Amnon Ben-Tor

Amnon Ben-Tor was an Israeli archaeologist, Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the recipient of the 2019 Israel Prize in archaeology. His main field of expertise was the archaeology of the ancient Near East and biblical archaeology. He specialized in the art of Bronze Age carving, relationships between ancient cultures, and since 1990 focused on researching Tel Hazor as a key to solving many mysteries in the field. He was Yigal Yadin's partner in the excavations at Tel Hazor and also excavated with him at Masada, writing a book on the subject. Ben-Tor held the view that the united monarchy of Israel did indeed exist in reality as a kingdom that ruled over significant parts of the Land of Israel, contrary to the opinion of "minimalist" professors like Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na'aman and Ze'ev Herzog, and this was based on an archaeological interpretation of findings in the field, not religious faith or ideology, as he defined it.