Dor 4

D O R

A southern Phoenician town in the Levant. 4

Assyrian period:

In 733 The Assyrian king Tiglat-Pileser III made a number of campaigns in this direction and came also to Dor. In 732 BC Dor is for a while the capital of the Assyrian province Surru.

Esarhaddon gives in the 7^th century BC the region of Dor to Ba‘lu of Tyre. This can be read in the treaty Baal I made with the Assyrian king (675-671 BC). It is confirmed by a large amount of commercial jars of Tyrian types in the following years. Assyrian overall control however lasted to 619 BC, because a Assyrian governor of Sumur (Manni-ki-ahle) assumed the eponym function in that year. After that there was a short Egyptian intermezzo. In 616 BC we see pharaoh Psammetichus I operate all the way in Mespotamia supporting the Assyrians against Nabopolassar, king of Babylon.

Persian period:

In 1988 Moscati said: Dor and Joppe were conquered (?) by Sidon in Persian Period, but neither of these two centres have any typically Phoenician features (?). He makes two mistakes. The towns were given to Sidon and they were to a certain degree indeed Phoenician. Recent excavations have proven that!

The king of Sidon (c.520 or c.450 BC) was given the Palestinian cities of Dor and Jaffa, as he himself records in an inscription: “Furthermore, the lord of kings ceded to us Dor and Joppe, the mighty lands of Dagon, which are in the plain of Sharon, in proportion to the important things I have done. And we annexed them to the territory of <our> land, so that they might belong to the Sidonians forever.”

No wonder Pseudo-Scylax (Periplus 1.78) named Dor: Δωρος πολις Σιδωνιων.

In the time of Pseudo-Scylax (c.346/345) the town is still under control of Sidon.

In this period an urban renaissance takes place with axial hippodamic streetplanning.

Domestic architecture: often, a large horizontally aligned hall provided access to two (and sometimes three) smaller adjacent rooms of equal size in the rear.

Hellenistic period:

Bocks of houses are built of 20 meters wide and the streets are becoming wider (3-5 meters). A new administrative centre and storehouses are built. The new walls are made in the ashlar masonry method. In 275 BC Ptolemeus II Philadelphus builts a new wall in Greek style around the town. The Phoenician town is transferred to a Hellenistic polis.

In 219 BC Dor is attacked in vain by Antiochus III. The defence was lead by Nikolaos.

In 139 a complete renovation was made in the time that there was fight going on between Antiochus VII Sidetes against Tryphon.

After a period under the local dynasty of Zoïlos (F.J.A.J.XIII 324) and the Hasmonian kingdom of Alexander Jannée (103-76 BC) the Romans entered the scene. Pompeius grants the town autonomy in 63 BC (F.J.A.J.XIV 76).

Roman period:

Plinius places the boundary between Phoenicia and Palestine at Caesarea (which is south of Dor) and for him Dor was the most southerly important town of Phoenicia.

Strabo (16.275): “Between the two places (Acre and Straton’s tower) is Mount Carmel, as also towns of which nothing more than the names remain…. I mean the towns of Sycamnion, Bucalon, Crocodeilon and others like them.” Dor itself is not mentioned explicitely any more!

The Roman period is a period of decline. In the 3^rd  century AD is the town abandoned.

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