Tomb of Assyrian official excavated in Northern Israel?

ARCHAEOLOGY: Archaeologists Stunned by Lavish Assyrian-period Tomb in Northern Israel.Hundreds of luxury artifacts accompanied the 2,700-year-old burial. Could these be the remains of an Assyrian governor who ruled over the vanquished Kingdom of Israel? (Ariel David, Haaretz).

Furthermore, in the Assyrian period, the fields around Tevet continued to be royal lands as they had been under the Israelites, so they belonged to and served the empire. The deceased was most likely a high-ranking official in the Assyrian administration, if not the provincial governor himself, [Dr. Omer] Sergi suggests. The tomb's unusual location may have served a political purpose. In ancient times, ancestral graves were often used to claim ownership of land, so the lavish burial of an Assyrian official may have been a way to link the fertile lands of the Jezreel Valley to their new overlords.

"If you consider that the body was coming from Megiddo, then you should immediately imagine also the procession," Sergi says. "This funeral must have been a really big event, with lots of people walking from Megiddo to Horvat Tevet, and by this also marking the connection between the two places."

This was a salvage excavation and they almost didn't explore this part of the site. That was close!

This has been a week for ancient Assyrian artifacts in Israel.

The underlying article is open-access in the current issue (52.2 2025) of Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University.

A Unique Assemblage of Cremation Burial from Ḥorvat Tevet and Assyrian Imperial Rule in the Jezreel Valley

Omer Peleg, Karen Covello-Paran, Hannes Bezzel, Yuval Gadot & Omer Sergei Pages 217-255 | Published online: 23 Oct 2025 https://doi.org/10.1080/03344355.2025.2550116

Abstract

The excavation at Ḥorvat Tevet revealed a unique cremation burial assemblage, dating to the Iron IIC. This diverse assemblage, richer than comparable burials throughout the Levant, includes unparalleled pottery objects and luxury items that reflect extensive trade networks across the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia and emphasise the high status of the deceased and the community that carried out the burial. The opulence of the burial contrasts sharply with meagre findings in the site’s Iron IIC occupational level. In this article, we present the assemblage and discuss the practice of cremation burials in the Iron Age Levant. In this light, we then demonstrate how this assemblage may contribute to the ongoing discussion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s socio-economic dynamics and territorial strategies in the Jezreel Valley and beyond.

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