Israel isn't big on signposting sites of interest, other than the bigger touristy ones. Maybe it's because such sites are everywhere you look, though you might have to look quite closely, and often with a trained eye! Almost every hilltop in the Galilee has archaeological remains of one sort or another.
So it is with Horvat Gamum, a small stand-alone inconspicuous wooded hill at Tzomet Misgav (Misgav junction), at the top of the Hilazon Creek, near our home, completely unmarked by waymarkers or signs, and with no visible footpaths. Despite being adjacent to a dusty quarry, during the winter and spring it is inviting with luscious green grass and myriad wildflowers. In the dry summer, it is bald but for its trees, and aspparently littered with rocks.
As with so many of these tours "off the beaten track," it started with an innocent walk for the sake of it, with Amber and Yonatan, in December 2012 (Yonatan still had long hair then). Yes, Horvat means ruin, but we didn't even know the hill's name then. And though it was covered in stones, they were all rough hewn. But at the top we found a hole in the ground over a bell cistern (thankfully covered with an old piece of iron grating), and so we started noticing other signs of former civilisation, and later worked out what place we had been seeing.
Not that there is concensus. Horvat Gamum (Arabic: Khirbet Jumeijma, khirbet also meaning ruins) is in fact a hill surmounted by the ruins of a Bronze and Iron age fortified city, spread over a round area with a diameter of about 70 metres, arranged in two to three levels, around the circumference of which there are traces of walls which we managed to make out, despite the luscious growth - these things are often better discerned during the dry summer. Although yet to be excavated - there is a long waiting list - according to the archaeologist, Yohanan Aharoni, these ruins are biblical Huquq, although that place is normally identified near the modern Kibbutz of Hukuk. Being at the top of the Hilazon Creek, it was located on one of the branches of Via Maris (the Biblical "way of the sea"), which formed the ancient route from Acco (Acre) to the east.
On top of the hill we found the bases of houses, apparently with several water storage cisterns located between them which we didn’t find, although we did find the one huge bell-shaped cistern at the very summit which I already mentioned. Fragments of crude pottery can be found in the ruins when there is less undergrowth; we might have to attempt a further walk in the heat of the summer when the ground is again bare.
It is very hard to find anything out about the site, but it was probably destroyed by the Assyrians in the 8th century BCE (734-732), after the intrusion of Tiglath-Pileser III (Kings II 15: 29). This intrusion wiped out most of the Galilean sites, as written in the Bible. The ruins may have been resettled partially after the return of the exiles during the 5th century until the 3rd century BCE (Hellenistic period), and were abandoned since then.
Hukok (if thus it is) was a city located in the region of the tribe of Naphtali. It is mentioned (as Hukoka) in Joshua 19:32,34: "The sixth lot came out for the children of Naphtali, even for the children of Naphtali according to their families.... And the border turned westward to Aznoth-Tabor, and went out from thence to Hukok; and it reached to Zebulun on the south, and reached to Asher on the west,..." It is also referred to in 1 Chronicles 6:74-75 as a city of the Gershonite Levities; it may have been transferred to the tribe of Asher after the pact of King Solomon and Hiram, when that tribe lost the cities of Cabul and was compensated with cities of Naphtali. "And out of the tribe of Asher; Mashal with her suburbs, and Abdon with her suburbs, And Hukok with her suburbs, and Rehob with her suburbs." The same text is quoted in Joshua 21:30-31, though Hukok appears there as Helkath.
On our trip we observed many flora, as well as some lovely butterflies and a tortoise whom we disturbed, as well as a horse tethered by a local Bedouin who, though not present, clearly used the foot of the hill for grazing. You can see more pictures here.