No title

ISSN 0003-097X

BIBLICAL ARCH OF

MAY 1976

Volume39 Number2

.

_f

4,1

4

lit1

I IL A-3.?'B:

1,% 4107

I i

r C\T

.e

C

'441, );

..,Z-I

~.k4 't

-T)L

14-

~

i?~411

W 10P

-4et,

The Royal Archives of Ebla

11

Biblical Archaeologist Reader, 1

The reprint of a unique and widely used anthology in which separate studies of the temple in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and SyriaPalestine as well as the ancient Israelite tabernacle, the synagogue, and the church form the setpiece. Contributors include Nelson Glueck, John Bright, W. F. Albright, F. M. Cross, A. Leo Oppenheim, Floyd Filson, and others. Edited by G. Ernest Wright and David Noel Freedman.

(Paper) $4.20 3.00 (for cSPs members) ASOR is a member of the Center for Scholarly Publishing and Services. 352 pages

Orderfrom:

SCHOLARS PRESS OF MONTANA UNIVERSITY

Biblical Archeologist is published quarterly (March, May, September, December) by the American Schools of Oriental Research in cooperation with Scholars Press. Its purpose is to provide the general reader, whether Christian or Jew, believer or non-believer, with an interpretation of the meaning of new archeological discoveries for the biblical heritage of the West. Unsolicited mss. are welcome but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Address all editorial correspondence to Biblical Archeologist, 1053 LSA Building, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Address business correspondence to Scholars Press, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812.

Copyright ? 1976 American Schools of Oriental Research. Annual Subscription: $10.00. Current single issues: $2.50. Printed in the United States of America, Printing Department, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812.

MONTANA 59801 MISSOULA,

Editor: David Noel Michigan

Freedman,

University

of

Managing editor pro ternm: John A. Miles, Jr., Doubleday and Company

.::

' ' ?5' :

fnE~,?

.'3tr.'.asa;,

?n,1; ?

L•r

:ID''c•r

,r" .+ ,, ..

;if .

:

i ,•"

,?

?; ?.at; . iA (

?1.0

,."',

. '

t

1

i;,

Editorial board: Frank M. Cross, Harvard University McCormick Edward F. Campbell, Theological Seminary William G. Dever, University of Arizona John S. Holladay, Jr., University of Toronto H. Darrell Lance, Colgate-Rochester Divinity School

..

Production Manager: James Eisenbraun, University of Michigan

jit~ f e

CREDITS

Cover Four of the Ebla tablets. The Ebla script is described as precise and "sophisticated," an indication of the mature and well-established culture of the ancient Syrian capital.

"Nothing Early and Nothing Late: Rewriting Israel's Conquest" is Anson Rainey's revised translation of an article by Y. Aharoni which first appeared in Bible et Terre Sainte, September-October, 1975. Special thanks are accorded to the editors of Bible et TerreSainte as well as to Prof. Rainey and to Miriam Aharoni, the late archeologist's widow, for their assistance in preparing this issue of Biblical Archeologist. Photographs accompanying "The Royal Archives of Tell Mardikh-Ebla" c/o World Wide Photos. Photograph accompanying "In Memoriam Yohanan Aharoni" c/o Anson Rainey.

IF

kg'

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

GiovanniPettinato

44

THE ROYAL ARCHIVES OF TELL-MARDIKH-EBLA It had a populationof 260,000.It spokea languageclose to Hebrew. Its greatestking bore a name cognate with Eber,the ancestorof the Hebrews (Gen 10:21).It worshippeda god named Ya.CanaaniteEblabroughtbackto life in an extraordinary find of 15,000tablets-seems destinedto revolutionizethe historyof the ancientNear East. One of its two discoverersoffersan earlyreport.

YohananAharoni

55

NOTHING EARLY AND NOTHING LATE:

RE-WRITINGISRAEL'SCONQUEST In Beer-sheba,a well with a shaft two meterswide and forty meters deep would seemto be the famous well of Abrahamand Isaac(Genesis 21 and 26). And yet Beer-shebaseems to have been uninhabiteduntil after the traditionalpatriarchalera. Aharoni offersan ingenioussolutionto the puzzlein a tale of four tells in the Negeb.

Reviews:

Departments: LETTERTO THE READERS

42

77 ASSYRIANPALACERELIEFS IN THE BRITISHMUSEUM R. D. Barnettand W. Forman

77 QUMRANSTUDIES ChaimRabin

OBITUARY

COLOPHON

53

80

78 JERUSALEMTHE HOLY

MichaelAvi-Yonahand WernerBraun

78 WILLIAM FOXWELL ALBRIGHT: A TWENTIETH CENTURY GENIUS LeonaGliddenRunningand David Noel Freedman

78 THE HISTORYAND LITERATURE OF THE PALESTINIANJEWS FROM CYRUS TO HEROD,550 B.C. TO 4 B.C. W. StewartMcCullough

79 HAZOR:THE REDISCOVERYOF A GREATCITADELOF THE BIBLE YigaelYadin

A LETTER TO THE READERS

In The Way of All the Earth, theologian John Dunne proposes a Gandhian "experiment in truth." One is to "map"world history onto one's own life as if its awful crises and triumphs were one's own and then reverse the experiment, "mapping"one's own life onto history as if one's private struggles were of major historical moment. The results of such an experiment, as Dunne reports them, are that A man comes to have plentyof time when he ceasesto workagainsttime."I haveonly one life to live,"he may thinkas longas he is workingagainstit; he will hurryto accomplishwhat he wants to accomplishin life, to experiencewhathewantsto experience,to reachthegoals he has set his heartupon, beforedeath overtakeshim. When he allies himself with them, though, all this changes.Whenhe seeshis lifeas a recapitulationof time, he seesthathe hasenoughtime,thathe hasall timeat his disposal. Though not all readers will find Dunne's experiment well-designed, there is a scripturalwarrantfor his reciprocally historical and existential method in the words of the Lord to Hosea, "When Israel was a child I loved him, "And I called my son out of Egypt." Whatever the scientific or historical status of such analogies as the "childhood" of a nation, those analogies have been extraordinarily fruitful for religion. The western religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have consciously anchored themselves in such analogies; and the secular faith of western political political communities is, if anything, even more dependent upon success in the struggle to discern some root similarity between "my"story and "our"history. For all of us to recognize, in some snapshot of our past, the child who is father to the man we have become is to know ourselves legitimate:we are then not orphans or bastards but sons and heirs. For such reasons as these, the close of the Late

42

Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age - the childhood of Israel - remains a period of compelling interest. Whether through eruption or incursion or evolution or migration or conquest or conversion or infiltration, there was at the end of that period an Israel where before there had been none. Of what improbable liaison was this new nation the issue? To the Peoples of the Book, the question is of existential as well as historical importance, but it has yet to receive an adequate answer. The waning of the Bronze Age and the waxing of the Iron was, as nearly as can be known, was a period of global violence. In his posthumously published Mankind and Mother Earth, Arnold Toynbee writes: In the courseof the threecenturies1250-950B.C.,all the regionalcivilizationsof the Old Worldfromthe Minoan and Mycenaeanin the Aegeanbasinto the Shangin the YellowRiverbasinwereviolentlyassaultedby relatively barbarouspeoples, and these disturbancesresultedin largeshiftsof population.Evenassailantswho had been successfully repulsed eventually won by 'peaceful penetration'the groundthat theyhad previoslyfailedto win by force of arms.The ultimateconsequencewas a sweepingchangein the map of the Old World'sregional civilizations.The oldestof themwereenfeebled;someof the youngerdestroyed;andseveralnewcivilizationsarose in the geographicalintersticesbetweenthe ruins. Such was the violence in the Aegean, for example, that writing itself - Michael Ventris' famous "Linear B," - was completely forgotten. Further east, the wreck of civilization was less total; and yet it is not too much to say that Israel was born in "the interstices between the ruins," a child snatched from the wreckage, a survivor against all odds. The question explored in this issue of Biblical Archeologist by the late Yohanan Aharoni is, in the first instance, whether the Israelite conquest of Canaan was a true conquest or whether it was part of that "peaceful penetration" of which Toynbee speaks. Ultimately, MAY 1976

however, the issue is that of religious militarism as ideology. To what extent is warlike behavior ineluctably a part of that national experience which has been taken as paradigmatic by the West? Is the modern ideology of Holy Peace, so to call it, hopelessly at odds with a biblical tradition of Holy War? Aharoni reconstructs the "conquest" as a much more pacific process than a cursory reading of the Bible would suggest and relates the biblical account as we actually have it to special pleading by the Davidic monarchy. He notes the absence of fortification in Early Iron Age Palestinian sites and infers that the Israelite "conquest" must have been "extensive settlement in an unpopulated area where the new settlements were not subject to actual danger."The later representation of this infiltration as a conquest under a king-like leader and of the era of the Judges as social chaos in which there was "no king in Israel and every man did what was right in his own eyes" is, for him, "apologetics on the part of the young monarchy against disintegrating tribal rule during the great struggle with the Philistines." The archeological evidence itself does not suggest disorder but rather tranquillity. If this tranquillity was the "peace of Yahweh," the war torn Early Iron Age might seem an unlikely matrix for it; but we must recall that "when Israel was a child," he

was a battered child. Perhaps, as he was called out of Egypt to manhood in a new land, he rememberedlessons of war and peace, of cruelty and mercy, that a happier childhood could not have taught him. Dunne speaks of "an abyss which opens up like a narrow and bottomless crevice at crucial points in a human life." The turn of the Bronze Age in Palestine may have been one such abyss in the history of Israel. Whether in Aharoni's archeological sounding of that abyss a new and more peacable revelation is to be heard, each reader may judge for himself. ***

Elsewhere in the current issue, we are pleased to present an early report by Giovanni Pettinato on the epoch-making discovery near Aleppo in Syria of the seat of a lost third-millennium Canaanite empire. At Tell Mardikh, now identified as Ebla, Paolo Matthiae of the University of Rome has unearthed an archive of some fifteen thousand cuneiform tablets, eighty percent in Sumerian, twenty percent in "Old Canaanite" or "Eblaite," a language hitherto unknown but closely related to classical Hebrew. Pettinato, as Matthiae's epigrapher, writes a chapter in what may well prove the archeological detective story of the century.

. . . next time in

OF BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST Ebla wasn't built in a day .

. .

.

or rediscovered in a day either.

Paolo Matthiae and Giovanni Pettinato's epoch-making finds came at the end of ten years of sometimes unpromising excavation. As a neophyte archeologist in his early twenties, Matthiae chose the unidentified tell against the advice of his University of Rome superiors. In September's Biblical Archeologist, he tells his own story as well as the story of the find in an exclusive interview and a specially commissioned article. The adventure of "the Dead Sea Scrolls of the '70's" from the man who discovered them is a story no serious student of the Bible can afford to miss.

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

43

ROYAL

THE TELL

ARCHIVES

OF

MARDIKH-EBLA

GIOVANNI PETTINATO

15,000 tablets,many in a previouslyunknown WestSemitic languageakin to Hebrew,reveala lost 3rd-millenniumSyrian empire as large as that of Sargon the Great. A stunning challenge to the primacy of Mesopotamiain ancient Near Easternhistoryand in the culturalgenesis of ancientIsrael.

A very large mound covering about 140 acres and shortly after in 1975 with the discovery of the first room 50 feet high, Tell Mardikh is situated on the North Syrian containing the royal archives of Ebla of the 3rd plateau about halfway between the modern cities of millennium B.C. Hama and Aleppo. Since the beginning of the The historical importance of the three dates just excavations in 1964 by the Italian Archeological Mission mentioned consists in the fact that these correspond to the of the University of Rome under the direction of three fundamental stages of our knowledge of Tell Professor Paolo Matthiae, Tell Mardikh has emergedas a Mardikh. The finding of the statue permitted the identification of Tell Mardikh with the ancient city of very important center in antiquity.' or have one could no imagined Ebla;2the recovery of the archive in 1974 enabled me to Surely expected that under the debris was hidden the capital of an identify a very ancient language of the Northwest Semitic immense empire, the storied city of Ebla, that repeatedly group which I have labeled Paleo-canaanite, hitherto came into conflict with the Mesopotamian empire of unknown.3 In addition to definitively proving the Akkad and was finally destroyed by King Naram-Sin, identification of the site and the language, the 1975 who put it to the torch. discovery permits fuller evaluation of the role played by Ebla in the political, economic, and cultural history of The discovery of Ebla has been slow, just like most solid scientific acquisitions, and not without difficulties the Near East in the 3rd millennium B.C. created by pseudoscientific skepticism. Of the twelve In this contribution to Biblical Archeologist, campaigns completed to date, three events in particular graciously solicited by its editor, Professor D. N. will be remembered whenever Tell Mardikh-Ebla is Freedman,4 I shall briefly describe the archives talked about. The first occurred in 1968 with the finding discovered in 1974 and 1975, dwelling on those points of of the statue bearing the dedicatory inscription of King history, religion and language of the Semitic peoples in Ibbit-Lim, lord of the city of Ebla, to the goddess EBtar. the 3rd millennium B.C.that have most recently emerged The second took place in 1974 with the unearthing in its from them. Since we barely have begun the study of the original place of the first archive serving a common tablets, this report must necessarily be preliminary and purpose, while the third exciting moment followed the interpretation of the findings tentative.

44

May 1976

A. Cuneiform Texts Found in 1974 and 1975 The 1974 archive consists of 42 tablets, for the most part of an administrative nature, dealing with metals, wood and textiles. Text TM.74.G.120 is an exception, being a school tablet listing personal names attested at Ebla.5 In 1975 texts of two other rooms were brought to light. In the first, L. 2712, about 1000 texts were preserved including the fragments, all of an economic character. In the second room, L. 2769, were discovered about 15,000 tablets of very varied types, as will be seen below. There are three bases for dating the royal archives of Ebla: archeological, epigraphic, and historical. The archeological context in which the tablets were unearthed is clearly Early Bronze IV, i.e., 2400-2250 B.c. The archeological date is fully sustained both by the paleography and by some important synchronisms

Reconstruction of the entire dynasty of Ebla in the period 2400-2250 permits the precise dating of the documents by king... contained in the tablets themselves that permit the dating of both archives to Early Bronze IV. The satisfactory reconstruction of the entire dynasty of Ebla in this period further permits the precise dating of the documents by kings and hence their exact collacation in time. Though it may appear premature to offer a classification of the tablets discovered in 1975, a tentative listing does not seem out of place. I. The largest part of the documents is economicadministrative. There are lists of rations for the palace personnel, for the messengers departing to friendly cities, offerings for the temples and the divinities, lists of tributes paid to Ebla, as well as rolls of functionaries and state personnel. Many tablets deal with agriculture, especially with grain, with viticulture, the raising of cattle, and above all with the metallurgical industry, textiles, wood, and precious stones. Among these the international trade tablets (textiles and metals) stand out for their immense size, in some cases containing 60 columns and about 3000 lines per tablet. From all these texts one gathers how vast was Ebla's commercial horizon in the 3rd millenium and how refined its techniques. II. In second place belong the lexical texts. Over and above the different school exercises, we possess scientific lists of animals in general, of fishes and birds, lists which may properly be termed geographical atlases, rolls of professions and personal names, lists of objects. All these lists are closely bound to the Mesopotamian tradition documented at Fara and Abu Salabikh. But the Eblaites did not merely transmit Sumerian lists already BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

known; they began to compose their own in Paleocanaanite. One of the characteristics, moreover, of the scientific texts of Ebla is that of being construed acrographically, that is, on the basis of the formative elements, so that they may be duly considered as the precursors of the Babylonian series ni-ga, izi and kd-gal attested in Mesopotamia, but seven centuries later.6 III. The historical and historical-juridical texts form one of the most pleasant surprisesof Ebla. There are royal ordinances, edicts, state letters or letters of state officials, lists of cities subject to Ebla, assignments of prebends, state marriages. Finally, there are some international treaties, among which should be mentioned the treaty between Ebla and Assur concerning the statutes of a commercial center. The juridical texts deal with purchase-sale contracts, the partition of goods, and perhaps also with codices of law. IV. Among the literary texts may be mentioned stories with a mythological background, hymns to divinities, incantations and collections of proverbs. The mythological tablets, written as they are in Paleocanaanite, deal with Mesopotamian deities such as Enki and Enlil, as well as Utu and Inanna. V. Last, but far from least, there are the syllabaries, properly so-called, for learning Sumerian, grammatical texts with verbal paradigms in Eblaite and 32 bilingual (Sumerian and Eblaite) vocabularies-the first in history. Among these, pride of place belongs perhaps to that tablet, TM.75.G.2000 (with 18 duplicates), containing nearly a thousand translated words. B. Political History of Syria in the 3rd Millennium The information of a historical nature supplied either by the strictly historical texts or by the economic tablets permits one to form a clearer and fuller picture of the political situation in the Near East during the second half of the 3rd millennium B.c. Given the lack of written

There are. . .32 Sumerian-Eblaite vocabularies. One, with 18 duplicates, translates a thousand words. evidence till now, Syria and Palestine seemed to be territories populated at best by nomadic tribes. Now, however, thanks to the Ebla tablets, the existence of many states with their own kings and in close contact with each other has come to light. The most important among these was doubtless Ebla, around which revolved the smaller principalities as vassals. The geographical dimensions alone of the state-empire would be a more accurate term- of Ebla

45

Fig. 1. Someof the nearly15,000tabletsfoundat Tell Mardikhin 1975.Theshelveson whichthe tablets-a commercial archive-were storedhad long since givenway beneaththem. However,as the photographshows,they werefoundin place,still linedup in the rows in whichthey had originallybeen placed.

would convince us that we are looking at the greatest power in the ancient Near East during the 3rd millennium, a power that not only could stand up to the Mesopotamian empire of Akkad but at certain periods could also reduce it to vassalage. Ebla's sphere of influence reached as far south as Sinai, including all of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria of today. To the west it reached Cyprus, to the north it extended to Kani' and possibly also Ijattu, while in the east it touched the highlands of Mesopotamia. Obviously, these are the

46

frontiers of Ebla's commercial sway, which often, however, coincided with strictly political boundaries. Of particular interest to students of Syro-palestinian archeology, as well as of the Old Testament, is the 3rd millennium documentation at Ebla of cities hitherto epigraphically attested in the 2nd-lst millennia B.C.,such as Salim, the city of Melchizedech, Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo, Gaza, Dor, Sinai, Ashtarot, Joppa, etc.7 The tablets further permit the reconstruction ot the dynasty of Ebla at this period and even the structure

MAY 1976

itself of the state. The names of the following kings, in order of reign, have been preserved: Igri~l-IJalam Ar-Ennum Ebrum Ibbi-Sipi', Dububu-Ada Irkab-Damu The kinship of the first three kings is unfortunately not very clear, but Ebrum and his two successors are respectively father, son and grandson. Among these kings the most interesting, also for his biblical reminiscences, is surely Ebrum, whose name is written Eb-uru-um, with two possible reading: Eb-ru9-um,whose resemblance to Eber, the father of the Semites according to Gen 10:21, is truly surprising, or Eb-ri-um, which inevitably elicits cibrj, "Hebrew."Of the two possibilities, I would choose the second. It is not mere chance that precisely under Ebrum the state of Ebla reached its greatest splendor, and it was just during his reign that Akkad-so one of the tablets reports- paid tribute to Ebla. The king bears the Sumerian title en, whose Paleocanaanite equivalent according to the Eblaite vocabularies is malik. The queen-maliktum--holds an eminent position in the state hierarchy; in fact, she is always mentioned together with the king. The internal affairs and administration were run by the crown prince, while the second-born directed foreign affairs. The elders of the kingdom (abba) also exercised considerable political powers, among them the management of the royal family.8 The kings considered of equal status in other states also are called en, while the vassals receive the Sumerian titles lugal, "king,"or more commonly di-ku5, "judges." Both titles clearly show that the structure of the state was

Under Ehrum, whose resemblance to Eber, the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews (Gen 10:21) is striking, Ebla achieves its greatest splendor, exacting tribute even from Akkad. quite different from that in Mesopotamia. Of course, the second title cannot but evoke the famous "judges"of the Old Testament. As regards the administrative division of the city of Ebla, which according to one text had a population of 260,000-obviously referring to Greater Elba-we have rather detailed information about the topography. TM.75G.336 reports that the city was divided into two sectors: the acropolis and the lower city. On the acropolis are located the four administrative centers: Palace of the City Palace of the King BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Stables Palace of the Servants All four administrative centers are together called &-MI+SITA, "Governorship." The lower city was subdivided into four quarters corresponding to the four gates of the city: Quarter of the City = Gate of City = Gate of Dagan Quarter 2 = Gate of Rasap Quarter 3 4 = Gate of Sipig Quarter The above-cited text also lists the servants, the functionaries and the principal officials of the administrative centers as well as the quarters of the city.9 Three historical texts in particular furnish information about foreign policy. The first is the report of the military campaign conducted by general Enna-Dagan of Ebla against Iblul-II, the sovereign of Mari, the city so well known from the excavations of A. Parrot. The account of the war, caused by Mari's refusal to pay tribute to Ebla, describes its various phases, among them the decisive encounter between the army of Ebla and that of Mari in the vicinity of Emar. Leading the triumphant

Ebla, according to one text, had a population of 260,000. march, Enna-Dagan reaches Mari, but Iblul-Il flees before the close pursuit of the enemy forces and seeks refuge in lUaSum. Here he is overtaken by Enna-Dagan who forces him to pay the tribute due, then dethrones him and makes himself king of Mari, but spares the life of Iblul-Il.'0The amount of tribute that Iblul-Il had to pay is fortunately reported by a contemporary economic tablet which places the sum at 11,000 pounds of silver and 880 pounds of gold.1" This campaign against Mari, which ill accords with the peaceful spirit of the Eblaites (see below), gives the key to understanding the encounter between Akkad and Ebla. It is because of this campaign that Sargon of Akkad decided on the sortie into Syria which brought Mari back into Akkad's sphere of influence and in addition achieved the subjection of Ebla. This fact must also have caused the dismissal of the king Ar-Ennum and favored Ebrum'sascent to the throne. But it is precisely Ebrum, thought to be weaker than his predecessor, who was to create greater problems for the empire of Akkad. When Sargon withdrew, Ebrum reannexed Mari and made one of his own sons king. As we learn from a dating formula, the son's name was Suraand Damu.'2 Sargon's immediate successors Rimu, and Mani'tusu stood helpless before Ebrum'sexpansion, only under Naram-Sin did Akkad recover well enough to defeat the Eblaites and finally to destroy Ebla itself. Naram-Sim could well boast of this exploit, whose

47

significancecan only now be fully appreciated.13 The secondhistoricaltext is a stateletterin which the king of Ebla, Irkab-Damu,petitions the king of UIamazito send him some good soldiers.14This letter, which shortlyantedatesNaram-Sin'sonslaught,reveals on the one hand how far-reaching were Ebla's connectionsand explainson the other hand the why of Ebla'sdefeat.On the basisof theportionsof textswhichI haveread,Eblaseemsnot to have had its own armybut hiredmercenaries.Clearlyan empirecannotbe defended by mercenariesalone and hereinlies, it wouldseem,the reasonwhy Akkadfinallyprevailedover Ebla. Besidesconfirmingwhathas beensetforthabove, the third text helps to understandthe foreignpolicy of Ebla, which aimed to form a network of close relationshipswith other cities and states based on commercial considerations rather than on military factors. This text contains in fact the treaty between Ebrumandthe legendarykingof AHur,Du-ud-jai (whom I am inclinedto identifywiththefirstkingof theAssyrian royallist,Tudija,one of the 17kingswholivedin tents).'5 The document begins with an introductionlisting the leadingcitizens of Ebla; then follow 20 paragraphsin which the problemsinherentin the foundationand the

May you have no stable abode! May you undertake a trip of perdition! statutes of a commercial center are casuistically faced. Among the cases envisioned may be cited the problem of entry tax into the kdrum, the treatment of merchants, as well as problems of a penal character, such as injuriesto persons, trials, etc. The treaty closes with a curse formula addressed to the Assyrian king: "The moment that he does not respect the treaty, may the god Sun, the god Adad, and his own personal god disperse his decision in the steppe; for his messengers who set out on a journey may there be no water; may you have no stable abode, may you undertake a trip of perdition!" From this curse formula it is difficult not to conclude that this is a vassal treaty. Unfortunatelywe do not know which commercial as center it has in mind, but the mention of Karchemi, well as of Uattu in the introduction warrants the cautious hypothesis that it is dealing with the founding of Kdrum Kanig, so famous some centuries later as an Assyrian commercial colony. The frequent mention in the economic texts of Kar-kai-ni-ikL sustains this hypothesis. These few details about some historic events during this period of the third millennium oblige us, as observed elsewhere, thoroughly to re-examine our knowledge and reconstructions of power relationships in the ancient Near East. Be it in the field of political history or in the area of economic relationships, one can no longer prescind from the ample epigraphic finds at Ebla.

48

C. The Religion of Ebla Till now the information about the Semitic pantheon in Syria-Palestine during the 3rd millennium has been laboriously gleaned from the SumerianAkkadian onomastica of Mesopotamia. Now, however, the Ebla tablets supply surprisingly rich data about the principal divinities and the bearing of their cult. Here three aspects of the religion as it appears in the economic

.. .the Massoretes had very ancient documents at their disposal. texts and in the onomastica will claim our attention; we shall also touch upon what may be termed an attempt at syncretism between the Sumerian-Akkadian deities and the West Semitic gods. I. The gods attested at Ebla number around 500. First, we must obviously deal with the problem of II and Ya (w): The term I1doubtless indicates "god"in general, but also a specific divinity, the god I1/El of the Ugaritic tablets. Ya is still considered a crux interpretumso far as it could be rather understood as a hypocoristicon, i.e., a shortened form. But the alternation in the personal names such as Mi-k&-Il / En-na-Il / En-na-Y&, Mi-k&-Y&t, I?-ra-ll/ I-ra- Yi amply demonstrates that at Ebla at least Ya had the same value as II and points to a specific deity. Now the new fact revealedby the Ebla tablets is this: while till the reign of Ebrum all personal names contained the theophorous element II, from Ebrumon II was substitued for by Ya. Here I merely note the fact, but it appears evident that under Ebrum a new development in West Semitic religious concepts took place that permitted the rise of Ya. The form Ya may be considered a shortened form of Yaw, as may be inferred from such personal names as Su-mi-a-ut. Passing now to other divinities, we may mention "Dagan of Tuttul," "Dagan of Sivad," etc. Noteworthy is the mention of "Dagan of Canaan," a title recalling the well-known "Dagan of the Philistines,"whose temple was pulled down by Samson. This referenceto Canaan neatly demonstrates the antiquity of this term and how sound the hypothesis that the ethnic label "Canaanite"is much older than generally believed. In the second position in the pantheon appears Rasap, the Regef of later documents. Then follow the god (Samag), AMtar,a Sipi,his Mesopotamian masculine divinity at Ebla, unlike counterpart, Atarte, Adad, Malik, Ka'alu (Ko'ar of the Ugaritic tablets, Aera, and finally the god Kamig,surely of posterior texts. From the reading of the the Kamo, name Kamig, one may again marvel at the divine reliability of the biblical text which on one occasion preserves the unusual form kemis; this suggests that the Masoretes had very ancient documents at their disposal.

MAY 1976

"-it

lvA 71

-Ito

IA

v?a

f f11., tit

?WOiMt

Fig. 2. Fourof theEblatablets.At righta measuringrod(eachsmallsquareis onecentimeter).TheEblascriptis described as preciseand "sophisticated," an indicationof the matureand well-establishedcultureof the ancientSyriancapital. Consideration for the reader'spatience, however, obliges us to terminate this enumeration of gods. But not before noting the presence in the Eblaite pantheon of some Sumerian deities such as Enki, Enlil, etc., as well as of the Hurrian gods Adamma and AMtabi, whose feast is mentioned in two month-names of the calendar introduced by the king Ibbi-Sipi', the son of Ebrum.'6 II. Passing on to the divine cult, we note the existence of the temples of Dagan, Atar, Rasap, Kamo,, all attested in the texts from Ebla. Among the offerings are listed bread, drinks, or even animals. Two tablets in particular, TM.75.G. 1974 and TM.75.G.2238, stand out because they record the offerings of various animals to differentgods made by all the members of the royal family during a single month. For example, "11 sheep for the god Adad from the en as an offering"; "12 sheep for the god Dagan from the en as an offering";"10 sheep for the god Rasap of the city Edani from the en as an offering." Among the more interesting aspects of the divine BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

cult at Ebla is the presence of diverse categories of priests and priestesses, including two classes of prophets, the mahlu and the nabi'iatum, the second of which finds a natural counterpart in the Old Testament. To explain the biblical phenomenon scholars have hitherto looked to Mari for background, but in the future Ebla will also claim their attention."7 III. The first attempts at syncretism between the cultures of Ebla and Mesopotamia were touched on above. Thanks to the vocabulary TM.75.G.2000 and parallels, we possess some correspondences between the Mesopotamian and the Syrian divinities, the most transparent being Nergal=Rasap. Other equations include Bara=A'tarta. Inanna=Atar, Utu=Sipi,, Interestingly enough, Enlil the head of the Sumerian pantheon is equated with no West Semitic god. In place of an equation is given the reading I-li-lu which is the simple correspondent of Enlil. One would have expected Enlil to answer to Dagan, but for the present this objective

49

consideration finds no confirmation on the tablets. At the end of this paragraphit could be underlinedthat till now I have not succeeded in identifying among the lexical texts any lists of gods comparable to the Mesopotamian catalogs, a rather surprising lacuna that future excavations may serve to fill. D. The Language of Ebla The archive of 42 tablets discovered in 1974 already permitted in 1975 the identification in the Ebla texts, especially in the onomastica, a new and very ancient West Semitic language, different from those nearest in time, namely Old Akkadian and Amorite. This language had already shown such strict affinities with Ugaritic and even more with Phoenician and Hebrew as to suggest the classification "Paleo-canaanite." The attestation of the term "Canaan" in the Eblaite texts precludes the accusation of using an anachronistic designation. What is more, the 1975 archives so confirm the relationship with the languages of Canaan in the 2nd and Ist millennium that the generic designation "Paleo-canaanite" for the language of Ebla appears fully justified. Without entering into a detailed discussion of the structure of the language of Ebla, it is possible to establish its classification by citing some personal names along with data drawn from the bilingual vocabularies. I. Before listing, however, the Paleo-canaanite terms, the phenomenon of Eblaite bilingualism should be noted. As is now evident, Ebla imported from the land of Sumer the cuneiform system of writing in which all the

...a new and very ancient West Semitic language.. .strict affinities with Ugaritic and even more with Phoenician and Hebrew. documents of Ebla were composed. The imported cuneiform method of writing served to express the Sumerian langauge, and it is precisely in Sumerian that the majority of tablets found at Ebla are composed. In fact, one can assert that 80% is certainly Sumerian and only 20% Paleo-canaanite. As has been remarked elsewhere'8 we are dealing here only with an apparent bilingualism, since the tablets, though written in Sumerian, were surely read as Northwest Semitic. Such a fact makes it impossible to study the Ebla tablets without a sound grasp of the Sumerian language as well as of the cuneiform system of writing'inthe 3rd millennium. Hence the necessity arises both for Sumerologists to examine again the West Semitic languages and for Semitists to return to the study of Mesopotamian languages and scripts. Among the merits of the finds at Tell Mardikhwill be drawing together of not only the eastern and western Semitic cultures but also the specialists in such disciplines.

50

II. Of the thousands of personal names attested at Ebla, available space permits the listing of but twenty. Mi-ku-YM Mi-ku-II En-na-ni-I En-na-ni-Yb Ig-mui-II A-na-Ma-lik Lam-I-lum Be-st-pi-hir RNi--na-Adad Ip-pi-hir A-dam-Ma-lik Du-bt-'hu-Ma-lik d il-ha-il Eb-du-dRa-sa-ap Ig-a-bz' Ig-i-lum i-sa- Yh I-ad-Da-mu Ib-na-Ma-lik

"'Whois like Ya?" "Who is like Il?" "Il has mercy on me" "Ya has mercy on me" "Il has heard me" "I am Malik" "He is truly god" "(He) has reunited his house" "Adad is our shepherd" "It has been reunited" "Man of Malik" "Feast of Malik" "Il is strength" "'Servantof Rasap" "A man is the father" "A man is the god" "Ya has gone forth" "The hand of Damu" "Malik has created"

These few examples suffice to illustrate the relationship of the Eblaite world to the biblical ambience of a later period. In fact, many of these names occur in the same form in the Old Testament, so that a certain interdependence between the culture of Ebla and that of the Old Testament must be granted. III. The bilingual vocabularies mentioned earlier make an essential contribution to the Northwest Semitic lexicon of the 3rd millennium. Many words hitherto attested only in the Old Akkadian inscriptions and the pre-Sargonic onomastica, and often erroneously considered to be East Semitic, are now more accurately assigned to the West Semitic branch documented at Ebla. As with the personal names, I shall list here only a few examples taken from the vocabularies. al-dull,-ga dumu-sag ur-sag nam-mi eme-bala ni-nam fu gu-ra

= = = = = = =

'i-ri-sa-tum but-kd-ru qa-ra-dum t-nu-jum td-da-bi-ru me-na-ma-ma ma-4a-si-i-da

(r~r) (bkr) (qrd) ('n?) (dbr) (mnmm) (mis yd)

= ti-'a-ma-tum a-ab (thmin) = a-ki-lum ('kl) kti nam-en = ma-li-ku-um (mlk) = nu-p"t-uI-tu-um(np) zi ama-mu = t-mu-mu ('mm) = k,-lu-ma-tt (klm) zeh)

"desire" "first-born" "hero" "womanhood" "translator" "whatever" "to smite with the hand" "ocean abyss" "to eat" "king" "life" "mother" "kid"

MAY 1976

i~4ji Alr~

el,r: li?:IR

Isr"~rr~sa~ ~4 IlkI

-:Vk? 41

Fig. 3. Partialviewof theexcavationsiteat Tell Mardikh.At left, the pedestalof the king'sthronein thecourtyardof the royal palace.At the heightof theirpower,the kings of Ebla exactedtributefrom cities from the PersianGulf to the Mediterranean Sea. One could continue indefinitely in listing examples from the rich royal archives of Ebla. But before turning to considerations on the Paleo-canaanite lexicon and language of Ebla, it should be stressed that Ebla furnishes the oldest vocabularies of recorded history. Those heretofore attested belong to a period 500 years later. Recalling that the Ebla archives date to 2400-2250 B.C., we should here speak of the importance of the scribal school of Ebla. The documentation at hand warrants discussion not only of the existence of such a school but also witnesses its efficiency. Indeed, this testimony calls for a substantial revision of the current evaluation of the cultural world in the 3rd millennium.'9 Till now the only sources of information for the 3rd millennium flowed from the Mesopotamian cities of Sumer, such as Uruk, Fara, Abu Salabikh, and Nippur. No wonder then that culture was identified with Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia in general and the land of Sumer in particular are considered the grand conceptual BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

forge from which culture spread to the entire known world. This obtains with regard to script, language, and compositions of both lexical and literary nature. Mesopotamia is supposed to have given all to others; to her applies the classic saying ex Oriente lux. But what now is the more accurate view of the situation after these discoveries, especially of the school of Ebla? What has been claimed above finds unprecedented confirmation in the library of Ebla: many of the texts, especially the encyclopedic lists, are identical with tablets found at Fara and Abu Salabikh in particular. Merely on the basis of available photographs it has been possible to identify at least 50 texts at Ebla that had already been identified at these two Sumerian centers, so that one can fairly speak of Sumerian influence on Eblaite culture. This fact is further confirmed both by the close commercial connections between Ebla and the Mesopotamian centers and by the mention of Mesopotamian scribes at the school of Ebla. The

51

professor of mathematics who composed the one mathematicaltext hithertoidentifiedhails in fact from the city of Kish. To Eblaalso camescribesfromothercenterssuch as Emar and Mari. But to conclude that Ebla only received Mesopotamianculture passivelywould be a mistake.Manyare the significantdata whichshow that Eblawas a creativecenterof notableimportance,that it not only receivedbut also gave somethingof itself to Mesopotamia.One examplemay serveto illustratethis statement.At Abu Salabikha geographicallistwasfound that has provedto be an insolublecrux for its modern editor.20Well,the samelist hascometo lightat Eblaand with concomitant evidence that it was drawn up in Syria-more preciselyat Ebla-and then transmittedto If EblacopiedSumerianlexicallists,it is Mesopotamia.21 that Sumerduplicatedtexts fromthe school true equally at Ebla.Thisfact alreadyenablesus to catcha glimpseof theculturalexchangeexistingin the NearEastduringthe 3rd millennium,a glimpsetill now unthinkable. Beforeconcludingthispreliminaryreport,it seems advisableto returnto the bilingualvocabulariesand to underlinetheirmodemstructure.Todayvocabulariesare composedaccordingto the alphabeticprinciple,and at Ebla somethingsimilar took place. Lexical lists were mentioned above whose words are ordered acrographically;the vocabulariesexhibitthe same structure so far as theycontaindiversesectionsclearlyset off from one anotherby keyterms.To citebutoneexample,all the vocabulariesbegin with the words starting with the elementni. But beforepassingon to the secondsection, the scribesrepeatedthis elementon one line. Thus the only differencebetweenmodem vocabulariesand those of Eblaconsistsin the fact thatwhilenow the letterof the alphabetis put at the beginning,at Ebla the formative elementappearsat the end of the pertinentsection. Another characteristicfeature of the Eblaite vocabulariesis the presenceof a verticalwedgeto mark the words translated,just as today italic lettering is employedto drawthereader'sattentionto a word.Sucha wedgethus sufficesto identifythe wordas WestSemitic. Such devices bespeak the modernity of the Ebla vocabulariesas well as the efficiencyof the scribes. To conclude,two thingsshouldbe emphasized.(1) Despiteits differences,the WestSemiticlexiconremains very closely related to the East Semitic. (2) This fact notwithstanding,the linguistic structureof the Paleocanaanite language of Ebla is so different from that of Old Akkadian and Amorite as to warrant speaking of a new language different from those heretofore attested. The pronominal and verbal systems, in particular, are so clearly defined that one can properly speak of a Paleocanaanite language closely akin to Hebrew and Phoenician.

52

The archives of Ebla will be of fundamental importancefor the understandingnot only of various aspectsof the politicsand cultureof the NearEastin the 3rd millennium,but also for a better explanation of phenomenaof linguistic,religious,and political-cultural the 2nd and 1stmillennia.To claimthat a knowledgeof the epigraphicmaterialfrom Eblawill be indispensable for seriousstudy of the generalproblemsof the ancient Near East wouldbe no exaggeration.

NOTES

'See Missione archeologica italiana in Siria 1964, 1965

(Rome),andthe variousarticlesof PaoloMatthiaepublishedin severaljournals. 2G. Pettinato, Orientalia NS 44 (1975), p. 362 and nn. 5

and following. 3G.Pettinato,"Testicuneiformidel3. millennioin paleocananeo rinvenutinella campagna 1974 a Tell Mardikh = Ebla," Orientalia NS 44 (1975), pp. 361-374. 41 cordially thank Prof. M. Dahood of the Pontifical

BiblicalInstitutein Rome for the Englishtranslationof my article. 5For the present, see Orientalia NS 44 (1975), pp. 369-

371. 6M. Civil, Material for the Sumerian Lexicon. Rome,

1971. 7Thecitiesmentionedhererecurrepeatedlyin ourtexts, as do all the others known from the Mari, Alalah, Ugarit,and El

AmarnaTablets. 8TM.75.G.411; 527.

9P. Matthiae-G.Pettinato, "Aspettiamministrativie topograficidi Eblanel III. millennioav.Cr.,"Rivistade studi orientali50 (1976). IOTM.75.G.2367. 1953. IJTM.75.G. 120rientaliaNS 44 (1975),p. 367 and n. 37. 13G.Pettinato,Reallexikonfiir AssyriologieV (1976), Ibla. Philologisch. 14TM.75.G.2342. 15TM.75.G.2420. 16G.Pettinato,"I1Calendariodi Ebla al tempo del re Ibbi-Sipis sulla base di TM.75.G.425," Archiy, fi'r 25 (1976). Orientforschung "Tothe questionof prophetismat EblaI shallreturnina forthcomingarticle. '8ConsultOrientaliaNS 44 (1975),pp. 367 ff. thisproblemsee myarticle,"Itesticuneiformidella O90n sulla Notiziapreliminare bibliotecarealedi Tell Mardikh-Ebla. scuola di Ebla," Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia di

Archeologia,1976. 20R. Biggs, Inscriptions from

Tell Ahu Salahikh

(Chicago,1974),pp. 71 ff. 21TM.75.G.2231.

MAY

1976

IN MEMORIA M YOHANAN AHARONI YohananAharoniwas born in Germany,June 7, 1919, and immigratedto Palestine in 1933. He was a foundingmemberof KibbutzAllonimbesidethe Jezreel Valley,wherehe liveduntil 1947.From 1948to 1950he servedin the IsraelDefenseForces.He beganhis public archeologicalcareeras AntiquitiesInspectorfor Galilee, representingthe Departmentof Antiquitiesof the newly founded State of Israel. He continuedin this capacity during 1950-55and a surveythat he conductedduring thoseyearsculminatedin hisdoctoraldissertationon The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in Upper Galilee

(publishedin Hebrew,Jerusalem,1957).For four years he was staff archeologiston the Hazor Expeditionas supervisorof Area A, wherehe uncoveredthe casemate wallandgateof the Solomonicperiodandwasthefirstto date themcorrectly.In 1959he becamea researchfellow at the HebrewUniversityandroseto the rankof associate professor(1966). His principalarcheologicalactivities duringthose years includedthe excavationsat Ramat Rahel, Arad and Lachish (the temple area). Notable among the many fruits of those labors were the rich materialfinds,includingarchitecturaldecorations,of the royalJudeanpalaceat RamatRahel,the collectionof cult vesselsandtheincensealtarin a cultroomat Lachish,and the templeand inscriptionsof Arad. In 1968Aharonicameto Tel Aviv Universitywith the rank of full professor and chairman of the Departmentof Archeologyand Ancient Near Eastern Cultures.He reorganizedthe departmentalong regional lines with majors in: Eretz-Israel and Syria, Mesopotamia,Anatolia,Egyptand also Prehistory.He also organizedthe Instituteof Archeologyas a research body including laboratories (and liaison with other science labs in the university)and departmentsfor the variousactivitiesof researchand processingto servethe projectsof the academicstaff. In 1969 he launched the Beer-sheba Negeb Excavations as a continuing phase of his previous Negeb

BIBLICALARCHEOLOGIST

surveyand his excavationsat Arad.Two othersites,Tel Malhata and Tel Masos, were also excavated concurrently,using the same base camp at Beer-sheba. To studentsof the Bible,Aharoniis probablybest known for his Land of the Bible (London and Philadelphia,1967),and the MacMillanBibleAtlas(with M. Avi-Yonah;New York, 1968),textbooksthoroughly groundedin the writtentexts and the terrainof Israel. Before his death, he had completed the notes for a revision of both works. In these books and his many articles, Aharoni showed his devotion to the original sourcesand his abilityto graspthe reallife situationsof antiquity. As a philologian, Aharoni has recently demonstratedhis talentsin the publicationof the Arad Inscriptions(Jerusalem,1975),for whichhe receivedthe Ben-Zvi Prize. His translationsare simple, straightforward and reflect the sound common sense of his interpretations.An English translation is now in preparation(thebookalsocontainsa chapterbyJ. Naveh on the Aramaictexts from Arad). Commonsense was also the dominantfeaturein his approachto excavation.His useof sectionaldrawings can be illustratedfromthe Aradfieldbooks, datingback to 1962.Butmethodwasalwaysadaptedto the problems at hand and the basic goal was never forgotten:to elucidate the way of life on the site. Stratigraphy, including the differentiationof soil types, etc., was followedcarefully,buteven stratigraphywas nevermade anendin itself.Thuswe havebeenenrichedbyan Israelite temple,a royalJudeanfortressand a store city with its principalstructures,store houses, apartments,etc. as By his colleagues,Aharoniwillbe remembered Yohanan,the quiet,unassuming,thoughtfulscholarand with friend,patientwithhis studentsandstraightforward all his associates.He had the courageto makedecisions andcarrythemthroughand was unafriadto standalone, even whenthe "establishment" was unableto digestthe newimplicationsof evidencehe had uncovered.He hada simple faith that the facts would eventually find acceptance.Aboveall, he hadwhatRollo Mayhascalled "the courage of imperfection."He never hesitatedto abandona previousview in the light of new evidence,a sure sign of an integratedand securepersonality. On February10, 1976,the careerof this pioneer spirit was abruptly halted, just when he was reaching his stride in scholarly creativity and dynamic research. They say the Righteous in Gan-Eden spend their time studying Torah, but I can't feature Yohanan sitting down all the time. Instead I envision him with his newly acquired Torah under his arm, setting out to survey the new terrain! ANSON F. RAINEY, TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

53

c.?t

I ~i C

t

M;

t?

;?~??

??~,-s -??

~t"::~C. z ' ' 'tn~2~~-;~i(:: ~aj~*k:?" `*~?. ?.?? ~~ r ?* :? '1. f~.X.??' t ,~:tt *a~?~: t~~~a~9~-a~ * *"?*P

si

..:1

E

-6

$:

tf ~t

~P4~C~C" ?~a~s~

(~Pl~~i~~

?:y

,?

d

,*?

gt~..

~

?~3'~L~a -~?. ?

S

~?c

:?-r~gy, 't

:

I r: r

'' ~.1.~6\YI~E

R

rr?q

C'

.i.;

a

3 r

rr r, L

i

"-"PI

g

1~

31t "dt.

9

r

;?

~. ;I

..,I

_I

-?

'Bd;-g~ : r"~"? &', i yt

I a ~P ~

,? ??r `e

I ?r- ~~-.6*:;i(~~~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~I~L~CT \??

?,:

5 a

,, ~.

1?-

t??~

*~BF;~f?

S3Y

r

i"

r

t Pia ,i (? ?s;Pr

i

a ai ft" t

?L

It,~$= i~a ?Jh

..

~a?

NOTHING

EARLY

AND

NOTHING

RE-WRITING ISRAEL'S

LATE:

CONQUEST

YOHANANAHARONI

A thirteen-year, five-tel campaignin the Negebsuggeststhat Israel's"conquest"of Canaanwas the settlementof areasso sparselypopulated that,for more than two hundredyears, villagesrequiredno fortification. The Bible combinesbattle talesfrom long before the settlementwith social conditions from long after in an epic designed, in part, to justify the impositionof royal rule.

Last summer my colleagues and I concluded thirteen years of excavation in the Negeb, a campaign which had occupied us continuously since the beginning of the first season of excavations at Arad in 1962. Ours was not the excavation of a single tel but a research project covering an entire region. The Negeb has a particular advantage in comparison to other regions: the number of ancient mounds is limited and their occupational periods are confined to relatively brief time-spans. Since the Negeb is a marginal desert zone, its settlement has always encountered unusual difficulties, from nature and man alike: the harshclimate and frequentdroughts, on the one hand, and the danger of invading nomads, the Bedouin, on the other. One may distinguish extremes of both prosperity and desolation and clearly marked historical processes, relating not only to a particular site but to the entire region. In this article we shall first describe the surprisingarcheological finds and then examine them in the light of the ancient traditions preserved in the Bible. The resulting picture enriches our knowledge both of the region itself and of the history of Israel in its earliest times. Defining The Negeb The geographical term Negeb is applied today to a much broader area than in ancient times. In the Bible, BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Negeb designated only the semi-arid region extending between the southern spurs of the Judean Hills and the more southerly desert highlands, an area in which the annual precipitation was still sufficient to permit agriculture,although subject to frequentyears of drought (Cf. Genesis 21:12). The biblical Negeb begins about twenty kilometers north of Beer-shebaand extends about twenty kilometers to its south. Further south is the Wilderness of Zin, with Kadesh-barnea at its southern extremity. Beer-sheba itself lies close to the western border of the Israelite Negeb; further west is the Negeb of the Cherethites, i.e., the Negeb of the Philistines (Cf. 1 Samuel 30:14; Ezekiel 25:16; Zechariah 2:5). From Beersheba the Negeb extends some fifty kilometers eastward to the border of the Wildernessof Judah, at a point where it begins its steep descent towards the southern end of the Dead Sea.' This is a broad, flat region, relatively large in comparison to the small size of Eretz-Israel. Only four reallyimpressivetels are found here, and on these mounds were concentrated the ancient settlements throughout the ages. At the eastern and western extremities are Tel Arad and Tel Beer-sheba.At both sites the ancient names have been preservedtill today (Tel Arad and Tel es-Saba), and thus there is no doubt as to their identification. Between them lie two other mounds: Tel Malhata (Tel el-Milh) and Tel Masos (Khirbet el-Meshash). Neither of their

55

e

Belt Mirsime

elTell

D OW

N. Tel Gamma

e,

t

Tel Harre

*Tel Ser'

eel

SaTellaIIN

N. OF THE CHERETHITESNEGE

N EG

B

OF OF

CALEB CALEB

,to *Tel

Arad

Sh.aruhen*Tel

N. OF THE KENITES ' *

Bee-shba

STel

0

Maleata T.Eal-dare

5

J10Km.

IIIIIIIIIII

Fig. 1. Ancientsitesin thebiblicalNegeb. names seems to echo any name known from biblical times, and their identity is therefore steeped in controversy.They are situated at a distance of six kilometersfrom each other along the river-bedknown todayas NahalBeer-sheva,the principalstreamdraining the region,whichflows westwardsfrom Beer-shebainto Nahal HaBesor.Threeof these mounds-Tel Malhata, Tel Masos and Tel Beer-sheba-are situated near the principalwells along the wadi, where even today the Bedouincongregateto watertheirflocks (fig. 1). Archeologicalexcavationswere carried out in recentyearsat all four of thesemounds: five seasonsat Tel Arad,2sevenseasonsat Tel Beer-sheba,3 two at Tel and three at Masos.5 Tel Malhata,4 Although this researchis still underway, the occupationalpictureat each of thesetels is alreadyclearand servesto illuminate A few words will suffice here to describethe earliest periods, which have no direct bearingon the history of Israel. On all four mounds, as well as at numerousothersitesin thevicinity,werefoundremnants of settlementfrom the Chalcolithicperiod, which has becomefamous as the "Beer-shebaCulture",following John Perrot'sexplorationsat some of these sites in the Beer-shebaarea.6 This was a wave of settlement of surprisinglystrong dimensions that swept over the countryduring the last third of the fourth millennium B.C.E., but in the Negeb it remainsa transientepisode which passed away, without leaving its mark on the succeedingperiods. The same applies to the large city of the Early BronzeAge II that developedand flourishedat Aradin the firstquarterof the thirdmillennium.Theexcavations of this astoundingcity, still being carriedout by Ruth Amiran,7are of great interest in connectionwith the

56

beginningof urbanizationof the countryandits relations with Egypt in ancient times; but this city likewise representsonly a single episode, not yet sufficiently understood,that occurredlong beforethe arrivalof the

In none of the sites did we find any remains of the Late Bronze Age. The whole eastern Negeb was not settled during this period. Hebrewsin Israel.It also seemsthat this phenomenonis confined to Arad, since so far no Early Bronze Age remainshavebeenfoundat any othersite in the region. Our historical interest is aroused only with a subsequentperiod,whichbeganalmosta thousandyears after the final destructionof the ancientcity of Arad. Fortressesof the MiddleBronzeAge II werediscovered on two neighboringmoundsin the centerof the region, Tel Malhata and Tel Masos. Both were fortified enclosures,withrampartsandglacisof terrepis&e,typical of the so-called"Hyksos"fortificationsof the time. Tel Malhata The fortificationsof Tel Malhatawerethe firstto be discovered,sincethis tel is outstandingin height,and the steepness of its slopes hinted at the ramparts concealed within (fig. 2). Tel Malhata comprisestwo projecting, step-like terraces; on the upper terrace, coveringaboutten dunams,the ruinsof a Romanfortare evident. To its south the lower terrace extends over approximatelyfive dunams. During the excavations trencheswerecut into boththe upperandlowerterraces. In the uppercut a strongfortressof the Israeliteperiod

MAY 1976

and the two earlierfloors to the MiddleBronzeAge Ilb (eighteenth and sixteenth centuries). Since the excavations did not reach virgin soil, it could not be determinedwith certaintywhenthesefortificationswere originally erected, but according to the ceramic assemblage, it seems almost certain that the earliest fortress dates to the tenth century B.C.E.,and its final possibledate would be ca. eighteenhundredB.C.E. In the section cut through the lower terrace, destructionto the end of the FirstTempleperiod.Onthe basisof potteryfoundin the excavations,it wasclearthat another glacis was revealed,covered with a mantle of some occupationin the periodof the Judges(twelfthand wadi stones,but all the remainsin this excavationarea eleventh centuries B.C.E.) had preceded the fortress, belongto the Israeliteperiod,and therewas no evidence althoughno floorsor structuresof theearlierperiodhave thattheglaciswasearlier.A largestorehousewithparallel yet been uncovered.However,on the slopes of the tel rowsof pillarswas found here,whosebeginningis dated where the excavationsreachedthe lower strata, it was to the tenth or ninth centuries,and whichcontinuedin found that the foundationsof the Israelitefortresshad use, with some alterations,until the end of the Judean beenlaid directlyon the glacisof the MiddleBronzeAge Monarchy. Was Tel Malhatathe only "Hyksos"fortification IIb (fig. 3). In the smallspacebetweenthe foundationsof the Israelitetower and the upper part of the "Hyksos" in the easternNegeb?This was previouslythe general ramparts,threefragmentaryfloors of the earlyenclosure assumption,but the biblicaltraditionwhich recallstwo wereuncovered;the upperfloor belongsto the end of the Canaanitecenters in the eastern Negeb - Arad and Middle Bronze or beginningof the Late Bronze Age Hormah- did not let us rest. Variousdata pointto the (approximatelythe middleof the sixteenthcenturyB.C.E.) identificationof Tel Masos(fig.4) withancientHormah, was uncoveredbeneaththe ruins of the Hellenisticand Romanforts.ThisIsraelitecitadelwasenclosedby a thick brickwall,the substantialtowersof whichwerepreserved to a considerableheight.Its foundationswereretainedby a glacisof earthernlayers,similarto the rampartsof the "Hyksos" period. The original construction of this

TrenchthroughMiddleBronzeAge Fig. 2. TelMalhata: ramparts.

ii

i: ili•::ii'• :i:::

??

!:!::iiii

i'li: :: l?z: . •:.: :: i :•• IIlk •........•

4v

4?m tz~-C

lAll

Mg',

'4?

01?

'g

-, ..,, " :A*

g. no." r 4%M,

t .

4

7?1?75, C- b,

'N? W1

v7%

njor T-W

l9k

fk

?Ml Alk

01 F w

"'x

-01:

1 .140,?_.

w

00 W

W,

00

0

IT

W?

0'.

*Ap?

. .. MR.r 4.1

jorl Vw

nil-

J.

-ro

, A ?l50, 4V?

47151 4. 40. Oak,

A

fto

Wwrl M

IN

Tpl

451?e

4

"TON

At me.

us,

"Is

JF V'? lm bd?

LA

d:

Imp A A4

" .

AGE I SETTLEMENT

SiIRON I

;O

It

ii

wlle

j?, f r--lay.QiE e swell

..: =..........

Ii•

Allf

S

loo

BRONZE /iMIDDLE AGE ENCLOSURE

Ina

DICTROW ",JUDITH

Fig. 4. Tel Masos:Plan of site. Opposite,Fig. 3. Tel Malhata:Middle BronzeAge glacis with stone mantle. as will be seen below. Did it begin only in the Israelite period and is it devoid of earlier remains?It was not easy to solve the riddle of this site, since on the small mound (Kh. el-Meshash) north of the wadi, there were remains only from the Israelite and later periods. We did not give up, however, but began to extend our searches over a wider area. And, then, south of the wadi, about eight hundred meters west of the small tel, we encountered a suspicious sight: two straight, elevated ridges, each more than one hundred meters long, meeting at almost right angles. Although loess ridges are common in the region, in this case their straight lines seemed artificial. At the foot of one of these steep banks, we found here and there patches of wadi stones, recalling the glacis at Tel Malhata. We searched the area carefully and succeeded in collecting a few sherds from the Middle Bronze Age II. Only after two seasons of excavation were our assumptions confirmed. We cut three sections through the flanks of the ridges (fig. 5) and were confronted by a typically "Hyksos"earthern rampart and glacis. The base was supported by a massive stone revetment, above which fragments of the stone mantle were preserved(fig. 6). The enclosure itself was largely destroyed by the meanderings of the stream-bed, but in the few preserved sectors we found remains of structures and evidence of two superimposed floors. The pottery was homogeneous and belongs to the first half of the eighteenth century B.C.E.As noted, most of the enclosure was completely destroyed by erosion, but according to the preserved stretches of the ramparts, it is apparent that its minimum area was BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Fig. 5. Tel Masos: Aerial view of Middle Bronze Age enclosure showing the three section cut through the ramparts. approximately twenty dunams. More or less in its center is one of the wells still being used today by the Bedouin. It was therefore verified that two fortified enclosures existed in the Negeb in the Middle Bronze Age IIb, at the two central, neighboring tels. Both were originally erected ca. 1800 B.C.E.The enclosure at Tel Masos was the larger (about twenty dunams), but it existed for only a relatively short period, not more than two or three generations. The size of the enclosure at Tel

The new settlements were unfortified villages. Simple, small houses wreathed the slopes of the mound. A sacred bamah stood on the crest of the hill. Malhata was only ten (or perhaps fifteen) dunams, but it existed over a longer period, apparently until the expulsion of the "Hyksos" and the founding of the New Kingdom in Egypt ca. 1570 B.C.E. One of our most surprising discoveries was that following the destruction of the "Hyksos"enclosures and until the beginning of the Israelite period, there was an occupational gap throughout the region. In none of the sites that we explored and excavated did we find any remains of the Late Bronze Age; it is therefore definitely established that the whole eastern Negeb was not settled during this period. This fact obviously raises difficult historical problems - to which we shall return upon completing our archeological sketch.

59

13th-Century Unfortified Villages

Israelite settlementat Tel Malhata, but it is clear from the section that the tenth-century city wall was built directly on the Middle Bronze fortifications; at the beginning it was even difficult to distinguish between the two fortification systems. At Tel Arad a small settlement was founded on an extension of the southeastern spur of the Early Bronze Age city. Simple, small houses, some with a row of pillars on one side of the courtyard, wreathed the slopes of the mound, surrounded by a narrow terrace wall, most likely intended to keep the flocks away (fig. 8). A sacred bamah was located in the center of the settlement on the crest of the hill (fig. 9) where later during the Monarchy a sanctuary was erected (which has been described in a previous article).9From the Bible we learn the identity of the original inhabitants of Arad and their relationship to the bamah. In Judges 1:16 the following is recorded: "And the descendants of (Hobab [LXX]) the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, went up with the people of Judah from the city of palms into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the Negeb of Arad; and they went and settled with the people." From this passage it is clear that families of Kenites settled around Arad and that the sacred bamah was connected with the sons of Hobab, the father-in-law of Moses.

The region returned to life after about three hundred years, i.e., in the thirteenth century B.C.E.In all the sites which we explored new settlements arose; and there is not the slightest doubt that we are now witnessing the beginning of the settlement of the Israelite tribes in the Negeb. It is still difficult to establish an exact date for this settlement, since the simple ceramic vessels found cannot be more closely dated than to the thirteenth-twelfth centuries. The only find that bears a more precise date is an Egyptian scarab (fig. 7) from Tel Masos, which has been attributed by R. Giveon to the reign of Seti II, and in any case, it seems to belong to the Nineteenth Dynasty, i.e., the thirteenth century B.C.E.8 Although this scarab

was a surface find, it may be assumed that it found its way to the site during an early phase of the settlement. This scarab is therefore a fair indication - if not decisive proof - that settlement began at Tel Masos no later than towards the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E. Although the size and character of the new settlements differed, they were, without exception, unfortified villages. In none of them was there found a defensive wall. We do not yet know the nature of the

Fig.6. TelMasos:Stonerevetmentof MiddleBronzeAgeII ,i ', +• ?

:.i•..IS

Woo.

'14P d

' ?

p,+

Lin j;": .-, '.-K~Q... i..

.. r.,, .•",G.

60

-,,.

•"Y

_--. .

•.

"

. .• . •-

i,.

... .

-

MAY 1976

,?1

Fig. 7. Arad: Early Israelite cult site with bamah.

Fig. 8. Arad: Houses of the early Israelite period (left) and later structures (right).

lip86

lowrl

406

T1

lop 00

.

:Z

,....?.. t

Ir"

W

1

P

Af.z

i,'. ,?rt?

p

??~

e. ?`

)

jop,~r ~~';rOak

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

%V

61

Tel Beer-sheba

efforts. This well has a circular shaft, about two meters in diameter, the upper section being lined with stones (fig. 12) and its continuation hewn into the solid rock. Our excavations have already reached a depth of twenty meters, and according to our calculations, it will be necessary to continue digging another twenty meters or so until we reach the subterranean water level of the river bed. According to the pottery retrieved from the shaft, this well was utilized until the beginning of the Roman period. But when was it originally dug? Since it is obvious that a well must be cleaned out from time to time while in use, one cannot necessarily expect to find sherds from its earliest periods of usage. However, its age may be determined with a high degree of certainty on the basis of its position in relation to the surrounding structures. During the Monarchy the well was just outside the city

At Tel Beer-sheba (fig. 10) settlement began with the first Israelite occupation, and no earlier remains were found (with the exception of some chalcolithic sherds, which, as noted above, appear throughout the region). The remnantsof the earliest settlement were found mainly in the vicinity of the later city gate (fig. 11). Three building phases were identified, but their preserved plans are still very fragmentary, mainly due to disturbances caused by the later fortifications. One of the most astounding finds is the well discovered in this area. The wells of Beer-sheba, as elsewhere in the Negeb, were usually dug along the river bed at levels where they would be filled by winter floods. To have dug a well on the heights of the mound was therefore an unusual undertaking involving exceptional

Fig. 9. Beer-sheba:City plan as revealedat conclusionof the sixth season of excavations.

~u

DD

TREETI

eD

WATER

SYSTEM

).) WESTERN QUARTER

" 9CELLAR

C

000

"e

rPr

000* so

AO

0

)

-

ct 0

2" ?

.....

4Z.b

/

m i

5

. ?

0-

OW E

•

/ raParan**

62

MAY 1976

-A

',Ar, i "i

ir

i1

ii:ik

4,44

iii:~ii

_Pot

gate and may therefore be compared to the well by the gate of Bethlehemfrom which water was drawn for David during the Philistine threat (1 Samuel 23:15; 1 Chronicles 11:17). However, there are several indications that the well at Beer-sheba precedes the fortifications there, and that it originated with the earliest Israelite settlement: (1) the outer city wall makes a deviation in the vicinity of the well, a sign that its position was taken into account; (2) the earliest structures were built around the well, likewise taking its existence into consideration; (3) near the well was found a surface belonging to one of the earlier strata of the settlement, covered by horizontal layers of sedimentation resulting from the water that had been spilled there over a long period of time. Once we had established that the well belonged to the earliest Israelite settlement, we were able to deduce with reasonable certainty that this was the well attributed to the patriarchs(Genesis 21:15; 26:25). One of the major BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Above, Fig. 10. Beer-sheba:Aerial view from southeast showing the ancient well (in lower right-handcorner) surroundedby Iron Age I structures;in centermay be seen the superimposedgates of StratumV (right)and III (left).

63

:~i

-i

-:41

-i~

~

~ ~

i: ?~:-.:i-viii. i:i~?r~"""~~"

l-~_-,

-

~?,;

?i::i-:~iii~iC

~

~-Q-

j?iiiii::24-

rr rr

..

"WOi~i qij-i il~~~ii 'i

110c-i:i

.

M..iii ~::

a

i

~

-:73is~~ii

~ il

wo:

;:-:-

ki--i

o99

i ~* "`A

"-o

'?~40 ~

"*`~, ES4F

~,

;p:

?*N

1?10 01

fd4

tow

LCIIP~~t Aw

NZ

Fig. 12. Beer-sheba:The hornedaltar,whichwas discovereddismantledand incorporatedinto the wallsof StratumII storehouses. Opposite,Fig. 11. The ancientwell on the heightsof the mound. problems with which we were involved at Beer-sheba throughout the excavations was the location of the cult site and temple mentioned repeatedly in the Bible.'0 Presumably the temple was inside the fortified city, as at Arad, and this assumption was proven in the fifth season upon the discovery of a large horned altar which had been dismantled, evidently following the religious reforms of Hezekiah (fig. 13). However, if the sanctuary were on the tel, and undoubtedly associated with an earlier sanctified site, how did the biblical tradition become attached to the well dug there by Abraham and Isaac, the tamarisk tree and the altar? Since wells are usually dug along side the river bed, is it conceivable that the site of worship would be remote from the well? As soon as we had discovered the BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

ancient well on the heights of the tel, and moreover, located beside substantial buildings of the earliest Israelite settlement, the problem was easily solved. The tremendous efforts involved in digging this well were

The large, horned altar had been dismantled, evidently following the reforms of Hezekiah. mradein connection with a place of worship that by its nature required a continuous supply of water; one can therefore understand the great impression this well made upon the ancients.

65

Tel Masos Complete understanding of the early Israelite settlement in the Negeb was attained only upon excavating the fourth mound, Tel Masos, and the results of this excavation thoroughly changed our perspective. In addition to the two sites previously mentioned, the small Israelite settlement (Kh. el-Meshash) north of the wadi and the "Hyksos" enclosure at its south, there is a third mound extending over a flat hill northeast of the khirbeh. In our preliminary survey we had already observed that this was a large settlement, covering almost fifty dunams. The pottery was primarily from the early phases of the Israelite period, and the courses of some of the walls and pillars could be seen on the surface, thus indicating that the remains of this settlement were immediately under foot. We opened several areas of excavation on various parts of the mound, and everywhere we unearthed the upper portions of the walls already on the first day of digging. This was an unusual opportunity to excavate a large settlement from the period of the Judges, whose

Fig. 13. Tel Masos:NineteenthDynastyscarab.

i-i:~---i:??:i::-:::::: :::_~ ~:i;-B?~_~ li--::i: ~13'1~iiiii-ii i:::

:

.:.;: ::-:: :

i?:

iii : ::-:: ~-i:~ii'ii:i:~ iiiIl ~ i~:?iBiiiii: si

- :. :ii

::::,i: : i I, ;::::::::1-

i??-i:, .:.....:

:::::::: :::::::: :-i-:--:--

W

.:

::

~:~?:gi

ii:l

:1:~: :-i:~:::::~-:.

:-:-::-- :::iisZPl~i:l: ~-::::(i

r -: ~ili-:i9i--

'i~i-ipi~i:i(iilili s: ::":: -iii,- ?:

66

-ao

MWI ?j iI

Aw"A

law 1 V*41?; am-:

Fig.14. Tel Masos: Aerial view of the Early Israelite settlement. buildings were buried just beneath the surface, most of them undisturbed by structures of later date. It is therefore not surprising that during two seasons we managed to uncover more than ten houses. Everywhere we found three occupational strata, separated by clearlydefined destruction levels (the second perhaps the result of an earthquake). Since the upper stratum was very fragmentary, and the excavation of the lower stratum is still limited in scope, we are best acquainted with the middle stratum (fig. 14). Most of the buildings are of the "four-room house" type, well known to us from Israelite settlements in other parts of the country (fig. 15). Their plan is composed of a long central courtyard, surrounded by rooms on three sides, usually with rows of pillars on the long sides of the courtyard. The dimensions of the houses and their uniform and wellconceived plan attest to a building tradition, technical ability and obvious affluence of the inhabitants. It appears that the entire area was densely built up, so that the population of this "village"may be estimated in the thousands. It should be noted that no city wall was found, and likewise the location of the settlement on a low hillock indicates that the site was not selected with an eye to defensive requirements. Not less surprising were the finds from several of the houses. In addition to ordinary domestic ware, there was also a type of burnished pottery decorated in two colors, which till now has been known mainly from the tels of the northern coastal plains, such as Megiddo (Stratum VI) and Tell Abu Hawam near Haifa (fig. 16). The discovery of this handsome pottery in the heart of the Negeb is most astonishing and is evidence of extensive trade relations with the wealthier sectors of the country. MAY

1976

Most of this pottery came from a building of obvious public nature, in which a carved ivory lion's head was also found, recalling the Canaanite tradition of the Megiddo ivories. It should be pointed out that all metal objects found were of bronze, and that so far no iron has been unearthed in this phase of the "Early Iron Age" at Tel Masos. There was also some decorated Midianite pottery of the type found in recent surveys of the northern Hejaz and in the Egyptian mining temple at Timna, dated there by Egyptian inscriptions to the twelfth century B.C.E. There is no doubt that the settlement at Tel Masos was a partner in the commerce passing along the trade routes of the Negeb between the Mediterranean coast and the gulf of Eilat.

A few sherds of Philistine ware, found mainly in the second stratum, provide a date between the midtwelfth and the mid-eleventh centuries. The third and earliest stratum would therefore be dated not later than the end of the thirteenth century. This large and substantial settlement therefore existed for at least two hundred years, and during this lengthy period did not find it necessary to protect itself with a defensive wall. Although Tel Masos seems to have been the largest of the Negeb settlements during this period, its occupational pattern is similar throughout the region: on every site we have found evidence of intensive occupation in unfortified settlements that existed during the twelftheleventh centuries and perhaps somewhat earlier.

Fig. 15. Tel Masos:"Four-roomhouses"of Iron Age I.

P BMW

pit

pop.

............... OF

N,2 -,,VAL "aw"G.

0Ms a,

4*0

4_1 '_'no

aauldhifflu LN m w

"laptop ?70

vs

ACT

All All

"I

- son

OF summit

Wa

".Y

.......... OKI: .'.iK MM zaz ..... vk 3MCE Z-' Aw. will_'p.. Ir EPAS six. '144*...It?C? NO -s, lip ?01

4'W

At

Wm

. rR? ........ 64 A: PA Iq; ';? ig Qv? -': ,Y4 .. 0. k s?s "ISM MIA 0 nK E'l BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

JO

,AM g:U?' ?.g

.4

own NMI:

vV.

?.:jow?4!' f%

X.4Xl?

67

Destructionin 1000 3.C.E. and Fortification These settlementswere all destroyedtowardthe end of the eleventhcenturyin a wave of destructionthat did not sparea single site. At some of them occupation ceased, never to be renewed. This phenomenon is particularlyevidentat Tel Masos;the upperstratumof the large Israelitesettlementwas destroyed ca. 1000 B.c.E,

whereupon the site was abandoned and not

reoccupied.Only towards the end of the Monarchy, apparentlynot before the beginning of the seventh century,wasa newsettlementestablishedon a nearbyhill (Kh. el-Meshash),and hereand therestood an isolated house or installationbelongingto this settlement. A similarsituationwas revealedat Tel Esdar,a small Iron Age site about five kilometerssouth of Tel Masos(fig. 17).Abouttwentyhouseswerebuiltin a wide circleon a flat hilltop,leavinga largeemptyspacein the center,perhapsintendedfor cattle and sheep. Fromthe excavationsof M. Kochaviat the site," it wasdiscovered that this small settlementexisted during the eleventh centuryand was totallydestroyed,togetherwiththe rest of the Negeb settlements,at the end of the century. In other places settlementwas renewedafter a short time, but its characterwas radicallydifferent. Instead of the previousunfortifiedsettlements,mighty fortressesarose, and the tremendouseffortsinvestedin

vesselsfromtheperiodofthe Fig.16. TelMasos:Decorated Judges.

At Beer-sheba,a seven-meterrampart was thrownup and coveredby a steep glacis, a defensivesystem whose equal has so far not beenfound in the Israelite period.

theirfortificationindicatethatthisenterprisewascarried out underroyalinitiative.Thetime of peaceful,unwalled settlementshad passed and the era of royal fortresses begun! The strongwall and glacis of Tel Malhata,built over the ruinsof the "Hyksos"period,has alreadybeen described.At Arada fortressof aboutfiftyby fiftymeters was now erected,surroundedby a casematewall with twelvetowersat its cornersand evenlyplacedat eachside (fig. 18).Thehillwas leveledand heightenedby a layerof fill and the housesof the earliersettlementcoveredover witha high,steepglacis.Thiswasa royalcitadel(fig. 19) containinga sanctuary,storehousesandthe housesof the

68

MAY 1976

commanders and officials, which continued to exist throughout the Monarchy; much has been learned concerning its administration and history from the numerous Hebrew ostraca found at Arad.12 The greatest efforts of all were invested in the fortifications of Beer-sheba and the establishment there of a royal city. In order to level, broaden and heighten the top of the hill, a rampart six-seven meters high was thrown up and covered by a steep glacis (fig. 20) - a defensive system whose equal has so far not been found in any other settlement of the Israelite period. At the top of the ramparts a solid wall with salients and recesses was built. The massive gate was defended by a strong tower and an additional outer gateway, beyond which lay the ancient well. The city itself was unusually well planned; starting from the gate area a peripheral street encircled the interior of the city; the governor's palace was to the left of the gatehouse and to its right were storehouses, similar in plan to the Megiddo "stables." Other public buildings, probably including a temple, were erected opposite the gate at the western end of the city. The entrance to a large water system with deep shaft, similar to those at Megiddo and Hazor, was found in the northeast corner. This city stood for nearly three hundred years, evidently from the time of David until its destruction by Sennacherib in his campaign of 701 B.C.E.

:?

Fig. 17. Tel Esdar:Generalplan.

Tel Ira In addition to the four tels actually excavated, another important site should be mentioned: Tel CIra (pronounced E'.ra; the Arabic name was Khirbet Gharrah), which until now has been explored only by archeological survey.'13 Tel Ira is located two and a half kilometers northeast of Tel Masos, but is some one hundred meters higher (fig. 21). It occupies the southern spur of a mountain range, cut away on all sides, its steep slopes towering to an appreciableheight above the Negeb plains. In contrast to low-lying Tel Masos, it is ideally defensible, as well as affording an unparalleled observation point over the Negeb. The upper, triangular plateau, convenient for building, has an area of approximately thirty-five dunams (fig. 22). At its western apex there are buildings and structures of the Roman period. However, on the rest of the tel the pottery is almost exclusively from the period of the Israelite Monarchy, except for a few sherds of Iron Age I. On the surface one may discern the line of a casemate wall, supported by sections of glacislike retaining walls. The abundance of pottery in this area clearly indicates that this wall belongs to the period of the Monarchy. BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Fig. 18. Arad:Isometricdrawingof the fortressfrom the earliestphaseof the Monarchy.

'o, \\

I

I

Irto

h/I?N

I

69

and a half dunams at Arad). As the reader may realize, this is the fifth site still awaiting excavation in order to complete the historical picture of the settlement and monarchical periods of the Negeb. We have chosen to present the archeological finds as they are, insofar as possible, and without relatingthem to the historical sources. We must now attempt to bring the two kinds of evidence into confrontation - sources which are ostensibly in conflict with each other, both in particular details and in their broader scope. It will become clear, however, that this apparent contradiction is purely superficial. We must now try to reach a new understanding of the historical sources in the light of the archeological evidence, which speaks in unequivocal language.

These finds show us that we should, in fact, add Tel Ira as the fourth link in the shifting chain of settlements at Tel Masos. We have encountered the identical phenomenon at most other Negeb sites: the establishment of a strongly fortified citadel during the Monarchy in the wake of the destruction of the unwalled settlement of the period of the Judges. Since the low-lying hillocks of Tel Masos were unsuitable for this purpose, this prominent hilltop, two and a half kilometers to the northeast, was chosen; and just as Tel Masos was the largest site in the Negeb during the initial period of Israelite settlement, so Tel Ira was the largest of the fortified strongholds of the Negeb during the monarchical period (thirty-fivedunams, as compared to ten dunams at Beer-sheba, ten-fifteen dunams atTel Malhata and two

Fig. 19. Arad: Schematicdrawing of Israelite citadel (above)andEarlyBronzeAgecitywallandhouses(below).

;16f ZA s?:;;~? ? ?;::,,r ~ j~ ? , ..,........•~r ?

.

,.

Is

:.-.- .---''":fr~s '-.

;

. .2"

:~

.. ...'-',.:. S... -?

:_: ??..'

: ? ?

?:%: Wt' ?: . .

?.

.

.......... / ...;':J

"..-:

•'-";

..

;!-.

0.

?" -.-''2 -;' '..• '.•.::.•...,_.••,.•: ......t :...-,''_

.:.::

-

•.:- ".

.""...-.-.. .

%=

.

.???

?

t

:•~,~~~_?z..Z?-~;,.: !.C.:.-..:,

. ?:??.. ?:.

~

.

? .:H

.

.

.

???

?'... .:

.,.

?r

..

?l

::40

2::f... ?'ite 'i.tv . ..•....

.....~?:~

?.- -.:: . '.

...

....

v.•:f,, 4...l

•,,..,',

.

I,'s'.

"

..r

i• ,,.

..

.,..

410

•.-,..•"

.

v.-, .-4w. :.

.,

. . .~:

ii

.

.5?I:': :: ?: .'

?~? JUDITHDICTROW

70

.. .'.

"

.....

.•.='.:. -.?.'-: ,

.;:.-,

•-~L•..".'• ~.

?-.... :::..'..'. :-:

: --.:::-.?':...:, '" ...-•?, . . -'. ... "!.'" i .

.

...

: -•., ".'''=:"'. -

'"...:.""'"" ""?.= I

.:::i• '?0.-4. :?:;--".:":'•'``': :•:i:-.'..:.'.: ..~f'...:~.~

,.

. ".'. . . . :: .

o...,.,"

. S-•

..

:r

.r

.." -.,:''...:

-....:.

;

?: •'.?..'-..:'.•;z,....

.

i

.?

...

..

o

T1'" ' ...."'"'"'';'::""':'" .?, .'.'-;:i.... " " • :.:' "" .

~

.'~~ ''

o

? :: C? -i

.. . ..:

~

.

.

~~

%

6;h i

.''. . ,, ..:• ;-?'• ::. ? .,:. .•..•:i. :.• ,,[

n•

-

.

.

.:

r- ,t-.'.•'.

'L ..:- '?' '"•,•..,. ......•: '• ...•:..,• ..-':"

....:"

. MAY 1976

Patriarchal Narratives As Late As 1100 First it should be emphasized that in the entire northern Negeb under discussion no remains were found of the Middle Bronze Age I (also known as the Intermediate Bronze Age). This is in direct contrast to the assumptions of certain scholars who would date Abraham to that period and picture him as a leader of the donkey caravan trade.14 The Middle Bronze Age I settlements in the modern central Negeb (the Wilderness of Zin) requireanother explanation, since it has long ago been observed that they are not situated on trade routes at all, nor did they have any connections with Egypt. The biblical tradition places Abraham in the more northerly biblical Negeb and especially at Beer-sheba, and here there are no traces of the Middle Bronze Age I culture. As a result of the Beer-sheba excavations another interpretation of the patriarchal stories is mandatory. Both on the tel itself and in its immediate vicinity there are no remains earlier than the conquest period, and the nearest site that yielded remains of the Middle Bronze Age is Tel Masos, twelve kilometers to the east. Although it is true that the biblical narratives do not mention any pre-Israelite settlement at Beer-sheba (such as, for example, at neighbouring Gerar or Hebron), nevertheless the patriarchs are not depicted as pure nomads who would have left no material traces behind them. Moreover, it is to Beer-sheba that the patriarchal

The well has a shaft two meters in diameter. Our excavations of it have reached a depth of twenty meters. We have another twenty to go to reach the subterranean water level.

tradition attributes a cult site and a well, and as we have seen, it is now possible to identify this well with considerable certainty. Since the digging of this well did not ante-date the settlement period, it therefore seems certain that neither can the patriarchal narratives associated with Beer-sheba refer to an earlier period. We cannot enter into the question of the antiquity and historical background of the patriarchal stories, nor do we wish to claim that they do not contain earlierelements, but it would seem that these traditions are not made up of a single fabric, but are a compilation of traditions originating in different periods. The excavations at Beersheba have now proven they include referencesto events that could not possibly have occurred prior to the thirteenth or twelfth centuries B.C.E. Naturally, this also explains the anachronisms in these stories, such as the BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

designation of Abimelech, King of Gerar, as king of the Philistines.'5 Numbers 21:1-3: A Pre-Conquest Narrative We now come to the most difficult problem: the question of the Israelite conquest and settlement. From the Bible we hear of the King of Arad, dwelling in the Negeb, who smote the Israelite tribes at Hormah (Numbers 21:1; 33:40), both of which are included in Joshua's list of conquered cities (Joshua 12:14). It is now clear that at the time of Moses and Joshua there were no fortified cities whatsoever in the Negeb whose kings could have stood up against the Israelite tribes swarming out of the desert. How then may this contradiction be resolved? Several suggestions have been offered by various scholars. When it was discovered that there are no Late Bronze Age remains at Tel Arad, N. Glueck suggested that the King of Arad was no more than a Bedouin sheikh who exercised control over the region.'6 B. Mazar proposed that the King of Arad dwelt in Hormah, since he smote the Israelites close by;'7but in the meantime it has become clear that there are not Late Bronze remains anywhere in the Negeb. V. Fritz is of the opinion that the story of Arad is purely etiological, derived from the Early Bronze Age ruins at Tel Arad, and entirely devoid of historical basis.'8 However, the ruins at Tel Arad, despite their archeological importance, are not prominently discernible on the surface (such as the ruins of Ai, for example), and moreover, a "normal"folktale would be expected to describe the conquest of a Canaanite city by the Israelite tribes ratherthan their crushing defeat by the King of Arad. Each of these explanations therefore leaves numerous unsolved problems. But is there really no correlation between the archeological evidence and the historical traditions? Actually, there is considerable harmony between the two, and it is hard to believe that this is purely fortuitous. Two fortified Canaanite cities - Arad and Hormah - are known to us from the Bible, neighbors in the eastern Negeb, which defended the settled lands against nomadic irruptions. And two such fortress-cities have been discovered that fulfilled this function in the Middle Bronze Age: Tel Malhata and Tel Masos. Although their ancient names have not been locally preserved, all the evidence favors their identification as Arad and Hormah. The identification of Hormah with Tel Masos is based on historical-geographical considerations. Hormah was one of the cities of the tribe of Simeon, whose inheritance also included Beer-sheba. At the beginning of the Monarchy we hear of other districts in the Negeb bordering on Simeon's which were named after the families that settled in the vicinity (1 Samuel 27:10; 30:14, 29); we have previously mentioned the Negeb of the Cherithites, the Philistine zone west of Beer-

71

r ,•,!d

iiii !ii•,•iii~iii~iiiiiiiiiii• iiii~iiii~iili•?il~i~ ii~~iiii~ i~iiii~i?!!

-4

4f

impiiiiii~~iil•ii

ii~ i~i••I ii,?•iii•!•,• !ii iiii• ili i!!i i i!•i !!ii ~i •ii,i~i , ! ?! ••

;.'k

....

1w•iii~ii•!iii~i!•

74•'

7•,

qi

•

YT

W

lot,• vtl ,•i,•,•It

i~ i

Of

f. 4,

1,, an•••,i,

........

t:

O

......1

i!

Opposite,Fig. 20. Beer-sheba:Rampartand glacis in the deep northerntrench,datingto the monarchicalperiod.

sheba. To the north was the Negeb of Caleb, whose family seized several places in the southern Judean hills. The Negeb of the Kenites lay toward the east, in the vicinity of Arad (Judges 1:16); their name is preserved by Wadi elQeini, east of Arad, and by Kinah (Joshua 15:22), also mentioned in one of the Hebrew ostraca found at Arad. And, finally, there is the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites, which should be located in the southeastern sector of the Negeb and whose name has apparently been preservedby Bir Rehmeh and Tel Rehmeh, about thirty kilometers south-southeast of Beer-sheba. Tel Masos, twelve kilometers from Beer-sheba,is therefore a valid candidate for Hormah, particularly considering that Hormah was one of the towns of Simeon, on the one hand, and a neighbor of Arad on the other. This possibility becomes increasingly likely in view of the archeological finds. We have seen that at Tel Masos was found the largest and most substantial settlement of the Negeb dating from the period of the Judges, thereby confirming the biblical sources. Hormah is the only town whose conquest and settlement are attributed to Simeon (Judges 1:16) and its special importance is attested by its inclusion in the list of cities whose elders received booty taken by David from the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30:30). It is also likely that Hormah is mentioned in sources of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom (from ca. 1800 B.C.E.) and heads the list of the Canaanite kings who were denounced in the later Execration Texts; Hormah also appears to have been the origin of workers for the Egyptian copper and turquoise mines of Sinai. These referencesfit in nicely with the "Hyksos" enclosures at Tel Masos, the southernmost fortification of the country at the time, which perhaps pre-dated the enclosure at Tel Malhata, and at all events, was larger. Zephath (Judges 1:16) = Tel Ira In the light of this identification it is also possible to suggest a solution to another problem: in Judges 1:16 we are told that the previous name of Hormah was Zephath, and this name is not repeated again, not even in Joshua 12. If in all other sources the town is called Hormah, and if that name appeared already in Egyptian texts of the Middle Kingdom, why did the biblical tradition suddenly introduce another ancient name? The meaning of Zephath, stemming from the Hebrew root spy is "watchtower"or "observation point," like Mispeh. We have seen that there is no other site in the Negeb more worthy of this name than Tel Ira, and therefore suggest that the ancient name of this tel was Zephath; upon the removal of the large settlement from Tel Masos to Tel Ira, when the latter was fortified during the Monarchy, i.e., the transfer of Hormah to neighboring Zephath, the tradition was preserved that the former name of the place was actually not Hormah but Zephath. What a simple BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

solution - but nevertheless one that could not have been imagined prior to our archeological excavations and the information we have gained from them. A Tale Of Two Cities Grantedthat Hormah may be Tel Masos; but what led us to identify the earlier Arad with Tel Malhata, when the former name is preserveduntil today at Tel Arad? Of course, there is no doubt as to the identification of Tel Arad with IsraeliteArad, which is moreover reinforcedby the occurrence of this name on two of the Hebrew ostraca from that site. However, even in this case, there has long been an unresolved problem. In the list of towns from Pharaoh Shishak's campaign to Eretz-Israel five years after the death of Solomon, two fortresses in the Negeb bearing the name of Arad are mentioned, each followed by a special appellation: "Hagarim Arad Rabbat (and) Arad of Beth Yeroham"(or: Yerahem), i.e., the fortresses of Greater Arad and Arad of the House of Arad of the Yeroham/Yerahem, apparently Jerahmeelites.'9 Two fortresses called Arad were therefore built during the Monarchy, and obviously, only one of these could have been located on the site of ancient Arad. GreaterArad is certainly Tel Arad where the royal center of the district was situated, and there is nothing to prevent Tel Malhata from being identified with "Arad of the House of Yeroham/ Yerahem,"especially since this tel with its huge fortifications was undoubtedly the most important fortress in the Negeb of the Jerahmeelites. We therefore arrive at a most startling conclusion: the biblical traditions associated with the Negeb battles cannot represent historical sources from the days of Moses and Joshua, since nowhere in the Negeb are there any remains of the Late Bronze Age. However, the reality described in the Bible corresponds exactly to the situation during the Middle Bronze Age, when two tels, and two tels only, defended the eastern Negeb against the desert marauders, and the evidence points towards the identification of these tels with the ancient cities of Arad and Hormah. Thus the biblical tradition preserves a faithful description of the geographical-historical situation as it was some three hundred years or more prior to the Israelite conquest. Only one of two alternatives is possible: either the biblical tradition concerning the wars in the Negeb is lacking even an historical kernel, in spite of its accuracy regarding the early settlements (which would have been difficult to conjecture in the later periods), or the conquest narratives are composed of several traditions, emanating from different tribes who roamed for several centuries on the borders of Eretz-Israeland its environs. I tend to the second alternative, which was well understood by the ancients, who declared that there is nothing early and nothing late in the Torah. We should look upon the

73

::'a

Pow"1.0

E low%:

M

g

I,

le.::

p

:

Q-0 A*?'R

Fig 21. Tel Ira:Aerialview showingcontoursof Iron Age casematewall.

biblical narrativesrelating to the patriarchs,the conquest and the settlement as a collection of traditions covering a long period and different groups, whose chronological

The biblical traditions associated with the Negeb battles cannot represent the days of Moses and Joshua, since nowhere in the Negeb are there Late Bronze Age remains. position cannot be established according to their literary sequence in the Bible, but only on the basis of external criteria, particularly the archeological evidence. In the present case, the patriarchal narratives relating to Beersheba belong to the settlement period, and on the other hand, the traditions pertaining to the wars of the tribes against Arad and Hormah are several centuries earlier.

74

Settlement,Not Conquest Perhaps not all readers will agree with me on this one thing is beyond a shadow of a doubt: it is but point, impossible to speak of the conquest of Late Bronze Canaanite cities in the Negeb, but only of extensive settlement in an unpopulated area where the new settlements were not subject to actual danger and hence did not find it necessary to fortify themselves. These words seem to conflict with the commonly accepted viewpoint that envisions the period of the Judges as an era of disorder and insecurity, when there was "no king in Israeland every man did what was right in his own eyes." However, in reality this is not the overall picture. The passage cited belongs to the realm of apologetics on the part of the young monarchy against the disintegratingtribal rule during the great strugglewith the Philistines in the second half of the eleventh century. Prior to that time there was a period of at least two

MAY 1976

hundred years from which only a few local wars are known, such as the invasion of the Midianites and the quarrels with the neighboring kingdoms across the Jordan, Ammon and Moab. The battle of Deborah - the decisive war with the Canaanite cities in the North - should be dated today according to all criteria to the closing phases of the thirteenth century B.C.E.,i.e., some two hundred years before the founding of the Monarchy.20 There are also many passages in the Bible illuminating the nature of the penetration of the Israelite tribes. Only here and there did they manage to conquer an isolated Canaanite city and, in general, were initially unsuccessful in infiltrating into firmly entrenched Canaanite territory, particularly the valleys and plains, since the Canaanites had "chariots of iron, and...they are strong" (Joshua 17:18).The Israelite tribes had no choice but to settle uninhabited or sparsely populated regions, principally in the forested hilly areas;21hundreds of such settlements dating to the beginning of the Israelite period have been found in archeological surveys in the Galilee,22 on Mount Ephraim,23in Judea24 and Gilead,25and in other areas that had never previously been settled. The same picture has now been brought to light in the Negeb. This was also an unpopulated region and was

However, the reality described corresponds exactly to the Middle Bronze Age, when two tels, and two tels only, defended the eastern Negeb.

unidentified "Gedor" (perhaps the Gerar of the Septuagint version is intended), the picture is absolutely compatible with the Negeb settlements as we discovered them: a broad land, quiet and peaceful, retaining only a remote, dim memory of the former inhabitants; exactly who they might have been had long faded from memory, since otherwise, why the use of such a vague expression as "belonging to Ham" - a people related in the Bible to Egypt, Canaan and even the Philistines. Amalekite Destruction and the Rise of Monarchy "These were their cities until David reigned" - when a wave of destruction swept over them, leaving in its wake not a single survivor. It is not difficult to guess the perpetrator of this destruction, i.e., Amalek,

A broad land, quiet and peaceful, retaining only a remote, dim memory of the former inhabitants. who was such a dire threat to Judah during the reign of Saul. The Amalekites obviously took advantage of the wars between the Israelites and the Philistines in order to oppress and destroy the Negeb settlements until they were finally dealt the crushing blow by Saul and David. However, the renewal of Negeb settlement did not remain Fig. 22. Tel Ira:Close-upof casematewall.

therefore occupied by various families and clans in spite of the climatic difficulties. The large, substantial settlement at Tel Masos illustratesthe dimensions of these settlements and the relative security they enjoyed for more than two hundred years. These were the greatest days of the tribe of Simeon, of which we hear reverberationsin the Book of Chronicles, a relatively late book that draws much of its materialfrom earliersources available to the compilers. The list of cities of the tribe of Simeon concludes with the verse: "These were their settlements until David reigned"(1 Chronicles 4:31). Our Negeb excavations have demonstrated the accuracy of this passage: the settlements of Simeon and of the other Negeb families continued to flourish until the end of the eleventh century. We should like to quote one more verse from the same chapter: "They [the families of Simeon] journeyed to the entrance of Gedor, to the east side of the valley to seek pasture for their flocks, where they found rich, good pasture, and the land was very broad, quiet and peaceful; for the former inhabitants belonged to Ham" (1 Chronicles 4:39-40). Although the reference is to an BIBLICAL ARCEHOLOGIST

75

under the control of the traditional families, but was undertaken as one of the important royal enterprises, apparently already during the reign of David. The fortress-citiesand mighty fortifications of Beer-sheba,Tel Ira, Tel Malhata and Tel Arad opened a new era in the history of the Negeb. This is a new concept of the "conquest", the settlement of the Israelite tribes and the beginning of the monarchical period in the Negeb, a picture that we must henceforth take into account in our evaluation of the sources pertaining to this period in particular and the complex problems of the conquest and settlement in general.

NOTES

*"Nothing Early and Nothing Late" was first published as "Le Neguev, L'histoire d'Abraham &Josue," in Bible et Terre Sainte, Sept.-Oct. 1975. 'Y. Aharoni, Israel Exploration Journal, VIII (1958), pp. 26-38; idem., apud D. W. Thomas, ed., Archaeology and Old Testament Study (Oxford, 1967), pp. 384-403. 2The excavations at Tel Arad, directed by the writer, were conducted from 1962-1967 under the auspices of the Hebrew University, the Department of Antiquities and the Israel Exploration Society. Ruth Amiran has directed the continuing excavations of the Early Bronze Age city at Arad since 1964; for a convenient summary, cf. Y. Aharoni and R. Amiran apud M. Avi-Yonah, ed., Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, I (Jerusalem, 1975), pp. 74-89; also Y. Aharoni, BA, XXXI (1968), pp. 2-32. 3Concerningthe progress of our work at Beer-sheba, cf. for the first three seasons, Y. Aharoni, Beer-sheba I (Tel Aviv, 1973);fourth season, idem., BA, XXXV (1972), pp. 111-127and idem., Tel Aviv I (1974), pp. 34-42, also idem., apud Avi-Yonah, op. cit., pp. 160-168; fifth season, idem. Israel Exploration Journal XXIII (1973), pp. 254-256; sixth season, idem. ibid., XXIV (1974), pp. 270-272; seventh season, idem. ibid., XXV (1975), pp. 169-171. 4Two seasons at Tel Malhata were carried out by M. Kochavi, under the auspices of the Arad expedition in 1967and of the Beer-shebaexpedition in 1971;cf. M. Kochavi, Christian Newsfrom Israel, XIX (1968), pp. 45-46; idem., Qadmoniot, III (1970), pp. 22-24 (Hebrew).

76

5The excavations at Tel Masos in 1972, 1974, and 1975 were sponsored by Tel Aviv University and the German Research Trust (Deutsche Forschungs-Gemeinschaft), under the direction of Y. Aharoni, V. Fritz and A. Kempinski, Tel Aviv I (1974), pp. 64-74; idem., ibid., II (1975). 6J. Perrot, apud Avi-Yonah, op. cit., pp. 152-158. 7Cf. supra, n. 2. 8R. Giveon, Tel Aviv I (1974), pp. 75-76. 9Y. Aharoni, BA, XXXI (1968), pp. 2-32. 10Y.Aharoni, BA, XXXV (1972), p. 127; idem., BA, XXXVII (1974), pp. 2-6. York, 1968), pp. 60-110; but most recently M. Weippert, Biblica, LII (1971), pp. 407-321. 12The volume of ostraca from Arad, containing 109 Hebrew texts as well as Aramaic, Greekand Arabic inscriptions has recently appeared: Y. Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions (Jerusalem, 1975). 13y. Aharoni, Israel Exploration Journal, VIII (1958), pp. 36-38. 14W. F. Albright, BASOR No. 163 (1961), pp. 36-54; idem, Yahwehand the Gods of Canaan (London, 1968), pp. 4795; N. Glueck, Rivers in the Desert, corrected edition (New York, 1968), pp. 60-110; but most recently M. Weippert, Biblica, LII (1971), pp. 407-432. '5Cf. B. Mazar, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, XXVIII (1969), pp. 73-83, for a similar view based on internal evidence of the patriarchal narratives. 16N.Glueck, op. cit., pp. 114-115. '7B. Mazar, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, XXIV (1965), pp. 297-303. '8Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palistina-Vereins, LXXII (1966), pp. 331-342. 19For detailed discussion and bibliography, cf. Y. Aharoni, Land of the Bible (Philadelphia, 1967), p. 289. 20Y. Aharoni, apud. J. A. Sanders, ed., Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1970), pp. 254-267. 21A.Alt, "The Settlement of the Israelites in Palestine," Essays on Old TestamentHistory and Religion, translated by R. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1966), pp. 133-169; M. Weippert, The Settlement of the Israelite Tribesin Palestine, Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series, 21 (London, 1971), pp. 5-46. 22Y. Aharoni, Antiquity and Survival, II-III (1957), pp. 131-150; idem., apud Avi-Yonah, op. cit., II (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 406-408. 23R. Gofna and Y. Porat apud. M. Kochavi, ed. Judea, Samaria and the Golan (Jerusalem, 1972), pp. 198-199 (Hebrew); Z. Kallai, apud ibid., p. 154 (Hebrew); Y. Aharoni, Israel Exploration Journal, XXI (1971), pp. 130-135. 24M. Kochavi, apud M. Kochavi, ed., op. cit. pp. 20-23. 25N. Glueck, The Other Side of Jordan (New Haven, 1940), pp. 146-147, summarizing results of his surveys there; cf. idem., Explorations in Eastern Palestine I-IV, AASOR XIV (1934), XV (1935), XVIII-XIX (1939), XXV-XXVIII (1951). 26Y.Aharoni, Israel Exploration Journal, VI (1956), pp. 26-32.

MAY 1976

volume, one suspects, that Byron could have dreamed over.

Book Reviews

R. D. Barnett and W. Forman. Assyrian Palace Reliefs in the British Museum. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1970, reprinted 1974 with new photographs at the University Press, Oxford. 45 pp.; 20 black-and-white plates, paperbound. In Lord Byron's familiar "The Destruction of Sennacherib," The Assyriancame down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohortswere gleamingin purpleand gold; And the sheenof theirspearswas like stars on the sea, Whenthe blue wave rolls nightlyon deep Galilee. More prosaic than Byron, historians of the sort called in to assure that Hollywood epics are "historically accurate in every detail" might point out that when Assyrian cohorts gleamed, they gleamed in bronze rather than in gold, specifically, in ankle-length coats of bronze mail or leaf armor. And the historians' source for this bit of cinematic authenticity would be what was, after a fashion, the ancient Assyrian cinema, namely, the palace reliefs. Warfare, perhaps first forced on the Assyrians by the natural weakness of their geographical situation, became by stages almost the national pastime, at least for the brutalized nobility. Assyrian palace reliefs, accordingly, are rich and grim in military detail: light infantry bowmen, mounted bowmen, chariotry, mines, battering-rams, pontoon bridges, siege machines - all these and more may be seen faithfully rendered on the reliefs. Though no representation of the siege of Samaria by Shalmaneser or of Jerusalem by Sennacherib has survived, the reliefs of the "Lachish Room" of the British Museum (pls. IV-VI in the present volume), recording an Assyrian triumph at a fortress town on the IsraeliteEgyptian frontier, are of particular interest to biblical scholarship. Assyrian Palace Reliefs is a new, shortened edition of the authors' Assyrian Palace Reliefs; and their Influence on the Sculptures of Babylonia and Persia, published by Artia Press, Prague, 1959. The text is unchanged, but a list of sculptures on exhibition has been added, and W. Forman's platesbeautifully highlighting the reliefs and very clearly printed - are from fresh photographs of the newly arrangedgalleries. A BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Chaim Rabin. Qumran Studies. New York: Schocken, 1975. 135 pp., index of passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls, subject index. $3.95. Paperbound. Qumran Studies is the paperbound reprint of a 1957 volume based on Prof. Rabin's Jacobson Lecturesin Jewish Studies, a series sponsored by the University of Durham. In those lectures, Rabin challenged the reigning identification of the sect that produced the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. According to Josephus, antiquity's only historian of Hellenistic Judaism, there were three Jewish sects at the turn of the Christian era: the Essene or "monastic" sect; the Sadducee or priestly sect; and the Pharisee sect, which, as it grew into Rabbinic Judaism, has survived into modern times. Most scholars have linked the Qumran sect, the sect that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls, with the Essenes; Rabin links them with the Pharisees: The Qumrancommunity- in this view - represents the old haburah [the Pharisaic brotherhood]more faithfullythan does the 'rabbinic'communityof the Tannaiticperiod[thefirsttwocenturiesA.D.],becausethe latterhad madeextensiveconcessionsin halakhic[legal] mattersin orderto enablenon-Phariseesto sharein its life. These concessionswere largelythe reasonfor the schism, though personalquarrelsmay have played a certainrole in bringingit about. In the years since its first appearance, Rabin's hypothesis has not won many adherents. However, far the bolder and more speculative portion of his challenge to the scholarly consensus about the Scrolls community is his suggestion that the group was not annihilated in the Jewish Wars of 70 and 135 A.D.but instead retreatedeven further into the desert, into Arabia, where it played a crucial role in the rise of Islam. Sectarian Jewish disputes that subsided elsewhere in world Jewry survived in Arabia, according to Rabin, and the apocalyptic and messianic strain in early Islam - otherwise so difficult to explain - was suggested directly to Muhammad by the descendants of the Qumran sectaries. In the Prophet of Allah, they saw the Messiah of the Jews: This,then,may havebeenthe end of a movementwhich began in effectwith the birthof Pharisaism,some time between170and 134B.C.,wentintooppositionandbroke with the majorityof the Jewishpeople duringthe first centuryA.D.,led an obscureexistencefor five centuries, andblossomedout in one lastgreatattemptto realizethe Messianicaspirationswhichhadbeenthe coreof itsfaith in its earlystages.

77

Michael Avi-Yonah and Werner Braun. Jerusalem the Holy. New York: Schocken, 1976. 130 pp.; 130 photographs, 30 in color. $10.00. Jerusalem the Holy may best be described as a coffee table book for the smaller coffee table. Physically small for a book of its genre (74 x 8Y2),modest in scope, and reasonable in price, it may serve as a lovely pilgrimage souvenir or, more seriously, as a popular lecture for pilgrims who may be acquainted with one or two of the religions that regardJerusalem as holy but not with all three. Michael Avi-Yonah's opening "Short History" is completed with paragraph-long captions that read like the comments of a tour guide equally wellinformed about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, e.g., The Arabvillagewoman,wearingthe traditionalblack gown and hand-embroideredbodice, is crossing the cornerof the greatplazawheresome Moslemsbelieve, KingSolomonsateverydayto watchhisworkmenbuild the Templeof the Lord. Avi-Yonah, professor of archeology and the history of art at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, adds a chronological chart that happily includes the Byzantinethrough-Ottoman periods as well as the biblical. Unhappily, Werner Braun's often excellent photographs do not receive from SADAN, Ltd., Schocken's Israeli printer, the care they deserve. Leona Glidden Running and David Noel Freedman, William Foxwell Albright: A Twentieth-Century Genius. New York: Two Continents Publishing Group, 1975. $15.00. "I know of no student of Albright's who does not hold him in great affection, and love may impede objective evaluation. The reverse also may be true; we may be too close to him to perceive his real stature."Thus wrote Frank M. Cross in BASOR No. 200 (Dec. 1970). In this biography, two of his closest associates set out to chronicle Albright's career, assess his personality, and convey his impact in the fields of scholarship in which he functioned. Dr. Running was Dr. Albright's research assistant in 1965-66 and then helped in that capacity for short periods of time up to his final year, 1971. Dr. Freedman was Albright's closest disciple; the two men worked together especially hard on the Anchor Bible from 1956 on. The writing is Running's; the collecting of innumerable reminiscences was largely Freedman's; the burrowing through mountains of newspaper clippings, correspondence, and publications was Running's. Together they have compiled a chronicle of the eighty years of Albright's life which is at the same time a portrayal of the development of several fields of

78

study - biblical archeology, typology of Hebrew poetry, Semitic philology, paleography, and cultural interaction throughout the Fertile Crescent. Furthermore it is a portrayal of a "school"; dozens of Albright's students parade through these pages, an extension of his scholarly stature and of his personality. And dozens more, his longrange disciples especially in Israel, participate (often in their own words) in the assessment of the man. The book comes close to demonstrating Cross's first caveat: love may impede objective evaluation. But the authors admit their biases, and they do not pull punches when they portray some of the "Old Man's" weaknesses. If there is anything which the book leaves undone, it is in the area of Cross's second warning. There was a broader-based response to Albright's work than is here presented. Indeed, people in the fields of cultural anthropology, historiography, phenomenology, and theology sensed the impact of Albright's searching explorations - and either approved or opposed them. The second chapter of his From the Stone Age to Christianityand much of his book of essays published in 1964, entitled History, Archaeology, and Christian Humanism, were avowed forays into broader areas of study; there were, and are, reactions. This biography, then, is a labor of love and a chronicle of a life which is viewed as incomparable. It should be read by all those who seek to know the roots of contemporary biblical scholarship. Let the reader supply correctives if there is need but know that he is encountering a giant among scholars. -Edward F. Campbell W. Stewart McCullough. The History and Literature of the Palestinian Jews from Cyrus to Herod, 550 B.C. to 4 B.c. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1976. 252 pp., notes, maps, bibliography, index. $15.00. From the preface: Theaimof thisvolumeis to presenta generalsurvey of the historyand literatureof the PalestinianJewsin the last five centuriesB.C.for studentsand othersconcerned withthe laterpartsof the Old Testament,the Apocrypha, andearlyJudaism.Theshortnessof thebibliographyat the end is congruentwith the author'spurpose,the list being confinedto books likely to be accessibleto the ordinary reader.These titles can be supplementedby the works mentionedin the notes. In orderto keepthe studywithin manageablelimits,it is confinedto the Jews of Palestine, therebyexcludingthe Jews of Egypt and of Babylonia, althoughbothof the lattergroupshad, or weredestinedto develop, considerablesignificancein the Jewry of the ancientworld. Theimportanceof the period550to 4 B.C.in Jewish historyhas long beenrecognized.It is in this spanof time MAY

1976

that we witnessthe completionand consolidationof the literaryand religiousachievementof ancientIsrael.Not only werethe Scripturesassembled,butJewishvaluesand customs,includingacceptableexpressionsof piety, were firmlyestablished,anduponthisfoundationall subsequent Judaismwas to be built. Since the ChristianChurchwas initiallythechildof the Synagogue,it too standsin debtto these centuries, for much of Israel's legacy was appropriatedby the early Christiansand becamein fact basicfor the Christianityof the New Testament. McCullough's goals are modest, but he achieves them handily. A good book for beginners. Yigael Yadin, Hazor: The Rediscovery ofa Great Citadel of the Bible. New York: Random House, 1975.280 pp., with about 300 photographs and plans. $20.00. Yadin's first publications in English of the work at Hazor appeared in Biblical Archeologist in the late

1950's; since then, luminous articles about work he has directed have often filled these pages. This new, popular book about Hazor, about Yadin's brief digs at Megiddo, and about his "dig" into the pages of the early Gezer excavation reports is archeological reporting for the general reader at its very best. Yadin enjoys himself as he writes; his readers cannot help catching the excitement of discovery. Laid out in a format very similar to two earlier volumes with the same aim, Masada and Bar Kokhba, this book is more challenging and meaty because it must present and resolve a far larger range of archeological data. Inevitably some matters of interpretation are presented with more certainty than may be warranted; but Yadin is a fair man, and his reader can sense where caution should be exercised. The photographs are nothing less than superb, and Yadin continues to use a very effective technique of presenting block-plans with colors to indicate phases. A fine book for any archeological enthusiast - with not a few new things for the specialist.

SUBSCRIBE now to Biblical Archeologist. For the latest archeological news relating to the Bible and its world, as well as interesting articles exploring the implications of recent discoveries, just fill out this coupon and mail (or send a card) to: ASOR Scholars Press University of Montana Missoula, MT 59812 Please send me: ( ) Biblical Archeologist (four times a year, September, December, March, May)..........................

....................

$10.00

Also available from ASOR/Scholars Press are: .. ................... $25.00 ASOR Membership* ............................................................... ...................... $15.00 ASOR Student Membership* .......................................... $15.00 ASOR Retired Membership*.................................................................................. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research $1500 (four times a year, ca. 80 pages per issue) .............................................................. .................................. $10.00 ( ) Archeological Newsletter (10 times a year) ............................... *ASOR memberships and student memberships include subscriptions to Biblical Archeologist, BASOR, and the Newsletter. ( ( ( (

) ) ) )

Name: Amount included: Address: City, State, Zip:

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

79

COLOPHON AND THESE ARE THE KINGS of the country whom Joshua and the Israelites conquered westwards of the Jordan, from Baal-gad in the Vale of Lebanon to Mount Halak rising towards Seir, and Joshua allotted their inheritanceto the tribes of Israel according to their divisions: in the highlands and lowlands, in the Arabah and on the Hillsides, in the Wilderness and the Negeb: in the territories of the Hittite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite: the king of Jericho, the king of Ai near Bethel,

"rr "rr

the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron,

Inr "rr "rr

the king of Yarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon,

alr

the king of Gezer, the king of Debir,

/s /

the king of Geder, the king of Hormah,

a:•r

the king of Arad,

thekingof Libnah,

r

r4

InM

(

"r

the king of Adullam, the king of Makkedah,

"rr TIN

the king of Bethel, the king of Tappuah, the king of Hepher the king of Aphek,

N ,,\

"t g"T

the king of Sharon, the king of Madon,

InNr "n"N "rrT

the king of Hazor, the king of Symoon,

"rnT "Inr

the king of Achshaph, the king of Taanach,

"Inr InH

the king of Megiddo, the king of Kedesh,

Inr

the king of Yokneam in Carmel, the king of Dor on the hillsides of Dor, the king of Goyim in Galilee, the king of Tirzah, Total number of all these kings: '

80

KY I

"1 In1 InH 2w

w

"•1

MAY 1976

OF

vie

THE AMERICAN SCHOOLS OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH ANNOUNCES THE FIRST IN A SERIES OF DISSERTA TIONS RELA TING TO THE HISTOR Y, LITERA TURE AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST.

THE

HUMAN IN

ANCIENT

OF

ROLE

SACRIFICE THE NEAR

EAST

by Alberto R. W. Green Dr. Green'sinvestigation of "human sacrifice"in the ancient Near East seeks (1)to analyze the written and unwritten materials from the Early Bronze through the Iron Age which refer to human sacrifice in Mesopotamia, the Vedic Indus Valley, Egypt, and Syria-Palestine, (2) to evaluate the role of this ritual within its cultural milieu, and (3) to find parallels among contiguous cultures which may demonstrate contact and diffusion. Methodological interests are prominent and tend to call into question certain cliche'sconcerning this ritual long held by scholars in other disciplines. The true function and meaning of this ritual can only be understood if interpreted within its chronological, historical, and sociological contexts. Human sacrifice in Mesopotamia and the Vedic Indus Valley took three forms: (1) foundation propitiatory child sacrifice, (2) the ritual murder of attendants at the death of an important individual in society, and (3) a substitutionary expiatory murder of an individual to preserve the life of the king. In Egypt the ritual assumed forms which include: (1) the murder of attendants at the death of an important person, (2) the sacrifice of captive royalty at the accession of certain Pharaohs, and (3) the sacrifice of foreigners and animals to deities at the mortuary cult of some members of the nobility. In SyriaPalestine human expiatory sacrifices were offered to foreign gods and presumably to Yahweh in various ways and for diverse reasons. This investigation shows that similarities in the rite among the various cultural groups studied reflect prior contact. Political powers which used law as a "rite"sanctioned by deity and war as a religious instrument also engaged in human sacrifice. In the ancient Near East, human sacrifice was most likely to be practiced in a society whose value system had degenerated and which attempted to find solutions to political and domestic problems based on misunderstanding of the past. The Role of Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East is available from SCHOLARS PRESS, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812. Payment must accompany order. Cloth $7.50 ($5.00 cSPs member price). Paper $6.00 ($4.00 cSPs member price). The member price is available to members of societies sponsoring the Center for Scholarly Publishing and Services. ASOR is a cSPs sponsor.

2