Tel Kinneret (Arabic: Tell el-‘Oreimeh) is located on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee, about 10 km north of Tiberias. In biblical times the name of the place was “Kinneret”, the reason the lake was named after it. In the Roman period, the name “Gennesaret” was used, and so the nearby Plain of Ginosar got its name. The site is located on a natural hill opposite the coast to the east and adjacent to the Plain of Ginosar to the south. The site is next to the “via maris”, through which troops and goods were transported between Egypt and Syria. The main water source is the spring of Kinar, which flows from its foothills. These two features of the site explain its flourishment for thousands of years. In the archaeological research, the site has yielded important findings for the continuity of Canaanite urban culture in the Iron Age 1 period. It was a large city, maybe the capital of a political entity on the eve of the rise of Israel and Aram-Damascus.
View from the site, with ancient remains, and the Lake of Galilee in the background
Research history
The site was explored intermittently by European explorers in the 19th and 20th centuries. The first excavations were conducted in 1932 and 1939 by Robert Koppel of the German Görres-Gesellschaft. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, several excavations were conducted under the direction of Gershon Edelstein (Antiquities Department), Jak Yakar (Tel Aviv University), and M.M. Wynn (University of Southern Mississippi). In 1982, a systematic excavation project began, first by the expedition of Volkmar Fritz from the universities of Mainz and Giessen in Germany, and from 2002 under the “Kinneret Regional Project”, which includes several European universities and is managed by Stephan Munger (Bern, Switzerland), Joha Pekela (Helsinki, Finland) and Jürgen Zangenberg (Leiden, Germany).
The beginning of settlement and urbanization on the site
The earliest evidence of human activity dates back to Chalcolithic period and maybe even as early as to the Ceramic Neolithic period (around 5500-3700 B.C). However, the finds from these periods are very scarce and were not published. Important evidence was discovered from the Early Bronze Age 1-2 periods (around 3700-3000 B.C), including architectural remains of a settlement that developed into a fortified city that was abandoned around 3000 B.C. The city was resettled during the 20th century B.C., the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. The fortifications were renewed in the Late Bronze Age I (16th-15th centuries B.C.). This is the period when the New Kingdom in Egypt took over Canaan. In the list of cities conquered by Pharaoh Thutmose III, a site named “K-N-N-R-T” is mentioned “, which took place under the auspices of the royal city of Hazor.
A late Canaanite city in the Iron Age 1B
After the withdrawal of Egypt, a large city was established here at the beginning of the 11th century B.C. This is the most significant phase in the site’s history. The excavations revealed a well-planned residential quarter with wide streets. The urban planning was necessary due to the slope of the hill. Many industrial facilities were discovered in the city, including olive processing installations. The plant finds and animal bones indicate that the people of the city used Lake Kinneret for fishing and the surrounding area for grazing sheep and growing grains, legumes, and fruits. It has been suggested that the city flourished due to the migration of refugees from the Canaanite Hazor, which was destroyed after the abandonment of Egypt. It is possible that Kinneret was the central political entity in the regions around northern Kinneret until the rise of Israel and Aram-Damascus.
View of Area I, the residential quarter (2007). From the 2009 report in Hadashot Arkheologiyot.
Various finds show the Canaanite culture of Kinneret in this period. A communal or ritual structure was discovered with vessels decorated with animal motifs such as a lion and a deer and a ceramic model of a temple. These cultic traditions are known from the Jordan Valley, and Ugarit, and may have originated from the island of Crete. Another example is a figurine of a naked woman that was discovered in one of the houses, which illustrates the worship of female goddesses that were associated with daily and domestic activities.
The city was destroyed around 950 B.C. in an earthquake that caused some of the buildings to catch fire. The settlement was revived for a short time and on a limited scale. Incense stands were found on the ruins, which may indicate the mourning rituals of the survivors of the disaster.
A fortified site between the kingdoms of Israel and Aram-Damascus
As mentioned, the site was identified with the biblical city “Kinneret”, mentioned in the book of Joshua, and it seems that it was an important city because it gave the lake its name. After the earthquake, The site was deserted for about 200 years until it was resettled in the Iron Age 2, between the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. During this period, the area was subject to disputes between the kingdoms of Israel and Damascus, and it likely passed from hand-to-hand between the two. In the early stage, the site included a large building at the top of the hill, and then a fortified complex was built, which was destroyed in Tiglath-Pilaser III’s campaign against the Kingdom of Israel in 734 B.C. After the destruction, a building was found that was probably used by the many empires that ruled the land afterward.
The mound was mostly used for agriculture in later periods, such as the Hellenistic, Byzantine, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods.
Bibliography:
Kleiman, A. 2022. Beyond Israel and Aram: The Archaeology and History of Iron Age Communities in the Central Levant. Mohr Siebeck,
Münger, S., Zangenberg, J., and Pakkala, J. 2011. “KINNERET—AN URBAN CENTER AT THE CROSSROADS: Excavations on Iron IB Tel Kinrot at the Lake of Galilee.” Near Eastern Archaeology 74, no. 2: 68–90.
Fritz, V. 1992. Chinneret, Tell. In: Stern, E. (ed.) New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land 1 299-301 .
Fritz, V. 1992. Chinneret, Tell. In: Stern, E. (ed.) New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land 5 (supplement). 1684-1685.