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Two appendices present the coins and the amphorae finds, both crucial for dating the foundation of the fortress and identifying it as a Hasmonean initiative. Galilee-the heyday of the Hasmonean territorial expansion.
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The finds are unique in their well-defined chronological range and shed important light on the material culture of the early 1st century b.c.e. The finds indicate this was a short-lived military site that was apparently founded by Alexander Jannaeus in the last years of his reign and abandoned shortly thereafter. The excavations in four of the towers uncovered accumulations above floors as well as the foundations of the walls. This article describes the results of the first excavation undertaken at the site, conducted in 2019 on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The remains of several rectangular towers, curtain walls, a single gate, and reservoirs are well discernible and suggest it was a military post. Ḥorvat Tefen is located on a prominent hilltop in the Western Galilee, overlooking ʿAkko-Ptolemais and its vicinity. The paper synthesizes several decades of research on Mediterranean issues, mainly in connection to Tel Dor on Israel’s Carmel Coast. It was stimulated and conditioned mainly by the effects of Egypt’s withdrawal from Canaan, by the Late Cypriot IIIA collapse, by the slow recovery of the Syrian coast in the early Iron Age, and by environmental factors. Gradually this phenomenon expanded geographically, a process that can be followed closely. I argue that what may be termed the earliest Phoenician mercantile maritime ventures, in the early Iron Age, were launched mainly from the Carmel Coast and were directed mainly toward Egypt. It is an archaeological bottom-up diachronic approach and considers the entire Levantine coast and not Lebanon only, which is traditionally considered the Phoenician homeland. My approach differs from others dealing with the Phoenician question in that its definitions are not projected from a yet-to-happen “Phoenician” phenomenon in the West. I propose here a new way to look at the process through which, following the Bronze Age collapse and culminating in the second half of the 9th century b.c.e., polities in south Lebanon became the most important Levantine commercial hubs in the Mediterranean and the main patrons of the so-called Phoenician expansion.