Tel Rehov and the Phoenicians: The Movie Demo Reel with Archaeologists Amihai Mazar and Nava Panitz-Cohen with rare footage of pottery vessels from the Hebrew University Tel Rehov pottery archive and pottery room.

The Phoenicians were once considered a lost civilization even though their influence on the modern world is unmistakable. There are best known for their ship called the ‘trireme’ named after the three rows of oars, manned with one man per oar, that they used to navigate the Mediterranean Sea and that appears in the archaeological record in Iron Age. They are also the civilization that gave us the oldest verified alphabet. They were innovators in shipbuilding, navigation, industry, agriculture, and government and their international trade network is considered to have set in place the economic, political, and cultural foundations of Classical Western civilization. The ancient site of Tel Rehov in modern-day Israel is one of the sites known to archaeologists today where the Phoenicians left evidence of their civilization as unearthed by the archaeologist’s trowel.

This Demo Reel is from a concept documentary on Tel Rehov to explore the connections between the Phoenicians who inhabited the Northern Coastal Plain of the Mediterranean Sea north of ancient Canaan and Israel and the inhabitants of the Land of Israel who lived at Tel Rehov. Located inland in the Bet She’an Valley almost 100 kms (60 miles) away from the Phoenician city of Tyre on the Coastal Plain there is nevertheless evidence here of the Phoenicians.

The Bible records a close relationship between the Phoenicians and the Israelites, even in Jerusalem. Who were these ancient people who lived at Tel Rehov where evidence of the Phoenicians was discovered? Were they Canaanites or Israelites or Phoenicians or a combination of all these peoples?

Evidence from this little known site of Tel Rehov meaning “broad”, “wide place” (Hebrew: תל רחוב; Tell es-Sarem (Arabic: تل الصارم) can help answer these questions.

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