Dor
DOR (dôr). A very ancient Canaanite city on the coast of Palestine, about eight miles (thirteen km.) north of Caesarea.
DOR dôr (דֹּ֣אר, דֹּ֖ור; LXX Δωρ,
The king of Dor supported Jabin, king of Hazor, in his unsuccesful battle against Joshua at the waters of Merom (
Tiglath-pileser III (744-727 b.c.) conquered Dor and established an Assyrian governor over it. In 219 b.c. the city was besieged by Antiochus the Great. He did not capture Dor, however, for rumors of an approaching Egyp. army caused him to agree to a truce. The Phoen. cities were subject to the Ptolemies until c. 200 b.c. when they were taken by the Seleucids who made Dor and several other cities independent. In 139 b.c. Dor was besieged by Antiochus VII (
The site of Dor is identified with modern el-Burj N of Tanturah.
Bibliography
CAH (1954), VII, 190, 192; Jos. Antiq. V. i. 22; XIII. viii. 2; XIV. iv. 4; XIX. vi. 3; J. Pritchard, ANET (1955), 26; D. Baly, Geography of the Bible (1957), 131-133; J. Simon, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the OT (1959), 272, 418, 419, 433.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915)
dor, do’-ra (do’r, dor, "habitation," "circle"; Dor; Josephus, Dora; modern TanTurah): A town of the coast of Palestine, South of Carmel (Apion, II, 10; Vita, 8), about 8 miles North of Caesarea. It was occupied in the earliest times by the Canaanites and probably belonged to Phoenicia, tradition saying that it was a Sidonian colony. It furnished an abundance of the shell-fish so valuable for the manufacture of the Tyrian purple, and this would have led the Phoenicians to occupy the site. In the 12th century BC, the region was occupied by the northern people who raided the whole Syrian coast and Egypt. They were driven back by the Egyptians, but renewed the attack, and the weakness of Egypt in the middle of the century enabled them to settle in the coast region South of Carmel; a tribe of them occupied Dor, and others the territory to the limits of the desert of Sinai, and became the Philistine people so well known by their contests with the Hebrews. Naphoth-dor, "the heights of Dor," may be the slopes of Carmel inland from TanTurah. Dor fell within the territory assigned to Manasseh (
The inhabitants of Dor were at enmity with the Phoenician towns and it would seem that the Sidonians seized it to obtain its rich supplies of shell-fish, and this probably caused the war of retaliation waged by the Philistines, under the lead of Ashkelon, against Sidon in the middle of the 11th century. Sidon was besieged by land, and the inhabitants were compelled to flee to Tyre. Dor seems to have been occupied by Solomon since he placed one of his purveyors in the town (