The archaeologist estimates that the complete statue would equal the size of a fully-grown man. Presently, only a preliminary reading of the inscriptions has been attempted, and the title and name of the Egyptian official who originally owned the sculpture are not yet entirely clear.

The statue, Ben-Tor said, was originally placed either in the official’s tomb or in a temple – most likely a temple of the Egyptian god Ptah – and most of the texts inscribed on the statue’s base include words of praise to the official who may have served in the region of Memphis, the primary cult center of the god Ptah.

They also include the customary Egyptian funerary formula, ensuring eternal supplies of offerings for the statue’s owner.

The finding – coupled with a sphinx fragment of the Egyptian king Mycerinus (who ruled Egypt in the 25th century BCE), discovered at the site by the research team three years ago – are the only monumental Egyptian statues found so far in second millennium contexts in the entire Levant.

The discovery of these two statues in the same building currently being excavated by the research team indicates the special importance of the building, which was likely the administrative palace of the ruler of the city, as well as that of the entire city of Hazor.

Shlomit Bechar, a doctoral student at the Institute of Archaeology, who has been excavating at Hazor for a decade, is the dig’s co-director, and oversees the main excavation area.

During the course of nearly 30 years of excavations, fragments of 18 different Egyptian statues – both royal and private – dedicated to Egyptian kings and officials, including two sphinxes, were discovered at Hazor.

“Most of these statues were found in layers dated to the Late Bronze Age (15th-13th centuries BCE), corresponding to the New Kingdom in Egypt,” said Ben-Tor.

“This is the largest number of Egyptian statues found so far in any site in the Land of Israel, although there is no indication that Hazor was one of the Egyptian strongholds in Southern Canaan, nor of the presence of an Egyptian official at Hazor during the Late Bronze Age.”

Ben-Tor added that most Egyptian statues found at Hazor date to Egypt’s “Middle Kingdom” (19th-18th centuries BCE), a time when Hazor did not yet exist.

“It thus seems that the statues were sent by an Egyptian king in the ‘New Kingdom’ as official gifts to the king of Hazor, or as dedications to a local temple, regardless of their already being ‘antiques,’” he said.

“This is not surprising, considering the special status of the king of Hazor, who was the most important king in Southern Canaan at the time. The extraordinary importance of Hazor in the 15th-13th centuries BCE is indicated also by the Biblical reference to Hazor as ‘the head of all those kingdoms’ (Joshua 11:10).”

All the statues at the site were found broken into pieces and scattered over a large area, he noted.

“Clear signs of mutilation indicate that most of them were deliberately and violently smashed, most probably in the course of the city’s final conquest and destruction sometime in the 13th century B.C.E,” said Ben-Tor.

“The deliberate mutilation of statues of kings and dignitaries accompanying the conquest of towns is a well-known practice in ancient times (I Samuel 5:1-4; Isaiah 11:9), as well as in our time.”

The Hazor excavations, which began in the mid-1950s under the direction of the late Professor Yigael Yadin, are carried out on behalf of HU. The excavations resumed in 1990, still on behalf of the university, and the Israel Exploration Society, and are named “The Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin.”

"Noteworthy is the intentional mutilation and interment of statues and images of gods, kings, and other types of authority. All public structures came to a violent end, with evidence of fierce conflagration and severe destruction clearly visible. The fate of the domestic structures is still difficult to assess, but at least in one case (in area S) a courtyard house was abandoned in an orderly fashion rather than being violently destroyed.

Canaanite Hazor was destroyed sometime during the thirteenth century B.C.E. More precise dating, whether in the first or second half of the century, is still debated. Related to this issue is the identification of the agents of destruction, whether the Israelites, other Canaanite city-states, or the Hazorites themselves, in an act of vengeance targeted at the symbols of power of the ruling elites. In any case, the entire site was abandoned, the acropolis for at least a century and the lower city for good."

"A small-scale excavation, directed by Sharon Zuckerman, was conducted in Area S in the center of the lower city."