Tel Hadid
During the course of the
excavations, under the direction of Professor
Itzhaq Beit-Arieh and Etti Brand, on behalf
of the Tel
Aviv University, a typical four room
house and numerous potsherds from the Iron
Age (9th-8th centuries BCE)
were exposed along the fringes of Tel Hadid.
Two complete tablets, written in cuneiform
and excellently preserved, were uncovered
next to the building, but not in a direct
archaeological context with it. They were
first published by Professors Nadav Na’aman
and Ran Zadok of the Tel Aviv University.
The two tablets are Assyrian legal
documents. The earlier of the two documents
is a note recording the sale of land dating
from 698 BCE and the latter is a promissory
note from 664 BCE. Their text is identical
to that customarily used in Assyria during
the time of the Assyrian Empire. These documents
join two other documents written in Assyrian
from the years 651 and 649 BCE that were
discovered at Tel
Gezer, some 10 kilometers south of Tel
Hadid. The names of thirty six people are
recorded in the Tel Gezer and Tel Hadid documents.
All of them, except for one (Netanyahu from
Gezer) are not Israelite names. About half
are Akkadian names and the other half Aramean;
etymologically they are Western Semitic but
not Hebrew.
When did Tel Hadid become
foreign?
The date of 698 BCE ascribed
to the earlier document is of importance
because it indicates the time when the foreigners
listed in the document arrived in the region
and helps to some extent in identifying them
ethnically.
The note of sale we have
from Tel Hadid from 698 BCE predates the
documents from Tel Gezer by fifty years and
shows that the exiles were brought to the
region of Tel Hadid many years earlier than
what was previously known. We can reasonably
assume that the exile to Tel Hadid is connected
with Sargon’s war with Merodach-Baladan
the Chaldean who took control of Babylonia
and rule there at the time of Sargon ascension
to the throne in Assur. We can assume that
the exiles who arrived at Tel Hadid and wrote
the two documents we are dealing with here
did so in the wake of Sargon’s war
with Babylonia and not during the reign of
Sennacherib, his son.
When did the Region of
Tel Hadid revert to Jewish Control?
According to the Bible (Nehemiah 7:6,
36) it turns out the foreigners mentioned
in the documents from Tel Hadid in the first
half of the seventh century BCE either abandoned
the area or were expelled from it.
It is therefore reasonable
to assume that the expulsion of the exiles
from Tel Hadid occurred when Assyria became
weak and the Assyrian administration crumbled
west of the Euphrates River. It is also possible
to associate the expulsion of the foreigners
with the extensive religious reforms carried
out by Josiah, King of Judah,
at the temple in Jerusalem;
some of the reform processes may have included
the annihilation or expulsion of foreigners
in the country.
In any case it is clear
that by the end of the period of the Kingdom
of Judah Hadid was an established Jewish
city and its inhabitants were banished to
Babylonia by the Chaldeans and
returned from exile to their homes during
the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. During the
reign of Simon
the Hasmonean, Hadid was already an important
fortified city in the Hasmonean Kingdom
of Judah.
Sources: Israel
Antiquities Authority |