Now the mystery shifts north of the Sea of Galilee to the tell, or mound, of ancient Hazor, where Professor John Garstang excavated in 1928. Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin turned to this huge tell in 1955. He had in mind a Biblical statement that reads: “This is the account of those conscripted for forced labor that King Solomon levied to build the house of Jehovah and . . . the wall of Jerusalem and Hazor and Megiddo and Gezer.” (1 Kings 9:15) It seemed logical that Solomon’s engineers would follow a master plan for similar fortifications in other cities they rebuilt. Did such Solomonic gates exist at Hazor?

As Yadin’s workers progressed in their excavations, they found a casemate wall, a double wall with rooms in between. Then a large structure connected to the walls began to appear. Yadin says: “We immediately realized that we had discovered the gate . . . Furthermore, it was soon evident that the gate’s plan​—comprising six chambers and two towers—​as well as its dimensions were identical to those of the gate discovered [many years] earlier at Megiddo . . . Excitement in our camp intensified . . . We traced the plan of the Megiddo gate on the ground, marking it with pegs to denote corners and walls, and then instructed our labourers to dig according to the marking, promising: ‘here you will find a wall,’ or ‘there you will find a chamber.’ When our ‘prophecies’ proved correct, our prestige went up tremendously . . . When we read [to them] the biblical verse about Solomon’s activities in Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer, our prestige took a dive, but that of the Bible rose sky-high!” ​—Hazor: The Rediscovery of a Great Citadel of the Bible.

It seemed that the mystery of the gates was being solved precisely as expected according to the clues in the Bible. Yet, what about Gezer, to the south? Yadin knew that Irish archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister, who had excavated there between 1902 and 1909, had found nothing that was assigned to Solomon. Might important clues have been overlooked in what even Yadin called “The Mystery of Gezer”?

He relates: “The discoveries at Hazor and the famous passage in 1 Kings led me to a fresh examination of Macalister’s report in the hope of locating a gate. One can well imagine my astonishment and unbounded excitement when . . . I came across a layout . . . entitled ‘Plan of the Maccabean Castle of Gezer.’” Macalister dated the remains of that “castle” to the rebellion of the Jewish Maccabees (second century B.C.E.). But Yadin thought that he could see in this old drawing ‘a casemate wall, an outer gatehouse, and even more important what looked like half of a city gate, exactly like those found in Megiddo and Hazor.’ Yadin published an article on these clues. Later, Dr. William G. Dever excavated at Gezer. The result? Dever excitedly wrote: “Solomon did indeed re-build Gezer!” Or as Yadin puts it: “Sure enough, not only did Dever’s team find the other half of the gate, but the stratigraphy and pottery demonstrated conclusively that the complex had been built in Solomon’s times.”

So the mystery was solved. Yadin observed in The Biblical Archaeologist (Volume XXXIII, 1970, 3): “With the aid of the brief biblical passage from Kings, the Solomonic fortifications, identical in plan in the three cities, were located and dated.”

[Pictures on page 25]

Based on 1 Kings 9:15, archaeologists found at Hazor a gate of the same size and shape as that in Megiddo