Dor 3

D O R

A southern Phoenician town in the Levant. 3

Phoenician period:

Pietschmann knows already in 1887, that Dor is a Phoenician town. He quotes Stephanos of Byzantium who tells from the ‘Phoenician history of Klaudios Iolaos’, “the Phoenicians possessed the city Dor and is also inhabited by Phoenicians.” According to Pietschmann: This is the southernmost point of the Syrian area where surely a Phoenician settlement can be detected.

In the 10^th century BC there is a vivid corporation between Israel and Tyre. Phoenician goods and commodities entered Israel through the ports of Dor and Joppe.

The strata of the 11^th and 10^th centuries BC contain fragments on painted Cypriot pottery. Recent archaeological research has brought to light a stretch of the city wall which includes remnants of monumental entrance gate with rooms inside and two towers flanking it outside; the construction is of mud bricks on a stone base.

Considering the distinctive features of this complex, in use from the 9^th to the 8^th century BC, has been attributed to the Phoenicians and it is therefore considered the only known example of Phoenician monumental architecture from the pre-Assyrian period.

Two deposits of votive material found in different areas of the city, but from the same period are of some interest. One contained terracotta and stone votive statuettes of a kind often found in sanctuaries in central Phoenicia and on the Palestinian coast; the other contained terracotta figures of a Greek type together with Greek pottery. (A.Ciasca in 1988).

Red burnished pottery is from 9^th-8^th century abundant present in Dor. There are three types:

- mushroom-lipped jug;

- trefoil-lipped jug with a long neck;

- biconical jug.

In the 9^th century the ramparts of Dor consist of a solid massive brick wall, some 3 meters wide, reinforced at its base by a plaster-faced clay glacis and constructed upon foundations built partly of brick and partly of stone. The city-gate is flanked by mudbrick towers set upon a foundation of huge limestone blocks. The walls have a regular alternation of salients and recesses.

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