Ze'ev Herzog
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Ze’ev Herzog (born 1941) is an Israeli archeologist, professor of archaeology at The Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University. Ze’ev Herzog is the director of The Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology since 2005.
Herzog took part in the excavations of Tel Hazor and Tel Megiddo with Yigael Yadin and in excavations at Tel Arad and Tel Be'er Sheva with Yohanan Aharoni.
Herzog directed the excavations at Tel Beer Sheba, Tel Michal and Tel Gerisa and in 1997 has begun a new exploration project at Tel Yafo (ancient Jaffa).
Prof. Herzog serves as archaeological advisor to the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority in the preservation and development of National Parks at Arad and Beer Sheba.
Specializes in Social Archaeology, Ancient Architecture and Field Archaeology
Herzog is among archaeologist leading the claim that “biblical archaeology is not anymore the ruling paradigm in archaeology and that archaeology became an independent discipline with its own conclusions and own observations which indeed present us a picture of a reality of ancient Israel quite different from the one which is described in the biblical stories.”[1]
In 1999, Herzog’s Haaretz weekly magazine cover page article “Deconstructing the walls of Jericho” attracted considerable public attention and debates. In this article Herzog claims that “the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is the fact that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, Jehovah, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai”[2]
Herzog is a co-author of “Has King David's Palace in Jerusalem Been Found?”[3] (Israel Finkelstein, Ze'ev Herzog, Lily Singer-Avitz and David Ussishkin. 2007) which opposes claims made by Eilat Mazar who alledgedly unearthed King David’s palace in Jerusalem.
[edit] Publications
Herzog is the author of numerous books and articles, including:
- Beer-Sheba II: The Early Iron Age Settlements (1984)
- Excavations at Tel Michal, Israel. (1989) ISBN: 9780816616220
- Archaeology of the City: Urban Planning in Ancient Israel and Its Social Implications. (1997)[4] ISBN: 9789654400060
- The Arad Fortresses 1997. [Hebrew].
[edit] External links
- Tel Aviv University Department of Archaeology page for Ze'ev Herzog
- The bible: no evidence, Herzog's original 1999 article in Ha'aretz newspaper (in hebrew)
- Deconstructing the walls of Jericho: biblical myth and archaeological reality, article by Ze'ev Herzog
- Has King David's Palace in Jerusalem Been Found? (complete article)
