Bible Synapse
Tel Dan: city gates and high place
Site · 9th–8th centuries BC · Israel and Judah · also called Tel Dan, Tell el-Qadi, Dan high place
See it on the map and timeline
- Date
- 9th–8th centuries BC (the Israelite high place and city gates)
- Found
- Tel Dan, Israel, 1966. Excavated by Avraham Biran in 33 seasons from 1966, at first for Israel’s Department of Antiquities and from 1974 for Hebrew Union College’s Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology. The high place and the gates are partly restored.
- Now
- At the site, Upper Galilee, Israel
- Passages
- 1 Kings 12:28–30, 2 Kings 10:29, Amos 8:14
What it is
A sacred precinct with a large platform of dressed stone, which the excavators called a bamah (high place), and an altar area beside it, rebuilt in several phases. The excavators also uncovered a series of Israelite city gates with a paved plaza, groups of standing stones and a raised platform that may have held a canopied seat for a king or an image. Pieces of the Tel Dan Stele were found near the outer gate.
How it connects to the Bible
1 Kings 12:28–30 says that Jeroboam set up one of his golden calves at Dan, and Biran identified the earliest platform as the royal shrine where it stood, enlarged in Ahab’s time and again in the 8th century BC. No calf has been found. Amos 8:14 condemns those who swear “Thy god, O Dan, liveth”.
What scholars debate
The dates of the platform’s phases are debated. Biran put the first platform in Jeroboam I’s time, in the late 10th century BC; the excavation’s own summary now places it (Bamah A) in the 9th century BC.