wall. In addition, the placement of a later “installation” that was used during both phases of LB II—in which a tall basaltic stele

ng the Late Bronze I Age, Yadin laments that many conclusions regarding the evaluation of structures, installations, and finds are difficult to make, owing to the enormous amount of leveling and looting that took place on the tel during the Solomonic period (Yadin, The Head, 125).55. Wood, “Let the Evidence Speak,” 78.56. Amnon Ben-Tor, “News and Notes,” IEJ 51:2 (2001), 238.57. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 160.58. Yadin, The Head, 200.59. James B. Pritchard, ANET (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 242. Hazor is mentioned in a topographical list of Amenhotep II at Karnak (Bienkowski, “Role of Hazor,” 54).60. Omar Zuhdi, “Combined Arms Egyptian Style: Thutmose III Crosses the Euphrates,” KMT 18:3 (Fall 2007), 56.61. Pritchard, ANET, 239.62. Donald B. Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 158.63. Hoffmeier emphasizes that the conquest list of Thutmose III for this campaign was not a record of destroyed cities (James K. Hoffmeier, “Reconsidering Egypt’s Part in the Termination of the Middle Bronze Age in Palestine,” Levant 21 [1989], 187).64. As Hoffmeier correctly explains during his discussion of the primary battle of this campaign, which was fought at Megiddo, “While it is true that Thutmose III was concerned to have order and loyalty in Canaan, he was not going to destroy cities that could be useful to him” (Ibid., 187). For this reason, Hoffmeier concludes that Megiddo was not razed either, despite this city’s distinction of being the site from where the king of Kadesh launched his rebellion against the Egyptians at the outset of Thutmose III’s sole rule.65. Thutmose III undoubtedly would have followed the same foreign policy as that of the earlier pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, including his grandfather, Thutmose I, who set the precedent for his progeny by venturing through Canaan and into Mesopotamia. “Because of Egyptian economic interest in the region, it would make little sense to adopt a scorched earth policy in Canaan. . . . [W]hen Thutmose I acceded the throne, he was able to march, apparently unmolested, all the way to the Euphrates river” (James K. Hoffmeier, “Aspects of Egyptian Foreign Policy in the 18th Dynasty in Western Asia and Nubia,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean World: Studies in Honor of Donald B. Redford, ed. Gary N. Knoppers and Antoine Hirsch [Leiden: Brill, 2004], 133).66. One author calls the Egyptian advancement into upper Syria a direct attack on Mitanni, “which must long have been seen as one of Thutmose’s manifest goals” (Redford, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel, 159). Another writer suggests, in reference to Thutmose III’s renowned campaign into Mesopotamia, that “[t]his campaign was perhaps intended as a capstone ending a series of military operations begun twelve years earlier with the daring strike through the Aruna Pass at Megiddo” (Zuhdi, “Combined Arms,” 55).



The Gebel Barkal Stele of Thutmose III states that this
conquering pharaoh “crossed the Euphrates after the one who had attacked him, at the head of his armies seeking that feeble enemy [from] the land of Mitanni.” The subsequent victory caused Thutmose III to boast, “There is no opponent of mine in the southern lands, northerners come bowing because of my awe. It was Re who ordained it concerning me, I having bound together the Nine Bows, the islands in the midst of the sea, the Aegean and rebellious foreign lands” (Thutmose III, “The Gebel Barkal Stela of Thutmose III,” in Context of Scripture, vol. 2 [trans. James K. Hoffmeier], 15). All of this causes Hoffmeier to look back on this pharaoh’s first campaign and conclude that it already “suggests that Egypt was moving towards an imperial model of domination” (Hoffmeier, “Egyptian Foreign Policy,” in Egypt, Israel, and the Ancient Mediterranean, 134).67. Hoffmeier, “Egypt’s Part,” 187.68. Yadin, The Head, 32. Yadin’s reference to the middle of the 15th century BC for the timeframe of the occupational gap is purely speculative, as a connection to the Late Bronze I Age is the only certainty. The matter of import in his observation is that a large occupational gap did occur between Late Bronze I and Late Bronze II, before a later re-inhabitation finally took place.69. One may be tempted to accuse Amenhotep II of merely inflating the record, claiming to have conquered a city that he never actually defeated. This argument, however, is a weak and desperate one. If one randomly asserts that Hazor was not “destroyed” by Amenhotep II, why should this pharaoh not be accused of falsifying the conquest of some or all of the other sites on his conquest list? For that matter, why should Thutmose III be trusted to have “destroyed” Hazor as he stated in his conquest list? Thus one could dismiss the claims of any or every ancient conqueror who boasted of cities that he captured during his exploits abroad. The burden of proof should remain squarely upon the shoulders of the modern student of history to produce sufficient evidence when claiming that an ancient monarch falsified his records, rather than expecting the ancients to have justified their own claims somehow for the sake of future critics of history who might cavalierly distrust them. Amenhotep II, among others, deserves far better treatment than this.70. Yadin, The Head, 45.71. Betsy M. Bryan, “Antecedents to Amenhotep III,” in Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign (ed. David O’Connor and Eric H. Cline; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 46. The latest documented year of Thutmose IV’s reign is Year 8, which is attested to on the Konosso Stele (Ibid., 48, 54–55).72. Yadin, The Rediscovery, 59.73. Ibid., 63–64.74. Ibid., 65; idem, The Head, 46; Yigael Yadin, Yohanan Aharoni, Ruth Amiran, Trude Dothan, Immanuel Dunayevsky, and Jean Perrot, Hazor II: An Account of the Second Season of Excavations, 1956 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960), 153.75. Yadin et al., Hazor II, 153. Elsewhere, Yadin calls the pottery “the very end of the IIIA: 2 type” (Yadin, The Head, 46).76. Yadin, The Head, 46.77. Arne Furumark, Mycenaean Pottery II: Chronology (Stockholm: Skrifter Utgivna av Svenska Institutet i Athen, 1972), 115. In an earlier note, Kitchen’s quote reveals that he improperly dated Furumark’s Mycenaean pottery analysis to the 1940’s. Instead, the publication-date here reveals a time 30 years closer to the present than Kitchen declared; incidentally, Furumark lived until 1982.78. Examples of Yadin’s Late-Bronze-I finds include the following: Mycenaean vessels from Tomb 8144 and Tomb 8145, which are contemporaneous with a pear-shaped jar from Tomb 8065, all of which are characteristic of the later stage of IIIA:2; three jars (from Tomb 8065) that belong to the period of later IIIA:2; five stirrup-jars (from Tomb 8065), which are divided into three groups, two of which belong to later IIIA:2, and one Rosetta Stone