Torah Light News From Israel

A massive ancient Canaanite metropolis that housed some 6,000 residents has been uncovered alongside Israel’s newest city, Harish, during new roadworks. The 160-acre (over 650 dunam) city is the largest Early Bronze Age settlement excavated in Israel.

It is much larger than any known site in the land of Israel — and outside the land of Israel — in the region of Jordan, Lebanon, southern Syria.

This is a huge city, a megalopolis in relation to the Early Bronze Age, where thousands of inhabitants, who made their living from agriculture, lived and traded with different regions and even with different cultures and kingdoms in the area… “This is the Early Bronze Age New York of our region; a cosmopolitan and planned city,” said excavation directors Itai Elad, Paz and Dr. Dina Shalem.

According to archaeologists, "the city is one of the first steps of Canaanite culture in the ancient Land of Israel, which is consolidating its identity in the newly established urban sites.

"Such a city could not develop without a deliberate guiding hand and administrative mechanism behind its founding. The impressive design and the fact that tools were brought from ancient Egypt and seal imprints are evidence of this," they said. They added that the findings allow, for the first time, to define the ancient cultural characteristics of this area, and the remains exposed indicate an organized society and a social hierarchy.

We’ll be visiting this new site this December on our TLM Archaeology Tour.