Hazor in the 10th Century bc. Following his excavations at Hazor in the 1950s, Yadin concluded that the settlement at Hazor was rebuilt and became an Israelite city during the 10th century bc (strata X—IX). At that time, the city was restricted to the western part of the acropolis, where residential structures, including multi-roomed dwellings, attest to an emerging Israelite administrative center (Ben Tor et al., Hazor VI, 52–109; Ben Tor, “Hazor in the Tenth Century BCE”). The site was also fortified by a six-chambered gate and attached casemate wall. This aligns with the Bible’s claim that Hazor was among the cities fortified during Solomon’s reign (along with Jerusalem, Gezer, and Megiddo; 1 Kgs 9:15).

Yadin thus attributed this structure to stratum X and dated it to the mid-10th century bc (Yadin et al., Hazor III—IV, 30–39). Current excavators of Hazor support Yadin’s 10th-century dating (Ben Tor, “Hazor and Chronology of Northern Israel”; Ben Tor and Ben Ami, “Hazor and the Archaeology of the Tenth Century bc”). However, Finkelstein—who promotes a low chronology of Iron Age southern Levant—dates strata X—IX of Hazor to the days of the Omrides, assuming that there was no central government in Jerusalem in the 10th century that could have promoted such large-scale building activities (Finkelstein, “Hazor and the North in the Iron Age).