Amihai Mazar

Amihai Mazar was born in 1942 in Haifa. He began his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1966 and completed his doctorate there in 1976.[1]

His early fieldwork included a 1968 survey of Jerusalem's aqueducts, preceding the excavation projects that became central to his research on the archaeology of ancient Israel.[1]

Mazar lectured at the Hebrew University from 1977 to 1981 and also taught at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. He became a senior lecturer at the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology in 1982, was appointed associate professor in 1986, and from 1994 held the Eleazar Sukenik Chair in the Archaeology of Israel.[1]

He headed the Institute of Archaeology from 1995 to 1998, served on the Archaeological Council of Israel from 1994 to 1999, and was a member of the Israel Antiquities Authority Council from 2001 to 2005.[1]

Mazar received the 2009 Israel Prize for archaeology.[2] He was also awarded a Michael Landau Prize in the field of archaeology of the Land of Israel and the ancient Middle East for research that included Iron Age beekeeping and honey production at Tel Rehov.[4] The 2006 festschrift I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times, edited by Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji, was published in his honor and included a bibliography of his work.[5][6]

Mazar directed excavations at Tel Qasile from 1971 to 1974 and again from 1982 to 1990. From 1977 to 1989 he worked with G. L. Kelm at Tel Batash, identified with biblical Timnah, and from 1978 to 1982 he directed excavations at Giloh near Jerusalem.[1] A 1982 article documented three seasons at Tel Batash, and Mazar later co-edited Timnah (Tel Batash) with Nava Panitz-Cohen.[7]

From the late 1980s, Mazar directed the Beth Shean Valley Archaeological Project, including excavations at Tel Beth-Shean from 1989 to 1996.[1] He edited the first volume of Excavations at Tel Beth-Shean, 1989–1996, published in 2006 by the Israel Exploration Society.[8]

In 2007, Mazar publicly criticized archaeological damage caused by Waqf excavation on the Temple Mount. He identified the excavation of a large pit providing access to the underground mosque in the area known as Solomon's Stables as the most serious damage to the site's archaeological remains.[9]

A central project in Mazar's field career was his direction of seven excavation seasons at Tel Rehov in the Beth Shean Valley between 1997 and 2005. The work was conducted on behalf of the Hebrew University's Institute of Archaeology with sponsorship from John Camp. Excavation took place in four areas on the upper mound and five on the lower mound, uncovering remains from the Early Bronze Age through the Iron Age and from a later Early Islamic-to-medieval settlement.[10]

In a trench on the slope of the higher mound, excavators revealed an Early Bronze Age II–III fortification system: a mud-brick wall 9.5 meters wide and preserved to a maximum height of 6.5 meters, with an outer earthen glacis preserved to 13 meters wide and 3.5 meters high. The scale of these defenses suggests that a major city existed at Tel Rehov during the period.[10]

Excavations in Area D, a 10-meter-wide trench on the western slope of the lower mound, documented continuous urban settlement from the fourteenth century BCE onward. Canaanite material culture persisted through phases dated from the thirteenth to the end of the eleventh century BCE despite at least three destructions. In the eleventh-century phases, excavators found a north–south street and adjoining houses; after the destruction of one stratum, the area became an open space containing more than forty storage or refuse pits.[10]

For Iron Age IIA, defined in the site account as approximately 980–830 BCE, Tel Rehov contained three strata of a densely built city laid out in parallel blocks, with no fortifications found. Houses were constructed from unbaked mud brick without stone foundations, while wood was used beneath walls and floors. The buildings also lacked pillars of the type common in Israelite architecture elsewhere. An open-air sanctuary beside a residential quarter may have served the local neighborhood and possibly an ancestors' cult, although that interpretation remains tentative.[10]

Beehives found in a Stratum V building were described as the first of their kind uncovered in the Levant.[10] A passage attributed to Mazar and Nava Panetz-Cohen says that the apiary was first identified in the northeastern part of the site in 2005 and probably held many dozens, if not hundreds, of hives. The same account cautiously describes the discovery as apparently without parallel in the archaeology of the Old World.[11]

A Jerusalem Post account reported that remains from the clay cylinders indicated that the bees originated in Turkey. It described hives approximately 80 centimeters long and 40 centimeters in diameter and estimated that a facility of roughly 200 hives could have housed more than one million bees. Mazar called the find "a very special discovery" and characterized the importation of bees from such a distance as evidence of complicated and sophisticated agriculture.[12]

Phoenician, Cypriot, and Greek pottery attested to international trade connections. Rare Greek Proto-Geometric, Sub-Proto-Geometric, and Middle Geometric sherds were considered important for the study of Greek Iron Age chronology.[10] Three alphabetic inscriptions were incised on pottery jars. Tentative readings suggest that one may mean "belonging to Nach[um]" and another "belonging to Shky (?) [son of?] Nimshi"; the third is fragmentary and unresolved.[10]

Radiocarbon dates from grain and olive stones, considered alongside conventional archaeological evidence, placed Strata VI and V in the tenth century BCE and Stratum IV in the ninth. The destruction of Stratum V was dated to the last third of the tenth century, with the raid of Shoshenq I suggested only as a possible cause. Aramean attacks in the time of Hazael were similarly offered as a possible explanation for the ninth-century destruction of Stratum IV.[10]

During Iron Age IIB, approximately 830–732 BCE, the city contracted to the upper mound, about half its former size, and was surrounded by a 9.5-meter-wide mud-brick wall probably intended to resist the Assyrian threat. A destruction layer containing evidence of people slaughtered in their houses was attributed most probably to the Assyrian conquest of 732 BCE. Brief subsequent activity was followed by abandonment.[10]

Although Tel Rehov is not mentioned in the Bible by name, the site account identifies it as one of the important cities of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and suggests that much of its tenth- and ninth-century BCE population may have descended from earlier Iron Age I Canaanite inhabitants.[10] Mazar also said that ceramics and loom weights found there may indicate the presence of Sea Peoples—though not necessarily Philistines—who migrated into the Jordan Valley.[13]

Mazar published numerous papers, monographs, and books. His best-known work among students of archaeology, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (ca. 10,000–586 B.C.E.), appeared in English in 1990 and was subsequently translated into Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese.[1] An Internet Archive catalog record places it within a three-volume series introducing the archaeology of Israel and Jordan and its relevance to the Old Testament world, covering periods from early permanent settlement through the Roman era.[3]

His 1996 article "The Archaeology of the United Monarchy: An Alternative View" appeared in Levant 28, pages 177–187. It was followed by his 1997 article "Iron Age Chronology: A Reply to I. Finkelstein" in Levant 29 and Israel Finkelstein's 1998 rejoinder in Levant 30, forming part of a sustained exchange over Iron Age chronology and the archaeology of the United Monarchy.[14] Mazar's article "The Inscriptions from Tel Rehov and Their Contribution to the Study of Script and Writing during Iron Age IIA" appeared in Maarav in 2013 and in a 2014 memorial volume for Professor Hanan Eshel.[15]

Mazar also participated in the dispute over a folded lead object recovered from discarded excavation material at Mount Ebal. He argued that it was a lead fishing weight of a type commonly found in Late Bronze and Iron Age contexts in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean, challenging claims that it bore an early Hebrew curse inscription. The object's identification, dating, and alleged inscription remain disputed.[16]

The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on Mazar characterizes his treatment of archaeological material as reasoned and balanced, describes his influence on younger Israeli archaeologists, and calls him a loyal mentor to his students.[1]

Mazar has discussed the limits of archaeological evidence for reconstructing biblical history. Regarding the Exodus, he argues that archaeology cannot scientifically verify the narrative as a whole, including the plagues, the crossing of the sea, the revelation at Sinai, or forty years of wandering. He distinguishes this conclusion from religious faith and describes the Exodus as a powerful tradition with a central place in Judaism.[2]

Discussing the Merneptah Stele, discovered at Luxor in 1896, Mazar notes that its inscription records a group called Israel in the land of Israel near the end of the thirteenth century BCE. The inscription uses a sign indicating a people rather than a place, but Mazar emphasizes that it establishes neither the group's size, strength, nor precise location and does not verify an Exodus.[2]

Mazar points to Egyptian evidence documenting the movement of Canaanite-speaking populations into Egypt's eastern Delta over roughly seven centuries, from the nineteenth century BCE through the time of Ramesses II. He presents this migration history as a possible background for memories of an Israelite sojourn in Egypt while emphasizing that it does not prove the biblical account.[2]

He interprets Papyrus Anastasi V as describing three enslaved people escaping into Sinai rather than a mass departure, while noting its resemblance to the biblical pursuit motif. Regarding the Ipuwer Papyrus, he argues that the surviving copy reproduces a much older account of Egyptian disasters predating the emergence of Israel and that its resemblance to the plagues is not evidence that the Exodus occurred.[2]

Mazar says that attempts to identify Mount Sinai have not succeeded and that Kadesh Barnea has no remains attributable to the period in which an Exodus might have occurred. He presents as a hypothesis the possibility that a smaller group, perhaps Levites, lived in Egypt's Delta and crossed the Sinai desert, contributing a historical kernel to the later tradition. He contrasts the scholarly effort to investigate how and when ancient traditions developed with readings such as Simcha Jacobovici's claim that the Exodus occurred around 1500 BCE and is supported by archaeological evidence.[2]

Mazar's excavations at Tel Rehov produced evidence relevant to agriculture, trade, writing, urban development, and population continuity in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The ancient apiary, rare Greek imports, alphabetic inscriptions, and extensive radiocarbon program became significant evidence in the wider study of Iron Age chronology and society.[10][11]

Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, translated into Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese, brought a broad synthesis of archaeological research in Israel and Jordan to an international readership and became Mazar's best-known book among archaeology students.[1][3] His publications also included monographs on Tel Qasile and Tel Batash and the edited excavation volume for Tel Beth-Shean.[1][8] With Ginny Mathias, he edited the 2001 volume Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan.[17]

The two-volume festschrift I Will Speak the Riddles of Ancient Times, published in 2006 and edited by Aren M. Maeir and Pierre de Miroschedji, reflects his standing among colleagues and includes a bibliography of his work.[5][6] His published exchanges with Israel Finkelstein formed an important part of the chronology debates of the 1990s.[14] A later study's use of the phrase "Yadin and Mazar paradigm" for a proposed association between a Tel Megiddo destruction layer and the Shoshenq I campaign illustrates Mazar's continuing place in debates over Iron Age chronology.[18]

Several interpretive positions associated with Mazar's work remain debated. The chronological framework applied to Tel Rehov's Iron Age IIA strata—placing Strata VI and V in the tenth century BCE and treating the evidence as relevant to the period of the biblical United Monarchy—is part of the broader dispute between high- and low-chronology approaches.[10][14] Mazar's exchange with Israel Finkelstein in Levant during the late 1990s was a prominent episode in that debate.[14]

The proposed association of the destruction of Tel Megiddo Stratum VA–IVB with the Shoshenq I campaign was termed the "Yadin and Mazar paradigm" in a 2023 study. That study reported that its radiocarbon evaluation did not support the association and instead placed the destruction in the ninth century BCE, connecting it with Hazael's campaign.[18] At Tel Rehov itself, the proposed links between destruction layers and the campaigns of Shoshenq I or Hazael are expressly tentative rather than established identifications.[10]

Mazar's position that the Mount Ebal lead object is a fishing weight rather than an inscribed curse tablet also places him within an unresolved dispute. The object's archaeological context, dating, function, and alleged writing continue to be contested.[16]