DAN (CITY) (Heb. דָּנ׃֙), a city of the northern extremity of ancient Israel, situated on the S base of Mount Hermon close to one of the tributaries of the Jordan River, the Nahr Leddan. It was commonly used as a symbol of the extent of Israelite territory in the phrase, “from Dan to Beer-sheba” (Judg 20:1, et al.). The mound where the ancient city stood is presently known as Tell el-Qādi and rises about seventy-five ft. above the grass land roundabout. In ancient Canaanite times it was known as Laish (variant, Leshem Heb. לָ֑יְשָׁה, variant, Heb. לֶ֨שֶׁמ׃֙, as in Judg 18:7; variant, Josh 19:47). The name was prob. derived from an old Sem. word for “lion” (Heb. לַ֣יִשׁ, Isa 30:6, et al.). It is known that the site was occupied as early as the Bronze Age and prob. was inhabited by 3500 b.c. The town was on the trade route to the Syrian coast; specifically, it was about midway between ancient Aram, Tyre and Sidon. It is above the great valley of Beth-Rehob which stretches from N to S between Mt. Lebanon and Mt. Hermon. It was in this region that Abraham and his retinue pursued the Elamite king, Chedorlaomer (Gen 14:14). The Danite conquest of the city is reviewed in Judges 18 which also states, “they dwelt in security, after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and unsuspecting, lacking nothing that is in the earth, and possessing wealth” (v. 7). After the revolt of Jeroboam, Dan along with Bethel became the locations of the two shrines which he set up with golden calves prob. as symbols of Baal worship (1 Kings 12:29). So ingrained did this worship at the shrines become that even the massacre of Baal worshipers by Jehu did not stamp out the worship at Dan (2 Kings 10:28-31). Subsequently it was one of the towns taken by the Syrian king, Ben-hadad, in fulfillment of the warning in 2 Kings 10:32, “the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel.” Dan was recaptured by Israel under Jeroboam II (14:25), but was again captured by the Assyrian Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 b.c.). In accord with his usual policy often depicted on Assyrian reliefs of the period, he deported the inhabitants of captured towns, thus the Israelites were carried off to resettle the cities of the Medes (2 Kings 17:6). Dan is mentioned in the extrabiblical sources as early as the conquest annals of Thutmose III (1490-1436 b.c.), in which it appears as R w ś (L/Ra-wish). It is also mentioned by Josephus, as the area in which Titus, at his father Vespasian’s orders, stamped out a revolt in the Fall of a.d. 67. (Jos. War IV, I, 1ff.)