Tjeker - Settlement at Dor

Settlement At Dor

The Tjeker conquered the city-state of Dor, on the coast of Canaan near modern Haifa, and turned it into a large, well-fortified city, the center of a Tjeker kingdom that is confirmed archaeologically in the northern Sharon plain; it was violently destroyed in the mid-11th century BCE, firing the mud bricks red and depositing a huge layer of ash and debris. Ephraim Stern connects the destruction with the contemporary expansion of the Phoenicians, which was checked by the Philistines further south and the Israelites. No mention of the Tjeker is made after that time, the period of archaeological and literary silence. The Tjeker are one of the few of the Sea Peoples for whom a ruler's name is recorded - in the 11th-century papyrus account of Wenamun, an Egyptian priest, the ruler of Dor is given as "Beder".

After two intermediate occupations, the earlier of which has yielded imported Cypriote ceramics as well as Phoenician wares and is followed by a well-stratified and important Phoenician presence in the early 10th century the site of Dor fell to the Israelites under David.