell, was a large, shallow depression. Sure that the springs and the depression were related, Yadin put 160 diggers to work sinking test holes.

Sealed Tunnel. After probing for three months, the diggers struck a rectangular masonry shaft that began at the city level of Ahab's time (about 850 B.C.) and dropped past the debris of 13 older cities. As Yadin was removing rubble near the bottom of the shaft, "a rush of hot air hit me in the face." He had uncovered a 12-ft.-high tunnel that had been sealed since Biblical times. At its other end, 100 ft. away, Yadin saw water sparkling in the torchlights. Instead of depending on springs, Ahab's engineers had dug deep to tap the natural ground water reservoir. The stonework shaft's 10-ft-wide stairways sloped gently down to the tunnel mouth and were roomy enough, Yadin believes, to accommodate two columns of donkeys--one carrying water jars up from the bottom, the other returning with empty jars.

Yadin plans to clear out the shaft, install guard railings on the stairway and restore the entire waterworks system. 'We will not need the water for siege periods," says the soldier-archaeologist confidently, "but it will come in handy for tourists and visitors."

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