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DOR

(Heb. dōʾr, dôr; Gk. Dṓra)

Remains of the monumental Persian period building at Tel Dor. The front wall is in the foreground and to the left parts of three stone piers which supported a columned entrance porch (E. Stern, Director, Tel Dor Project; photo by Y. Hirschberg)

A city on the Mediterranean coast below Mt. Carmel, Khirbet el-Burj/Tell Dor (142.224), 21 km. (13 mi.) S of modern Haifa. It first appears in an Egyptian document of the 13th century b.c.e. that lists towns on the coast of Palestine. Joshua defeated the king of Canaanite Dor (Josh. 12:23), and in the 12th century the Sea Peoples (“Philistines”) conquered it. Incorporated into Israel, Dor was the capital of Solomon’s fourth administrative district (1 Kgs. 4:11). The Assyrians conquered the city in 732, and in the 5th century the Persian king granted it to the Phoenician king of Sidon. Protected by powerful fortifications, Dor asserted its independence in the Hellenistic period until the Hasmonean Alexander Janneus added it to the Jewish kingdom ca. 100. In 63 b.c.e. the Roman general Pompey gave Dor its freedom, and it flourished for several centuries as a seaport, only gradually succumbing in the Roman period to competition from neighboring Caesarea. In the 6th and 7th centuries, reduced to a village, it still had its own bishop.

From 1923 to 1980 various teams sporadically excavated at Tell Dor and in Lower Dor E of the mound. Since 1980 Ephraim Stern of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, heading a consortium of foreign institutions, has explored the site continuously during summer field seasons. These excavations have recovered rich finds from the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 2000 b.c.e.) to the Late Roman period. Especially important are the sequence of fortification walls, the city’s Hippodamian (“grid") street plan introduced by the Persians, and domestic and industrial quarters from several occupation periods. Other finds include a complex of large Hellenistic temples, coins featuring the Phoenician Astarte and Hellenistic Zeus, cult objects, material for studying the ancient purple dye industry, and inscribed potsherds. Another large temple, to the east of the tell, became an early Christian church, seat of the later town’s bishop.

Bibliography. E. Stern, “Dor,” NEAEHL 1:357-68; Dor, Ruler of the Seas (Jerusalem, 1994).

Kenneth G. Holum

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

DOR

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)