Tel Dan - Monday, 4/7/08

This was at least one of, if not THE best, thing we have done so far. Remember, a tel (tell) is an artificial hill created by centuries of dirt and vegetation covering a city. This site we visited on Monday was the ancient city of Dan where the tribe of Dan settled after conquering the city of Laish (Judges 18). We hiked through the closest thing to a jungle I have ever been in, which I’m a country girl and have been in some pretty thick woods. It was not an area I expected to see in Israel where you picture all deserts or rocky mountains. One of the things we’ve noticed here is that there is not nearly as much attention paid to details like building codes or ADA requirements. For example, at the olive press in Nazareth Village there was a big hole in the floor where they would press the olives and all us tourists would be wandering around the hole. In the USA there definitely would have been a railing around to keep people from falling in. But, back to Tel Dan. The mile or so hike through the jungle to get to the excavated ruins was literally through the River Dan. We hiked through the source of the river which grows into one of three major tributaries for the Jordan River. Large rocks had been laid through the waterways but if you missed your step your shoes would be wet.

The first stop on our hike was their cultic place of worship. King Jeroboam, after rebelling against the kingship of the line of David, split the kingdom of Israel into two parts. In order to persuade the people to follow him instead of King Rehoboam, grandson of David, he made sacrifices at this spot to the pagan gods. Thousands of years ago we would have been in a temple with a spot for the worshippers down in front of us and the altar would have been up behind us. We sat on ancient steps for a time of worship to the true God of Israel.

For modern geography, we were just yards away from Syria behind us. Here I am standing on the edge of the ruins with Syria in the background.

From the cultic temple we hiked to the city gate. On our way we had the benefit of Israeli Air Force flyover. This wasn’t honestly for our benefit. The nation is in the middle of five days of emergency response drills. They flew over while we were on the Sea of Galilee as well but I forgot to mention that yesterday. They were much lower than they appear in this picture.

At the end of our hike we reached the city gate. This seems backwards as usually the city gate would be the only way into the city. Again, as in Megiddo and Caesarea, the gate was at a 90° angle to slow down any troops entering the city. Unlike old American cities where the city square was in the heart of the city, I learned that the square was right outside the city gate. This helps us understand the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where the two angels go to visit Lot. The angels said they would sleep in the city square which, if the square was in the center of the city, would make them more vulnerable to the attacks of the men within the city. They wanted to sleep in the square outside the city which would have protected them from the men who were locked into the city. (Genesis 19) In this picture, the men in the top right are walking out of the gate and the large flat area in front of them is the city square.