No title

The

BIBLICAL

ARCHAEOLOGIS o w

Publishedby THIE AMERICAN

SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH

126 Inman Street, Cambridge, Mass. Vol. XXXIV

September, 1971

No. 3

Now-, My.~

Wil

in

~

~

Fig. 1. Tell el-Hesi, probably Biblical Eglon, in the south-central coastal plain of Israel. The signs of recent excavation are those of a Joint American excavation, John Worrell, Director, Lawrence Toombs, Chief Archaeologist, which was begun in 1970 with the generous assistance of the Smithsonian Foreign Currency program.

Contents What

Archaeology

Can and Cannot

Do, by G. Ernest Wright

. ..

..........

A Problem of Ancient Topography: Lachish and Egloii, by (;. Ernest WVright.. Appendix: Climatic Conditions and Grain Storiage in the Persian P:riod, bN Lawrence

E. Stager

.........

.................... Mosiac Floors at Caesarea: An Archaeological Training Ground, by Thomas D. Newman ........ End of an Era: Albright, de..................... Vaux and Goetze ......... .................. .....

70

76 .86

88 92

70

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (February, May, September, December) by the American Schools of Oriental Research. Its purpose ls to meet the need for a readable, non-technical, yet thoroughly reliable account of archaeological discoveries as they relate to the Bible. Editor: Edward F. Campbell, Jr., with the assistance of Floyd V. Filson in New Testament matters. Editorial correspondence should be sent to the editor at 800 West Belden Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Editorial Board: W. F. Albright, Johns Hopkins University; G. Ernest Wright, Harvard University; Frank M. Cross, Jr., Harvard University; William G. Dever, Jerusalem. $5.00 per year, payable to the American Schools of Oriental Research, Subscriptions: 126 Inman Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. Associate members of ASOR receive the BA automatically. Ten or more subscriptions for group use, mailed and billed to one address, $3.50 per year apiece. Subscriptions in England are available through B. H. Blackwell, Ltd., Broad Street, Oxford. Back Numbers: $1.50 per issue, 1960 to present: $1.75 per issue, 1950-59; $2.00 per issue before 1950. Please remit with order, to the ASOR office. The journal is indexed in Art Index, Index to Religious Periodical Literature, and at the end of every fifth volume of the journal itself. Second-class postage PAID at Cambridge, Massachusetts and additional offices. Copyright by American Schools of Oriental Research, 1971 PRINTED

IN

THE

UNITED

STATES

OF AMERICA,

BY TnANSCRIPT

PRINTING

COMIPANY

PETERBOROUGH, N. H.

What Archaeology Can and Cannot Do

G.ERNESTWRIGHT Harvard

Divinity

School

For a majorityin the Biblical world Albright's work has esablished the basic chronologyfor the events related in Joshua (a 13th century date of the conquest) and the historicalsupport for the backgroundof the narrative.Yet a carefully defined statementof what archaeologyis and is not, does and does not, has been hard to articulate.Such a statementmust follow the experiments of reconstruction,and first attempts may need future modificationwhen the polemical period which is always created when general assumptions arc badly shaken, is past.' While the term "archaeology"was first used by classical authors simply to mean "ancient history",its revival in modern times has meant a narrowing of its meaning to the ruins of past civilizations and cultures, especially their excavation. For Albright and his students archaeology has included both epigraphic and non-epigraphicdiscoveries,even though the investigation of the two must develop each its own set of disciplines. Yet in the antiquarian field gencrally, philologists and archaeologists are usually separate, the former studying documents and the latter the methodologiesof conducting an excavation and the study and presentationof what is found. The field has suffcrcd from too much compartmentalizationat this point. 1. For outstanding attempts at such statement, see especially Roland de Vaux, O.P., "On Right

and Wrong Uses of Archaeology," Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century, pp. 64-80. For a treatment of the same subiject from the standpoint of a classicist, see M. I. Finley,

"Archaeology and History," Daedalus (Winter, 1971), pp. 168-186.

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

71

Furthermore, archaeologists themselves have suffered from too great a separation from one another in their various fields, and usually too great a separationfrom humanistic disciplines on the one hand and from the natural sciences on the other. Anthropologicalarchaeology,for example, startingfrom its primarypoint of reference, primitiveman, has developed methodology and cooperationwith natural sciences more quickly than other fields, because the very nature of most of the deposits dealt with requiredthem to do so in order to extracta maximumof informationfrom a minimum of deposit. On the other hand, the humanistic aspects of the subject have often been short-changed and the resultsimpoverishedby over-zealousattempts to remain non-historical and "scientific"when actually they are simply trying to reconstructall they can about human beings for whom "science"has only a partial application. Classical and most of early Near Eastern archaeology has been dominated by a museum mentality which requires objects for display to a contributing public primarily interested in art and art history. Archaeologists from this backgroundhave been slowest of all to develop an interest in ever more precision and control in methodology. They have to their glory maincained their full humanistic interest, but separationfrom the natural sciences with exceptions has been most notable in the information derivcd from the queries put to their material. Excavation of the great Near Eastern tells has brought such wealth of architectureand objects that there seemed no need to ask further questions than those of the historian regarding chronology, interconnections and typologicalhistory. The conceptual frameworkand methodologyof excavationhas been most highly developed and refined in the historical period by a few exceptional persons whose primarytraining has been in other countries, but who for one reason or another began excavations in Palestine: Petrie and Kenyon from England, Reisner and Albright from the United States. That small corridor between continents has few natural resources,and thus was and is very poor as compared with the centers of world power in antiquity. To gain any positive result from work in the country requires one's turning his attention from an expectation of rich stores of anything, and certainly not great palaces and a wealth of inscriptions, the latter forming the primaryguide to where in time one is located while digging. Pottery chronology and the stratigraphyof the deposits of earth have to be the primaryconcentration. It was Petrie who in 1890 left Egypt for a short period of work at Tell el-Hesi in the southern coastal plain. There he proved that ceramics could be a primary chronological tool by demonstratingthe differences in pottery between levels cut into the steep cliff of the tell eroded by a winter stream. It was Reisner who left Egypt in 1909 and 1910 for two seasons of work at

72

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST(Vol. XXXIV,

Samaria and encountered an intricate jumble on the tell which requiredentirely different strategyfrom anything he had used in Egypt. It was Albright, beginning in 1920, who developed the pottery tool into an instrument of some precisionby taking it out of the mists of oral tradition, articulatedits use in writing, and provideda critical assessmentof the whole discipline in the light of his knowledge of the entire Near East. Following his work one could begin to write archaeologicalhistoriesof the country- something impossiblebefore the discipline had been subjected to his critical work and his ceramicsequences. Reisner's methodological principles were generally not followed, except for the new care with which recordingand find spots were handled and the ideal evolved of being able to reproduceon paper a tell's stratigraphyin which the exact location of all artifacts could be spotted. It was with Kenyon's of Reisner's principles independently, as they had been derc-introdtUction veloped in the archaeologyof England, -thatthe new revolution in precision and field control was now put in practice for all to see in East Mediterrancan archaeology. The key to this control lay in digging and distinguishing the soil layers as a geologist would do, rather than focusing primarily on building or wall sequences, following the lead of the chief interests of the expedition's architect. Palestine west of the Jordan is the most intensively dug and explored area of its size in the world. Its very poverty has been a major factor in the dcvelopment of precision in archaeological field work to a level seldom reached in the historical periods anywhere else in the classical and Near Eastern worlds. Consequently, it cannot be overstressedthat use ,the proper of archaeology as a "scientific"tool in Biblical study was impossible before the work of Albright,while the period of the 1960'sis the time of a revolution in controlled archaeology,following the period 1952-1958of the Kenyon expedition to Jericho.2 Even these new methodologiesfail to extract a maximumof information from the occupationaldebris of antiquity. Beginning in Palestine in 1970, certain American explorationswere able to staff their expeditionswith a more or less full complement of natural scientists. Such cross-disciplinaryapproaches were a "first"in the Near East's historical period. They were modeled after the great pioneering prehistoric enterprises of Robert J. Braidwood in the 1950's, which have refocusedour knowledge of human prehistorywith regard to what happened before, during, and after the Neolithic revolutionwhen the first villages were established in the Near East. Hence it can be predicted 2. Cf. Kenyon, Beginning in Archaeology and G. Ernest Digging up Jericho (1957); (1952); Eretz Israel, IX An American Interpretation," Method in Palestine Wright, "Archaeological pp. 120-133. (1969),

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

73

that the 1970's will see far more controlled information made available to the Biblical student than the archaeologisthas hitherto been able to provide. With regard to Biblical events, however, it cannot be overstressedthat archaeological data are mute. Fragmentary ruins, preserving only a tiny fraction of the full picture of ancient life, cannot speak without someone asking questions of them. And the kind of questions asked are part and parcel of the answers "heard"because of predispositionson the part of the questioner. Archaeology can prove very little about anything without minds stored with a wide-rangingvariety of informationwhich carefully begin to ask questions of the mute remainsin order to discoverwhat they mean. It is all too easy for lack of informationand imagination to gain less than the remainscan supply, or for fertile imaginations to suppose that the ancient trash heaps tell him more than a more con~trolledmind can believe they do. It is small wonder, then, that disagreement and debate arise. A destruction layer in the ruins does not tell us the identity of t'he involved. Indeed, we know that certain black soot and charcoallayers,people do not necessarilymean destruction.An accidental fire in one part of the town or city, certain industrial pursuits, or even an earthquakemay be the answer. Yet the mute nature of the remains does not mean that archaeologyis useless. It simply means that ancient cultural and political horizons and sequences can only be reconstructedby hypothesis from every kind of critically sifted evidence available. At some poinitsmore data are availablethan at others. Hence the historicalreconstructionshave only varying degrees of probability. Yet in anitiquityit most importantto recall ;thatmodels and hypoheses are the primarymeans,isby which reconstructionis possible after the basic critical work is done. And, furthermore,it takes a great deal of humility to say frankly what the physical sciences have had also to say; predisposiltionof minds at any one period frame the type of questions asked of the materialand become a part of the "answers"we suppose we (haveobtained from our investigations. Final proof of anything ancient must be confined to such questions as how pottery was made, what rock was used, what food and fauna were present, etc. Certainly that proof does not extend to the validity of the religious claims the Bible would place upon us, and we must rememberthat the Bible is not a mine for scientifically grounded certainties about anything. It is instead a literaturethat places before us one of history'smajor religious options. What archaeologycan do for Biblical study is to provide a physical context in time and place which was the environment of the people who produced the Bible or are mentioned in it. Inscriptionalevidence is of exceptional importance for Biblical backgrounds and even for occasional mention of Biblical people and places. For the rest, archaeologyprovidesevidence to be critically sifted. It then is used along with other critically assessed data,

74

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

where it exists, in order to form hypotheses aboultthe how, why, what and when of cultural, socio-politicaland economic affairs in thirteenth century Palestine, for example. These hypotheses will stand or be altered as new information makes change necessary. Final and absolutely proven answers are impossibleto provide.One generation'squestionsmay not be another's,and in every case the questions asked are integral to the answers. Thus one generation'sresearchdiffers from another's. Furthermore,Martin Noth's predisposition,for example, has led him to a negative view of the historical backgroundof the confessional events surveyed in the Books of Exodus and Joshua, along with many of his predecessors and contemporaries.To this writer, such a negative assessment,deriving from the last century'scriticism,is not only a defensible, but an indispensible tool in historicalmethodology. Bu'twhen the tool becomes the dominant item of the conclusion, ilt then is most often a bias or predispositionof the author. There is no reason whatever that the opposite predispositionshould not be held, namely one toward a positive view Ef the evidence, even though the actual course of events may have been far more complex than tradition has remembered.Whether optimismor pessimismis the predisposition,the fact is that in Exodus and Joshua we have dominant and central confessional and literary themes presented both in the book and in confessional liturgical statements.This requiresexplanation. A necessity is upon us to explain their presence in the earliest literature (e.g., Exod. 15) as well as in the latest. Something formativeto Israel'sworldview happened in her earliest historical experience. Can a hypothesis be suggested which explains without claiming too much or too little? By definition such hypothesis is devised to explain most completely what we now know, not what it may be necessaryor possible for anothergenerationto say. The situation with regard to Joshua, ranging from extreme negative assessment to positive, has numerous parallelsin other fields where scholarstry to assess literary tradition, philological analysis, tradition-history,form, language, text, archaeologyand historicalbackground- and then try to come up with a story of what really happened! Faulty analysis or overemphasisat the wrong place can throw the resultinghypothesis "out of gear"entirely. Yet one must forge ahead, under the critical light of his peers, in the knowledge that the work has to be as carefully done in this time as possible, and then restudied a generationlater, if not sooner! Father Roland de Vaux has reviewed the evidence for the Trojan War and that for the Phoenician colonization of the Mediterranean, and finds precisely the same problems being struggled with in the same way, with the same radicallydifferent conclusions.3 3. See R. de Vaux, loc. cit. (n. 1).

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

75

With regard to the Phoenicians ancient authors assert th'at Cadiz and Utica, for example, were founded as early as 1100 B.C., while Carthage was founded in 814 B.C. and became the Phoenician power of the west par excellence for centuries. Yet Rhys Carpenter in 1958, basing his results on purely archaeological evidence, disregards the literary tradition completely and says the cities in question were not founded much before ca. 700 B.C., and only gradually during the next two centuries spread to Sicily, Sardinia, Cadiz, Spain and the Balearic islands. Now with 10th and 9th century inscriptions existing on Cyprus and Spain, which Carpenterhad no training to handle critically, 8th century specimensin Sicily, Sardinia, and Malta, the skeptics can only defend themselves by challenging the archaeologist's methods, especially the discipline of paleography,etc. Nevertheless, the basic point has been made by the archaeologistsin general agreement with the ancient authors: Phoenician colonization preceded the arrivalof the Greeks. What can be said about the tradition made immortalby Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey? Schliemann evidently found the ruined tell of Troy, but then came the debate as to which stratum was destroyedand by what agency at the site. Carl Blegen, the last excavator,accepts the city's identification, and claims the city destroyedin Homer's traditionsmust be identified with Stratum VIIa, in which Mycenean pottery still occurs in abundance. Thus Homer's story of the expedition against Troy must have a historical basis. Archaeologyfor Blegen thus "proves"that there must have been some kind of coalition of Achaeans or Myceneans who fought Troy and its allies and defeated them. Yet a more "judicial"answer hiasbeen that Troy VIIa was destroyed by human violence, but the excavationshave provided not one scrap of evidence of a Greek coalition or any identificationwhatever to answer the question of "Who did it?" Perhaps it was destroyedby the Sea Peoples. The best procedure of all, in this viewpoint, is to dissociate the whole archaeologicaldiscovery from myth and poetry, and even from the legend of Troy itself. Yet in both instances still other scholarsraise basic questions with regard to both viewpoints as to whether the two extremesare really in methodological tune with the use of archaeologyas "proof"or as evidence. The skeptic always has the advantage because archaeologyspeaks only in response to our questions and one can call any tradition not provable. Thus since no proof can be attained anywhere, one extreme simply asks that archaeologicaldata be presented and the attempt to prove anything in literary tradition cease forthwith. Both sides of the controversyuse the term "proof"in ways inadmissible, even absurd, with regard to any past cultural, socio-economichis,political, tory.

76

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST(Vol. XXXIV,

Whether it is Trojan history,Phoenician history, or what history remains in the book of Joshua,we must begin with the fact that we have actual texts. These must be interpretedby all the means of literaryanalysis availableto us. Then we must reconstructthe archaeologicaland ecological context as best we can both in the given area and in the widest possible context. Only then can we examine the question as to whether the one illumines the other, or whether a reasonable hypothesis can be reconstructedwhich best explains what we know at this time. The dictum of de Vaux is axiomatic:"Archaeology does not confirm the text, which is what it is, it can only confirm the interpretationwhich we give it."4 Conversely,archaeology,dealing with the wreckage of antiquity, proves nothing in itself. It must be analyzed in a variety of ways, and then with all other data available,its meaningin the overall picture of a cultural continuum is expressed by interpretation.Here again it is the interpretationthat is at all usable, and that is the product of a human brain with the use of tools available, not in a pure vacuum mistakenly called by some "science." Instead the brain belongs to a limited person, living and working in a given time and space. A person is not more infallible than his sources and predecessors. Ambiguity and relativity enter every sphere of human activity. Some minds rise above others as masters of their peers, but 'the solid proofs,which so many assume possible ajtthe end of either scientific or historical work, cannot be attained by finuitebeings. We are historical organismsby intrinsic nature, and ambiguityis always a central component of history, whether of the humanities, of social science, or of natural science. 4. R. de Vaux, op. cit., p. 78.

A Problem of Ancient Topography: Lachish and Eglon G. ERNESTWRIGHT Harvard

Divinity

School

For many years the writer has wondered about the ancient Israelite claim to a town as far out in the coastal plain as Tell el-Hesi, if that town is correctly identified with Biblical Eglon. During 1964-1965, when with graduatestudents I was able to explore the area in person, thus supplementing the study of maps, my puzzlement with the historical topography and archaeologyof the area deepened. Tell el-HIesiis approximatelysix and one-half kilometersfrom the Lowlands (Shephelah) of ancient Judah, measuringin a straight line to the point land rises to about the 200-meter contour. By the same type of where ,the it is some -thirteen kilometersfrom Lachish, the main Judean measurement fortresswithin the Shephelah, along the NE-SW fault line that was the inner communication and defense road within the Lowland. Lachish and its *Reprinted by permission from the Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 64.2 (Spring-Summer, 1971), issued in honor of Paul W. Lapp (copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College).

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST

1971, 3)

77

smaller satellite Mareshah, five and one-half kilometers to the northeast, were the guardians of the main pass by which one ascends the high hills to Hebron (see map). This means that as an Israelite or Judean town, Tell el-HIesiis situated about one-third the distance to the coast from Lachish, for the Wadi el-Hesi emerges into the Mediterraneanat a point only some twenty-six kilometers from the tell and ca. eight kilometerssouth of Ashkelon. When one is present at the tell, one has a feeling of isolation from other ancient cities, vulnerable, low, in a kind of pocket, with open view only to east and south. When Mo4em roais Vvsr9bpr~oximu*. bcrdsrsh? 5 pi~helah and

4

Timnak

0

EB )rG c+ -5he.I *

"

~LAzckN AswWD

-'`- -,

foil

k

i-

.

ip or

#

?

•,.,oA --.I

#

'•,1,~

-

.-,'. ,j .

,

* Tu .

qi/n T ,,'Arai

,I n*-'

T,

aj

G~o

_.01k I i

T

r-

Miunim."a

A,~

v

T

lei

k-A

/*

?GrA a

Slart

/i

r**h

r

i

oT. Mulkalhi

, '

Bait

r.

ra 0

Nu

'.n-

T.

A~bu

T' I T

/.

T

!

A-a6 Ic`

e

3~Jro

Fig. 2. Map of the Lachish-Eglon area.

standingon ,the tell I have not been able to escape the impressionthat this site could never make sense as a defense point, or as an independent city-state, unless it served as an integratedpart of a largerwhole. The first modern scholar to examine the Hesi area with an eye to its topographical history was Edward Robinson during his first exploration of Palestine in 1838. From his study of the ancient sourceshe knew that the tell was mentioned in the Crusaderliteratureof the time of Richard and Saladin, and he wished to satisfy himself as to whether a ruin called Umm Laqis could lay claim to be the Biblical Lachish (Heb. LakiD). It existed five kilo-

78

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

meters northwest of the tell, but its size and situation, he decided, were not those of an ancient fortified city which "for a time at least could brave the assaults of an Assyrianarmy"(II Kings 18:14; 19:8). Besides, according to Eusebius and Jerome in their Onomnasticonof ancient Biblical places, Lachish was seven Roman miles from Eleutheropolis toward the south, and thus within the Shepelah, while Umm Laqis "lies in the middle of the plain . . . three hours distant"[on horsebackto the WNW]. On the other hand, about two and one-half kilometersnorth of the tell was a ruin, Khirbet 'Ajlan, the name of which "alone identifies it with the Eglon of the Old Testament; and there seems nothing in the position to contradict this evidence." The tell itself is in the midst of fine grain lands, but its form "is 'singular,a truncatedcone with a fine plain on the top, somewhat resembling Frank mountain,' though by no means so high. From the informationof our guides and from the remarkableappearanceof this isolated tell, we had expected to find here traces of ruins . . ." Yet they could find nothing of the "thick ancient walls drawn around it" reportedby Felix Fabri (A.D. 1483), nor of the remains of a "strong citadel" reportedby Volney, published in 1787. Consequently, the true meaning of "tell" not yet being known to Robinson,he could say nothing about its past history.2 The greatest accomplishmentof Robinson was his identificationof Beit Jibrin within the Shephelah as the Roman Eleutheropolis.This was important because the Onomasticon of Eusebius, translated and revised into Latin by Jerome, attempted to locate Biblical towns of the area as they survived in their day and tradition, with reference 'to distance and direction from that city. For the ancient period this meant that Robinson had no difficulty in identifying Mareshah with the ruins to be seen in "the remarkableTell south of the place," a tell whose name, Tell Sandahannah, preservesthe name of the ancient church of Saint Anna, the ruins of which Robinson identified.3 Later explorers, except for Bliss and Macalister in 1898-1900, missed this identification of Robinson and were content to point to the preservationof the name in the nearby ruin, Khirbet Mar'ash, until the early part of this century.4 Meanwhile, Petrie in 1890 made his famous investigationof Tell el-Hesi, proving to the world the possiblity and significance of pottery chronology. The American, Frederick Jones Bliss, excavated a quadrant of the tell between 1891 and 1893 for the Palestine ExplorationFund. Petrie, following 1. The extinct volcano SE of Bethlehem which Herod the Great had fortified so that it is also known as Herodium. 2. Biblical Researches, Vol. II (published simultaneously in the U.S. [Boston], England and Germany, 1841), pp. 46-49. 3. Ibid., pp. 51-68. 4. So C. R. Conder in The Survey of Western Palestine, Memoires, III (1883), p. 233; H. Guthe, of the Holy Land (1894), Smith, The Historical Geography wdrterbuch (1903), p. 416.

p. 262; Kurzes

G. A. Bibel-

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST

79

only his own intuition, identified the site as Lachish, while Bliss' discoveryof a Tell el-Amarnatablet in 1892 within his Level III, written about Lachish, was taken to prove the identification.5This was essentially the way matters stood until W. F. Albright made his first detailed study tours of the area in 1924.6 for the first time was to Albright's immediate reaction when seeing be "most forcibly struck by the smallness of theH.esi mound." Then he recalled that Bliss had said that the Israelite town could not have been much more than a fortress 100 yards square. Hence, there could be no question for Albright of such a site being the capital of a majorLate BronzeAge City-state of the 14th-13th cents., nor of its being a major fortress city to protect Hebron. The three surrounding ruins, Khirbet Sh6qef, Umm Laqis and Khirbet 'Ajlan are all small Roman places with nothing earlier on them. Consequently, there remains only one possibility.Iesi is Biblical Eglon, the ancient name preservedin the nearby Khirbet'Ajlan. For the time being Albright left the ancient Lachish unidentified. He took no special note of an important mound in the Shephelah, Tell edDuweir, which the British survey of the 1870's had mapped but had considered for the most part a natural hill with "on the top the foundations of a large squarebuilding."7 It was not until 1929 that Albright wrote:8 For a number of years the writer has maintained this identification [Lachish with Tell ed-Duweir], which is so evident that several other topographershave accepted it. The Onomasticon states that Lachish was a village [in the 4th cent., A.D.] in the seventh mile from Elcuthcropolisto the Negeb (Daroma). This general location suits the biblical rcferencesto the place remarkablywell, while Tell el-Hesi does not. Tell ed-Duweir is easily four times as large as the latter, which is altogethertoo small to representan importantJewish town like Lachish. Moreover, Tell el-FHIesi is nearly twice as far away from Beit Djibrin [Eleutheropolis]as allowed by the Onomasticon for Lachish; for its identification with Eglon cf. Bulletin, No. 15, pp. 7f. While Tell ed-Duweir itself is only five miles by road from Beit Djibrin, there are a number of Byzantine sites in the immediate neighborhoodwhich could be identified with the Lachish of that period . . . Between 1932 and 1938, the British Wellcome ArchaeologicalExpedition, directed by J. L. Starkey, excavated Tell ed-Duweir and in 1935 discovered within the charred ruins of the city gate, between its two destructions 5. Cities 6. 7. 8.

W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tell el-Hesy: and F. J. Bliss, Lachish (1891); (1894). W. F. Albright, BASOR, No. 15 (Oct. 1924), pp. 2-11. Conder, Survey of Western Palestine, III, 290. XVissenschaft, XLVII (1929), Albright, Zeitschrift fiir die alttestamentliche

A Mound

1-18.

of Many

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

80

in 597 and 587 (or 586) B.C., eighteenof the now wellby the Babylonians knownLachishletters.If therehad been any doubtaboutthe identification of Tell ed-Duweir,it wasnow settled.9Fornearlyall topographers Eglonand itself. Lachishseemedas securelyidentifiedas Jerusalem

Fig. 3. A reconstruction of the Judean fortress-city of Lachish, with the palace of the provincial governor existing on a stone podium within. The fortifications shown are reconstructed from existing ruins and from Sennacherib's picture of the Assyrian army's siege of the city in 701 B.C. In the guardroom of the city-gate was found a well-known group of letters written to the Judean commander of the city from an officer in charge of a nearby outpost during the Babylonian subjugation and destruction of the country beginning in 589 or 588 B.C. (The Wellcome-Marston Archaeological Research Expedition to the Near East.)

Meanwhile, at the western edge of the Shephelah on the road from Lachish there was a tell named Tell Sheikh Ahmed el-'Areini by the small Arab village of 'Araq e-l-Menshiyeh- today the major Israeli farming and industrial city of the area, named Kiriath-Gat(see map). In 1923 Albright marshalled the main arguments for the location of two Philistine cities, Ekron and Gath.1oOf the five such cities three were the Bronze Age citystates along the coast, Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod. Ekron and Gath were clearly inland, Ekron north and Gath somewhere south. The one obvious spot for the latter was Tell 'Areini, Albright argued, because the assumption of "virtuallyall students of Palestinian topography"to "identify the famous old Philistine city of Gath with Tell es-Sdfi"must be abandoned,if for no other reason than that the latteris much too far north." There are three main passes that had to be carefully guarded to protect 9. See especially Lachish letter IV, written to the commanding general of Lachish by a commander of an outpost between Lachish and Azekah in the next valley system, the valley of Elah, to the north. The letter says: "We are watching for the signals of Lachish according to all the instructions which my lord has given, because we cannot see Azekah" - meaning evidently that the Azekah smoke signals had ceased because the Babylonians had taken the fortress-town; see Albright's translation in J. B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p. 322, and BASOR, No. 82 (April, 1941), pp. 18-24 for discussion. 10. AASOR, II-III (1923), 1-17, esp. pp. 7ff. 11. The arguments in favor of the identification are summarized in Bliss, Excavations in

Palestine

1898-1900

XXXIV (1911),

(1902),

49-53.

pp. 62-66;

cf. G. Halscher,

Zeitschift

des deutschen

Paliistina-Vereins,

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

81

entrance to the high hills: the Aijalon valley at the northern Shephelah (guarded by the Beth-horonsLower and Upper and by Gibeon), the valley of Elah and the pass to Hebron, mentioned above. The main cities guarding the Elah were Sokoh and Azekah in the Shephelah and Tell es-SAfiat its outer opening in the coastal plain to the west (see map). The wide Sorek Valley does not need the same kind of protection since, as is well known from the 1948 Arab-Israeliwar, the passes to Jerusalemfrom it are so narrow and steep that their protectionis comparativelyeasy. Albright argues from I Sam. 7:14 that Gath did not lie near Ekron, because the latter town must be nearer the Negeb, as is clear from the situation in the latter part of the reign of Saul I (I Sam. 27, 29-30, especially I Sam. 27:5-7, 10; I Sam. 30-1, 14). Hence Tell 'Areini would fit the specifications for Philistine Gath perfectly.'2 Further one's judgment of the situation must depend upon the importance one attaches to Libnah. In the final days of Judah the main defenses of the Judean hills against the Babylonianswere Lachish and Azekah, when Judah had been weakened and had lost the outer Shephelah. In the time of Sennacherib (701 B.C.), the attack on Judah centered on the fortresses of Lachish and Libnah. Since the passes crucial for Judean protection were the Elah and the road to Hebron, then Libnah should be in the Elah area. The only real candidate, then, is Tell es-Safi. Libnah appearsto derive from the Hebrew word meaning "white," which could refer to the chalk scarpsof Safi and could be related to the Crusadername for the site, Blanche Garde, as well as to the Arabic which means "the bright, shining tell." In any event, Albright's location of Philistine Gath seemed so cipropos that it was generally accepted. Thus on early Israeli maps it was labelled Tell Gat and the neighboring city Kiriath Gat. Only the excavations directed by Dr. S. Yeivin in the 1950's, then Director of the Israeli Department of Antiquities, proved the identificationwrong. Tell 'Areini is another small fort erected on the site ,of a very large Early Bronze Age (2rd millennium) city.'3 From the Petrie-Blissexcavationsin 1890-93 and from staff-surveyby the new American expedition which began work at the site in 1970, we know that Tell el-Hesi (Eglon) is precisely the same type of site - a small cone, containing the ruins of a fortress,dating at least as early as the Late Bronze Age (ca 15th-13th cents., B.C.) and ending in the Persian Period, standing on the ruins of a large Early Bronze Age town some thirty acres in extent.'4 12. This identification had already been suggested (with a question mark) by Guthe, Kurzes Bibelwbrterbuch, p. 195, though Albright did not discover his proposal until after his own dccision had been made. 13. For very brief preliminary reports of the excavation of Tell 'Areini, see Israel Exploration Journal, VI (1956), p. 259; VIII (1958), 275f.; and L. E. Stager's references in footnote 5 to the appendix which follows this article. 14. See ASOR Newsletters: in the 1970-71 series, No. 5 (Dec. 1970) and in the 1969-70 series, No. 8 (April, 1970), both written by John E. Worrell, Director.

82

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

We know in some detail what such a siltewas like from the excavationsof Tel Arad, northeastof Beershebain the Negeb. Here a small Israelite fort, controlling a pass up from the Dead Sea, existed as a small mound at the edge of a large Early Bronze Age fortified city, between twenty-five and thirty acres in extenit.'5 Thus we have two forts, one, Tell 'Areini, on the western edge of the Shephe'lah,nearly eighitkilometersfrom Laohish to the northwest. Out in the plain some thirteen kilometersfrom Lachish west-southwest, and nearly nine kilometers southwest from Tell 'Areini on a differenitwadi or drainagesystem is Tell el-Hesi (Eglon).

i:,iiii-

__:__jii

,A

Fig. 4. Tell Quneitirah, a small "cone" mound on the west side of the Beersheba highway near Tell el-Hesi. Like Tell Bornat and Tell Muleihah in the same area it is not on an elevated strong defense point. Yet it is too small to have been a town. The hypothesis here presented is that it with the others may have served along with Tell el-Hesi in an integrated defense system of the city of Lachish.

Yet this is not all of the story. Approximatelythree and one-half kiloon the right side of the Beershebahighway as meters west-southwestof one goes southward is Tell H.esT, el-Quneitirah. This is a tiny cone-mound that could have served no other purpose than as a fort, not a quarterof the size of Hesi. It was founded in the Late Bronze Age and continued throughout the Iron Age.'G Its distance from Lachish is just over eight kilometers to the northwest. Approximatelyseven and one-half kilometersdirectly north-northeastof on one of the northernmostbranchesof the Lachish is another small cone-,tell 15. See Y. Aharoni and R. Amiran, Israel Exploration Journal, XIV (1964), 131-47; XVII (1967), 233-49; also Archaeology, XVII (1964), 43-53. 16. My thanks are due to the Rev. William Broughton who carefully collected a group of sherds from the site in the spring of 1965, and brought them to me in Jerusalem. The Late Bronze Age was well represented by easily dated pieces.

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST

83

Wadi Qubeibeh system which drains the Lachish area. That is Tell BomrAt, about eight and one-half kilometers from Tell 'Areini. With Lachish they form a triangle, or a quadrangulararea with Tell Sandahannahincluded. Tell is scarcely larger in size than Quneitirah, has a similar agec-range,beBorn.t in Late Bronze; ilt could not possibly have been more than a small ginning fortified outpost, scarcely capable of withstanding the siege of a large army. An army would simply have moved around it, leaving it to a small detachment. Like Quneitirah it uses no high or naturallystrong point, but is erected in a comparativelyflat area as an outpost on a particularwxidi system. Some thirteen and one-half kilometers directly soutIh-southwestof and railroad,and almost the Lachish, on the left of the Beersheba htighvway same distance from Tell Beit i\lirsiml (Biblical Dcbir?), is still another small cone-mound, Tell Muleihah. It is slightly largerthan Quncitirah and Born'•t, but is still a very small place, best interpreted as a fort. It is in a low spot on a branch of the WAdi el-Hesi which originates where the Shcphelah gives way to rolling Negeb. It was these peculiar cone-tells which first attracted my attentiionat a time when Tell 'Arcini had been shown not to be Gath of the Philistines but a fort erected on the ruins of an Early Bronze city, while anwthersimilar establishment was being exposed at Tel Arad. Anirther problcin was the suggestion that Tell Bornit could be identified with Libnah,"7a towxnor city which tradition states was strong enough to engage the Assyrian army after Lachish had been taken (according to II Kings 19:8). A hypothcs:is which would explain this group of forts surrounding Lachish, the one large city of the area, on its western, northwestern and southwestern approaches,is very simply that they were originally created or begun as the fortification system of the city-state of Lachish in the Late BronzeAge (ca. 1500-1200B.C.). From the Tell cl-Amarna diplomatic archive found in Egypt we kniow that Lachish had a vigorous and expansionist leadership during the first half of the fourteenth century. Three kings of the city are mentioned. Zimrcda and Shipti-Ba'lu lived during the latter part of the reign of Amenophis III and the early part of the reign of Amenophis IV. The third king, Yabni-Iliu, is later in the reign of the second king.'8 The kings of Gezer, Jerusalem, the Hebron area, and Lachish controlled the whole of the Judean hill country and the Shephelah. Given the western exposure of Lachish it would have been necessary for any city-state centered there to build defenses in the 17. So Aharoni, The Land of the Bible (1967), p. 381 and passim, though always with a question mark. For further support of Tell es-Safi with Libnah, see F.-M. Abel Giographie de la 369f. Palestine, 11(1938), 18. Sec E. F. Campbell, For Jr., The Chronology of the Anmarna Letters (1964), pp. 90-105. which will background see also Albright, Cambridge Ancient History (2nd ed.), Fasc. 51 (1966) be Volume 11, Chapter XX.

84

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

Shephelah and in the plain as these were possible. Inasmuch as the Gezer city-state could attempt control as far south as Zorah and thus perhaps the Soreq Valley it overlooks,19Lachish could have been expected to con'trolthe Elah Valley and all small tells to the south of it, including probablyTell Beit Mirsim (Debir?) aitthe edge of the southern Shephelah and the high hills of the Hebron area. Indeed, it is tempting to suggest that the founding of the last main tell directly south of Tell el-Hesi, some fifteen and one-half kilometers away, namely Tell esh-Shari'ah,may have been to protectthe southern boundary of Lachish. It was founded apparentlyin the Late Bronze Age at the eastern opening of the gorge of the Wadi Shari'ah,the most critical point from the standpoint of defense in the northern Negeb for any political entiltyto the north of it.20 That kings of Lachish, Libnah and Eglon are mentioned as defeated by Joshua in the thirteenth century (Josh. 12:11-15) need not trouble us at this point. The document is an editorial composition or listing at best. Furthermore, not only had a breakdownand multiplication of the city-state organization taken place by the end of the thirteenithcentury, the Amarna letter found at Tell el-Hesi suggeststhat a multiple leadershipof close subordinates, some with close family ties, might be still another explanation.Zimredaat first is the head man at Lachish, with Shipti--Ba'luas his second in commanduntil Zimreda'sdeath when Shipti-Ba'lu becomes king. According to the Tell elHesi letter, while the former is still alive a certain Egyptian official, Pa'apu, writing from some unknown place another Egyptian official,called "(the) ,tomen of Chief", accuses both of the Lachish disloyalty, and says that ShiptiBa'lu has received a letter from another king, presumablyto the north, who asks to be in league with him, and also for a few bows, daggersand swords. Yet Shipti-Ba'lu has the effrontery to claim that "the one who is disloyal to the king is Pa'apu."21 So Pa'apu is having him sent to the "chief,"wherever the latter was. The fact that the letter was found in HesTdoes not help us 19. See letters 273 and 274 in J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln (1915); Albright, BASOR, No. 89 (Feb. 1943), pp. 15-17; and J. F. Ross, BA, XXX (1967), 69-70. 20. See my remarks identifying this site with Gath of the Philistines in BA, XXIX (1966), 78-86, and a lengthy reply by A. F. Rainey, Christian News from Israel, XVII.2-3 (1966), 30-38; 23-34. Thus far I have not had time to prepare a detailed defense of my position. XVII.4 (1966), That of Rainey is disappointing from a methodological standpoint. Beginning with the assumption that Gath is at Tell es-Safi, he takes all arguments not explicitly against that view as favoring it. The author pays little attention in his article to the argument of B. Mazar, Israel Exploration which he knows well, that there were at least two Gaths in the Journal, IV (19 -), 227-35, Shephelah area, one in the northern sector. Acceptance of this fundamental argument takes away the basis of nearly all of Rainey's contentions. The matter will remain conjectural, however, dewith which one begins. These have to do, among other things, pending upon the presuppositions with the purpose of the Philistines. If their primary object was to reconquer for Egypt the whole of Palestine as a mercenary Blite, then the primary purpose for the establishment of Ekron, the on the Yarkon of Tell-QaAileh, take-over of Gath, the founding etc. must relate to military geography. The argument that Safi is Gath primarily because it was a large city in the Philistine has to do with the placement and imperiod is not strong enough. A second presupposition portance of Libnah. 21. For translation and interpretation, see Albright, BASOR, No. 87 (Oct. 1942), pp. 32-38. W. L. Moran, however, I do not think we know oral comments by my colleague Following two who about of wrote the letwhereabouts the the one the anything Egyptian officials, ter or the one to whom it was sent.

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

85

very much. While the Egyptian official to whom the letter is being sent may have been in Hcsi, it is not at all unlikely that the letter ncver reached Egyptian archivesbecause itt was in~tcrcepted.Briberyto secure freedom from officialdomwas such a regularpractice at the time that we can only speculate as to why the letter was found in the Hesi fort. During the Iron Age all of these forts around Lachish were maintained during the period of Israelite and Judean dominance. The Lachish city-state was destroyed at the end of the thirteenth century, and the city itself not rebuilt until the time of the United Monarchy in the 10th cent.22By the end of the twelfth century the Philistines were in firm control of the whole Shephelah and continued to hold it until the time of Saul and David. A small unfortified Philistine town, Tel Sippor, seems safely to have existed a short distance north of Tell el-Hesi, but not to have survived for long the Israelite revival of control between ca. 1020 and 990 B.C.23 A new addition to the area defenses was the Judean erection of a more or less square fortress, bctwccn 104 and 83 m. long on the sides, on the southwestecrnpart of Tel Negilah. This is a fine Middle Bronze Age tell, unoccupied except for the Judean fort after ca. 1500 B.C., about halfway (or slightly less than six kilometers) between Tell el-HjesTand Tell Muleihah and ca. fourteen kilometers from Tell Shari'ah (Gath of the Ph'ilistines?)24The fortifications of the fort are of the casemate variety, well known in royal building between the tenth and the end of the seventh centuries B.C. Tell cj-Judeideh (Morcsheth-Gath, home of 'theprophet Muicah)was evidently not fortified in this period, and is not to be consideredin this connection, though it is well situated for defense on a high hill rising west-northwestof Tell Born.t.'5 To this writer the historical topography of the Lachish-Eglon area is peculiar and of special interest. Yet 'the hypothesis of the series of forts as outposts of Lachish would appear to make a coherent conception of the area, beginning in the Late BronzeAge.26 Evidently to the professional geographer the area also presents special 22. 64-66. 23. 284f. 24. at the

Presumably by David; see most recently G. E. Wright, Eretz Israel, VIII (1967), esp. pp. See A. Biran and 0. Negbi, Israel Exploration Journal, XIII (1963), 338-40; XIV (1964), S. Billow and R. A. Mitchell, Israel Exploration Journal, XI (1961), 101-10. For excavations site, R. Amiran and A. Eitan, Israel Exploration Journal, XIII (1963), 143f., 333f.; XIV

113-23. (1964), 219-31; and Archaeology, XVIII (1965), 25. Bliss and Macalister, Excavations in Palestine 1898-1900,

pp. 41-47.

On the last page,

Bliss

notes that the site's wall belongs to the latest occupation of the tell because its footing and its gate towers are datable by pottery to "Greek and Roman" times. 26. An addition to the list of Rehoboam's fortifications of Judah (II Chron. 11:5-12), may well be the thirteen-meter-wide brick wall surrounding Eglon at the base of the Acropolis, found in 1970 (ASOR Nea&sletter, No. 5 for Dec. 1970, p. 4). More excavation is needed, however, for more precision in dating. Currently, the ,wall is dated from typical 10th (or early 9th) cent. chordal burnishing, etc., found on sherds in the foundation trench dug for the wall in the virgin sand of the area.

86

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

problems. An appendix this article by Lawrence E. Stager, member of the current expedition's core,tostaff at Hesi, will explain these problems and offer a hypothesis for one featureof the site in the Persianperiod.

Appendix: Climatic Conditions and Grain Storage in the Persian Period by LAWRENCE E. STAGER Harvard

University

Tell el-Hesi lies in a zone with a mean annual rainfall of 300-400 mim. (11.8-15.8 inches).' Its low-lying plains of loess soil arc suitable for growing grain crops, such as wheat and barley, provided the annual rainfall does not fluctuatebelow the ariditylimit for dry-farmingthese cereals. In areas with an abundance of rainfall, the predictabilityof the annual amount is higher in areas with ?ascanty supply. Tell cl-IIecsiand ,those its neighbors (see,than lie in a zone of precarious rainfall, where the below) "meanrelativevariability"for the annual rainfall is 26%.2 In analyzing the fluctuations in settlement patterns over the last two centuries in the southern Coastal Plain and northern Ncgov, David Amiran, professor of Geography, Hebrew University, has described this area as a "broad transition-zone"in which atmosphericcirculation, resulting from the Mediterraneanclimate interacting with the desert climate, produces "fluctuations of the border of aridity."3 Unlike the Judcan Desert to the cast, where the border of aridity is quite fixed, Hesi and its surroundingsare subject to rather frequent fluctuations in climate and rainfall patterns because of the erraticpatiternsof atmosphericcirculationfrom the \Icditerranean. In the Persian period, during the 5th-4th centuries B.C., subterrancan storage pits studded the tells localtedin this transition zone. The 1970 season of excavationsat Tell el-HIeesi revealed several of these cylindrical silos on the Acropolis.4Often lined with mud plaster, these pits were usually ca. 1.00-2.00 1. Atlas of Israel (1970, 2nd English Edition, Survey of Israel), IV/2, Map A. The mean was calculated for the period 1931-1960. 2. Ibid., IV/2, Map J. According to the Atlas of Israel, this percentage is based on "the mean of the deviations of rainfall in the individual years from the long-period average, divided by the long-period D. average itself." By using another variable called the "relative standard deviation," Sharon has demonstrated the frequency Exploration (Israel with Journal, [1965], 169-176) which the deviations from the average amount exceed the "mean relative variability." The "relative standard deviation" index of 35% for Ruhama (just 7 km. south of Hesi) indicates that about two-thirds of the time the variability of annual rainfall will be below 35%, usually fairly close to the "mean relative variability" of 26%. But nearly one-third of the time the variability will be 35% or more. And very infrequently (4% of years) it could soar beyond 70%. In the last thirty years, the area around Hesi has four years in which rainfall fluctuated down to the 200 mm. mark. (Atlas of Israel, IV/2, Map K.) 3. D. H. K. Amiran, Israel Exploration Journal, III (1953), 250-260. 4. The preliminary report on the first season of excavations will be published in a forthcoming issue of BASOR. The Persian pits belong to Bliss' City VIII, although he was unable to recognize many of them until he had reached the stratum below, his City VII. (See Bliss, A Mound of Many Cities, pp. 109ff.)

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST

1971,3)

?~~~~C -

r,

`,

(

87

..

.?'•

i..~

.:

ic

!/ '

?.?Y

?.

Qc~

.

d, ?

..

as excavated by the Joint American Expedition, Fig. 5. Persian pit or granary at Tell 1970-1971. el-.Hesi,

m. in diameterand 2.00-2.50m. in depth.Specimensof wheat(two varieties) and barleywere frequentlyfound in them. In the same period,numerous plastered storage pits dotted the small Acropolis of Tell 'Areini (Strata IIIII).5 At both sites these "acropoleis"were chosen for the pits probably be5. S. Yeivin,

First Preliminary

Report

on the Excavations

at Tel Gat (Tell

Sheykh

'Ahmed

el-

'Areyny), Seasons 1956-1958 (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 4 and Fig. 2. For seasons 1959-1960, see A. Ciasca, Oriens Antiquus I (1962), 23-39 (Italian); and Yeivin, Revue Biblique, LXVII (1960), 391-394 (French).

88

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST (Vol. XXXIV,

cause of their facility of drainage. Nearby at Lachish more than fifty cylindrical pits were discovered.They were located near and associatedwith the "Residency"of the Persian period. Farther south at Tell Jemmeh, on the northern fringes of the Negev, Sir Flinders Petrie excavatedat least ten large subterraneangranaries,some more than 6.00 m. in diameter and ca. 3.00 m. in depth.' Petrie speculated!thatTell Jemmeh, because of its granaries,was a supply post for a Persian army attacking Egypt via Sinai. By estimating the total capacity of the silos and the amount of wheat consumed by a man per year, Petrie arrivedat the rather remarkablestatistic that Tell Jemmeh could supply 70,000 men on a two months'campaign.8 Regardlessof how appealing these notions may be to one's romanticsensibilities, such ideas are far in excess of the evidence. To this writer an adequate hypothesis must account for the extraordinarynumber of these nearly contemporaryunderground storage bins as well as for their distribution at sites situated in a climatic transition-zone. The vagaries of rainfall in this area made drought a constant threat. Frequent low yields or complete crop failures were the result. To cope with the "lean" years of harvest, the communities needed facilities for storing a surplus during the seasons of plenty.9 The writer believes that many of the pits of the Persian period represent such facilities. 6. 0. Tufnell, Lachish III (1953), pp. 151ff. and Pls. 17:3-4 and 116. 7. Petrie, Gerar (1928), pp. 8-9 and Pl. 13. 8. Ibid., p. 9. 9. For the feasibility of long-term wheat storage underground, see H. C. Bowen and P. D. Wood, Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, VII (1968), 1-14.

Mosaic Floors at Caesarea: An Archaeological Training Ground THOMAS

D. NEWMAN ASOR

Between the Crusader castle (A, on the accompanying aerial photo) and the Theater (B), two large mounds (D and E) rise from the shoreline south of Caesarea harbor. The fact Ithatthese "dunes"have not eroded away suggests that there are substantial walls retaining the sand. Their prominent position on the shoreline suggests further that they are the sites of major public buildings belonging to the city's early history. In the summer of 1972, the Joint Expedition to Caesarea, under the direction of Robert J. Bull, plans to excavate one of these mounds, using the intricate procedures of modern stratigraphictechnique. Application of this technique demands intensive training for budding stratigraphers;indeed, the most experienced archaeologist can encounter difficulties in ob-

1971, 3)

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

89

serving the minute differences in consistency or color value of soil which may be crucial in correctly interpreting a site. So it was that in the 1971 season at Caesarea, an area designated Area C, at the edge of a site previously explored by Dr. A. Negev of the Hebrew University', was selected -as a training area. The circumstances were ideal for several reasons. The training ground is in close proximity to the planned 1972 excavation site. Secondly, training was under the supervision of Nasser Dhiab Mansuir, better known as Abu Issa. ASORrelated digs are fortunate in that, over the years, a series of cxpeditions

k

3

-4 Ir'h?. Ilk FO

J li~p?''

Fig. 6. Aerial view of Caesarea Maritima. Note the Crusader castle (A), the Theater (B), Mosaic area (C), and the two mounds probably covering early buildings (D and E).

the

has developed a core of Arab technicians who have become expert in accurate identification and isolation of soil layers. Of these men, Abu Issa has become almost legendary. A third happy circumstancewas the presence of mosaic floors in Area C. The team under training set about learning to recognize differences in soil layers. What it soon hit was mosaic flooring, however. Now a mosaic floor is simply a more readily interpretable,more easily undcrstandable "occupation layer," one which can be followed with comparative ease. Like any floor, but perhaps more dramatically because of its character, a mosaic floor seals off periods in the site's occupation. It is the bottom of an occupation layer which may be discernible lying on it. If 1. A. Negev,

Christian

News

from Israel, X.4 (Dec.

1960),

17-22.

90

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST(Vol. XXXIV,

it is possible, practical and desirable to go down through the mosaic, any coins, pottery and artifacts beneath the flooring will have to be earlier than the date the floor was laid. The interesting problem which the training team encountered, however, was what constitutes the mosaic floor in its entirety. Several mosaic floors were uncovered in Area C; when a floor was intact, it was not difficulitto follow it so as to associate it with the walls of the structure of which it was a part. When a mosaic floor was found to be broken, either through erosion or by damage in use, the problem of establishing such association was more difficult. In Area C.2, portions of a broken mosaic floor were uncovered, bu't the tesserae did not continue far enough in any direction to permit associationwith nearby walls. Where the tesserae played out, an underlayment of charcoal and lime plaster was noted and followed for some distance; then it too petered out. At this point, Abu Issa pointed out beneath the plaster level a very fine layer of hamra, spread out by the ancient craftsman. Hamra sands are the yellow to dark red deposits indigenous to the ancient shorelines, inland from the present coast along Israel's coastal plain. These sands were valued as flooring material.2 Abu Issa's sharp eyes had spotted a layer only about two millimeters thick, but with extreme care it could be followed to an associated wall, where a few tesserae were discoveredengaged in the plaster at the foot of the wall; the flooring and walls of the original building had been connected and identified. These findiLgs of the archaeologicaltrainees will help in determining the sequence of construction in an area which was obviously once part of a large public space entirely covered with mosaics and later subdivided by additional walls. Moreover, it will provide data for a study of the construction techniques of mosaics in the late Byzantine period. Although hundreds of mosaic floor fragments have been excavated in Palestine, almost nothing is known of the economic or technological aspects of mosaic construction, because excavators have, at best, described only the surface designs of the pavements. Here, perhaps for the first time, a detailed analysis of the layers under the tesserae will permit scholars to compare provincial mosaics to the standard procedures set forth particularlyby the Roman architect Vitruvius. Vertical sections will be studied to determine if late Roman and Byzantine craftsmen used a special plaster for setting the tesserae on the base layer or "nucleus,"as has been recently proposed by R. E. Moore.3 The training program in Area C at Caesarea also provided valuable 2. R. G. Bullard, BA, XXXIII (1970), 108, 1llf., and esp. pp. 101 and 125. 3. R. E. Moore, American Journal of Archaeology, LXXII (1968), 57-68.

THE BIBLICALARCHAEOLOGIST

1971, 3)

91

experience in the recovery of designs in mosaics. In Area C.4, a badly damaged mosaic floor had been severely eroded by exposure to the elements, thereby showing clear evidence of an earlier floor beneath it. The broken floor was removed to reveal that the lower floor was almost intact. Its tesserae appeared completely white, but there was evidence of a pattern in the layout of the tesserae. Closer inspection revealed that the entire floor was covered with a thick coat of calcination, butilt up by rain seeping through soil layers rich in calcium and depositing a solution of calcium salts on the almost impermeable mosaic floor. The resultant deposit had virtually the same consistency and strength as tooth enamel!

JC6 t- r

J

.::

:: ,::::: ... .

si.

A

.0

Fig. 7. Archaeological dentistry uncovers a mosaic inscription at Caesarea. At left, one of the training team (none other than Mrs. Thomas Newman) works at the arduous cleaning task. At right, the end result.

A dilute solution of hydrochloric acid was applied to a small area of the mosaic, with little or no eflect. And so, armed with a dentist's pick, one member of the team (Fig. 7) proceeded to perform dentistry on each tessera, to determine whether it was a color indicator within the pattern or part of the white background. After two weeks of painstaking endeavor, the dentistry produced a completely legible inscription, one which Dr. Negev has under study since it bears a relationship to another he found in his work. Mosaic tracing is one special kind of stratigraphicarchaeology. More of it lies ahead of the Caesarea excavation team, and from it will come new insight into the history of what may be Israel's most exciting and promising Roman-Byzantineruin.

92

THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST

(Vol. XXXIV,

The End of an Era: Albright, deVaux and Goetz Who can say when an era in scholarshipends? Within four weeks, biblical archaeologyand ancient near easternstudieshave lost three men whose work literallydefinesan era. William Foxwell Albrightis dead. Active, alert, stimulatingas ever until a massivestrokeon July 9, he did not thereafterregainhis mental faculties,althoughafterfive weeks of physicalimprovementhe was moved to a nursinghome in Baltimore.Suddenlyhe lost groundon September 18 and died on September19, less than four monthsafter his 80th birthday. Dr. Albrightgave dimensionand definitionto what the BA sought to be and to do; throughthe BASOR which he planned and edited for 152 issuesover thirty-eightyears,throughmore than a thousandpublished works, and through his teaching of hundredsand his influence upon thousandsof scholars,he did the same for an entire scholarlyfield - as what one exuberantpopularmagazineonce called "the world'sforemost authorityon old things."Fruitsof his immenseintellect will continue to appearin the months ahead, notably the Anchor Bible volume on Matthew which he craftedin conjunctionwith Stephen Mann (to appearin October). Nine days prior to Dr. Albright'sdeath, Pare Rolandde Vaux, OP, distinguishedleader of Jerusalem'sEcole Biblique, died of a coronary thrombosis.At 68, he had overcomea blood clot problemin his leg this springwell enough to inauguratea new dig at Tel Kisannear Haifa. An accidentin the tcole kitchen broke his other leg in July and returned him to the hospital;there he sustainedthe final heart attack.He was at work on a monumentalhistoryof Israelin three volumes;work was far enough advancedto assure the appearanceof at least the first volume, a legacy of a remarkablecareerin biblicalarchaeologyand culturalhistory. The first few pages of this issue of BA, where Dr. Wright is in a sense in conversationwith Pare de Vaux, are tribute to his felicitous writing and clear thinking. In late August,AlbrechtGoetze,whose careerin Assyriologyspanned half a century,died of a heartattackin Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. at Marburgin 1933 At age 37, he had been forcedfromhis professorship by the Nazis, and came to Yale University,from which he retiredonly recently. He was founder and editor of ASOR's Journalof Cuneiform Studies. His Kulturgeschichte Kleinasiens(2nd ed., 1958) is a masterhis and and Identification publicationof the Eshnunnalaw-code piece, a milestone. Two of these men were ASOR pillars;the other was one of the Schools'most valued friends.With their deaths,and with that of Nelson Glueck in February,we witness the end of an era. --EFC