Endor
עֵין דֹּר · “Ein Dor” on the map
Where was biblical Endor? At Hurvat Tsaftsafot, near Kibbutz Ein Dor, about 20 km southwest of Tiberias. I mark it probable.
On the night before his last battle, King Saul disguised himself and crept past the Philistine camp to consult the woman of Endor. He had banished the mediums from the land himself. She raised Samuel, and Samuel told him that by tomorrow he and his sons would be with him.
By Aaron Shaffier, licensed Israel tour guide and mapmaker · About the mapmaker
- Site today
- Hurvat Tsaftsafot, near Kibbutz Ein Dor
- How sure
- Probable The best case we have, with real alternatives.
- Other names
- En-dor, Ein Dar, Indur, Hurvat Tsaftsafot, Khirbet es-Safsafa
- Location
- 32.6431° N, 35.3904° E (Google Maps)
How we know where it was
The geography makes the story work. Saul was camped on Gilboa. The Philistines were at Shunem, on the Hill of Moreh across the valley. Endor lies at the far foot of that hill, behind the enemy. To reach it Saul had to slip around the Philistine camp, over the Hill of Moreh, in the dark. The disguise and the night got him through. The text isn't being poetic. It's being literal.
The name survived. The Arab village of Indur, at the foot of the Hill of Moreh, carried it into the 20th century. The Book of Joshua lists Endor with Taanach and Megiddo among the Canaanite towns of this area, which fits. A psalm remembers enemies destroyed at Endor who became dung for the field.
But finds at Indur itself go back only to the Roman period. So archaeologists looked nearby. At Hurvat Tsaftsafot, a ruin about 1 km away, they found Bronze and Iron Age pottery. That is now the commonly accepted site of biblical Endor. Indur was most likely the later town that inherited the name.
The spring ties the two together. Ein means a spring, and Endor had one. Travelers in the 1800s described a natural cave in the hillside at Indur, its narrow mouth between two rocks under a fig tree, with a small spring inside that never ran dry. So the picture is one Endor: the town of Saul's day on the ruin at Tsaftsafot, and the spring that gave it its name in the cave a short walk away.
Indur is the rival. It holds the name but not the right period, so the map leans to the older ruin beside it.
Visiting today
Hurvat Tsaftsafot is a small ruin near Kibbutz Ein Dor in the Lower Galilee, and the kibbutz has a local archaeology museum.
Read it in the Bible
Verse numbers follow the Hebrew Bible. In a handful of chapters English Bibles count one verse off.
See Ein Dor on the interactive map →
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Get the print + free ebookNearby places
- Mount Tabor 5 km north
- Shunem 7 km southwest
- The Spring in Jezreel 11 km southwest
- The Spring of Harod 11 km south
- Jezreel 11 km southwest
- Mount Gilboa 15 km south