Solomon's Port of Dor, Israel - Underwater Surveys

The natural port of Dor straddles the Mediterranean coast of Israel 35 kilometres south of Haifa. When Wreck Watch started surveying its waters in collaboration with Kurt Raveh of the Dor Maritime Archaeology Project in 1989, this quiet provincial anchorage was vastly overshadowed by its southern neighbour, King Herod’s port city of Caesarea Maritima. 

While Caesarea was a short-lived colossus that was submerged through tectonic faulting within 100 years of its late 1st century BC foundation, Dor’s history was far longer. With its anchorages protected by a 965 metre-long chain of five offshore islets, Dor was Israel’s principal port of call from the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1800 BC) through the reign of King Solomon in the 10th century BC and until the rise of Herod. Following the submergence of Caesarea, Dor rose again in prominence from the Byzantine period onwards. 

Surveying its three bays led to the discovery of 12 shipwrecks, the largest cluster in the Eastern Mediterranean. Almost all of the sites are ‘bottlenecked’ in the southern bay and range from an 11th century BC wreck of amphoras that probably held imported purple dye from Sarepta in Lebanon to sections of a late 18th century Napoleonic wreck that was being salvaged when a storm rolled in and disaster struck. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

The near-shore waters also contain a Phoenician wreck with stone anchors, mortaria, flat-shouldered 6th-4th century BC amphoras and a bronze Thracian war helmet with exquisite sculpted cheek pieces. Its shallow waters are particularly rich in Byzantine wrecks of the 6th-7th centuries AD, characterized by spreads of ballast stones sealing wooden hulls. Crushed Palestinian bag-shaped wine amphoras with smaller quantities of storage jars from the Gaza/Ashkelon region overlie the wrecks. Important small finds include copper jugs and cooking pots – the personal belongings of sailors and crew – with crenellated seams typifying production in Turkey, and bronze steelyards incised with Christian crosses and the name of one sea captain, Psates of Rhion. 

The local waters have yielded the most diverse array of storage amphoras in Israel and the largest collection of Middle, Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age stone anchors in the Mediterranean. The Wreck Watch/DMAP surveys demonstrated that stone continued to be used as poor man’s alternatives on Byzantine ships after composite lead and wood, and subsequently all-iron anchors, replaced stone as standard breaking mechanisms on ancient wrecks. 

In 1985, the pioneering English marine archaeologist Alexander Flinder described a day spent exploring the coast of Dor with the late, great Prof. Avner Raban, and concluded in Secrets of the Bible Seas (1985), that “except for cursory observations, the coast at Dor remains untouched. One day I hope that some enterprising institution will devote itself to the beaches… for I am convinced that here lies the key to much of the ancient maritime world of which we still know little.” Our decade of fieldwork in these waters proved Flinder’s thoughts to be prophetic. 

S. Kingsley and K. Raveh, ‘Stone Anchors from Byzantine Contexts in Dor Harbour, Israel’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 23.1 (1994), 1-12. 

S. Kingsley and K. Raveh, ‘A Reassessment of the Northern Harbour of Dor, Israel’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 23.4 (1994), 289-95. 

S. Kingsley and K. Raveh, The Ancient Harbour and Anchorage at Dor, Israel. Results of the Underwater Surveys, 1976-1991 (BAR Int. Series S 626, Oxford, 1996). 

K. Raveh and S. Kingsley, ‘The Status of Dor in Late Antiquity: a Maritime Perspective’, Biblical Archaeologist 54.4 (1991), 198-207. 

K. Raveh and S. Kingsley, ‘The Wreck Complex at the Entrance to Dor Harbour, Israel: Preliminary Details’, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 21.4 (1992), 309-315.