Dig Scholarship: Tel Dor

We do not typically receive applications for Dig Scholarships from former second lieutenants in the Chinese Army, but Yiyi Chen was not our typical applicant. Chen earned a bachelor’s degree in Hebrew language and literature from Peking University in 1994 and is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Cornell’s Near Eastern studies department. In addition to his academic workload, Chen is translating the Hebrew Bible into Chinese, the first such translation in more than a century.

In his application for a scholarship, Chen told us that he wanted to join a Cornell team digging at Tel Dor, along northern Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The team would be trying to identify the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age. “The finds from this excavation will illuminate the social, economic and cultural context of the early Biblical period, and will probably also shed light on the hotly debated issue concerning the origin of the early Israelites,” Chen wrote us. He also hoped that the dig would uncover new epigraphic material—material that would be directly relevant to his dissertation topic, northern Hebrew dialects in the Bible.

Chen added that even if the dig failed to produce any new inscriptions, it would nonetheless “equip me with firsthand knowledge of the people who lived in this region, with whom the northern tribes of Israel had a close relation, and from whom they received significant influence, both cultural and linguistic.”

Here is his report on his experiences at Dor last summer: