While evidence suggests a period of abandonment during the Persian era, it was later rebuilt as a Hellenistic city with a notable shrine.

[2] The Hebrew Bible states that prior to its conquest by the tribe of Dan the site was known as Laish with variant spellings within the Books of Joshua, Judges and Isaiah.

[5] Rabbinic works,[6] and writers like Philostorgius, Theodoret, Benjamin of Tudela and Samuel ben Samson, all incorrectly identified Dan or Laish, with Banias (Paneas).

[2] 19th century Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt identified the source of the Jordan River having the name "Dhan" (Arabic: ضان) in his travelogue published posthumously in 1822.

[10] The American naval officer William F. Lynch was the first to identify Tell el-Qadi as the site of the ancient city of Dan in 1849.

Melting snow from the Hermon mountains provides the majority of the water of the Jordan River, and passes through Dan, making the immediate area highly fertile.

Due to its location close to the border with Syria and Lebanon at the far north of the territory which fell under the British Mandate of Palestine, the site has a long and often bitterly contested modern history, most recently during the 1967 Six-Day War.

The alliance offered little practical benefit due to the remoteness of Laish from Sidon, and the intervening Lebanon mountains.

The Bible describes the Tribe of Dan with 600 men brutally defeating the people of Laish and burning it to the ground, and then building their city in the same spot.

[21] The excavators of Tel Dan uncovered a city gate made of mud bricks on top of megalithic basalt blocks called orthostats,[22] estimated to have been built during the Middle Bronze Age around 1750 BCE.

In the 15th century BCE, Tuthmosis III conquered Dan (called Laysha) along others (Egyptian hieroglyphs did not distinguish between L and R).

[25][26] During the Iron Age I, Egyptian withdrawal from Canaan led Laish (Dan) to become an independent entity allied with the Sidonians.

The Tribe of Dan were seeking an inheritance for themselves, so they sent five of their clan leaders from Zorah and Eshtaol to spy out the land of Laish.

Hebrew script from the era is vowel-less, which would make the inscription the first time that the name David has been found at an archaeological site dating before 500 BCE.

Excavations at the cultic area of Dan have revealed a religious compound with a large four-horned central altar and presenting a diverse amount of cult paraphernalia.

[35] These findings seem to be in line with the biblical account which portrays Dan as a major cultic center of the Kingdom of Israel from the reign of Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:28–30).