'En Esur

The site is known in Arabic as Tell el-Asawir. The mound covers an area of around 5.5 acres with a maximum height of 11 meters above the plain. It appears in the 1799 map drawn by French geographer Pierre Jacotin. American archaeologist and biblical scholar William F. Albright visited the site during his 1923 trip to Mandatory Palestine. He recalled the opinion of German scholar Albrecht Alt that Tel Esur is the site of an ancient city called "Yaham", located just north of the Menashe Heights and mentioned in the sources of the 15th-century BCE Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose III, who campaigned against a coalition of Canaanite city-states led by the king of Kadesh and gave battle at Megiddo. According to the Egyptian account, Thutmose III camped in Yaham before he marched on Megiddo and captured the city. Albright stated that the location of the site corresponds with the geographic descriptions of the Egyptian sources, and his discovery of Bronze Age pottery while surveying the mound further confirmed this identification in his opinion. Today however, Yaham is identified with a site located at the Arab village of Kafr Yama, since 1988 part of Zemer, some 10 kilometers south of Tel Esur. The discovery of the larger site around Tel Esur and its springs occurred in 1977, during the digging of a water reservoir south of the mound. A salvage excavation was conducted by archaeologists Azriel Zigelman and Ram Gofna of the Tel Aviv University. They discovered two settlement layers, one from the Chalcolithic period (the last period of the Stone Age) and the Early Bronze Age. The former included the foundations of structures made of rough stones and some installations. These are dated to the Early Chalcolithic (c. 6000 years ago). The latter included the foundations of massive structures made of large stones. The widest wall measured 1.7 meters in width. The pottery there is dated to the Early Bronze Age I period (3300–3000 BCE). The site was surveyed by Yehuda Neʾeman and by the Manasseh Hill Country Survey. A survey and an excavation was conducted in 1993 by Eli Yannai of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). It revealed the massive extent of the site during the Early Bronze Age, as well as settlement remains from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods, and sherds from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. The site was excavated between 2000 and 2002 by a team led by A. Zertal. En Esur was excavated by professional and volunteer archaeologists between January 2017 and 2019, with the research overseen by archaeologists Itai Elad and Yitzhak Paz. The work was organized in part by the Israel Antiquities Authority and financed by Netivei Israel, Israel's national transportation infrastructure company. During the process of excavation, archaeologists found a temple within the city that was built approximately 2,000 years before the rest of the site. In an announcement of their discovery, researchers called En Esur "cosmopolitan" and the "New York of the Early Bronze Age". ==Location==

'En Esur stands in the northern Sharon plain, c. 1 km east of Moshav Ein Iron, at the outlet of Wadi Ara, a valley which allowed the ancient international coastal highway to bypass the difficult section squeezed between the sea and western Mount Carmel by passing through the mountain. Today, the important Highway 65 follows the same route and cuts through the archaeological site of En Sur. ==History==

The site of En Esur consists of three elements: Tel Esur, which is the main tell (a mound of accumulated human settlement layers) covering c. 28 dunams, a smaller mound southeast of it, and an open field that surrounds the mounds, which was occupied by a massive, densely built city during the Early Bronze Age. Little is known about this phase; no traces of structures were found, and only a few artefacts. Chalcolithic Early Chalcolithic . In addition to the road, the site has been disturbed by modern developments including several buildings and a reservoir. The site was occupied throughout the Early Chalcolithic period, founded around 5000 BC. There were only scattered finds from Early Chalcolithic I and a small occupation in Early Chalcolithic III. It was during the Early Chalcolithic II (EC II) period that the site became a significant place, reaching a size of 50 hectares. The archaeologists uncovered a c. 60 m2 large area, free of dwellings, used for cultic activities. This would have made the settlement much larger than Tel Megiddo in Israel and Jericho in the West Bank, and therefore the largest settlement in the Southern Levant during this period, but smaller than more distant cities in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Archaeologist Itai Elad stated that En Esur is double the size of other large settlements known in the area. Archaeologists excavating the site believe that the city was planned, and included not only streets, alleys and squares, but also facilities for storage and drainage, and a cemetery. En Esur was surrounded by fortified walls that were high. The inhabitants of En Esur are thought to have been an agricultural people. They would have traded with other regions and kingdoms. which was located in a public area and includes a courtyard with a huge stone basin for rituals. The Tell el-Asawir necropolis, located near a stone quarry, underwent a salvage excavation in 2003, resulting in a find presented to the press as "the largest Bronze Age necropolis in the world". The Ministry of Religious Affairs intervened and the thousands of human skeletons excavated from burial chambers measuring up to 100 m2 had to be reburied before they could be scientifically studied, although their age excluded the possibility of them being the remains of Jews, which are not to be disturbed under Jewish religious laws. In Egypt, the rise of the 1st Dynasty with Narmer and Aha occurred in the final EB IB, with Djer marking the transitional EB IB/EB IIA. Trade centers in Lower Egypt, such as Tell el-Farkha declined with trade routes changing. Climate conditions during the EB II (c. 3050/3000-2750/2720 BCE) were generally drier before they improved in EB IIIA (c. 2720-2500 BCE), but 'En Esur did not revive as an urban center for the rest of EBA. Middle Bronze Age Unlike Tel Bet She'an, Tel Megiddo and other sites in the Levant, there is no evidence of a return to urbanization in the following Middle Bronze Age. Iron Age Administrative center In excavations led by S. Bar in 2010–2014 on the western slopes of the small mound (Area D), a large public structure from the early 8th century BCE (Iron Age IIB) came to light. The fortified tower abutted by a storehouse was interpreted as being part of a regional administrative centre, due to similarities with other contemporary public complexes. ==Preservation==

In October 2019, according to Haaretz, En Esur was slated to be paved over by a planned highway interchange All findings were photographed and computer-processed, the 3D documentation of the site allowing archaeologists to continue studying it after it has been covered over. The Agence France-Presse has reported that the road plans have been modified in order to protect the archaeological site. ==See also==