No title

BIBLICAL ARCH oo)

ISSN: 0006-0895 VOLUME 41 NUMBER 4

DECEMBER1978

Tablets from ancient Ebla

t

Dr. Kitchen... has assistedin excavations in Egypt,

publishing a number of the texts found there. He has also been able to study many of the extra-biblicaldocuments relating to the Bible through his competence in the languages involved. In other words, he is someone of acceptedauthorityin the areaof archaeologyin

its relationshipwith the Bible. ThirdWay

.... .......

K. A. Kitchen makes direct use of primary sources from the ancient biblical world, both archaeology and texts, to enlarge and fill in our picture of the ancient context of the biblical writers. He concentrates principally onh the earlier periods and proceeds by biblical chronology to the end of Solomon's reign. This is the first book on Bible archaeology to make full use of the spectacular discoveries at ancient Ebla in the 1970s. Kenneth A. Kitchen is a lecturer at the School of Archaeology and Oriental Studies, University of Liverpool. 168 pages, paper, 797-5, $3.95

Press InterVarsity Box F Downers Grove, Illinois 60515 1875Leslie St., Unit 10 Don Mills, Ontario M3B2M5 Divisionof Inter-Varsity ChristianFellowship

JI

Editor David Noel Freedman, The University of Michigan

Associate Editor Harry Thomas Frank, Oberlin College

Editorial Committee Frank M. Cross, Harvard University John A. Miles, Jr., University of California Press

David Noel Freedman is Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Michigan and Vice-President (for Publications) of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He has made significant contributions toward our understanding of Hebrew poetry and history. Presently, under his editorship, the Biblical Archeologist has been the first in publishing new finds, such as Ebla.

Assistants to the Editor Ronald D. Guengerich Terrence M. Kerestes Kenneth A. Mathews Bruce E. Willoughby

Graphic Designer Rhonda De Mason

Credits The First Two Seasons at Ma5?ebat-Sfip6n: photo on p. 140 by courtesy of Mr. E. Eisenberg and the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums. The Real Story of the Ebla Tablets: photos on pp. 145, 149, 156, 157, 158 supplied by author; photos on pp. 153, 160- 61, 164 are from Science Year, The World Book Science Annual, Copyright @ 1978, Field Enterprise Educational Corporation. Used by permission of Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. Map on p. 148 by Kenneth Mathews and Terrence Kerestes, Ann Arbor, MI; map on p. 150 by Terrence Kerestes, Ann Arbor, MI. Five Seasons of Excavation at Tell el-Hesi: map on p. 168 by F. L. Koucky; photos on pp. 167, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175 supplied by authors; drawings on pp. 169, 176, 179 by B. Zoughbi; drawings on p. 176 by B. Zoughbi after original by L. E. Toombs; drawing on p. 178 by B. Zoughbi after original by K. G. O'Connell; chart on p. 181 supplied by authors. Colophon: "This Place Rumord to Have Been Sodom" by Robert Duncan is from The Opening of the Field. Copyright ? 1960 by Robert Duncan. Reprinted by permission of New Directions. Composition by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, IN 46590. Printed by Printing Services, The University of Michigan.

Valerie M. Fargo spent the 1976-77 academic year in residence at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem, doing research for her University of Chicago dissertation, "Settlements in Southern Palestine during Early Bronze III." She was the Area Supervisor at Tell el-Hesi in 1975 and 1977 and also has participated in excavations at Gezer, Jenin, Idalion, Chogha Mish (Iran), and Belice Valley (Sicily).

Kevin G. O'Connell, S. J., Associate Professor of Old Testament at Weston School of Theology, has published The Theodotionic Revision of the Book of Exodus, 1972. He has been Administrative Director of the Tell el-Hesi Expedition since 1973 (after serving there as a volunteer in 1971) and is general editor for the Expedition's final publication series. He has published articles in Israel Exploration Journal, IDB Supplement, New Catholic Encyclopedia, among other well-known journals.

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST is published with the financial assistance of ZION RESEARCH FOUNDATION Boston, Massachusetts A nonsectarian Protestant foundation for the study of the Bible and the history of the Christian church

Cover:Tabletsfrom ancient EblamodernTell Mardikh-dated between 2600-2300 B.C.

DECEMBER 1978 VOLUME 41 NUMBER 4 David Noel Freedman

The Real Story of the Ebla Tablets, Ebla and the Cities of the Plain

143

One of the greatest archeological finds of the twentieth century is discussed in a provocative and stimulating article, relating information from the Ebla tablets to biblical history, specifically the patriarchal period. Valerie M. Fargo Kevin G. O'Connell, S. J.

Biblical Archeologist is published quarterly (March, June, September, December) by the American Schools of Oriental Research. Its purpose is to provide the general reader with an accurate scholarly yet easily understandable account of archeological discoveries and their bearing on the biblical heritage. Unsolicited mss. are welcome but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The American Schools of Oriental Research is no longer affiliated with the Center for Scholarly Publishing and Services at Missoula, Montana. Address all editorial correspondence to Biblical Archeologist, 1053 LSA Building, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Address all business correspondence to ASOR, 126 Inman Street, Cambridge, MA 02139. Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Copyright @ 1978 American Schools of Oriental Research. Annual subscription rate: $12.00. Current single issues: $4.00.

Five Seasons of Excavation at Tell el-Hesi

165

(1970-77) A report on the recent archeological work with vivid illustrations of Tell el-Hesi's importance during the biblical period. Letter to the Readers

133

Polemics and Irenics

134

Notes and News

137

op-ed

139

Twenty-Five Years Ago

185

Book Reviews

189

Lichtheim, The New Kingdom, Ancient Egyptian Literature, A Book of Readings (Weinstein) Hayes and Miller, Israelite and Judean History (Flanagan) Colophon

192

The First Season of Excavations - 1962 M. Dothan and D. N. Freedman

I ASHDOD

The definitive report of excavations at Tell Ashdod in the Philistine Plain of Israel during 1962 by a combined expedition of Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and the Department of Antiquities of Israel, ASHDOD I surprised us all by becoming a bestseller and being out-of-print by 1970. Although evidence at the tell proves occupation until modern times, ASHDOD I deals particularly with the periods from the Late Bronze, 14th century B.C., through Hellenistic of the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries B.C. Number of copies at: Cost of book: Postage & handling:

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The Second and Third Seasons of Excavations: 1963, 1965 Soundings in 1967 Moshe Dothan and Others Jerusalem 1971 CAtiqot: English Series. Volumes IX-X Second in the series of major reports on excavations at Tell Ashdod in Israel by a combined expedition of Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and the Department of Antiquities of Israel, this work in two volumes (IX is text, X is figures and plates) describes work and significance of new evidence found between the time of the end of the first season, 1962 (reported in ASHDOD I), and 1967. ASHDOD II AND III deals particularly with the periods from Middle Bronze II c through Hellenistic of the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries B.C. Number of copies at: Paperbound Clothbound Cost of book Postage and handling Pennsylvania residents add 6% sales tax

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Letter to the Readers EB III and Abraham The Early Bronze Age in Palestine has been something of an enigma to us. We tend to characterize it as distinguished by the appearance of the first heavily fortified cities, yet Paul Lapp correctly reminded us that these cities were small islands in an agricultural sea. Unlike the cultures of EB Mesopotamia and Egypt, that of Palestine was not essentially urbanbased. Civilization in Palestine which had been relatively high in the Chalcolithic period rapidly fell behind. Writing, for example, which appeared among the Sumerians well before 3000 B.c. and among the Egyptians slightly later, does not seem to have come into widespread use in Palestine until the second millennium. Ernest Wright called the end of the Early Bronze Age "a dark age" in Palestine: a period of cultural decay occasioned by the influx of large numbers of seminomads who descended upon the land. Somewhere in this movement of peoples were to be found the historical beginnings of Israel in the person of Abraham. Many other scholars rejected such historical claims, however qualified, and insisted that Abraham and the other Patriarchs were "eponymous heroes," a later projection of group ideals and aspirations. The simple fact seems to be that there really was too little archeological evidence from the period (the deep EB levels were often not even reached in many excavations, and there was no contemporary, direct literary evidence). But the debate raged on. On one hand the character of EB culture in Palestine and its relation to what was going on in the Tigris-Euphrates basin along the Nile was a vexing question. On the other those who wished to defend the historicity of the Patriarchal narratives by citing a clear historical context were hard pressed. All who tried to do this sought such a context in the second millennium, in the MB period. Meanwhile, some literary critics were suggesting that the stories might have been created more or less out of whole cloth as late as the first millennium. All the while W. F. Albright steadily maintained that EB III (ca. 2800-2400 B.c.) "undoubtedly represents the culmination of Early Bronze culture in Palestine as well as Egypt." Furthermore, the historical context for the patriarchs was a part of the lengthy decline of this extraordinary EB III culture. BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

In the 1970s much new evidence-archeological and literary-has come to light. In particular, EB III has emerged as just what Albright saw it to be; namely, the culmination of EB culture. Excavations southeast of the Dead Sea in Jordan and in southern Israel have shown that Early Bronze urban life was hardly restricted to the north as we once thought. Moreover, they have suggested that many EB III cities in the south met a sudden and violent end. The work of Paul Lapp at Bab edh-Dhrac has been continued and expanded by Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub (see among other things ASOR Annual 43, just issued). This has reopened the question of the "Cities of the Plain" (Gen 14, 18 and 19) including the infamous Sodom and Gommorah. Westward, the Joint Expedition to Tell el-Hesi, working at one of the most famous sites in the country, has encountered extensive Early Bronze remains. These indicate a major settlement in EB III and its destruction and/or abandonment at roughly the same time as the destruction of the "Cities of the Plain." A comprehensive report of the archeological evidence from five seasons of work at Hesi is represented in this issue of BA in the article by Valerie Fargo and Kevin O'Connell. The interpretation of this difficult site-predominantly mudbrick with heavy erosion and all the attendant problems-provides new insight into southern Palestine, not only in the time of the Hebrew monarchies and the Post-Exilic period, but also in the Early Bronze Age. The article by D. N. Freedman, "The Real Story of the Ebla Tablets," deals directly with literary evidence for EB III and its possible relation to Genesiswith striking results for our knowledge of Abraham. Albright and others, such as E. A. Speiser who insisted upon the historicity of Abraham and the traditions associated with him, have been vindicated, but in a way they could not have guessed. The Ebla Tablets, says Freedman, force us to place Abraham in EB III, as early as 2600 to 2400 B.c.! Moreover, the Cities of the Plain can now be put into a known historical context, as can the traditions underlying Genesis 14, 18 and 19. "The reason that the story has never been located historically is that scholars, all of us, have been looking in the wrong millennium," says Freedman. Not only do we have an argument for placing Abraham in EB III, but for the first time new and astounding information reveals that one of the Ebla Tablets mentions the name of the king of one of the Cities of the Plain-is it sheer coincidence that a king of the same name is also mentioned in Genesis? This issue of BA thus presents both new archeological evidence adding to our knowledge of little known periods and areas, and also an analysis of new literary evidence challenging old theories and putting the cat among the pigeons. HARRY THOMAS FRANK

133

Polemics & Irenics

On the History of Writing The great ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity that has constantly been characteristic of Near Eastern civilizations from the remotest antiquity to the present day is often obscured or glossed over by modern scholars whose ideas and attitudes are determined by an increasingly dysfunctional departmental or disciplinary parochialism. A particularly striking example is furnished in the report of a paper presented at the 1977 meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America (Biblical Archeologist, June 1978, p. 45). In a paper entitled "The Byblos 'Hieroglyphics' as an Aegean Script," Jon Billigmeier made a series of statements that are unusually consistent in being demonstrably wrong-an unhappy state of affairs that could have been easily avoided by someone that is knowledgeable about what is going on in Near Eastern studies. Since the subject is of very considerable importance to ancient and biblical studies, it seemed appropriate to furnish here a brief summary of what is now known about and from these intriguing-and exasperating-texts. First, it is not accurate to say that the texts remain undeciphered; after presenting progress reports to various learned societies for nearly twenty years, I am now able to present a connected translation, grammatical analysis, and even a juridical commentary upon most of the texts, most of which are legal documents in a very broad sense of the term: a royal proclamation (text d), a marriage contract (text c), a very badly eroded building inscription (text a), and other categories including two far too fragmentary to yield anything of importance. Dating these texts to the 2nd millennium B.C. is no longer possible. Over the years, I had been forced from internal evidence to date them earlier and earlier, in recent years concluding for a date roughly contemporary with the First Intermediate Period of Egypt, ca. 2100 B.C. Now, by the sort of incredible coincidence that ought not to exist outside the realm of

134

science fiction, the king who speaks in the first person in text d is named in the Ebla texts, according to Pettinato, as a king of Byblos. This name, HIu-ruBa-'i-lu in Byblos Syllabic, had emerged during the decipherment process at least ten years ago. Merely to illustrate the wealth of information that has already emerged from these texts, this name proves first of all the great antiquity of Baal names (contrary to an observation of Albright years ago), and also such biblical names as Ben-Hur. Further, it proves that the South Canaanite Iron Age form bacal derives fom an original verbal noun of qatil form, like malik, and capir. This reasonably secure redating of the Byblos texts places Billigmeier's thesis in a new light. There are some similarities between Byblos Syllabic signs and the Minoan scripts, to be sure, but purely formal comparisons are most unconvincing in isolation. Much more important is the fact that both writing systems are very predominantly based upon signs that represent a consonant with following vowel, and therefore neither system can represent either closed syllables or double consonants. Years ago I had found it necessary to conclude that certain vowels represented in the script were what Mycenologists have now long termed "dead vowels." It is the systemic similarity that is far more important than superficial, and probably misleading, formal similarities between individual signs of the two scripts. This is even more important since the Byblos script illustrates a rather considerable variation in individual forms of the same character. So far as affinities are concerned, there can be no reasonable doubt that the Byblos script was inspired by the Egyptian hieroglyphic system, as Dunand correctly pointed out in the original publication. It is now equally certain that this syllabic system antedated by half a millennium, and actually gave rise to, the Canaanite alphabet: virtually every Bronze Age alphabetic form derives from an earlier syllabic character where the chances of preservation and decipherment have made a direct comparison possible. Completely unexpected, however, is a very close relationship to the old pre-Islamic Arabic alphabets, in spite of a mysterious gap of some fifteen hundred years in date. Not so surprising is an equally close relationship to the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions; in this corpus some signs are more pictographic and seemingly archaic than their counterparts in the Byblos system, even though the Sinaitic inscriptions can hardly be older than ca. 1500 B.C. Inconsistencies in the Byblos Syllabic system itself, whether of forms, of signs, or even of spelling are at least not incompatible with the thesis that the system was in use at Byblos for a period of several centuries and perhaps was known elsewhere as well. Since writing is everywhere in the early period a function of specialized classes-priests, merchants, lawyers, or bureaucrats-it seems that the system broke down with

DECEMBER 1978

the enormous disruptions that attended everywhere the transition from the Early Bronze to the Middle Bronze Ages. Already far simpler than the cumbersome cuneiform and hieroglyphic systems of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the syllabic system was further simplified in an elegant simplicity that could easily be mastered (and garbled!) by anyone, since only some thirty consonant signs were involved. At the same time, in the Bronze Age alphabetic signs, all otiose strokes were dispensed with; in contrast, the Minoan systems seem to represent the opposite tendency toward enormous (aesthetic?) elaboration, a phenomenon that can only be explained on the basis of social structure and specialization, not on the needs of a writing system. There can be no doubt whatever that the Byblos Syllabic system is a product of the ancient Near Eastern cultural complex, both because of its antecedents and its descendants. The signs themselves derive largely from Egyptian prototypes, but wherever the sign represents a recognizable object, the phonetic value of the sign is the first syllable of the name of the object represented, e.g., BA-yi-tu: "house." Furthermore, we know beyond question that all areas of the West Semitic language region had been familiar with writing long before even the Byblos Syllabic. In all the justified excitement over the texts from Ebla, the fact has escaped attention that at least three sites in the Upper Euphrates Valley in Syria and Turkey have yielded written tablets in the "proto-literate"system a thousand years older than the Ebla tablets. Again, in sharp contrast the Minoan system, like Melchizedek, has no forebears (and also no descendants), and scholars have long sought some antecedent prototype that directly or indirectly inspired it. As Billigmeier correctly has seen, we now have that prototype. We also have two sources for EB West Semitic writing and language, both of which have very close relationships to the much later South Canaanite complex of dialects that have been preserved in the Bible. Contrasts between the Byblos dialect and what has so far been made available from Ebla are so great that there is no justification for terming Ebla dialect "Canaanite." In fact, my own preference would be to restrict the term "Canaanite"to linguistic materials from the coastal area during the Middle Bronze through Iron Ages. In consequence, the dialect of the Byblos Syllabic texts would be pre-Canaanite, for its closest linguistic affinities are with the Old South Arabic. It is hoped that the publication of the decipherment may take place within the next two or three years. Meantime, further discussion of this topic with a chart of the signs may be found in the forthcoming Proceedings of the First International Symposium on the History of Arabia, to be published by the University of Riyad, Riyad, Saudi Arabia. GEORGE E. MENDENHALL

The University of Michigan

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

The Uniqueness of the LB Temple at Tell Mevorak After having read E. Stern's article in Biblical Archeologist 40 (1977) 89-91, I would like to make the following comments. The general reader may well be misled by the somewhat overenthusiastic emphasis which E. Stern places on the uniqueness of his discovery of an isolated LB temple at Tell Mevorak (cf. p. 91). This cultic structure is not as "isolated" a phenomenon in the Late Bronze Age as Stern asserts. Stern did not consider H. J. Franken's publication "Excavations at Tell Deir CAlla" I (Leiden 1969) 19-20. Some sort of relationship to the Bronze Age settlement at Tell el-Mazar, which is located approximately 3 km north of Tell Deir cAlla, may well exist, but the nature of this relationship cannot be clarified at present. Stern also did not mention the recent discoveries at Tell Mfisa (cf. E. Eisenberg, Biblical Archeologist 40 [1977] 77-81, especially p. 80; already Hadashot Arkheologiyot 54/55 [1975] 8-10, especially p. 9; Qadmoniot 9 [1976] 105-9, especially p. 108). These three isolated temple buildings in Palestine from the MB II and Late Bronze periods ought to be considered together. El-Meneciya (Timna) does not apply here, since it is located in a completely different area, and the Amman Airport Building does not appear to be a temple (cf. V. Fritz, Zeitschrift fiir die deutsche-paliistina Vereins 87 [1971] 140-52). The temples at Tell Deir cAlla, Tell Mevorak, and Tell Musa may well provide some additional information concerning the structures in nonurban Palestinian society during the LB period. It is, however, too early at this point to make any definitive statements since these finds have not yet been fully published. Additional discoveries are to be expected. E. A. KNAUF West Ttibingen, Germany Response to E. A. Knauf I wish to thank Mr. Knauf for his useful comment. What I have been trying to point out is that the sanctuary at Tell Mevorak is unique (up to now), by being isolated with no LB settlements in a radius of 12-15 kms. This point seems to escape Mr. Knauf. The two examples brought by him (well known to me, and there are many more, to mention only the "Fosse Temple" at Lachish) are located close to a contemporary settlement or connected to it in one way or another. However, one can only join Mr. Knauf in his hope that "additional discoveries are to be expected." EPHRAIM STERN

Hebrew University

135

The Need For More Prompt Publication This is in reply to your comments in Biblical Archeologist on the need for more prompt publication in regard to the Dead Sea Scrolls. I write as a retired research chemist with no formal training in archeology, but I have had a great deal of experience with delays caused both by my own slowness in writing an article, and also with reviewers and editors taking an inordinate amount of time to accept or return a manuscript which had been submitted. When you say that you were assigned responsibility for the Leviticus Scroll, I assume that you were given some kind of photographic reproduction of the scroll, while the original reposes safely somewhere in an air-conditioned vault. I would suggest that when a Dead Sea Scroll document is assigned for study and publication, time limits be placed upon the scholar who accepts it. He would be required to submit a preliminary publication to a journal within one year, and a final complete article within five years. (The time limits could be flexible: for a short fragment, six months for the preliminary article; for a very long scroll, as much as two years for the preliminary and ten years for the final article). If the scholar does not conform to these time limits, he would be requested to return the item for reassignment. If he neither publishes nor returns, then the scroll should be made available to all interested persons, in the form of either microfilm or microfiche. Probably in most cases, either a blackand-white film or a color film would suffice; with some of the darkened scrolls, infrared photographs would also be needed, but it seems to me that with modern methods an entire scroll could be put on microfilm or microfiche, in both color and infrared, and copies made available at relatively very little cost. This is, I admit, a carrot and stick approach: it is saying that if you don't publish the scroll within a reasonable time, it will be made public, and someone else may get it in print before you do. Most chemists will cut the throat of a colleague if it will help get priority in publication. Physicists, biologists, and biochemists are probably not much better. Are archeologists nicer people? Isn't it true that Ugaritic was deciphered very quickly because of prompt publication and cooperation between various groups? There are two other problems on publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls which I do not think have been discussed. The first is that the Biblical scrolls and fragments have not been published in a form suitable for the interested layman, who may or may not be able to read Biblical Hebrew and certainly cannot struggle with various older forms of the square Hebrew alphabet. It seems that those scrolls which are more or less complete should be published with the Hebrew in a

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modern type-face, and an English translation, in parallel columns. Probably it need not be done for the complete Isaiah scroll, since we are told that there are few significant differences from the Masoretic text, and some recent translations of the Bible do give variant readings suggested by the scroll. But what about something like the Dead Sea Scroll version of Samuel, which sometimes agrees with the Masoretic and sometimes agrees with the Septuagint? Shouldn't these texts be made available, in translations, hopefully in moderately priced paperbacks? The second need is for an up-to-date book on the entire topic of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Every general article for the layman recommends, for further reading, Millar Burrows' two volumes, but they are twenty years old. It would be nice to have a book that covers the entire topic of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the way Burrows' two books do but includes what has been learned in the last two decades. Since Professor Burrows has not written such a book, I assume that he is either unwilling or unable to take on the job. Yadin is a superb writer and certainly knows the subject of the scrolls very well, but I doubt if politics will leave him with any time to devote to archeology or to popular writing on archeology. Is there any chance that one of the younger men in the field of the Dead Sea Scrolls would be willing to spend a few years of his spare time on this task? LESLIE REGGEL

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Early Days of BA In writing something about the early days of the BA, something should surely be said about Gladys Walton (Mrs.). She was Millar Burrows' secretary and also the only office secretary for ASOR. The BA would hardly have gotten off the ground if it weren't for her untiring efforts in the office. She typed most of the correspondence that had to do with getting authors to contribute, bids on envelopes, printing, etc. She mimeographed the bill forms and "reminders"that I sent out with the copies of the BA, and she kept track of the incoming subscriptions especially after we moved to Chicago (Jan '39). Her enthusiasm for the baby "mag" was boundless. She kept sending us all the complimentary remarks that came in written across the subscription forms, forwarded to me all new and changed addresses, and kept score on the number of subscribers and renewals - especially the important ones. EMILY WRIGHT

DECEMBER1978

Tell el-Hesi Soon to begin Sixth Season

Notes and News Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem The Ecumenical Institute for Advanced Theological Studies, Jerusalem, invites readers of the BA to consider spending a sabbatical-leave period, or shorter periods of time for research, at the Institute. The accommodations are excellent, and the opportunities for collaboration with scholars from many fields, lands, and church confessions are outstanding. Present research of the Institute itself is focused upon "Prayer in Eastern Christianity," "Christianity in the Holy Land," "Interpretation as a Theological Issue," and "The Mystery of Salvation." Ample time is available for the pursuit of one's own research, but the Institute does expect scholars in residence to join in the common life and worship and, when appropriate, to lend a hand with its research efforts and seminars. Write to either of the following: Professor Walter Harrelson, Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, TN 37240, USA, Rector of the Institute for 1977-78 and for the second term, 1978-79. Professor Joseph Blenkinsopp, Acting Rector, Ecumenical Institute, 1978-79, Fall, POB 19556, Jerusalem, Israel, (Professor, Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA).

The Joint Archeological Expedition to Tell elHesi has announced the dates for its sixth season, 14 June-31 July, 1979. The Volunteer Program includes archeological field experience, an educational program and academic credit, guided tours to many important sites in Israel, opportunity to work with specialist interdisciplinary teams, and an introduction to the life and culture of the ancient and modern Middle East. Charter flights are planned (tentatively) to depart on 10 and 11 June, and to return on 2 and 16 August. For further information and application forms, write to Dr. Harry Thomas Frank, Hesi/The Volunteer Program, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074. Experienced applicants for positions on the field staff should write to Dr. D. Glenn Rose, Hesi Project Director, Box 2305, University Station, Enid, OK 73701. Trowel and Patish The first number of Trowel and Patish, a newsletter for all persons who have served as staff or volunteers for any season of the Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi, appeared under the editorship of J. Kenneth Eakins in May, 1978. The sixpage issue contains information about reports already published on the first five seasons, a preview of final publications that are being prepared, and other news of interest to Hesi veterans. Any Hesi people who did not receive the first mailing should send their present addresses to: Dr. J. Kenneth Eakins, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, CA 94941. He will then send them a copy of the first issue and add them to the mailing list for subsequent issues.

WALTERHARRELSON Vanderbilt University

KEVIN

G.

O'CONNELL S.J.

Hesi Expedition

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BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

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op-ed

The First Two Seasons at Ma??ebat-Aip6n The enterprise of archeology, when it is carried forward in those parts of the world where the doctrinal interests of modern religious traditions might seem to be at stake, is frequently vulnerable to the attacks of critics who call into question its objectivity. Thus, for example and in particular, when the excavation of the Near East is (as it often is) in the hands of confessing Jews and Christians, the charge of lack of detachment is sometimes leveled. Most Near Eastern archeologists, to be sure, will claim absolute objectivity, and almost as many live up to the claim. The business of archeology is not intended to establish the validity of religious doctrine, and, indeed, it is exceedingly seldom that archeological evidence is capable of such a thing (or the reverse). In fact, it may be stated as a generalization that excavated remains by their very nature cannot prove anything in the strict lexical sense of affirming by demonstration the truth of a given statement or belief. There are, however, exceptions to every generalization, and although I shall be concerned in these pages not with the proof of a religious conviction, I hope to provide you with incontrovertible evidence from ancient Near Eastern sources for the validity of a particular, modern, nonreligious belief. Scholars have been long acquainted with the ancient and widespread oriental belief in a domestic demon who was supposed to visit homes and kill or carry away children. Incantation texts have been recovered from several sites which were designed to be placed on doors or doorposts to protect a household from this creature. The tradition behind the Passover account in the biblical book of Exodus is probably related to the custom at some point. It is less well known, but now beyond question, that a similar but opposite belief was entertained at the same time, according to which a benevolent spirit or being of some BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

description was expected to visit the homes leaving gifts for the children of the house. As cogently argued by the late Victor Wenceslaus of the University of Prague, "It is inconceivable that the notion of a destroying angel can have existed in isolation from its natural corollary, viz., a kindly visitor whose annual arrival was eagerly anticipated." This hypothesis has, to be sure, been seriously challenged. Especially problematic are certain brief and cryptic references from late (Hellenistic) sources which suggest that the benevolent visitor in question was obliged to enter a house not by the door but through the opening in the roof designed in the standard threeroom Palestinian dwelling to permit the passage of smoke from cooking fires out through the ceiling. It is on this basis that the eminent British orientalist Ebeneezer Marley has challenged Wenceslaus' conclusions. In 1961 Marley wrote succinctly: It is hardlypossiblethat any visitor who was required to enter a house through a chimney can have been regardedas friendlyby the occupantsof the house in question.In short, ProfessorWenceslaus'hypothesisis to be dismissed as a scholarly humbug. This controversy, which raged for several years, reached no satisfactory conclusion until the middle of the winter of 1977. In that year a team of French archeologists, surveying a series of promising but unexcavated mountain sites in the Anti-Lebanon range at the northern extreme of ancient Syria-Palestine, had become interested in rumors of the recovery of rather curious antiquities near the site of the ancient village of whose name in old Canaanite meant Massebat-sp•pan, "Pillar/ Pole of the North," though the precise significance of the name remains in doubt. This ancient village had been associated in ancient tradition with the mysterious benevolent visitor, so that it was eagerly hoped that the new find might shed further light on the tradition. Excavation, therefore, was begun immediately, in spite of the handicap of the heavy snowfalls which are endemic to those altitudes in winter months. The results of that first season of work at were disappointing. No light at all was Massebat-sipon on the benevolent-visitor tradition. There was an shed interesting limestone relief recovered, apparently depicting the old Amorite deity El, though this has been questioned. The figure on the relief does display the characteristic flowing white whiskers of the Amorite deity, and he is seated in El's customary profile position in an elaborate chariot. But certain peculiarities are also present in the relief. The chariot is pictured not with wheels or poles for conveyance by servants, as was the custom, but with runners. This has been plausibly explained by the excavators as an accommodation to the wintry climate of the area, so that the chariot was conceived as a sled or sleigh rather than as a wagon. A second peculiarity in the relief is the portrayal of eight, small antelope or other deerlike

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mammals running ahead of the chariot. Professor Wenceslaus' suggestion that these animals were a diminutive form of elk or reindeer which drew the chariot must be considered the idle fancy of an aging scholar. Much sounder is Marley's explanation of them as imperfectly represented specimens of the common Syrian gazelle fleeing from El in his aspect as the Cosmic Hunter. As Marley has explained: We should hardlyexpect such idle, carelessprimitives as those who must have inhabitedancient Massebatsapon to executethe depictionof a gazelle'santlerwith the proper number of branches. One regrets that ProfessorWenceslaushas propoundedthis humbugin his twilight years. Subsequent seasons at the site have been far more productive. Indeed several things now seem clear. First, there was actually some basis in fact for the benevolent-visitor tradition, that is, there was a genuine historical figure to whom the old stories accrued. Second, the residence of this person was, at least until Third, the beginning of the Iron Age, Massebat-sypan.to have the individual in question seems customarily

made an annual journey in mid-winter across the known world (and perhaps beyond) with the express purpose of providing children with gifts and confections. These conclusions are illustrated by the following data. During the second season of work at Massebatslpan, two habitation areas representing a single continuous occupation predating the Syria-Palestinian Iron Age were isolated. These two areas may be considered individually. The first was, according to the excavators, an industrial complex. In particular, the manufacture of various small objects of amusement and diversion was carried forward here for several centuries. Victor Wenceslaus' characterization of these materials as "children'stoys manufactured by a population of strange folk, small in stature but uncommonly industrious" has been severely criticized by Ebeneezer Marley, whose opinion I shall now quote at length: The Wenceslaustheory can hardly seem other than sheer,doting humbugto the seriousscholar.The small female figurines, which Professor Wenceslaus has describedin his fanciful way as "children'sdolls,"are beyond any serious doubt cult objects intended to

promote the fertility of the soil by means of sympathetic magic.Note in particularthe unusualapotropaic device recovered from Area 16B of the tell, which consists of a smallark or chestcontaininga leeringand conspicuously grotesque graven image which is so positionedthat it springsup to confrontthe unsuspecting opener of the little box. This device is clearly intendedto frightenawayevil spiritsand can hardly,as Wenceslausproposes,be the forerunnerof any modern child's toy. We might add that in the same area during the next season the discovery of several stuffed and padded zoomorphic figurines designed to resemble small, rotund bears would seem to confirm Marley's critique of Wenceslaus' conjectures. The second area excavated that year represents the same occupation level. It will be remembered as the site of one of the truly dramatic discoveries of modern archeology, for it is almost certainly the locus of the dwelling-place of the so-called benevolent visitor himself. Actually, two separate structures have been distinguished in this area: one is the house or cottage; the other seems to have been a shelter for stabling domesticated animals, though whether donkey or camel remains undetermined. The latter structure contains at least eight discernibly separate stalls, the last four of which bear cuneiform legends which may be deciphered as "Comet, Eros, Thunder, and Lightning," more familiar to scholars in the translation of the eminent German Assyriologist Nicholas van Kringle as "Komet, Kupid, Donner, und Blitzen." Wenceslaus has identified these legends with the proper names of the animals quartered in the structure, but Marley has more plausibly argued for their association with a series of minor astral deities, as suggested indeed by the names themselves. The dwelling itself proved to be rich in epigraphic remains. One extremely large but badly damaged tablet has aroused considerable excitement in scholarly circles, insofar as there is reason to believe that it may derive from the hand of the benevolent visitor himself. At any rate it seems to be a doublecolumned list of children's names - the two columns being labeled or introduced rii'cma and tabrma respectively. Marley renders these headings "evil" and "good," offering this as evidence for the practice of a primitive system of retributory justice in the society, whereas Wenceslaus' translation "naughty" and "nice" seems equally acceptable if adventurously imprecise. Interestingly, the list seems to have been checked twice in the strong but freely cursive hand of the scribe. Sample entries include (i) on the "naughty" side: "Yatanbaal son of Zakarbaal of Sidon: ashes, switches, lumps of coal" and (ii) on the "nice" side: "Amenkheper-Re son of Amen-hotep of Thebes: stuffed crocodile drum, fruit, and nuts." Also recovered from the ruins of the house were several articles of clothing belonging to the occupant: the fabric has not yet been

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

identified but may have been red or perhaps violet in color with white-fur trim, although all specimens have been badly tarnished with ashes and soot, perhaps in the general conflagration which, according to Marley, brought the community to an end about 1200 B.C. Other scholars have denied the fiery conflagration hypothesis, placing credence instead in the account recorded in the so-called "Scribal-School Tablet" from Damascus. The document derives its familiar titulary, "the Scribal-School Tablet," from a most curious colophon, hastily inscribed at the end of the text, which reads: "On my honor as a student in the scribal school of Hadadzedeq of Damascus, I have neither given nor received aid on this inscription." The text itself contends that the benevolent visitor left Massebatsiipn in the year 1200 only to migrate even further north and establish a new headquarters from which to conduct his annual rounds. This remains unsubstantiated by other reports. It should be noted that the Scribal-School Tablet, which is inscribed in unvocalized alphabetic Aramaic, gives us our only clue as to the ancient name of the benevolent visitor. The name occurs three times, twice in the form SNTKLS and once in the alloform SNTNKLS (the full expression in the latter case being "jolly old SNTNKLS'). In the vicinity of the celebrated "double-columned list" at Massebat-syp5n was also found an archive of correspondence apparently addressed to "jolly old SNTNKLS," though unhappily the name of the addressee has survived on none of the tablets. One such letter reads: To [PN], speak!Thus Enlil-iddinson of Ishtar-iddinof Babylon:Be it known to you that I have been a very good boy all this year. Do not believemy sister if she writesto you that I am not or that I brokethe oil jar. She broke the oil jar herself.I have been a very good boy all year. May it pleaseyou to bringme a new ball and a Gilgameshcostume and a jar of clover honey. Do not bring me any more clothes or school-tablets like last year. I might adduce further evidence, but perhaps the is clear. Despite unwarranted scholarly skeptipoint cism of the most pernicious kind, there is clear and unambiguous evidence from ancient Near Eastern sources sufficient to establish the sometimes controverted existence of that generous patron of midwinter er festivity known variously as Kris Kringle or St. Nicholas. Further we must recognize our responsibility not to confine this information to ourselves but to publish it at large and to advise our friends and colleagues here at the University, and indeed, to announce to the citizens of the Commonwealth which our institution serves that "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!" P. KYLEMCCARTER, JR. The University of Virginia

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THE

REAL

STORY

OF

THE

EBLA

TABLETS

EBLA AND THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN DAVID NOEL FREEDMAN The Biblical Archeologist is pleased to present another first in the publication of archeological discoveries and their significance for understanding biblical backgrounds. BA offered the earliest reports of the epoch-making find of the royal archive of Ebla by the archeologists themselves, Giovanni Pettinato and Paolo Matthiae (May and September 1976). Now, Editor David Noel Freedman reveals in print his address delivered at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary - the true significance of the Ebla tablets for biblical history and our understanding qf the patriarchal narratives. The Genesis 14 account of the punitive raid of the kings of the East upon a rebellious coalition of kings from the Cities of the Plain has long been a puzzling problem for scholars in reconstructing biblical history. The amazing correlation of the number, order, and names of the Cities of the Plain between the Ebla tablet and the biblical record indicates that the Genesis 14 narrative should be understood in the setting of the third millennium, not in the second or even first millennium as scholars have previously thought.

After this article was already in press, I received a letter from Mitchell Dahood, who is working on the tablets with Pettinato. The information which Dahood passed on may cause a complete reevaluation of the earlier material upon which I based my presentation. In all fairness, to both Pettinato and myself, I feel that I must include a report of the revised readings which Pettinato now espouses. As Dahood wrote in his letter: Giovanni[Pettinato]tells me that he considersthe readingof the first two names, Sodom and Gomorrah,quite certain,but that he is no longerreadyto defendthe next two city namesbecauseof his improvementin the readingof the signs, improvementthat could only come with greaterexperiencein readingthe tablets. In any case, the cities 3 and 4 of the Genesis14 list do not occur in the same tablet, so that the argumentin favor of the antiquityof the Genesislist is weakened.I had not known that they were not in the same tablet. And as for tablet 1860,it deals with the alloys of metals,quitea long text but withoutthese city names in it. When I was in the States, I heardsomewherealong the line that [Thorkild] Jacobsenalreadyhad doubtsaboutsomeof thesereadings,doubtswhichseemto have been confirmed by progress in understandingthe Ebla syllabary. G. [Pettinato]has just completeda transliterationof all the texts and has reviseda numberof his earlierreadings.But that should create no surprise;our teacher Albrightwas ever readyto give up an earlierreadingas soon as he founda better one. (October8, 1978) I do not want the following article to provide anyone with ammunition which could be used to discredit Pettinato. Such an occurrence would be unfortunate because, in my opinion, Pettinato is our best hope for getting the texts published with any kind of dispatch, and to jeopardize the position he is in would not serve the best interests of Ebla. David Noel Freedman

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

My first visit to one of the predecessor bodies of this illustrious institution was more than thirty years ago, when I gave a talk as a candidate for a teaching position at old Western Theological Seminary. I remember the occasion vividly, as positions of the kind for which I was a candidate were just as scarce in those days as they are today, and this was the first time I had ever been a candidate. The title of the talk was "The Generation That Failed"; the subject was the generation which went out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the central theme or kerygma of the Old Testament. That generation, with one or two notable exceptions, died in the Wilderness, although they were specially favored by God: they had been delivered from bondage in Egypt and had witnessed all the great miracles; they had heard the voice of God at Mt. Sinai; they had received the Commandments and the Covenant; and from the model which Moses had brought down from the mountain, they had built the Tabernacle with the Ark and the Ephod. Nevertheless, they had failed: they also made the Golden Calf and had broken the Covenant which they

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had sworn to uphold. They were condemned to wander in the Wilderness until they perished, to be replaced by their children who would enter and settle the land promised to the Fathers. The talk itself may not have been much as such things go, but it was enough to help win me a position there, where I remained for sixteen years, the most creative and perhaps the most important years of my career: the years of teaching and preaching, writing and editing, with colleagues and students. Some years after I came here, I heard that there were mixed feelings about the talk and some misgivings among the faculty, especially about the stance which I had taken with regard to these early traditions in the Bible. I seemed to some to be rather - or to be candid - very conservative, as though I believed that the story was essentially historical, that the people were real people, and that the events actually occurred. It wasn't a matter so much of my theology, which has always been a bit strange, but of my historical outlook. On that score, they were quite right. I am an unrepentant conservative, and if I could remember the details, I would give the same talk again today. I don't believe that I am dogmatic

the beginning and try to find archeological facts to support their position: to convince the wavering or to persuade the unbelieving. But the position is fixed and not affected by the facts. Historicity of Abraham In the same mood, that is the search for truth, I now bring you word, not about Moses and his generation, the historicity of which continues to be questioned by many leading scholars, but about an earlier generation still, that of the patriarchs, and to be more specific the father of them and of us all, that is by faith if not in fact Abraham or Abram. Even to talk about the possible historicity of the stories of Genesis and the figures who play leading roles in them is to jeopardize one's standing in the profession and to lay oneself open to the charges of pseudo-scholarship. Nevertheless, there have been outstanding scholars in the past who held these peculiar notions, and I do not hesitate to identify myself with this viewpoint and as an adherent of that school of thought. I recall an interesting and remarkably pertinent exchange of views concerning this ultimate ancestor, for the members of the three great monotheistic

Members of the three great monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all trace their descent from Abraham. about these matters. A recent visit to Trinity Evangelical Theological Seminary, with my old friend and Princeton classmate, Gleason Archer, who is Professor of Old Testament there, confirmed that: the spirit and mood of fundamentalists are quite different. I like to think that I am open-minded, at least slightly, while they take some pride in being closeminded. I try to adopt a scientific approach to archeological data and pursue the facts wherever they lead. Fundamentalists go in the opposite direction. They know the end from

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faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all trace their descent from Abraham himself, which makes the subject of his historicity of something more than academic interest. Professor W. F. Albright, whom we all acknowledge as an Abrahamic figure in the scholarship of our day, and the father-professor of a legion of us, his followers and disciples, was quite circumspect about a historical reconstruction of the Genesis narratives and about precise circumstances and activities of the patriarchs, as well as their

beliefs. At the same time, the illustrious cuneiformist at the University of Pennsylvania, E. A. Speiser, who unlike Albright did not profess a personal religion, had hardly any reservations at all; he did not merely assert the historicity of Abraham and his extensive family, but insisted on his monotheistic faith. Together these eminent scholars were an island fortress of conservative, almost traditional views, in a sea of skepticism, but, of the two, Speiser was the more outspoken and direct, while Albright was more reticent and nuanced. Now that vindication is on its way, it is clear that Speiser was closer to historical reality, but even the presently known facts go far beyond what either of these great thinkers could have imagined. I am here to inform you that recent archeological discoveries have proved to be directly pertinent to the question of the historicity of the patriarchal traditions, as they are preserved in the Genesis narratives. Generally they confirm or at least support the basic positions maintained by giants like Albright and Speiser, while effectively undercutting the prevailing skepticism and sophistry of the larger contingent representative of continental and American scholarship. I need not remind you that the standard scholarly view, since the days of Wellhausen at any rate, regarding the patriarchal traditions is that these stories not only were shaped and written down during the period of the monarchy in Israel and Judah but that their contents arose out of and reflect the same setting and circumstances. In short, these stories can tell us nothing about supposed patriarchal times and persons, but only about the monarchy which created and preserved them. They are projections or retrojections of the experience of Israel and Judah in the early centuries of the first millennium B.C. back to much earlier times, the purpose of which was, through exemplary ancestors and their experiences, to establish rights and

DECEMBER1978

claims, principles and regulations, the essential character of the nationstate which was to be. It may be granted at once that the Book of Genesis, in the form in which it has come down to us, is a product of the centuries before the Babylonian Exile and inevitably reflects the concerns and interests of the editors and scribes who put the book in its final form. Certainly the language is classical Hebrew of the period of the First Commonwealth, and the stories themselves were composed with contemporary (i.e., monarchic) circumstances in mind; not infrequently lessons would be drawn and admonitions addressed to the readership of that and later periods. At the same time, it must be asserted emphatically that authentic traditions involving persons and places and their interaction in events are preserved in the surviving text, and that these take us back to patriarchal times, and doubtless to the patriarchs themselves. While the case is in some respects circumstantial, if not hypothetical and speculative, I believe it is fundamentally sound and deserves to be presented. The major thesis to be argued in this address is that the patriarchal traditions are essentially historical in nature, although there is an admixture of the legendary and mythical, and furthermore that these cannot always be disentangled. In one test case, however, it is possible to provide precise correlating information, on the basis of which we can say something about the date of the patriarchs, or at least some of them, about their place, or I should say the places to which they came and from which they went, about their line of work and related activities, as well as some thoughts about their status and way of life, their experience and the legacy of faith and practice which was bequeathed to their descendants. Ebla Tablets By now everyone has heard or read about the Ebla tablets, but much less is known about them and their contents, even by scholars, BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Libraryroom in the Early Bronzepalace where the tablets were recovered.

than would normally be the case even at this stage of the story. In my case, I cannot verify or validate specific information from knowledge of the tablets themselves, to which I have not had access, and I could not read them if they were available to me; but I can report what I have learned from those directly involved in the decipherment and interpretation of the material, as well as from those scholars who are qualified to evaluate the data and who have been able to study some of the texts. Here briefly are the relevant data:

1) Quantity. There are tablets in all; the thousand several exact number has not been determined, or in any case announced. Inventory numbers and tablets are not the same; e.g., one tablet can break into 30 inventory numbers, or two or three dozen inventory numbers can produce one tablet. So upwards of 16,000 inventory numbers boils down to about 7,000 tablets, according to the latest information available to me. This is still not satisfactory, and an accurate count is much to be desired.

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2) Date. According to unanimous testimony, including both archeologists and Sumerologists (which may not be infallible; one must always bear in mind Athanasius contra mundum), the tablets come from the Early Bronze Age, which ended about 2250 B.c. That is, they are not later than that date by any criterion, whether stratigraphic or epigraphic. There is, however, a significant difference between the views of the chief archeologist, Professor Matthiae, and those of the Sumerologist, Professor Pettinato. Matthiae holds to a low chronology, placing the tablets in EB IV, the last phase of the Early Bronze Age, equivalent to the period of the First Dynasty of Akkad, between 2400 and 2250 B.c. Pettinato, on the basis of the style and format of the tablets, as well as their contents, places them essentially in EB III (the third phase of the Early Bronze Age, between 2800 and 2400 B.c.), clearly before the First Dynasty of Akkad and Sargon the Great, preferably about 2500 B.c. In the opinion of most scholars who have expressed themselves on the subject, Pettinato has the better of the argument. Recognizing that we must allow about 100 years for the span of the tablets themselves (they constitute the archive of the royal house over a sequence of four or five kings), as well as an equivalent margin of error at this early period, we can safely date the tablets between 2600 and 2300 B.c. General confirmation has come this past season in the form of two royal Egyptian cartouches, reported from the excavation: one is Pepi I, the first major king of the 6th Dynasty (24th century B.c.), and the other of Kephren, one of the great pyramid builders of the 4th Dynasty (26th century B.C.). 3) Language. Without delving into the complex problems of early cuneiform writing, we may say that two languages are represented on the tablets: Sumerian and a Semitic dialect. There is an ongoing debate as to whether the Semitic language is a form of West Semitic

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= Canaanite (as Pettinato and Mitchell Dahood contend) or a form of East Semitic = Akkadian (as indicated or implied by I. J. Gelb and others). Whether it is an eastern form of West Semitic, or a western form of East Semitic, is a matter which can be left to scholarly determination in the future. It is important to note that it is a distinctive dialect which belongs somewhere on the family tree, and it has features which link it with other dialects in the Semitic spectrum, and also separate it from any other Because of its age and obvious - if superficial - resemblances to Canaanite dialects like Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, and Ugaritic (although the last is classified separately by certain scholars), its importance for biblical studies is transparent, and biblical studies is transparent, and some gains already have been registered, thanks to the survival of a number of bilingual glossaries containing the same words in both Sumerian and Semitic: e.g., the word for king in Sumerian is indicated by the sign EN, which is equated not with sarrum, as we would expect if the Semitic language were Akkadian, but with malikum, which is the linguistic equivalent of Biblical Hebrew melek. which results from *malk(u) and ultimately *mal(i)ku(m), and is close enough to give us all a bit of a jolt. If this were the only example, it would be like the proverbial swallow, but

4) Contents. This is a large order even at this early stage of decipherment and publication. It can be said, however, that as with many cuneiform archives, the bulk of the tablets are economic in character, i.e., they record commercial transactions between Ebla and other citystates throughout the Near East. Perhaps 80-90% of the tablets belong to this category, while the rest, or most of them, reflect the interests and activities of the royal house. There are administrative texts, including royal decrees and memoranda, reports from civil and military authorities, as well as ecclesiastical documents, including ritual calendars and sacrificial tariffs, and royal correspondence, including letters to other kings and internal communications to subordinate officials. Treaties both diplomatic and commercial hold a prominent place in the archive. There is also a group of linguistic and literary texts, reflecting the activity of a school of scribes, in which apprentices were trained through exercises. Ebla and the Near East In general we may say that the chief value of the tablets lies in the information they will provide about the life of Ebla and of the Near East of this early period. Thanks to the extensive trade relations between Ebla and cities far and near, the tablets contain a

The Ebla tablets date between 2600-2300 B.C. there are many others. When we look at pronouns, however, the picture is somewhat different (they are more like Akkadian), and generally speaking the morphology of the language (verb and noun structures) seems to lean in an oriental direction. The best judgment at present is that the Semitic language of Ebla is a distinct dialect, namely Eblaite, with affinities in both directions, east and west; the final determination requires further scholarly analysis and discussion.

veritable Baedeker of the whole region. Pettinato reports that about 5,000 different cities are mentioned in the tablets, a datum which produces a remarkable picture of urbanization in the middle of the third millennium B.C. The traditional representation of two relatively isolated centers of civilization focused in the two great riverine cultures, the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile valleys, will have to be modified sharply to include the vast areas between these countries as a junior, if not equal, partner with the

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others, a prior fulfillment if not a model for the famous prophecy in the Book of Isaiah, in which Egypt, Assyria, and Israel constitute the three cardinal points of a Near East triangle (Isa 19:23-25). Significant historical and sociological information already has been drawn from an initial reading of the tablets, including the names of several kings known from other sources and accounts of political and military activities which will help to fill out a picture which until now has been a sketchy combination of random facts interwoven with unequal parts of legend, myth, and scholarly speculation. Perhaps the most important set of data thus far analyzed concerns relations between Ebla and Mari, an important city of

B.C.) although both of these issues have been debated for years. It is like finding authentic historical information about King Arthur, or other semi-legendary heroes of early European tradition. We have alluded already to the linguistic and literary data (there have been hints about a Flood Story and a hymn to the Lord of Creation), which have affinities with materials of a similar nature in the Near East and the Bible. In general, there is a reasonable expectation that the Ebla tablets will provide needed background materials and will shed light on many obscure corners in the ancient Near East, including dark pages of the Bible. That has been true of every major discovery of cuneiform tablets and

Among the commercial transactions of Ebla, the five cities of the plain are named. both the Early and Middle Bronze Ages which was excavated extensively by the French in the 1930s, and from which tablets of both periods were found, some from the period of the Ebla finds and perhaps 20,000 from the time of Hammurabi of Babylon. The outcome of prolonged hostilities between the kingdoms of Mari and Ebla was the deposition of the king of Mari, Iblul-il, and the effective incorporation of the city-state of Mari in the economic empire of Ebla. Subsequent to these developments there was a treaty between Ebla and Assur, which later became the capital of the great Assyrian Empire but which previously had been under the domination of Mari. Of special interest is the identification of the king of Assur, mentioned in the treaty. His name was Tudiya (or Dudiya), which is the same as that of the first king on both the notable Assyrian king lists compiled more than 1,500 years later and the king list of the First Dynasty of Babylon compiled in the first half of the second millennium. Apparently it is the same person and establishes beyond cavil both his historicity and approximate date (around 2,500 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

other written materials in the past, and there is no reason to suppose that this discovery will prove different. We should be warned about undue expectations or hopes since important discoveries in the past have led scholars to overly optimistic speculations about links with biblical persons and events, speculations which finally and often painfully had to be abandoned: e.g., the Amarna and Ugaritic tablets of the Late Bronze Age (14th-13th centuries B.C.) which were widely and originally thought to give direct information about biblical episodes relating to the Exodus, Wanderings, and Settlement in the land of Canaan. All of these theories proved to be untenable in any specific sense although the value of these finds for more general purposes can hardly be overestimated. The Amarna texts, mainly correspondence between the royal Egyptian court and the subordinate local princes and Egyptian officials in Canaan, have proved invaluable for the recovery of political, social, and economic conditions in Palestine in the period between the Patriarchs and the Exodus, while the Ugaritic tablets, especially the literary texts

including the great mythic and epic poems, have supplied us with striking examples of Canaanite prosodic tradition from which the earliest poetry of the Bible also emerged, to say nothing of the vivid confirmation of the decisive contrast in religious belief and practice between the Ugaritic texts and the Old Testament. Ebla and the Bible The same may prove to be the case with the Ebla tablets although so far stupendous claims have been few and muted while a chorus of voices, beginning with the Italian professors and echoed by their colleagues around the world, has been raised warning us against undue expectations, especially in relation to the Bible. In this situation, the danger may lie in the opposite direction: in the general stampede to look wise and be discreet, a really significant piece of information may be overlooked, and there will be silence when circumstances call for boldness and loudness, even showmanship. With respect to the Ebla finds, hopes initially were raised by the location of the tablets in a city in Western Syria, part of the heartland of ancient Canaan (and not very far from Ugarit, another Canaanite center of somewhat later date). They were dampened somewhat by the reports of the early date of the tablets. The further back they were pushed into the third millennium the less likely was a direct, or even indirect, link with the Bible. Now that the discussion has centered around 2500 B.C. the chances would seem remote indeed since most of the biblical narrative is of much later date, and even the Book of Genesis according to scholarly (and unscholarly) opinion belongs almost entirely to the second millennium B.c. Aside from a few possible allusions in the first eleven chapters of Genesis (e.g., the Tower of Babel, perhaps the Flood Story, if it has an empirical base) which may go back to an earlier time, there was nothing in the remainder of Genesis

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that anyone has dated before about logy, and fact. I am here to tell you 2000 B.c. (or the 21st century). Even the details, and indicate as well what the most traditional and conservative it may mean for the future of biblical studies. To all the caveats chronologies (Archbishop Ussher devised the best known of these) do already expressed (most recently by Robert Biggs, a Sumerologist at the not place Abraham any earlier; all Oriental Institute, who stated flatly place him well within the Middle that there was no such connection Bronze Age. To try to recover historical information from the Bible between the Ebla finds and the about people and events earlier than Bible), I must add in all candor that the crucial tablet upon which all Abraham has thus far proved to be futile in spite of widely publicized depends has not been published, and efforts to persuade a gullible public the information which I will relay to that Noah's Ark has been found on you comes from the only person who so far has read it. If he is Mt. Ararat. mistaken in the readings, and even Nevertheless, in spite of the bad examples from the past and the very good scholars (of which he is associated those one) can make mistakes in reading ample warnings by with the Ebla finds, I believe firmly cuneiform, then the relevant data that there is a link between the Ebla will simply vanish. I don't believe that this will happen, and I have tablets and the Bible, not only of and the general linguistic literary good reasons for this opinion. which is It all began with a belated type already mentioned, almost inevitable, or even in terms announcement by Professor Pettiof a common pool of names of nato at the Annual Meeting of the various learned societies (Society of persons and places, but much more direct in terms of history, chronoBiblical Literature, American Aca-

demy of Religion, and the American Schools of Oriental Research ) in St. Louis on 29 October 1976. He stated that on one of the Ebla tablets, a large economic text listing commercial transactions between Ebla and many other cities, he had found the names of the five cities of the plain: the same names in the same order as they are found in the Bible. Since the five cities together occur in only one chapter of the Bible (namely Genesis 14), the possibility of a link is at once limited and focused. Genesis 14 is itself a strange and difficult segment of the Bible and has been the subject of continuing analysis and discussion; we will return to the question of its contents and connections. Now we wish to consider the names as a group: their number, order, and the names themselves. The correlation between the tablet and the biblical account is so close that however unlikely it may appear on the surface, there

EBLA

'Mediterranean Sea

AKKAD

EGYPT The Triangular Powers of the Early Bronze Age

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must be a link to explain the correspondence. Ultimately they must derive from a common original, which lay behind the third millennium tablet and the biblical passage which in its present form can hardly be dated before the 10th century B.C. In Genesis 14, the five cities form a league or defensive alliance against a coalition of four cities of the East which had oppressed the western cities and were exacting tribute from them. In the Genesis passage, therefore, we may speak of a pentapolis or league; hence the combination of city names is no accident or happenstance. In other words it is a deliberate grouping, which undoubtedly made geographic sense as well, such as the Philistine pentapolis (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath) of a later age. The occurrence of the five cities together (in the same order) on the Ebla tablet fits with the same supposition, namely that the cities are grouped geographically and also may be linked economically and politically. Cities of the Plain The names themselves are the same in the two sources, and there can be little doubt that the same cities are involved; the only differences in the names are in the vocalization, i.e., the vowels, and these reflect only the standard evolution in pronunciation that has been established on a broad scale as Canaanite evolved into Biblical Hebrew and ultimately the Masoretic vowel indications (the Masoretes between A.D. 500-950 preserved the oral tradition concerning the correct vowels and accents). Thus we find the following: 1) S~dam (Biblical Hebrew) = si-da-mu at Ebla. The final -u is the old nominative case ending which one would expect in the third millennium B.C. but which has been almost totally lost in the Bible. The vowels of the word at Ebla are -i and -a, which in the development of the language became respectively (vocal shewa) and -3 (by the socalled Canaanite shift). The correBIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

EpigrapherGiovanniPettinatoand Director Paolo Matthiae. spondence is perfect, but quite different from the common scholarly analysis, which was influenced by the Greek rendering of the name in the Septuagint: Sodom. This spelling would imply an original qu.tul formation; it apparently was not original, but a secondary backformation based upon the current Hebrew pronunciation in the 3rd century B.C. when the LXX was prepared. 2) cAm5rah (Biblical Hebrew) = e-ma-ra at Ebla. The initial e sound at Ebla reflects the presence of a laryngeal, for which they had no consonantal equivalent: either cayin or het. The original consonant is preserved in the Hebrew text: cayin, which is to be preferred in

spite of the reading in the Septuagint, Gomorra, which may reflect an older ghayin. In any event, the Eblaic form and the biblical word correspond exactly. 3) 'Admah (Biblical Hebrew) = ad-ma at Ebla. Here the equation is so obvious that no comment is needed. The name, and doubtless the city, are the same. 4) Zeboiim (BH: = si-ba-i-um at.sib5yym Ebla. or .sbb-ifm) Once again the forms correspond: the biblical text preserves the original Semitic consonants where the cuneiform transcription may be ambivalent (e.g., the initial sibilant is the emphatic "s" sound in Semitic, whereas the sibilants are undifferentiated in the transcription).

The Five Cities of the Plain Sodom Gomorrah

Admah Zeboiim Bela

Genesis 14

Ebla

sjdom

si-da-mu

c•moraih Dadmdh

seboyFm belac

-ma-ra

ad-ma si-ba-i-um be-la

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Caspian Sea Haran Aleppo

Ebla

Assur

_______Mari

K Damascus

Babylon _

Jerusalem

Persian Sea 100

Consonants and vowels correlate until the last syllables of the word. The first two vowels in the Hebrew name correctly reflect the forms on the tablet: thus, si-ba becomes se-b5. From that point there is some divergence. Apparently the original vocalization was lost, and the Masoretes, seeing the very familiar sequence -ym (which is the regular plural ending of masculine nouns) vocalized the text -im, producing the form indicated above. The Ebla tablet, however, preserves the original form of the name, consisting of the root sby (= gazelle?), plus the old nominative case ending: -u, and the so-called mimation (an appended final mem) which is a relic of the earliest known forms of the language. It is instructive that in the official word lists the case endings and the mimation are preserved in the Ebla tablets, whereas that is often not the case in the texts. In

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200 km

this name, however, the ancient forms survive; in the Masoretic Text, the consonantal writing has preserved the word intact, whereas in the vocalization, the scribes seem to have gone slightly astray. The preservation of this name essentially intact is an extraordinary tribute to scribal fidelity, while the slight mispointing by the Massoretes is the exception which shows that they were fallible at the same time that they were faithful. 5) Belac (Biblical Hebrew) be-la at Ebla. Once again the equation is obvious, and little comment is required. The Hebrew text preserves the original final laryngeal (cayin), whereas such consonants in final position were not represented in the cuneiform transcriptional system. Throughout, the specific correlation of consonants and vowels is remarkable and is a testimony to the fidelity of the

biblical transmission; the survival of the names over such a long period of time is truly astonishing. We could pursue the matter further by pointing out that in Genesis 14 (vv 2 and 8), the fifth city, Bela, also bears the name Zoar, which is somewhat more familiar to us from the story in Genesis 19, where the name is singled out because of its resemblance to another Hebrew term meaning "small." I have been informed that this place-name occurs in another Ebla tablet, where it is written za-Par, a form which corresponds closely with that preserved in the Bible, though perhaps in an unexpected fashion: the consonants are the same (as noted earlier, the Semitic laryngeal in the middle of the word is represented by -4-, which is reflected in Biblical cayin), and the vowels show a standard correlation: Eblaite -a + -a becomes Biblical

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Hebrew -5 + -d. If we ask how it happens that the same city bears two names simultaneously, the answer is provided by the Ebla tablet in which the second name occurs. It states that Zoar is a town within the district of Bela, which constitutes the larger urban complex. That was the situation in the era of Ebla, and apparently the biblical record reflects that circumstance without specifying the details. That leads us to the more important question, namely the significance of this impressive correlation of city names: five for five, or six for six. Not only are the names the same, given the differences in systems of writing and the evolution of the language, but the order is the same as well. Is this correspondence fortuitous, merely an accident or coincidence? I believe that the implications are serious, but in order to explain the situation, we must look again at Genesis 14 and also at the other story which concerns these cities (but especially the first one, Sodom, which is representative) in Genesis 18 and 19. The story in Genesis 14 is about a great armed conflict between four city-states in the East (rather widely scattered so far as we can tell) and the five city-states in the West (located in the general region of the Dead Sea, as we are told). It is an episode in international history, tied loosely and incidentally to the biblical narrative through the circumstance that Lot, the nephew of Abraham (the shorter form of the name is used in Genesis 14, Abram, while the more common form, Abraham, is used in the later story: we will use the common form throughout although the short form has turned up at Ebla: ab-ra-mu) chose Sodom to be his residence. Except for the fact that the luckless Lot was there when the four kings of the East conducted a punitivel raid against the five cities and carried him off with the rest of the captives and booty, requiring Abraham's intervention, the story would have no place in the biblical tradition. How peripheral the link is

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

may be seen from the circumstance that none of the kings mentioned in this chapter (eight of the nine are named in Gen 14:1-2) is ever referred to anywhere else in the Bible (the mysterious Melchizedek, priest-king of Salem, is another matter entirely). The event itself has been lost in the shadows of antiquity; until now, no satisfactory explanation of the story has been offered, much less accepted by the scholarly community. There is widespread doubt as to its historicity, and even among those scholars who regard it as essentially historical in nature, no agreement as to its date and setting has been reached. Now what is to be said

conclusion that the story has no historical content and that we should regard it as a form of allegory or disguised account of the time of the authors rather than that of the patriarchs. Like some of the stories in the Book of Daniel, it reflects the times of the authors, and its meaning and significance are to be found in the experience of Judah during and after the Babylonian captivity. Recently, two scholars, John Van Seters and Thomas L. Thompson have independently adopted the view that Genesis 14 is not an account of patriarchal experience in the second millennium at all, but that it is a product of the first millennium; the story does not

The name he had written down was bi-ir-sa. about this story in light of the information on the Ebla tablets, especially the one with the names of the five cities of the plain? Before proceeding, we wish to point out again that the Ebla tablet is a commercial document, not a narrative; it lists the names of the cities with which Ebla traded, and presumably includes some details of that trade. There is therefore no literary link between the Genesis account and the Ebla tablet. The Scholars' Debate Scholars have been divided over the question of the historicity of the biblical account. Near Eastern specialists such as Albright and Speiser regarded it as essentially historical although neither was successful in fitting the story into a satisfactory chronological framework or in identifying any of the kings mentioned in Genesis 14. Since there was widespread agreement then about the probable date of the patriarchal era (the Middle Bronze Age), they both located the story in that period, somewhere between 2000 and 1500 B.c. Albright's efforts to pinpoint both the time and the persons involved were notably unsuccessful, and Speiser preferred to leave such questions unsettled. Other scholars have come to the

reflect ancient circumstances, people, and events, but the situation of the author(s) and the community, presumably during the Babylonian exile. It is an attractive hypothesis with broad appeal in our skeptical age, and we will concede this much truth to it: no doubt the editors who selected the story for inclusion in the biblical text believed that it had a message and some meaning for them and their contemporaries and, in presenting the material in teaching and preaching situations, drew attention to parallels and analogies between those days and current events, whether of the Babylonian Exile, or another time. But it is going much too far to say that these same people invented the story in order to make their point; no, they obviously believed that it was an authentic record of the past, peculiarly fitting to be preserved and transmitted to the present generation and for posterity, but certainly not a fiction devised for this purpose. While the Van Seters-Thompson critique of existing views, like those of Albright and Speiser, has considerable merit, the substitute theory of the origin and import of the story is no more adequate, and in fact is even less persuasive, by about 1,000 years. It is now my belief that the story in Genesis 14

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not only corresponds in content to the Ebla tablet, but that the Genesis account derives from the same period. The reason that the story has never been located historically is that scholars, all of us, have been looking in the wrong millennium. Briefly put, the account in Genesis 14, and also in chapters 18-19, does not belong to the second millennium B.c., still less to the first millennium B.C., but rather to the third millennium B.C. That is a large claim, and so far I and the few people brave or foolhardy enough to follow this lead are the only ones to make it. Before passing judgment, however, there are two more significant items which you should consider. One is archeological, the other is linguistic (or literary). For more than fifty years the region around the Dead Sea has been the object of intensive if sporadic archeological research. Exploration and excavation have gone hand in hand since Albright's well-known visits to the site with Melvin Kyle (of Pittsburgh-Xenia Seminary) and others in the 1920s. The search for the cities of the plain has gone on much longer than that, but until today no entirely satisfactory conclusions have been reached about the precise location of those cities or their identification with existing mounds of ancient occupation. Conflicting theories about the location of the cities have dominated discussion for centuries; in more recent years the weight of opinion has shifted significantly in favor of the southern view, namely that Sodom and its sister cities could be found along the southwest perimeter of the Dead Sea if not under the shallow waters of the southern end of the Sea. The site of the modern city of Sedom in Israel reflects this tradition, which was also supported by Josephus and by the documents found in the Judean Caves by Yigael Yadin some years ago. Aside from the obvious truth that this was the prevailing tradition about the location of the cities of the plain at the beginning of the Common Era, there was no

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substantial evidence favoring this position, that is, evidence from the period of the patriarchs and of the cities themselves. In fact, there is no evidence at all for sedentary occupation in this region during the Middle Bronze Age, the traditional date for the patriarchs and the destruction of the cities. The underwater possibility also has been investigated, not under ideal scholarly conditions it may be added, but in spite of extensive and misleading publicity, nothing determinative or even usable has turned up. If Sodom and Gomorrah are beneath the waters of the Dead Sea, they have not been found; the hypothesis itself seems more dubious all the time.

In the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim, they made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela -

that is, Zoar.

Gen 14:1-2 In the meantime, important sites of ancient occupation in the vicinity of the Dead Sea have been surveyed and excavated, and there has been speculation about possible connections between them and the cities of the plain. There were two major obstacles in the way of making an identification, however, even though Albright had observed that there were five wadis in the southeast quadrant of the Dead Sea area and that each could and did support a single settlement along its banks. The difficulties lay in the dates of the settlements, and, to a lesser degree, in their locations. The chief of these settlements is Bab edh-Dhrac, which was excavated by

the late Paul Lapp and by Nancy Lapp of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and more recently by Thomas Schaub and Walter Rast; nearby is Numeira which has a similar history of occupation. With respect to the question of the location of the cities, there is no precise evidence in the Bible or the Ebla tablets (so far!) to settle the issue. Nevertheless it is of interest, and perhaps of importance, that the city which precedes the Dead Sea pentapolis on the Ebla tablet is Damascus (which also is mentioned in the Genesis account, 14:15). While it is a small clue, it points to the east side of the Dead Sea as the region of the five cities, presuming that their territory abutted on the district of Damascus. Furthermore, the biblical tradition concerning Lot points to the same region. Lot and his daughters are said to be the ancestors of the Ammonites and Moabites, whose territory fills the area east of the Dead Sea and borders on that of the later Aramean state of Damascus. Furthermore, the date of these settlements posed a more serious problem. Bab edh-Dhrac has been excavated extensively, and a clear profile of its occupation history has been determined by the Lapps, Rast, and Schaub. It is certainly an Early Bronze Age site, being finally abandoned not later than about 2250 B.c. (so-called EB IV). The last major phase of occupation there, however, is EB III (perhaps 2800 to 2400 B.c.). At the same time, no trace of Middle Bronze Age settlement has been found there, or at any of the neighboring sites. All were occupied during the Early Bronze Age for varying periods of time; the only period common to all is EB III, which is also the period of the Ebla tablets. The provisional conclusion to be drawn is that the cities of the plain have in fact been found, but until now they were not securely identified as such. In the light of the new information, we now propose that these are the cities of the plain (though which was which can be left for future DECEMBER 1978

investigation) and that we revise our views of their location and chronology accordingly. The traditions embodied in Genesis 14 and 18-19 derive from the middle of the third millennium B.C.; and if the link with the patriarchs, notably Abraham and Lot, is not secondary and artificial, then they also must be dated to the same period. Such a conclusion, drastic as its implications for biblical studies and the story of Israel's origins may be, would bring the Genesis account into the same orbit as the Ebla Tablets, in particular the one on which the names of the five cities are inscribed. We may enunciate a general principle governing cases of this kind, and then proceed to document it: identity of content signifies proximity in time. The fact that we can establish points of contact between Genesis 14 and the Ebla tablets at seven places - the five cities (same names in the same order) plus Zoar and Damascus means that there is a good chance that they stem from the same era. That is not proof, and in the case of one or another of the items, the connection may be fortuitous. But to argue the opposite, namely that the same configuration of cities or citynames would turn up centuries apart, or even a millennium, is stretching credibility. Is it likely that the same situation occurring in the Early Bronze Age would recur in Middle Bronze? We need only add that there is no hint of any of these cities in any Middle Bronze Age record that is extant, or of any later period, and the available data for the Middle Bronze Age is much greater than for the Early Bronze Age. King of Gomorrah We are not dealing only with the names of cities, however. What follows is a personal account of an extraordinary experience, certainly the most unusual in my career as a scholar. It involved only Professor Pettinato and me, at breakfast in the Quadrangle Club at the University of Chicago, on 5 BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Scribesof Eblaworkingin the royalarchive. November 1976; we were traveling together to major universities in the midwest and the east, so that he could present information about the Ebla tablets and discuss his findings with Sumerologists and historians. During breakfast we were talking about the tablet with the names of the five cities of the plain on it, and which he had described publicly a few days earlier at the meetings in St. Louis. I asked him whether there were an additional details about the cities or Gt; kings which he could divulge. Since he did not have a transcript of the tablet, or even a picture of it with him, he had to

work from memory and could not remember all the details since the tablet was a large one and contained hundreds of city-names along with the information about the individual commercial transactions between Ebla and the other cities. After some cogitation, he informed me that he could remember the name of one of the kings of the cities of the plain on the Ebla tablet. I asked immediately what the name might be, as I could not help wondering whether there would be another point of contact between the tablet and the story in Genesis 14, especially since the names of four of

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the five kings of the western cities were recorded in verse 2. He countered by saying that he did not think it would matter since the Ebla name would not correspond with the names of the four kings of the eastern cities, names such as Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim. Obviously there could be no connection with any of them since the name on the tablet would be of one of the western kings, but four of these other names, of the kings of western cities, were contained in verse 2, and there might be a parallel there. Professor Pettinato had apparently forgotten the second group of names, which is understandable since most scholarly attention has been devoted to the first group of names, whereas the second group has largely been ignored. Those names occur only in Gen 14:2 and nowhere else in the Bible, and there is no evidence for their occurrence outside the Bible either. Since neither they nor their namesakes have turned up anywhere else, one could be forgiven for overlooking them. It dawned on me then that we could conduct an objectively fair test, which would guarantee that no undue influences would be at work, if it turned out that there was another and far more significant point of contact between the Ebla tablet and the biblical story. I suggested to Pettinato that we should proceed in a strictly scientific way, and that he should write down the name which he recalled from the tablet in an appropriate syllabic transcription before we discussed the information from the Bible. In that way we would be assured that his transcription would not be influenced in any possible way by knowledge of the biblical names.The point is that cuneiform signs, when used syllabically, may represent a variety of different syllabic values and that the selection of values in determining the proper reading of a word (or in this case a name) should not be influenced by external considera-

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tions, but only by the inner logic of the language and the writing system. Generally speaking the primary value is chosen, and wide agreement is reached among Sumerologists in the determination of readings. In any

around. Beginning with the biblical form we would get the Eblaite spelling, but beginning with the Ebla form, we would not necessarily arrive at the biblical spelling. In fact, the biblical form of the name is quite distinctive if not unique since quadriliteral nouns (roots with four The patriarchal traditions consonants) are quite rare in are essentially historical in Semitic, and this one cannot now be nature. duplicated from any source. The correlation of the vowels (-i and -a) is especially remarkable when it is event, Pettinato wrote out the name remembered that the vowels in the according to his best judgment of biblical text were not actually the signs and their values. He concealed what he had written until recorded until late in the first I could secure a Hebrew Bible, so millennium A.D., or almost 3500 that we would have the exact years after the Ebla tablet on which the same vowels appear. This single information about the names of the western kings mentioned in Gen datum produced an instantaneous 14:2. I was able to secure a copy of conversion in my thinking about the Kittel Biblia Hebraica at the vowel points in the Massoretic Oriental Institute, courtesy of tradition. While I would not go as Professor Gelb, who is an authority far as the Protestant scholastics of in all of these fields, and returned the 17th and 18th centuries who with it to the breakfast table. Then regarded the vowel points of the I read out the names of the kings Massoretic Text as infallible and and their cities to Pettinato: Bera inspired, I think that we must be Birsha of of Sodom, king king very much more respectful of that tradition than we have been in the Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, and Shemeber king of Zeboiim; the past. While the name of the king, name of the fifth king, of Bela, is Birsha, is the most striking single not given. example of extraordinary fidelity to Then Pettinato turned over tradition, there are many others when we compare the forms in the his slip of paper, and the name written on it was the same as one of Ebla tablets with those in the Bible. It was an astounding moment. the four names which I had read from the Bible. Given the differences Before proceeding with implications in the writing systems, the names and inferences, it is wise to be cautious and enter the reservations. were identical. The name he had While Pettinato is a recognized written down was bi-ir-ga, which would have been pronounced birsga expert in this field, and a man of or precisely the same as the name of integrity, it is necessary to have the tablet itself published and available the king of Gomorrah in the Bible: to other scholars for reading and birsac. The consonants and the vowels are exactly the same, with checking. Only when that has been the exception that the final cayin in done and a consensus reached on the biblical form of the name is not the reading can we speak with tranabout this name. And we in the Eblaite confidence represented need to know the exact, complete scription because, as already pointed out and seen in the case of other contents of the tablet before drawing words (including the names of the far-reaching conclusions. It would be cities), final laryngeals do not appear premature, therefore, to speak of an in the transcriptions. It is clear equation between King Birsha on therefore that the cuneiform transthe tablet from Ebla and the person of the same name in the biblical literation is based on the quadriliteral form of the name preserved in story. Assuming, however, that the the Bible, and not the other way reading is correct - and we have no

DECEMBER 1978

reason to doubt it at this time - it would seem to strengthen the view that the tablet and the Genesis account belong to the same chronological horizon. With eight names the same in both documents, including especially the name of a person, the correlation must be temporal as well as verbal since it would be asking a great deal to suggest that the same configuration of city names along with the name of at least one king would be the same in widely separated periods of time. I should add that I learned later that on the Ebla tablet Birsha is said to be the king of Admah, whereas in Genesis 14 he is king of Gomorrah. The difference is obviously significant, but how to interpret it requires some reflection. On the face of it, it looks as though we are dealing with two different men who happen to have the same name (which for all we know may have been very popular in the middle of the third millennium B.C.). Such a phenomenon is common: we note that in the list of kings of Israel and Judah some names are duplicated: there are two Jeroboams in the northern kingdom, who reigned perhaps 150 years apart; then roughly contemporary kings of Israel and Judah bore the same or very similar names: Ahaziah, Jehoram, Joash, and Jehoahaz. It may well be, therefore, that the tablet and the Genesis account are not precisely contemporary but are sequential. Since according to the biblical tradition, the cities of the plain were destroyed in the same generation as the episode described

taneity. But the era can hardly have extended beyond the Early Bronze Age. Another solution is also possible. The arrangement of the names of the cities and their kings in Gen 14:2 follows a mnemonic pattern which may have been imposed upon the material in the interest of facilitating the preservation and transmission of the data (the process of transmitting the information may have been oral or written, or, over the long period, both at different times). The first four cities fall into natural and traditional pairs, as we know from their appearance elsewhere in the Bible: Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a fairly common pair, and Admah and Zeboiim, which is a relatively rare one. The kings of the paired cities in Gen 14:2 also have similar sounding names which alliterate. Thus Bera and Birsha are the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, while Shinab and Shemeber are the kings of the other paired cities, Admah and Zeboiim. Since we assume that the Ebla information is correct for its period, we may conclude that the biblical arrangement has been affected by other considerations, which in this case helped to preserve all the names correctly, but not necessarily the political realities. It may be that in the course of oral transmission, the names were accidently or deliberately grouped in the fashion in which they are recorded in order to facilitate memory. We do not say, therefore, that Birsha of the tablet is the same

The Genesis stories belong with Ebla to the middle of the third millennium B.C. in Genesis 14 (i.e., while people like Abraham and Lot who participated in the first episode were still alive to participate in the second), we may assume that the Ebla tablet must be slightly earlier than either episode in Genesis. When we speak of a common background or framework, we have in mind a period of fifty or even a hundred years, not simulBIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

person as Birsha of the Genesis narrative. We suggest strongly, however, that if they are not the same person, they belong to the same era, quite possibly to the same dynasty or to related families. We can go further now and argue that the tradition in Genesis 14 reflects conditions in the Near East that also are reflected in the Ebla

tablets: the pre-Sargonic Early Dynastic era in Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine. The shifting coalitions of city-states and the struggle for preeminence among them precede the emergence of the first bona fide empire in Mesopotamia, that of Sargon the Great and the First Dynasty of Akkad. Just as the Ebla tablets reflect the situation prior to that development, so also does Genesis 14. In addition, the archeological evidence for occupational levels in the region of the Dead Sea, both positive (for the Early Bronze Age) and negative (against the Middle Bronze Age), supports this view. As already observed, there is merit in many of the strictures adduced by Van Seters and Thompson (and others) against assigning the patriarchs, or at least Abraham, to the Middle Bronze Age, but the negative conclusion about the historical value of the data preserved in Genesis (and especially chapter 14) was hasty and premature. While the particular solutions proposed by Albright and Speiser may have been faulty, their basic attitude and approach to the material, namely that the Genesis traditions are rooted in historical experience, have been vindicated in my judgment. We all have been looking in the wrong places and periods for the right historical framework. At the least, we can say two things about the composers, compilers, and editors of the Book of Genesis: 1) They were seriously concerned to get the story straight. Like good reporters they were careful about details and preserved the names of persons and places accurately. 2) They had access to authentic historical records, either written or oral or both, but in any case reliable, although minor mistakes, mis-attributions, and the like are to be expected. Years ago Speiser wrote in the Anchor Bible volume on Genesis that the narrative in Genesis 14 was derived from a cuneiform report. Since that was long before the Ebla tablets were discovered, the statement now seems

155

Tell Mardikh-ancient Ebla Tablets. Severalthousandtablets in all, constitutingthe archive of the royal house over a sequenceof four or five kings. uncanny in its prescience although Speiser had in mind the Old Babylonian period (second millennium B.C.). Like everyone else he simply did not consider the Early Bronze Age and the third millennium as a serious possibility for patriarchal origins. Patriarchal History The implications of the new discoveries for a reconsideration and reconstruction of patriarchal history

156

are profound and to a considerable degree disturbing. Under any circumstances, they should not leave anyone in a complacent mood since no existing blueprint or plan is viable. Conservatives may take some comfort from the apparent vindication of biblical tradition where it can be checked. Liberals can console themselves that if a newer and truer picture of biblical origins has been attained, it has been through the vigorous use of scientific historical, archeological, and linguistic methods,

and not derived dogmatically from prior commitments, theological and otherwise. But no one was prepared for such a drastic shift in dates although it has been clear for some time that no existing reconstruction of the patriarchal age was satisfactory, while the rampant historical skepticism seemed even less so. There are two basic issues in relation to Genesis 14 and 18-19, and the Ebla tablets. The first has to do with the date and setting of the Genesis stories; here we have DECEMBER 1978

good reason to believe that they belong, with Ebla, to the middle of the third millennium B.C. The second

question has to do with the roles of Abraham and Lot and their relationship to the story in Genesis. Were the patriarchs introduced secondarily and artificially from a different age and set of circumstances because of a fundamental error in chronology and misapprehensions about the patriarchs? Such a resolution of the difficulties may appeal to a broad group of scholars because it will allow them to write off the new discoveries as largely irrelevant to biblical studies. To be sure, they are of major importance for historical matters and cultural issues of the third millennium B.C., but with only incidental

bearing on geographical data fortuitously preserved in the Bible. Somehow the author or editor of Genesis 14 (and 18-19) managed to get hold of an authentic record of ancient times and reproduced some of its data accurately enough. Perhaps amateur archeologists of an earlier time uncovered an ancient archive or stumbled over some stray tablets, thus providing edification and entertainment for those of a later age. Then it would be no great feat to disengage the patriarchs from the rest of the story, reversing the procedure by which they are presumed to have been introduced into it in the first place. I don't care much for this approach although it

must remain an option until contraindicated by specific data. More information will be needed to resolve the issue, but we may approach the matter from a different angle. The story in Genesis 14 and its aftermath in chapters 18-19 would not be in the Bible at all were it not for the patriarchal connection. The biblical writers did not create the connection since they must have believed it was authentic. No matter how important those nine kings were in their day, or the great war which they fought, it would all have been meaningless to the biblical writers if the ancestors of Israel had not been involved in the story. Great events and great leaders by themselves get scant notice in the Bible unless there is some significant link to the story of the holy people. The history of the ancient Near East is viewed narrowly from the perspective of Israel and its experience. It seems more likely that the link between patriarchs and international history is authentic and the source and trigger of this account in the Bible, rather than the other way around. The accuracy in recording trivial details, which have been preserved intact across millennia, must command recognition that those who have been faithful in small points can also be trusted to have handled larger issues reliably. The biblical historians should be given the benefit of the doubt, especially when we realize that the

Abrahamic stories fit at least as well into an Early Bronze Age context as into the Middle Bronze Age, and generally better. Ur and Haran, which figure in the migration story, were flourishing metropolises in the Early Bronze Age, at least as central and prominent as they were in the Middle Bronze Age. We have observed already that if Abraham and Lot had anything to do with the cities of the plain, then that link could only have existed in the Early Bronze Age, certainly not in the Middle Bronze Age. Then too the picture of the patriarch Abraham especially in Genesis 14 is notably different from that presented elsewhere in Genesis. The marked difference suggests that this is an original and independent representation, not derived from other parts of Genesis and imported into the story here. In Genesis 14 Abraham is portrayed as a warriorchieftain, reluctant to be sure, but eminently capable and ultimately victorious over the four kings of the East, themselves triumphant over the western Pentapolis. In this serial struggle, Abraham emerges, along with his own allies, as the most powerful of the group. There may be some enhancement or exaggeration in the retelling of this notable victory, but the picture and its details are realistic and fit well the historical setting. If this is the earliest picture of Abraham preserved in the Bible, then we must

ApproachingTell Mardikhfrom the northwest.

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Platformfor the royal throne in the Early Bronzepalace. adjust our thinking about the man, his status and stature, his place in history and culture. We see him not only as a central figure in an international incident but as belonging to the main stream of Early Dynastic history in Mesopotamia and Syria-Palestine. Without exaggerating on the basis of a few isolated bits of evidence, we can argue that Abraham was like the kings with whom he associated in business, war, and liturgy: he was a warrior-chieftain, and so were they; he was a merchant prince, and so were they. He no longer had a home base (Haran), but there were others like him, who for one reason or another left their homes to try their fortune elsewhere. If he was somewhat more peripatetic than most, he nevertheless belonged to urban culture and civilization and

158

participated in its activities. As merchant and leader, responsible for a community of people, like his counterparts he would have had access to literacy. In the age of cuneiform writing, only scribes (and a few others) were truly literate, but society had urgent need of their services for record-keeping and missive-writing. While Abraham's needs may not have been as extensive as those of the kings of city-states, he too would need records of business transactions (such as the purchase of property) and files of necessary communications. For those who had need of such services, and could afford them, scribes were available to read what they wanted read and to write what they wanted written. The survival down to the first millennium B.C. of records and traditions

as early as the middle of the third millennium can be accounted for in some such way as this. It appears, therefore, that Abraham and his clan emerged in the first great age of civilization, the Early Bronze Age, and more particularly EB III, when the great cities of the Near East flourished and sustained a vast network of commercial and cultural relations, which included the pyramid builders of Egypt, the Sumerian dynasts of Mesopotamia whose cities were already as old as time, and the rulers of city-states in the areas between and around those primal centers of wealth and power. This was the first Internationalism of recorded history. It is at once stimulating and vaguely troubling to imagine the origins of our faith in such a setting, to recognize our DECEMBER

1978

spiritual ancestors as sophisticated participants in urban culture, with all its complexity and corruption, quite different from the spartan and sylvan picture of simple and humble shepherds living in tents. The new setting offers many possibilities for interpreting the separate and several aspects of patriarchal life, and in particular we must try to cope with the question of religion. Since already in the third millennium classic polytheism was dominant in the Near East, the same issues arise, and the same divergence from traditional norms remains to be explained. Abrahamic religion is a miracle in any age, and the sharp break with conventional religion is neither more nor less explainable in the third millennnium than it is in the second. Biblical Religion It is this feature of the tradition which must engage us now. What is the significance for theology, for our analysis and evaluation of biblical religion, of the new discoveries? In a profound sense, they do not affect belief or faith which are rooted in verities not subject to the vagaries of external criteria or material evidence. Archeological discoveries cannot ultimately undermine - and hence cannot demonstrate or create religious convictions or commitments. Nevertheless, biblical religion has a historical component, and the way we look at phenomena or interpret experience can and must be affected by our view of what happened, and how and why, and under what circumstances. From its earliest self-conscious affirmations and credal formulations, the biblical community perceived the true test of faith to be in the marketplace of human experience. There was a basic correlation between desert and reward, between what ought to be and what was. The underlying sense that belief in one God was inseparable from a commitment to a universal rule of justice found articulation in plain speech and somewhat sophisticated nuances in

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

order to 6orrelate principle with practice, expectation with experience. There is a common thread which runs through the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, and the comments and interpretations of the peoples of the Book. "As you sow, so shall you reap," is a familiar formulation of this basic theology, which constitutes the framework within which the message of divine grace and salvation, and the other message of threat and punishment, are delivered. Without a formal structure of justice (= Hebrew mipa(t) there can be no message of love; grace is meaningless without divine demand and imperative. The contrasting rewards of the just and the unjust are a persistent theme in both Old and New Testaments, and we are constantly assured that either that is the way things already are, or they will be in the future. What we may call the basic theology of the Bible, the framework of morality and justice within which the good news of divine grace, mercy, and love has its force and significance, runs through the whole of Scripture, having its roots deep in the human psyche and the historical experience of the species. One of the most vivid illustrations of divine retribution, the administration of divine justice on a broad scale, was the fall of kingdoms and the destruction of city-states. The classic formulation of this doctrine in the Bible is found in the so-called Deuteronomic theology. The principles are enunciated in the series of Mosaic sermons in the Book of Deuteronomy itself, while the realization of the divine policy in historical experience is spelled out in the books which follow: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, the so-called Deuteronomic History. Whether viewed prospectively in the form of threats and promises (i.e., as prophetic utterances) or retrospectively as theodicy, the theme is the same throughout: the vindication of divine justice as well as the manifestation of divine mercy. Ultimately Israel along with the rest of the nations, separately and

collectively, will reap the just reward of their deeds; all will receive exactly what they deserve, regardless of mitigating and modifying factors, which often obscure the direct correlation between what is earned and what is paid and make it appear that the principle has been undermined or distorted so as to allow the guilty to prosper and the innocent to suffer. Nonetheless, the

The story in Genesis 14 not only corresponds in context to the Ebla tablet but derives from the same period. fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the destruction of their capital cities, Samaria and Jerusalem, were predictable and predicted, and these events fulfilled the dire threats which accompanied the ratification of the covenant between God and his people centuries earlier in the wilderness, to be renewed regularly after entry into and settlement of the land. It was no accident that the prophets repeatedly established the parallel circumstances and condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah (e.g., Isaiah and Jeremiah) or Admah and Zeboiim (e.g., Hosea) in speaking of the destiny and doom determined for Samaria and Jerusalem. Not only in Deuteronomy (29:22) where all four cities are held up as an object lesson to the Israelites, but in the principal prophets - Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and above all in Ezekiel - the direct comparison is made between the doom hanging over the northern and southern kingdoms and what befell one or more of the cities of the plain in ancient times. How does it happen that Sodom and Gomorrah, and to a lesser extent Admah and Zeboiim, became ultimate symbols of divine retribution when these cities played no role in Israel's actual history and had long since disappeared when the first Israelites set foot in the Holy Land?

159

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A reconstruction of the city-state of Ebla, located in northwestern Syria 4500 years ago.

There are two parts to the answer: 1) The nature and impact of the destruction of the cities of the plain. 2) The association of these cities with the first and most important of the patriarchs, Abraham. Concerning the destruction of the cities, we have a very vivid account of the catastrophe in Genesis 19. Precisely what happened may not be clear in geological or physical terms, but the impact on witnesses and through them on later generations was not unlike that of an atomic explosion. One moment there was a group of bustling communities, and the next utter devastation. Comparison with the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum is not out of order, although in the case of the latter the immediate cause of the disaster is identifiable - volcanic eruption whereas in the case of the former there are hints of different kinds, including earthquake and other forms of natural violence. The theological implications of sudden and total destruction could hardly be missed, even at the time of the disaster, though in time more sophisticated and nuanced explanations would be devised. For destruction on such a scale, the provocation and iniquity must have been correspondingly great. The correlation between punishment and sin was assumed and asserted and became axiomatic and automatic throughout the tradition. Sodom and Gomorrah became code words for the judgment of God on human sinfulness. Another element in the picture which could only become manifest with the passage of time was the fact that the cities were not just destroyed utterly but were never rebuilt, as though thecondemnation of God upon those cities and their inhabitants would be a permanent blight upon the earth. This combination of circumstanc.s ensured that the fate of the cities would not be forgotten and made them symbols of divine retribution forever.

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But why was this tradition enshrined in the biblical record, especially since the cities and their people were never part of the historical Israel at all and were only related to the Israelite ancestors in a rather accidental and superficial way? Nevertheless it was precisely that inadvertent contact (through Lot's unfortunate choice of a residence) with Abraham that brought Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, into the orbit of Israelite theology. The fate of the cities might have commanded contemporary interest independently although the biblical writers habitually ignore the great events of world history unless they bear directly on the life of the special people of God; in this case the link with Abraham made it certain that the tradition would be preserved. The patriarch's role was more substantial in the story of the war between the four kings and the five, since he was responsible for the defeat of the eastern monarchs and the rescue of his kinsman, Lot, than in the story of the destruction of the cities of the plain, where he was a peripheral figure, having no part in what happened, being at most a distant spectator. There is a common underlying theme in both stories (Genesis 14 and 18-19),

king-priest of Salem). Abraham is cast in the role of mediator or intercessor as he makes a heroic, last-ditch effort to save the cities just before their destruction has been decided. While Abraham's interest is triggered by his concern for his nephew and the latter's family, his solicitude extends to the whole population of the cities since it is clear that Lot's rectitude will suffice to save him and at least part of his family. But it is for the whole population that Abraham pleads with God. In a prolonged session of hard bargaining, Abraham acts the part of the prophetic intercessor, advocate of sinners subject to divine judgment. In this role he is seen as the model for later intercessory prophets: Moses and Samuel, but also Amos and Isaiah, and unsuccessfully, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It is instructive that although Abraham won the argument that the city should be spared for the sake even of a minimum number of righteous in it, he lost the case (not enough righteous people could be found). The verdict went against his clients, and the cities were destroyed. It is understandable that the prophets of the 8th-6th centuries B.C. used the fate of the cities of the plain as an object lesson for the people of Israel and Judah of their

Sodom and Gomorrah became code words for the judgment of God on human sinfulness. namely the rescue of Lot from dire difficulties. In the latter instance, that necessary objective is achieved through heavenly messengers, who carry out the divine mission, whereas in the former, Abraham is the agent of divine rescue. There is one element we have so far not considered, and it makes Abraham's role in the story of the destruction of even greater importance than in the war of the kings (we have omitted entirely from discussion the mysterious figure of Melchizedek in Genesis 14 and the mystical, ritual contact between Abraham and the

day since the same configuration of elements was present both in the Genesis traditions and in the historical circumstances in which the prophets lived: i.e., corrupt citystates under divine judgment because of their sinful behavior, along with the complex questions of possible repentance and survival on the one hand, and theories concerning the treasury of merit accumulated by the righteous or possible intercession by prophetic figures on the other hand. In the end, the verdict would be the same: Samaria and Jerusalem would suffer the fate of Sodom and

DECEMBER1978

Gomorrah, or Admah and Zeboiim because repentance was either too late or impossible and because the presence of saintly people would not save the cities, although the saints themselves might expect to be rescued, like Lot. Prophetic intercession would fail as well, not because of shortcomings on the part of the intercessor but because even the minimum requirement of good faith on the part of the people or the presence of more than a mere handful of righteous for whose sake it would be worthwhile to keep the cities alive, could not be guaranteed. It is easy enough to recognize the links and lines of theological thought running between Genesis and Kings and in the utterances of poets and prophets in the critical years which measured the decline and fall of the two kingdoms. The analogies are drawn explicitly: the prophets invoke the traditions concerning Sodom and Gomorrah to make their points clear. The correlations are so impressive that the problem we face is a different one, that is, whether the stories in Genesis were not shaped and constructed by essentially the same people who faced the difficulties of the two kingdoms and in fact produced the same message as the historians and prophets. There can be little doubt that the compilers and editors of the Genesis material had the same crises in mind, and they selected and sharpened their stories so that even the most casual hearer or reader would get the point. The story of the cities of the plain was not put into the Bible merely as an engaging item of dim antiquity but rather as a sign and sermon for a contemporary audience. The compilers, no less than historians and prophets, living in a time of great stress and peril, looked to the past for guidance and help in the present difficulties. If the message were dire threat and certain doom, that nevertheless could be helpful too, at least in attempting to understand both the present crisis and future disaster. It seems inevitable that they would find in BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

the ancient story with its catastrophic denouement both lesson and warning for the current generation, and that they would bring the message home with all the literary and homiletical skill they could command. But we are still a long way from conceding or suggesting that they fabricated the story or invented the whole tradition in order to make a point. The tradition itself is so widely attested among historians, prophets, and others, that collusion is impossible, as is mass delusion. Behind all the citations and applications, there is an authentic memory. They knew the ancient story, and each used it to make his peculiar point to the people to whom he brought his message. The essential ingredients were already present in the original

Behind the symbolic figures preserved in the second millennium traditions, there are real people of the third millennium. event or story about it, as we can show from documents of the third millennium. The destruction and abandonment of urban centers in the latter part of the third millennium around the Dead Sea is an archeologically established fact. No comparable phenomenon is attested at any later period before the compilation of the biblical materials. The basic theology of divine justice and retribution was already established much earlier in the Near East, and we may suppose that the patriarchs were fully aware of it. A remarkable poem called "The Curse of Akkad" deals with the fall of the First Dynasty of Akkad and the destruction of the capital city itself. The disaster is seen as a case of divine retribution, and cause is found in the wickedness of the successive kings of the dynasty who failed to perform the necessary services for the tutelary gods of the city. The swift rise, unmatched

success, and equally precipitate fall of the Dynasty gave rise to all sorts of reflections and speculations and the role of the gods in both the success and final collapse of the kingdom. While, in the case of Akkad, the city was destroyed by human foes, its fate was similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah in that it was never rebuilt and its exact location has never been determined. It remained a permanent symbol of divine retribution and a warning to would-be conquerors and imitators of the great Sargon. All the essential ingredients were already in place by the early years of the second millennium, while the events themselves took place toward the end of the third millennium: the arrogant presumption of the dynasts of Akkad and the consequent condemnation of dynasty and city by the offended deities. As to the intercessory role of Abraham, that could hardly be documented by contemporary evidence, but such activity on the part of priests, kings, and other religious functionaries in behalf of communities and countries is a commonplace of ancient religious practice. The actual conversation recorded in Genesis 18 may well be pious reconstruction of the author. We maintain, therefore, that while the particular literary form and expression which the Genesis tradition took were influenced by conditions in the two kingdoms during the critical final centuries of their existence, the traditions themselves are ancient, ascending to the third millennium B.C. and containing all the essential elements which made them suitable for the purposes of the prophets who appealed to them. I wish to leave another principle or rule with you about the traditions of the ancient Near East, including those of the Bible. In the continuing debate over the precise way in which legend and myth interact with events and historical memory, and more particularly whether and how persons become symbols, or vice versa, I would suggest that the process is a

163

complex one and works in both directions; nevertheless behind the symbolic figures preserved in second millennium traditions, there are real people of the third millennium. As in the case of Tudiya of Assur, whose symbolic importance in the long list of kings of Assyria cannot be doubted, it is clear now that he was a real, not an invented, historical figure. For later generations, however, whatever his actual accomplishments may have been, they were of less importance than his symbolic value as the first of the long line; so the specifics faded away, and in effect only the symbol was left. More dramatic is the case

of Gilgamesh, the hero of the oldest epic known to man, the first of the great tribe of wanderers who searched for ultimate answers to fundamental questions. But the legendary semidivine hero of the epic was a real king of Uruk in the third millennium, as has been established beyond cavil. Finally, there is Abraham, father of the faithful, pioneer and pilgrim of biblical religion. Was he a real person or a point of departure, a symbol of that community which claimed descent from him? In my judgment, the answer must be drawn along the same lines as for the heroic figures mentioned above.

Behind the symbolic figure of the second millennium and later speculation and reverence, there is a real man, a human being of the third millennium. In the Bible Abraham as symbol is larger than life: he encompasses his entire posterity; but enough has been preserved of the original traditions to ensure recognition of the individual himself. It is to the credit of the biblical writers that they never lost sight of the person behind the symbolic figure. While Abraham enjoyed special status before God and achieved a greatness granted to few, he remains identifiable as a real person, now more than ever before.

The streets of Ebla reflecting a wide variety of daily activities.

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DECEMBER1978

SEASONS

FIVE

TELL

AT

OF

EL-HESI

EXCAVATION

(1970-77)

VALERIE M. FARGO AND KEVIN G. O'CONNELL, S.J.

Thefamous site of Tell el-Hesi was thefirst archeologically excavated Palestinian site at which the relationship between pottery and stratigraphy was shown to be significant. After a six-week season, Sir Flinders Petrie published his work in 1891. For the first time in Palestine, the importance of pottery as a chronological indicator was made known. Today, utilizing the archeological advances accumulated over seventy-five years, archeologists have reopened the investigation of Tell el-Hesi.

Tell el-Hesi is on the southeastern margin of the coastal plain, 23 km from the Mediterranean and 26 km northeast of Gaza. Resting on a series of sand dunes on the west bank of the Wadi Hesi (Nahal Shiqma), the large site (35-40 acres) includes an acropolis and a lower city. Today the acropolis, which commands the northeast corner of the site, encompasses an area of only twothirds of an acre at its summit. Originally a sand dune 16.7 m high, it has been more than doubled in height by 21 m of occupational debris. By contrast,

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

the lower city is a roughly rectangular plateau bordered by wadis and high dunes. Its shallow but extensive deposits cover an area more than fifty times greater than that of the acropolis. The only certain occupation of the lower city was in the Early Bronze Age, but the acropolis was used repeatedly for nearly 2000 years, down to Hellenistic times. After virtually total abandonment for many centuries, the acropolis and the southern dune ridge served as a Muslim cemetery. Another period of abandonment was ended by modern military trenching during

1948 and again in 1956. Although it was too far inland to have direct influence over the Via Maris, the famous coastal highway from Egypt, Hesi's location was important for control of the internal road system. A branch of the coastal highway turned east near Ashkelon and passed 2.5 km to the north of Hesi. Together with its smaller flanking neighbors, Tell Quneitra (or Qeshet) and Tell Sheqef, Hesi was well placed to control this route. Its position at the eastern edge of the coastal plain also allowed Hesi to assert control over the southern ap-

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Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) First Excavator at Tell el-Hesi (1890)

G. Ernest Wright (1909-1974) Founder of the Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi

In 1880 in his first archeological investigation Sir Flinders Petrie, one of the great pioneers of archeology in the Near East, tested a theory about the construction of the Great Pyramid, and from that time he devoted many years to excavating at Egyptian sites such as Abydos, Giza, Memphis, Nagada, Saqqara, and Thebes. In 1890 at Hesi, he undertook his first excavation in southern Palestine but then returned to Egypt until the 1920s. In his later years he focused on southern Palestine, working at Ajjul and Fara. Generally he spent the winter in excavation and the summer writing up materials for publication before the next field season, a system followed by regrettably few archeologists today. He produced nearly 100 volumes, most financed by the Egypt Exploration Fund and the British School of Archaeology in Egypt. In 1935 he and Lady Petrie moved to the American School in Jerusalem, where they resided until failing health forced him into the hospital. Lady Petrie continued to live at the School for some time after Petrie's death. Petrie was buried in Jerusalem in the British cemetery on Mount Zion. His discoveries and contributions are extensive. While working in Egypt he uncovered the mastabas of many kings of the first Egyptian dynasties; at Thebes he found the famous Merneptah Stele, which records an early reference to "Israel";at Tell Yehudiyeh in the eastern Delta he discovered one of the first examples of the elaborate "Hyksos" ramparts of the Middle Bronze Age. In his Egyptian work he established the principle of sequence-dating; at Hesi he recognized both the nature of a Palestinian tell and the stratigraphic and chronological significance of pottery; he was the first to describe, draw, and record the location of artifacts and to use pottery-profile drawings; he employed scientists when their disciplines were likely to provide useful information. In short, he single-handedly established the foundations for modern archeology in the Near East. His autobiography, Seventy Years in Archaeology, written when he was nearly 80, provides an entertaining and informative account of this remarkable man's long career.

G. Ernest Wright, longtime a recognized leader among American archeologists in Palestine, directed the Shechem dig as the model of organization and method for ASOR projects. Nearly all Americans excavating in that sector were his archeological colleagues or students and recognized his influence. His further involvement in the excavations at Gezer, begun in 1964, gave him the unique privilege of participation in archeology on both sides of the armistice line, and his reputation and rapport with Israeli archeologists and officials was solid. But even more important to us than these practical factors was the pilgrimage taken by his own archeological self-understanding throughout his career. He grew increasingly concerned that "Biblical archeology "was failing to draw on the important anthropological and humanistic insights which he had come to admire in the approach of V. G. Childe and others. While never a part of the"new archeology"movement, he was conversant with it and recognized some basic correctives and contributions it had to offer to classical archeology, including biblical archeology. A volatile but creative tension is produced by coupling the objective rigors and investigative range of the sciences with the sensitivities of the humanities. To apply his refined field techniques within that framework became Wright's powerful dream for archeology in the Near East. It was a vision which he readily shared with his students and younger colleagues. Wright hoped to people his vision with what he termed the third generation of ASOR archeologists. He considered the mastery of field operation in the Shechem project to have formed the first generation. The expansion of investigative, recording and educative techniques at Gezer, staffed primarily with Shechem alumni, shaped the second. What remained was to erect a holistic enterprise on these foundations, thus preparing ASOR to make a new contribution to the development of world archeology, as befitted the heritage of such pioneers as Petrie and Albright. This was what he hoped to achieve at Tell el-Hesi.

proaches to the Shephelah. Today there is relatively little rainfall (ca. 300 mm per year) at Hesi, but this rain, supplemented by fresh water springs in the

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surrounding wadi system and considerable dew at night (especially during the dry summer months), enables the rich alluvial soil of the coastal plain to produce

JOHN E. WORRELL

First Director of the Hesi Expedition

good crops of wheat, sorghum, and melons without the need of irrigation. At times in the past, notably in the Early and Late Bronze Ages, there was somewhat

DECEMBER1978

Tell el-Hesi: view from the southwestacross the field that once held the EB III lower city toward the acropolis in the northeast corner of the enclosure.Field I's location on the top of the acropolis is indicatedby the photo tower in the center distance. Field III is on the slope of the acropolis,the westernsectionjust to the right of center and the eastern section to the far right. The Wadi Hesi runs out of sight behind the acropolis. more moisture in the region. Productivity then would have been more than sufficient for local needs and also might have provided surplus for export.

Hesi's Place in Palestinian Archeology Tell el-Hesi holds a unique place in the history of Palestinian archeology. It was the first Palestinian site at which the relationship between pottery and stratigraphy was shown to be significant. In 1890 Sir Flinders Petrie, one of the truly great figures in Near Eastern archeology, excavated at Hesi for six weeks and produced a general picture of the site's occupational history. Although the 1891 publication of his work incorrectly identified the site as biblical Lachish, it was the

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

first discussion of Palestinian archeology to recognize the importance of pottery for chronological distinctions. Petrie's excavation of the acropolis had been limited to probing along its slopes, since the summit was under cultivation. In 1891 and 1892 Frederick Jones Bliss extended Petrie's project to the top of the mound. His strategy was to excavate a large portion of the tell stratigraphically to virgin soil (in this case, sand). The resultant cut removed nearly the entire northeastern third of the acropolis. "Bliss' Cut" has been a distinguishing feature of Hesi ever since. In this segment Bliss identified eleven occupation levels which he grouped into eight strata or "cities." His publication of these "cities" in 1894 was the first effort at presenting large-scale excavation results in a stratigraphic context.

The Present Excavation at Tell el-Hesi The Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi - as the current project is known - entered the field in June 1970, following a brief survey of the site in 1969. It is a long-term excavation project, sponsored by the American Schools of Oriental Research and a consortium of educational institutions.' Major objectives were to investigate in greater detail and with more refined methods the stratigraphic divisions identified by Petrie and Bliss, to employ an interdisciplinary approach which would include the contributions of scientific specialists present in the field during the excavation, and to provide a carefully structured educational, experience for participating volunteers. By 1977, five seasons of fieldwork had been

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completed (1970, 71, 73, 75, 77). The first four seasons constituted Phase One of the project. This focused on the acropolis (with Field I located on the summit) and its southern slope (Field III). Phase One completed excavation through the Hellenistic and Persian levels (Bliss' Cities VIII and VII) on the summit and reached an understanding of the massive wall system at the base of the southern slope. It also located substantial, easily accessible Early Bronze Age remains in the lower city. They are being explored in the Phase Two investigation of the site's extensive EB occupation. The Summit of the Acropolis Phase One On the summit (Field I) a of 6 m X 6 m squares was grid in the southeast quadrant, opened south of Bliss's massive cut and just to the west of Petrie's probes into the east face of the mound. The intention was to relate new finds to strata previously identified there. As digging progressed, the sequence of stratigraphic layers proved complex. Earlier structures were largely disrupted by later constructions, pits, graves, and trenches. The difficulties in identifying walls and structures were further complicated by the fact that nearly all construction at Hesi was done with mud brick because of the lack of stone in the region. Distinguishing between mud brick, its surrounding earth, and the debris of its decay is a formidable task. Excavation on the acropolis during the first four seasons uncovered only the more recent periods of occupation. Stratum I is a system of military trenches and bunkers which may be dated to the late 1940s on the evidence of rifle cartridges, although local tradition mistakenly attributes the first military installations to the World War I period. The acropolis was used sporadically between the Hellenistic

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COASTAL PLAIN DRAINAGE PATTERN

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Map of the Tell el-Hesi region, showing the drainagepatternand the location of nearbytells. Tell el-Hesi is indicatedby a star. Only the tells nearestto Hesi are identifiedby name. period and the establishment of the with a few fire, ash, and garbage cemetery. At some point the pits. These meager structures may summit of the acropolis was represent garden-plot or animal-pen dividers belonging to a slight leveled, probably for agricultural Arabic occupation. use, but there is no clear evidence for occupation until the Turkish Stratum IV, the Hellenistic period. Stratum III consists of period (ca. 330 B.c.-64 B.C.), contained three stages (IV-A, B, C) fragments of mud-brick walls and associated compacted mud surfaces, but unfortunately was seriously

DECEMBER1978

FIELD IV

BM.71. A 132.81

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A

Al

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TREE VI

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EL-HESI so50

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Generalplan of the Tell el-Hesi site, showing the location of the various fields. The contour lines are drawn at 5-m intervals.The Wadi Hesi enters the plan from the right center and flows northwardto the right of the site. disturbed by the later cemetery and by pits of the latest Hellenistic stage which cut into the earlier remains. The Hellenistic structures which survive are mainly wall fragments which cannot be related to one another due to the extensive disturbances in the field. The earliest Hellenistic stage (IV-C) included at least one wall constructed of mud brick on a stone foundation in the southern half of the acropolis, with open air surfaces to the north. This was

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

followed by a period (IV-B) of more elaborate construction in stone walls with rubble fill. The final stage (IV-A) saw the acropolis in use as a storage area characterized by numerous pits and little or no residential occupation. Despite the incomplete nature of the structural evidence, the artifacts, including Greek vessels and stone amulets, indicate at least a modest settlement during the Hellenistic period. Stratum II on the acropolis

consists of a Muslim cemetery approximately 200 to 500 years old. Over 400 burials have been excavated in Field I. Originally the cemetery was laid out in parallel rows of graves, but continued use of the area led to the placement of new burials between rows, above older graves, and on occasion even cutting into earlier burials. Typically, an oval shaft led to a narrow clearance at the bottom just large enough to accommodate the body. The body, clothed in everyday attire or a shroud, lay roughly east-west with the head to the west and the face toward Mecca. Most often the body was placed in an extended position on the back, but in some cases on the right side, either extended or flexed. After interment of the body, the cist was frequently covered with several large, flat capping stones and the shaft filled with earth. Occasionally graves were lined with stones or packed mud as well, but many cists were neither lined nor capped. Grave goods are relatively rare and simple. Men usually were buried without any grave furnishings while women are found with their jewelry, such as glass or metal bracelets and anklets, metal finger and toe rings, and beads of glass or semiprecious stones. Infants often were provided with necklaces of tiny beads. Infant burials tend to be nearest the surface. This is not a chronological indicator but results from a Muslim custom of digging graves in such a way that the deceased, if standing, would have head and shoulders above ground. Thus, the depth of a grave is determined by the height of the deceased and is not significant stratigraphically. Since the tops of many shafts were plowed up during agricultural use of the area, the phasing within the cemetery is uncertain. The major occupation during the Persian period (ca. 539 B.c.-330 B.C.), Stratum V, had four distinct phases. Here again pits from the final Persian phase, V-A, and from Hellenistic IV-A destroyed many

169

construction of some new walls, but in the last Persian phase (V-A) a change took place. At this time two roughly north-south lines of large, brick-lined storage pits were dug into the previous residential area. These pits, as much as 3.5 m in depth, were surrounded by cobblestone surfaces. Ash of chaff and straw found in the lower portions of some pits may indicate fumigation against various pests. The Persian levels produced many domestic artifacts and a wellstratified pottery corpus of local wares and Greek imports. Such exotic objects as a travertine rhyton and ceramic pillar figurines of a fertility goddess were also among the artifacts of this period. The recovery of the pottery corpus is of particular importance as it will aid in the refinement of ceramic seriation for a lesser-known period in Palestinian archeology.

Muslimburial with the skeleton extended on the back. The head is to the west and turnedto the right, so that the eyes look toward Mecca. stratigraphic connections for the earlier phases. The earliest Persian level (V-D) contained a large building complex around a central courtyard. The walls were constructed of mold-made, sun-dried bricks; the wall faces were typically a row of bricks of only half the normal width, coated with plaster. Few remains were found in the rooms of this earliest Persian occupation. At the end of this phase the acropolis apparently was cleared off and the rooms filled up to provide a foundation for the smaller dwellings of the next phase, V-C. Along the east portion of Field I a series of striations of dark ash and gray earth with high grain content suggests an activity such as threshing adjacent to these buildings. The ensuing phase (V-B) followed essentially the same building plan as V-C, with the

170

The Slope of the Acropolis Phase One During the first season traces of a wall were noted at the eastern end of the southern slope where the wadi had undercut the side of the acropolis. Excavation along the southern slope (Field III) revealed a massive three-phase fortification system, the largest mud-brick structure from the Persian period in Palestine. The wall was traced westward for over 100 m around the southern base of the acropolis and was sectioned in two places to determine the method and date of its construction. The three zones of brickwork, initially labeled A/B/C from north to south, proved to have been constructed in that sequence, A/B/C, from the innermost to the outer. A rounded structure at the southeast end of the wall was originally thought to be a tower, but further work in 1971 and 1973 showed it to be a rounded corner for the B wall where the entire system turned to the north. A section through this corner produced a clear view of the phases of construction of all three zones. The innermost and earliest phase, Zone A, was built

Muslimburial with the skeletonflexed on the right side. The head is to the west and the eyes look toward Mecca. on a massive stone foundation nearly two meters high placed on virgin sand. Zone B, built against the outer face of Zone A, was founded on one course of stones set in bricky fill. Its outer surface was battered and plastered above ground level. The bricks of the final phase, Zone C, were laid directly into a plaster foundation. Piers below ground level were bonded to the north face of the A wall and ran north into the slope of the mound. This construction suggests that, in addition to a defensive role, the wall system may have functioned to shore up the acropolis and reduce erosion down the south slope. The severity of such erosion is indicated by Walls B and C, two major supplements to strengthen the original wall. All three were built within the Persian period, perhaps even within its earliest phase. DECEMBER 1978

Digging at Hesi Today How does digging at Hesi today differ from Petrie's description? The most striking change probably has been in the shift from hired laborers to volunteers, mostly students and academicians from the USA and Canada. Every other summer, somewhat over 100 such people converge upon Tell el-Hesi, to spend six weeks living in primitive conditions in a tent village erected on the southern dune, part of the third millennium town. We do have electricity and running water, advances since Petrie's day, but there are only the tents and one tree for protection from the ever-present sun and wind. We are up with the sun at 5 a.m., as was Petrie, to begin the work day by 6 a.m., continuing in the field until noon. The hottest part of the day, the early afternoon hours, is devoted to rest and, if possible, sleep, before another session in the field from 4 to 6 p.m. In the evenings, the records of the day's work are completed in preparation for the next day's activities, and, as part of the educational program, staff members present lectures about archeological method, the cultural history of the site, and other relevant topics. By 9:30 p.m. the generator is silenced, and all retire for some much-needed rest. The Bedouin do not regularly brandish sword and pistol although they have been known to carry weapons when guarding their watermelon patches. We assiduously avoid treading on any melon plants and are

When the Field III wall system went out of use before the end of the Persian period, its brickwork may have served as a clay source for building elsewhere. Later still, a Persian cemetery was dug into the top of the wall system. Half of the more than 40 burials encountered in this cemetery were interred in the fill of a pit that may have resulted from clay mining. Many burials were oriented east-west with the head to the east instead of to the west as in the later Muslim cemetery. All but five were adult burials, and only onethird possessed any grave goods. These included juglets, copper anklets, iron rings, a dagger, and a small seal. The disuse of this wall system and its successive functions as a clay mining area and as a cemetery may correspond to the V-A period on the acropolis when the earlier Persian structures were

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

rewarded with numerous gifts of melons for the lunch table. A weekly ritual at Hesi is the Wednesday morning arrival of units from a nearby Israeli army base. After viewing the excavations, they engage in practice runs in their half-tracks down the side of the tell through the steep section produced by Bliss' excavation. There is great interest in archeology among the Israelis, and groups from nearby collective settlements frequently visit the site. The expedition follows a five-day work-week, with a two-day weekend for rest and relaxation, usually in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or on the beach at Ashkelon. In addition, several tours to sites of historical interest are organized during the season. These opportunities provide a welcome respite from the strenuous daily routine. Once bitten by the "archeological bug," one willingly puts up with discomfort from heat, wind, and sunburn, with aching muscles from wielding the pick, and with the inescapable dust and dirt in order to pursue the discovery of the past in the unknown and unexcavated earth. Soon the newcomer can be heard to intone the words of a motto heard often at Hesi, "The answers lie below." So today, more than 80 years later, we can agree with Petrie that "the course of an excavator is not of the easiest," but now, as then, the excitement and adventure far outweigh the inconveniences.

no longer in use but were replaced by the large grain storage pits. This Persian wall system succeeded earlier wall structures on the southern slope of the acropolis. Fragments of walls and other installations were found, but they cannot be dated without further excavation. The earliest structure found in Field III was a roughly circular adobe installation containing Late Chalcolithic pottery. The Lower City -

Phase One

The initial attempt to explore EB remains in the lower city proved unfruitful. Field II in the southern part of the lower city was opened in 1970 (see General Plan of Site). It contained only the lower portions of two EB refuse pits, the remainder having been eroded or plowed away. This field was soon closed, and the Expedi-

tion's kitchen and dining facilities subsequently were set up nearby. The unpromising results of the work in Field II prompted a staff decision to concentrate on the acropolis (Fields I and III) until the 1973 season. In 1971 a group of volunteers digging a trash pit for the kitchen decided to use careful stratigraphic techniques. To their surprise they found evidence of EB remains in a part of the lower city where it had been thought that the shifting wadi courses had carried away all traces of human occupation. In 1973 a surface survey of the lower city revealed the heaviest concentration of EB sherds on the southern dune system and on the ridge west of the acropolis. Field IV, a 2 m X 2 m probe on this western ridge (see General Plan of Site) showed extensive EB occupation below 75 cm of disturbed

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The expedition's dining facilities in 1973, with a view northward across the lower city to the acropolis. In the foreground are John E. Worrell (1), the Expedition's first Director, and 0. Ernest Williams (r), then a volunteer and currently the Camp Manager.

The educational program at Tell el-Hesi during the 1977 season: Archaeological Director Larry Toombs reading pottery (left); Osteologist Ken Eakins and volunteer Jim Gullett discuss the proper excavation of a burial (right).

Grave goods from Muslim burials in Field I: (top) several bronze and iron fragments from Burial 51A.002; (center) 1 bronze ring with a fine carnelian stone backed by iron from Burial 51A.002, and a copper bracelet with one end flattened and widened into the shape of a serpents's head from Burial 32.048; (bottom) beads of carnelian and glass from Burial 22.062.

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

173

Objects from the Hellenistic Period (Field I): (top 1.) black on red Aegean import rim fragment from 22.180; (top r.) obverse of a scarablike seal with the figure of a seated baboon from the Hellenistic fill of Pit 12.081; (center 1.) Udjat eye amulet (a human eye and the markings of a falcon's head symbolizing the eye lost by the Egyptian god Horus in his fight with Seth to avenge Osirus) found in 21.112; (center r.) black on red Attic ware with the picture of a rampant dog from 21.175; (bottom 1.) carved ivory object from 21.112 representing either a fish (viewed horizontally) or a head with an "African" headdress (viewed vertically). (bottom r.) almost-intact, painted lekythos found in Pit 32.100 beneath the foundation of a IV-B stone wall;

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DECEMBER 1978

Petrie's Description of Digging at Hesi "I had usually about thirty men employed, each with a woman or a girl to carry the basket. But only a small proportion of the natives there are fit for work; each group of men that I engaged rapidly dwindled down by weeding out the hopelessly lazy ones; so that in two or three weeks half of any lot would be dismissed, and in six weeks but an eighth of the original party remained, all the rest having come in later. At first it seemed as if watching them made no difference; if away one never saw them doing anything, and when there one always saw them doing nothing; that was the only variation. But gradually by steady weeding, and by regular work, the average quality improved; and at last there were some tolerably good workers among them. The Bedawins were troublesome, though not actually quarrelling. Some of the head shekhs [sic] appeared civil enough, and as far

surface material. There were at least two phases of domestic structures, each with two subphases, characterized by thin mudbrick walls and beaten earth or plaster floors. The many sherds from domestic vessels all dated to EB III. It thus seems probable that the western portion of the lower city was a residential area during this period. In the following season (1975) three more probes - Fields V, VI, and VII - were opened along the southern dunes (see General Plan of Site). In Field V up to one meter of plow soil,

reasonable as such folks can be. But the common herd were always in mischief; lounging about the excavations, carrying away things that were found, overthrowing any masonry, driving off the workmen's donkeys while out grazing, worrying about supposed injuries to crops, and generally being about as much in the way as they could. It would have been a treat to have made them do an honest day's work; for nothing is more annoying than a pack of ne'er-do-weel [sic], quarrelsome, loungers insisting on hanging about. No villager dare say a word to them, or object to anything they did, for fear of the ever-present sword and pistols, which they were only too ready to flourish about. What with needing to be always conciliatory to the Turkish official, and to the Bedawin shekhs [sic], and yet never allowing anyone to obtain any authority over the men or the work, the course of an excavator is not of the easiest" (1891: 10-11).

surface soil, and Muslim burials covered the ancient remains. The first apparent structure encountered, a heap of decayed mud brick, had equal amounts of associated EB and LB pottery and may indicate an LB phase. Below these remains were several phases of EB walls and surfaces. Excavation ceased at 3.25 m below the surface, without reaching virgin soil (see Field V, east balk). This is the deepest EB occupation known at Hesi. No levels yet uncovered are earlier than EB III. In contrast to Field V, EB remains in Field VI were directly

below the surface, although again, many Muslim burials had disturbed the stratigraphy to a depth of a meter or more. This probe uncovered a massive mud-brick wall preserved to a height of nine courses, with an ash layer full of flat-lying EB III pottery to its south. Fragments of brickwork were uncovered beneath this surface, but their function and orientation would not be investigated until 1977 (see below). Field VII began as a geological probe on the badly eroded crest of the southwestern dune. Two mud-brick walls and

Objects from the Persian Period (Fields I and III): (1.) ceramic pillar-figurine head in the Hathor style from 1.1.141; (c.) chalk figurine head with an Egyptian-style headdress from 111.105.009; (r.) drinking horn or rhyton of travertine with a fragment of a kneeling horse on the side from Pit 1.41.136.

several plaster, pebble, and ashy surfaces were visible in the section (see Field VII, north balk). These EB walls appeared to run east-west along the ridge of the dune. Surfaces to the south of the walls suggest that the southern portions of the structures have been washed away. Summary of Phase One - 1970-75 At the end of Phase One following the fourth season in the field (1975), several tasks had been accomplished: (1) the acropolis excavations had proceeded through the Hellenistic and Persian occupations of Bliss' Cities VIII and VII; (2) the Field III Persian wall system had yielded information about its construction methods and date; and (3) a survey and several probes had indicated fruitful directions for exposure of the EB city. Phase Two, beginning with the fifth season (1977), has two principal goals: the investigation of the Iron II occupation on the acropolis and an extensive exposure of the EB remains in the lower city. The Summit of the Acropolis Phase Two On the summit of the acropolis (Field I) five Iron II phases (Strata VI and VII-A, B, C, D) have come to light beneath the Stratum V Persian levels. Most of this Iron II material is present only in the southern half of the field since the northern area was destroyed by the later Persian constructions (V-D). The most recent Iron II structures belong to Stratum VI, which rests on a black ash layer tentatively attributed to the Babylonian destruction of 586 B.c. The fragmentary remains of rooms in Stratum VI provide stratigraphic evidence, supported by the associated pottery, for a brief occupation at the very end of Iron II, perhaps by squatters on the site after the Babylonian devastation. A surface which may belong to this stratum, but which

176

was unfortunately cut off by later pitting, produced an inscribed bulla. Dated epigraphically to the 7th or early 6th century, the inscription reads: "belonging to Mattanyahu (son of) Ishmael." Below the destruction ash were four phases of Iron II belonging to Stratum VII. The latest, VII-A, was a housing complex of which two rooms are preserved, one with a cobblestone floor. The next phase (VII-B) contained two north-south walls with a sizable pit between them, possibly an open courtyard between two buildings. In the lower levels of the pit were layers of clay suitable for making pottery, perhaps indicating that the pit played a role in the production of pottery. Below these two phases, largely excavated in 1975, appeared the large structures of VII-C. In the south of Field I, two north-south walls mark the limits of a room like a corridor leading to a massive courtyard building to the north. Later builders in the Persian period (V-D) virtually destroyed this building. Only the foundations remain, but the plan of the structure seems to have been a row of chambers around a central room. The walls, more than one meter thick, may have supported a second story. Pottery from the foundation trench dates the structure to the late 8th and/ or early 7th centuries. Separated from this large building by a thin layer of fill were the extensive supporting structures (VII-D) prepared for its construction. Elements of apparently similar structures to consolidate the eastern part of the acropolis had been discovered by Petrie along the east face, where he distinguished six wall stubs forming his "long range of chambers" (Petrie 1891: 28-29, 34, and pl. 3). Only the southern two of these wall stubs extended westward into Field I. No trace of the four walls further north could be found. However, a wall parallel to the two southern walls was found midway between

Field VII, north balk. Note that the probe began below surface level. Scale 1:25. Elevation unknown.

/

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1,

LEGEND 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Surface soil Decayed mud brick Dark, bricky Reddish, bricky Plaster Mud-brick wall Water-laid earth Mud-brick wall Ash Pebble surface Ash Caliche-filled earth, possibly brick

DECEMBER 1978

/42.0

S

N

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0

0

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141.0 5N

Largecut stone Hard-packedbrick detritus Decayed brick Fallen and eroded brick with many rodent burrows 5. Close-packed,fallen brick 6. Probablewall 7. Loose, ashy, with fallen brick 8. Loose, ashy 9. Gray, ashy surface 10. Gray, ashy 11. Mud-brickwall 12. Loose, ashy 13. Sandy surface 14. Dark, ashy 15. Ash-coveredsurface 16. Dark, ashy 17. Ash and sand mix 18. Mixed debris layer 19. Black ash 20. Solid, bricky 1. 2. 3. 4.

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Field V, east balk. The decayed brick in Layer3 may indicatean LB phase;Wall 6 is probablyEB III, althoughan LB date cannot be ruled out absolutely; Wall 11 and associatedSurface 13 are a second EB III phase, and Surface 15 representsa third;the ash layer (19) and brickydeposit (20) at the bottom presumablyrepresentanother EB phase whose destructiondebris extends into Layer18. Note that the upperpart of the section (above 140.35m) is set 2.0 m furthereast than the lower portion.

----16

139.0

20

What's in a Name? Modern maps of Palestine carry the word Eglon by the site of Tell el-Hesi, sometimes with a question mark and sometimes without. Earlier scholars identified Hesi with Lachish. Thus, Petrie's excavation report (1891) was called Tell el Hesy (Lachish). He argued that the site of Umm Lakis, just north of Hesi, contained the name of ancient Lachish in Roman times and that Hesi was the Lachish of the "Amorite"period. This was thought to be confirmed when F. J. Bliss reported that an Amarna tablet discovered at Hesi in 1892 contained the name of Zimrida who was identified as the governor of Lachish in the Tell el-Amarna letters. When Tell el-Duweir became a better candidate for Lachish through the discovery of the Lachish letters, W. F. Albright argued that Hesi should be identified with Eglon, a city mentioned in Joshua 10 as involved in Joshua's southern campaign, whose name

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

them. Three north-south cross walls connected these three east-west walls, forming two ranges of three chambers each within the excavated areas across the southern part of the acropolis. No doorways have been found in the walls of these chambers, which presumably were built to hold the fill found in them. Petrie's wall stubs were probably the remnants of similar chambers along the east face. It is not yet known whether the same procedure was followed on the west or the north. North of the southern chambers and west of the eastern ones, in the area enclosed by the solid border they formed, no consolidating walls have been found. It is now thought that a heavy fill was simply dumped into the enclosed area, thereby raising the level of the southern acropolis some 2.5 to 3.6 m. This major construction, which would have eliminated a blind spot to the south caused by the Southern Ridge, suggests the strategic importance of the Hesi site during the later years of the Judean Monarchy. To the south of this platform a massive fill was installed, topped by a limestone plaster glacis. To complete the system, a mud-brick wall was constructed at the base of the glacis, overlapping

might be preserved in Khirbet 'Ajlan, another ruin near Hesi. The Joint Expedition has found nothing at the site to confirm or deny this popular identification. Joshua 10 has both literary and historical problems associated with it, and not all scholars trust the historical veracity of the account. Moreover, modern place names are frequently unreliable guides to the location of ancient sites. Indeed, A. F. Rainey has recently proposed (IDB Suppl.: 252) that Noth's identification of Eglon with Tell 'Eton. between Lachish and Hebron would make more sense of Joshua 10:34-36. Unless further historical records are found at the site by the present expedition, it will remain uncertain whether Hesi is Eglon or some other known or unknown site. D. GLENNROSE Current Director of the Hesi Expedition

177

The Excitement of Discovery Much day-to-day work at a modern excavation, while important, can quickly seem dull and unrewarding. Perhaps the least satisfying volunteer task is to sift dirt removed from the square to which the volunteer is assigned. Many little chips and fragments from flint tools, human or animal bones, and pottery, as well as broken beads or other items too small to be noted in the digging itself, are recovered in this way. The value of these bits and pieces is not always apparent, however, and it can seem that nothing "really important" is ever found in the sifting. The long hours at the sifter become boring and unpleasant. Halfway through the 1977 season the importance of careful sifting was dramatically demonstrated

4-

by the discovery of a small bulla or seal impression from the 7th-6th century B.c. The small lump of charred clay, originally used to seal the strings around a scroll and bearing two lines of writing, was scarcely larger than a thumbnail. It turned up in the sifting and was spotted by the sharp eyes of Jane Hammitt, a volunteer from Smith College. Her supervisor, Suanne Hoffman from Wilfrid Laurier University, and other staff were quick to recognize the importance of the find. It was the first clearly legible writing from the period of the Judean monarchy discovered in five seasons of excavation! If Jane's attention had wandered, if she had not looked closely at the charred bit of clay, an important piece of the past would have been lost forever (see O'Connell 1977).

As v

0515

;:;,;,;

15

41M ~mm.

Seal impression(bulla) of "Mattanyahu(son of) Ishmael." Marksof the strings securedby the bulla are clearlyvisible on the reverse (10 mm = 1 cm). its southern edge. This is Petrie's "Manasseh wall," which, despite erosion, is still preserved below ground for 38 courses. Where its top was preserved, it was covered by the same fill of alternating earth and stone layers which also overlay the glacis. We do not know if this wall continued higher as a free-standing defensive structure, but some upward extension would be required to retain the fill of earth and stones. These maneuvers extended the living surface of the acropolis some 6-8 m to the south. Thus, Field I shows that a massive effort was expended, probably in the late 8th or early 7th century, to construct a

178

platform and supportive structures to receive the VII-C buildings. Indications are that this consolidating system ends toward the northern edge of Field I, probably with a terrace or ramp leading down to the northern portion of the acropolis. Material culture from the Iron II levels of Strata VI and VII is largely limited to pottery vessels, in particular a series of restorable juglets, and a number of seal impressions, including the inscribed bulla. The Lower City -

Phase Two

The second focus of Phase Two is exposure of EB remains in

the lower city. The 1977 season investigated Field VI on the easternmost southern dune (see General Plan of Site) where the 1975 probe had revealed a large wall system. Excavation uncovered three recent strata corresponding to the latest periods of occupation on the acropolis. Military trenching (Stratum I) was represented by one pit, perhaps an observation post or a firing point. Nearly 200 burials of the Muslim cemetery (Stratum II) were found. Those excavated followed the same burial practices as the graves on the summit (in Field I). The Field VI burials may be the earliest ones on the site since they are adjacent to the

DECEMBER1978

largely ruined shrine of a minor Muslim saint. The higher proportion of well-built cists and betterquality jewelry indicates that wealthier individuals were buried nearest this sacred spot. Coins from several graves suggest a Mameluke date (14th-16th centuries A.D.) for this cemetery. Stratum III, the Late Arabic agricultural phase, produced no structures, but only sherds of domestic wares, mixed with EB sherds. So far, four EB phases have been encountered in Field VI although the earliest two (Phases 3 and 4) have yet to be explored fully. Phase 1 includes only a few patches of cobble surfaces, the remainder of these floors having been cut through or eroded. The limited remains, which contain EB III pottery, suggest a small-scale resettlement of the site after the destruction or abandonment at the end of Phase 2. The major wall system discovered in 1975 belongs to Phase 2, also dated to EB III. Running southwest to northeast along the ridge of the dune, this wall system was built on a mudbrick platform five courses high. The platform supported two parallel walls and also served as the floor of the chamber between them. The outer or southern wall is 3.5 m thick and was plastered on the outer face. The better-preserved inner wall is 6.2 m wide. This complex resembles the plan of a structure found by Bliss along the northern edge of his City I (Bliss 1894: 26-31). In 1977 the wall was traced for 29 m. Near the eastern limit of excavation the chamber seems to end in a solid mass of brickwork across the entire platform. At the end of the excavated areas, this structure is stepped back sharply and continued by a wall of somewhat different construction. Whether this represents a jog in the wall, a corner, or the edge of a gate must await further excavation. In the chamber between the walls was an ash layer containing many pottery vessels smashed in place, as well as other artifacts BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

H 77

FIELD

V\

SE CLTION SCHENAATIC WALL FTHI:OUCH EB-PHASEYSTFEM

, •A.S I coNSj.uraot

SURFACE 36.04SHY

3gAo3

•Po-

m

PLk-r oqA

1.0070

3.o57 , ,

N

SFIELD

S?

-I-

-I-

+i

TELL EL

HESI

VI

EB, PHASE •

-I-?

EB III wall system in Field VI: block plan (top) and schematicsection (bottom).

such as limestone maceheads, a bone awl, and two decorated bone sheaths. Outside the wall system on the southeast was a deep deposit of water-laid and wind-laid ash infused with much grain and many bones, sherds, and fragments of animal figurines. The expedition's botanist has suggested that this includes debris which may have come from a cooking area. Underneath this ash in the easternmost area exposed was a thick layer of animal dung in sufficient quantity to suggest the presence of a stable or animal market outside the wall. Inside the inner wall and associated with the wall system were domestic structures. Walls at right angles to the major wall system, cobbled and

beaten earth surfaces, and a stone pillar base attest to an occupation within the walls. Unfortunately, the Stratum II burials have destroyed much of the evidence for this occupation. Phases 3 and 4 of the Early Bronze Age are largely unexcavated. Phase 3, a fragment of cobbling lower than the Phase 2 cobbling, is at roughly the same level as the base of the Phase 2 platform and may be an earlier flooring within that phase. The deepest exposure in Field VI produced some disturbed mud brick and a possible plaster surface (Phase 4). The limited excavation of these phases precludes a definite dating within Early Bronze at this time.

179

The Ancient Environment at Hesi The 1977 season produced much new evidence about the local environment during the Early Bronze Age. The climate seems to have been wetter and cooler than at present. First, the size of the city required a good water supply and adequate agricultural production. That there was a perennial stream flowing through a swampy area near the site during the Early Bronze Age is supported by the presence of fresh-water snails characteristic of such streams. Further, the geological evidence from the high terrace just north of the site suggests that the Wadi Hesi carried a clear, fast stream during the period of EB occupation, as well as in the Late Bronze Age. It appears, however, to have contained considerably less water in the Middle Bronze Age. In addition, the quantity and nature of the ash in Field VI testifies to an abundance of wood for construction and fuel, while the humus-filled bricks of the EB wall system indicate soil containing much decayed vegetable matter. Such soil is typically found beneath

trees and is not available locally today. The botanical evidence shows an almost entirely local food dependence, including emmer wheat, two-rowed barley, and some pulses. Olive and pistachio were also found and may have been grown at Hesi in the milder climate of the Early Bronze Age. By contrast, in the Persian and Hellenistic periods a drier climate prevailed, with an increase in pulses and other crops requiring less moisture.

The Early Bronze Age at Hesi Looking Ahead The EB settlements at Hesi and at contemporary sites such as Ai and Yarmuth included a large lower city with a smaller acropolis in one corner. Like many other large urban centers of the flourishing Canaanite civilization, EB Hesi ceased to exist as a city in the last quarter of the third millennium. This EB civilization is becoming increasingly known through the texts discovered at Ebla (see Biblical Archeologist 39, nos. 2-3 [1976] and above pp. 142-64). Subsequent settlements were gener-

ally on a much less extensive scale. The reasons for this decline at Hesi and elsewhere in Canaan at the close of the third millennium are not yet clear. Hesi had a productive agricultural economy in the Early Bronze Age, probably producing surpluses available for trade with neighboring regions to obtain basalt, bitumen, sulfur, hematite, and other raw materials not found in the vicinity of the site. It may be that Hesi declined about the 25th or 24th century B.C. because of climatic changes (the onset of drier conditions) and the destruction of forest and plant cover through overuse. Further work at the site should shed light on this problem, not merely for Hesi, but for the southern Canaanite area generally. The sixth season at Tell elHesi is scheduled for 14 June to 31 July 1979. Work will continue on both the Iron Age remains on the summit of the acropolis and the Early Bronze Age structures in the lower city. As in every season, volunteers are actively sought to participate in the excavation and in the educational program which is an integral part of the project.2

NOTES

'John E. Worrell was the original Project Director for the Hesi Expedition, followed by D. Glenn Rose beginning in 1975. Lawrence E. Toombs was Archeological Director through 1977. Philip J. King was the Administrative Director for the first two seasons, and Kevin G. O'Connell, S.J., has filled that position since 1973. Many others, too numerous to name individually, have served as Field or Area Supervisors, scientific specialists, support staff, and volunteers over these five seasons. The following institutions have been or currently are members of the Tell el-Hesi Consortium: Ashland Theological Seminary (Ohio), College of the Holy Cross (Massachusetts), Consortium for Higher Education-Religious Studies (Ohio), General Theological Seminary (New York), Hartford Seminary Foundation (Connecticut), Lutheran Theological Seminary (Ohio), Oberlin College (Ohio), Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (Illinois), Smith College (Massachusetts), The Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, Wake Forest University (North Carolina), Wartburg Theological Seminary (Iowa), and Wilfrid Laurier University (Ontario). Financial contributions or valuable support services have also been provided by Christian Theological Seminary (Indiana), Golden Gate Baptist Theological

180

Seminary (California), Harvard Semitic Museum (Massachusetts), Phillips University (Oklahoma), Weston School of Theology (Massachusetts), and various individual donors. In addition, financial grants have been received in different seasons from The Canada Council (1970), The Smithsonian Institution (1970 and 1971), and the National Endowment for the Humanities (1973-75 and 1975-76). 2See the notice above in Notes and News, p. 137. Further details about the work of the various seasons may be found in the preliminary reports and other articles listed in the bibliography. The first three volumes of final publications on Phase One (1970-75) are in the final stages of preparation. These and future volumes will appear in a series of excavation reports under the sponsorship of the American Schools of Oriental Research. A chart summarizing the stratigraphic sequence at Tell el-Hesi as it is currently understood appears on p. 181. The authors wish to thank Lawrence E. Toombs, D. Glenn Rose, Michael D. Coogan, and H. Thomas Frank of the Hesi Staff who reviewed earlier drafts of this article and made many helpful suggestions for its improvement.

DECEMBER 1978

Characteristics

Period

Date

I

Modern

A.D. 1948 and after

II

Late Arabic

Not yet known

Muslim cemetery in Fields I, V, and VI.

III

Late Arabic

Not yet known

Pits, hearths, packed-earth surfaces and fragmentary walls, probably associated with agriculture and/or stock-raising, in Fields I and VI.

IV

Hellenistic

3rd-lst cent. B.C.

Three substrata, badly damaged by graves and trenching. Only in Field I.

Stratum

Sub-stratum or Phase

Israeli military trenching in Fields I and VI, reaching from the present surface to Stratum IV levels in Field I.

IV-A

Cultural decline marked by much pit digging. Many pits filled in at end of period.

IV-B

Stone-constructed building and agricultural surfaces. Drain of IV-C filled up. Some pit digging.

IV-C

Brick building on partial stone foundation. Stone-built drain with water catchment. Many Persian pits filled in at beginning of substratum.

V

Persian

6th-4th cent. B.C.

Four substrata in Fields I and III.

V-A

Square, brick Building 1.126. Latest use of brick Structure 31.058. Numerous deep pits, mainly for grain storage. Persian-period burials in decayed top of three-phase wall in Field III.

V-B

Building 1.126 used as underground chamber. Structure 31.058 in use. Disappearance of V-C agricultural residues. Multiple resurfacing and use of flagstones and cobbles. Continuation of three-phase wall in Field III?

V-C

Founding of Building 31.058. Agricultural residues and outside surfaces. Continuation of three-phase wall in Field III? Extensive building activities cutting into earlier remains south of Wall 41.162. Casemate-like building in southeast quadrant. Open-air surfaces to the northwest. Three-phase wall constructed in Field III?

V-D

Iron II

VI

6th cent. B.C.

Relatively poor house construction on a brick platform in Field I, Areas 41-51.

ASH (probably the result of the Babylonian destruction of the city) 8th-6th cent. B.C.

Four substrata in Field I.

VII-A

7th-6th cent. B.C.

House 51.098. Southern defenses of VII-D still in use. Northern portion removed by V-D construction.

VII-B

8th-7th cent. B.C.

Brick-built house with Pit 51.124 in the south. Southern defenses of VII-D still in use. Northern portion removed by V-D construction.

VII-C

8th-7th cent. B.C.

Building preceding Pit 51.124 in Field I, Areas 41-51. Large courtyard building in Areas 32-22. Southern defenses of VII-D still in use.

VII-D

8th-7th cent. B.C.

Construction of consolidating walls, glacis, and southern defense/ erosion-control system which continued in use to the end of Stratum VII.

Iron II

VII

EB

Phase 1

EB III

27th-24th cent. B.C.

Patches of cobbles, some of which overlie EB Phase 2 wall system in Field VI.

EB

Phase 2

EB III

27th-24th cent. B,C.

Chambered wall systetn in FieldVI with domestic structures abutting it on the north. Brought to an end by massive destruction?

Phase 3

EB III?

?

Patches of cobbles underlying the EB Phase 2 surfaces in Field VI. Relation to the Phase 2 wall system uncertain.

Phase 4

?

?

Fallen brick and plaster surface in FieldVI, Area 13. Essentially unexcavated.

EB EB

Chalco-

lithic

Chalcolithic

About

3200B.C.

Chart of the Stratigraphic Sequence at Tell el-Hesi.

Field III: circular structurein Area 5 and pits in Area 3.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amiran, R., and Worrell, J. E. 1976 Hesi, Tel. Pp. 514-20 in Encyclopedia of Archeological Excavations in the Holy Land II, ed. M. Avi Yonah. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Bliss, F. J. 1894 A Mound of Many Cities or Tell el Hesy Excavated. London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Coogan, M. D. 1975 A Cemetery from the Persian Period at Tell el-Hesi. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 220: 37-46. (Numbers 220-221 of the Bulletin have also appeared as Essays in Honor of George Ernest Wright, ed. E. F. Campbell, Jr., and R. G. Boling. Missoula: Scholars Press for the American Schools of Oriental Research [1976].) Koucky, F. L. forth- The Present and Past Physical Environment of Tell coming el-Hesi, Israel. In Tell el-Hesi: The Site and the Expedition, ed. K. G. O'Connell, S. J. Excavation Reports of the American Schools of Oriental Research: Tell el-Hesi 1. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. O'Connell, K. G., S. J. 1977 An Israelite Bulla from Tell el-Hesi. Israel Exploration Journal 27: 197-99 and pl. 26:G-H. O'Connell, K. G., S. J.; Rose, D. G.; and Toombs, L. E. 1977 Tell el-Hesi, 1977. Israel Exploration Journal 27: 246-50 and pl. 37:E. 1978 Tell el-Hesi, 1977. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 110: 75-90 and pls. 5-9. Petrie, W. M. F. 1891 Tell el Hesy (Lachish). London: Palestine Exploration Fund. Rose, D. G. 1976 Eglon (City). 2. Tell el-Hesi? Pp. 252-53 in The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible Supplementary Volume, ed. K. Crim, et al. Nashville: Abingdon.

1977 The 1977 Season at Tell el-Hesi. American Schools of Oriental Research Newsletter 1977-78, No. 3: 4-5. Rose, D. G., and Toombs, L. E. 1975 Tell el-Hesi. 1975. Israel Exploration Journal 25: 172-74 and pl. 18:A-B. 1976 Tell el-Hesi, 1973 and 1975. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 108: 41-54 and pls. 1-5. Rose, D. G.; Toombs, L. E.; and O'Connell, K. G., S. J. 1978 Four Seasons of Excavation at Tell el-Hesi: A Preliminary Report. Pp. 109-49 in Preliminary Excavation Reports: Bdb edh-Dhrac, Sardis, Meiron, Tell el-Hesi, Carthage (Punic), ed. D. N. Freedman. Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 43. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. Stager, L. E. 1971 Climatic Conditions and Grain Storage in the Persian Period. The Biblical Archaeologist 34: 86-88. Stewart, R. B. forth- Archeobotanic Studies at Tell el-Hesi 1973. Economic coming Botany. Toombs, L. E. 1971 Tell el-Hesi. Israel Exploration Journal 21: 177-78. 1974 Tell el-Hesi, 1970-71. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 106: 19-31 and pl. 1-6. Worrell, J. E. 1970a The Expedition to Tell el-Hesi: A New Joint Project. American Schools of Oriental Research Newsletter 1969-70, No. 8: 1-4. 1970b Tell el-Hesi: Mound of Many Surprises. American Schools of Oriental Research Newsletter 1970-71, No. 5: 1-4. 1974 Tell el-Hesi. Israel Exploration Journal 24: 139-41. Worrell, J. E., and Toombs, L. E. 1971 Tell el-Hesi. Israel Exploration Journal 21: 232-33. Wright, G. E. 1971 A Problem of Ancient Topography: Lachish and Eglon. The Biblical Archaeologist 34: 76-86.

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182

DECEMBER1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago

Disease, Bible and Spade The history of the human race is closely interwoven with the history of disease. Paleopathological examination of fossil bones has clearly demonstrated the immense antiquity of disease, which reaches back into remote periods of the earth's history. For the peoples of antiquity it was a phenomenon of great personal and social significance, being uniformly associated with the operation of malignant spirits and demons. In the ancient world the office of the physician was generally the prerogative of the priesthood, and the numerous incantations which have survived on clay tablets and in manuscript form testify to the place which they held in medical function because of their supposed ability to meet disease at the spiritual level at which it was thought to originate. From 1867 in Egypt, numerous papyri were discovered which contained material of a medical nature, these documents being of particular importance because they drew upon sources which originated in the remote past. Of these the Edwin Smith papyrus, published by J. H. Breasted in 1930, is probably the most important because it shows that the priestphysicians paid attention to the diagnosis and treatment of ailments in a more rational and scientific manner than the common stress on Egyptian magicoempiricism has led us to believe. The Ebers papyrus was discovered at Thebes and dated c. 1550 B.c. It contains a number of incantations along with extensive recommendations for medical treatment and surgical intervention. The Hearst papyrus, found in Upper Egypt in is 1899, largely a duplication of the Ebers papyrus, and

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

along with the Kahun medical papyrus, brought to light by Sir Flinders Petrie in 1889, and the Greater Berlin Papyrus, comprises the most important documentary evidence extant on disease in ancient Egypt. But even more interesting are the actual postmortem examinations which have been performed on mummies excavated by archeologists. The work of such men as Sir Marc Armand Ruffer, G. Elliot Smith and F. Wood Jones has shown that many of the diseases from which the ancient Egyptians suffered existed in a disconcertingly modern form. Thus poliomyelitis, rheumatoid arthritis, tuberculosis, variola, Pott's disease, and many others have been demonstrated on necropsy. Though archeological material of this kind is not so abundant in Mesopotamia as in Egypt, the excavator has not gone wholly unrewarded in this respect. The Gilgamesh Epic contains an interesting mention of "head illness" which may be either malignant tertian malaria, or erysipelas, whilst the disease which Gilgamesh himself acquired was perhaps of a syphilitic nature. The Code of Hammurabi throws important light on the struggle for dominance between magic and empirical therapy. Certain sections of that Code lay down the regulations for the proper conduct of medical practitioners in an attempt to organize medical services on a rational basis. Scales of fees were established, and malpractice was punishable by summary amputation of the offending physician's hands. That the battle against the dominance of magic was not wholly won even by Hammurabi is seen in the fact that, whilst the Code separated empirical medicine as far as possible from its magical background, incantations were still required as adjuncts to therapy. When we come to the Bible we may be disappointed at the notable lack of archeological evidence for the diseased conditions which are mentioned, especially in the older literature. The most important contribution to medical thought and practice was the uncompromising disavowal of the suzerainty of magic as found in the Mosaic Law. Apart from that there was nothing in the way of organized therapy, since the Hebrews believed that health and sickness came alike from Jehovah, so that one's physical condition was correlative to one's spiritual relation to God. One of the ancient records of Israelite life contains an account of a disease whose nature was unsuspected for several centuries. The narratives of I Samuel 5ff., speak of a plague of great mortality, spreading rapidly along lines of communication, and afflicting the victims with inguinal swellings. The mention in the text of rodents makes it possible for us to identify this disease as the dreaded bubonic plague, the scourge of the ancient world. The affliction is conveyed to man by the rat-flea (Pulex cheopis), and spread by droplet infection with a short incubation period. The

185

work of Professor Garstang at Jericho throws interesting light on the place which rodents may well have had in the spread of disease in antiquity, as he found the skeletons of several species of rats in the ruins of that city. One of the most popular techniques for releasing a supposedly imprisoned disease-demon during Neolithic times was that of trephining. Its use was apparently confined to Western Europe, for the Chinese, Hindus, Greeks and Romans do not appear either to have recognized its value, or to have employed it in any form of therapy. The procedure consisted of boring a hole in the skull of an immobilized patient, a sharp flint being used for the operation. As many as five holes on one skull have been demonstrated, suggesting that the disease was either epilepsy, or intermittent functional neurosis in a female. In 2 Kings 20:7, the writer mentions a prescription by Isaiah for use on a boil (shekhin) from which Hezekiah was suffering. The treatment appears to have consisted of the local application of a poultice compounded of figs, probably over-ripe, pressed together to form a dressing. ... The fact that recovery followed symptomatic treatment suggests that Hezekiah was suffering from staphylococcal infection, rather than a more serious condition such as diabetes mellitus.

186

In a veterinary text from Ras Shamra, on the North Syrian coast, we find a similar prescription for an ailing horse, whose symptoms include excessive neighing. The text prescribes a cake of fermenting figs and raisins, compounded in a flour base, which was to be fed intranasally to the horse.' The administering of drugs through the nasal passage is a technique commonly used at the present day on humans and animals alike when access through the mouth is restricted for some reason. There are many unsolved problems connected with the diseases of the Bible, and it is probable that in the future the spade of the archeologist may resolve some of them. At all events, the knowledge which we now possess concerning diseases amongst the ancient peoples makes at least one aspect of their existence remarkably up to date.

R. K. HARRISON Huron College, London, Canada (BA 16.4 [1953] 88-92) 'C. H. Gordon, Ugaritic Literature (1949), p. 129, text 55, lines 2830; text 56, lines 33-5.

DECEMBER 1978

Book Reviews The New Kingdom, Vol. II in Ancient Egyptian Literature, A Book of Readings, by Miriam Lichtheim. xiv + 239 pp. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, (paperback, 1978); $3.95. Egypt's New Kingdom, comprising Dynasties 18-20 (ca. 1570-1085 B.C.), was the era of empire par excellence. Under the energetic leadership of the early 18th-Dynasty kings, the Egyptian empire reached its greatest extent in history, extending from Napata down in the Sudan to the Euphrates River in the northeast and encompassing all of the land of Canaan. Political and economic relations between Egypt and Palestine were extensive during this period and are reflected in contemporary Egyptian literature. New Kingdom literature - especially poetry - also exerted considerable influence on the development of later Hebrew literature. Thus, a basic knowledge of this Egyptian literature is important for anyone who wishes to understand not only the relationship of Egypt to Palestine in the second half of the 2nd millennium B.C., but also the important role which Egypt played in the evolution of Old Testament literature. In the past thirty years several English-language anthologies of Egyptian literature have appeared, of which the best known is Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton University Press, 1950; 3rd edition, 1969), edited by James B. Pritchard. Miriam Lichtheim has now published an excellent two-volume selection of Egyptian texts in English translation, with volume I (1973; paperback edition, 1975) covering Old and Middle Kingdom literature, and volume II (1976; paperback edition, 1978) covering New Kingdom literature. In terms of the wide scope of the texts, the quality of the translations, and the very modest price of the paperback edition of this work, this anthology is one of the best such books now available. Over forty texts appear in volume II. Many of them are of great relevance to biblical studies. Several, for example, are concerned with Egypt's military and political relations with Palestine. The most important of these are the Megiddo section of the Annals of Thuthmosis III, the Kadesh Inscriptions of Ramesses II, and, of course, the famous Poetical Stela of Merneptah in which the first and only mention of Israel in Egyptian texts appears. In addition, there is the Report of Wenamun, the chronicle of an Egyptian priest whose journey up the Levantine coast at the very end of the New Kingdom confirms the decline of Egypt's empire in this area. Other texts of some significance to biblical studies are: the Instructions of Amenemope, a document whose parallels with sayings in the Book of

BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST

Proverbs reflect literary contacts between Egypt and Israel; the Tale of the Two Brothers, with its clear similarity to the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife; the hymn of Akhenaten to the Aten, with its parallels to Psalm 104; and various examples of Egyptian poetry whose structural features have often been cited because of similar phenomena in Hebrew poetry. The individual texts are accompanied by prefatory remarks, a bibliography of the text (including previous translations), and short textual notes. The excellent translations reflect the latest philological and historical research by Egyptologists. This is particularly valuable for Old Testament students and scholars, who normally do not have any academic training in the Egyptian language and thus must rely on translations of the original documents. The general reader will be impressed with the clarity and smoothness of the translations. And, finally, all will be thankful for the eminently reasonable price of $3.95 for this book. JAMES

M.

WEINSTEIN

Cornell University

Israelite and Judean History, edited by Johm H. Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller. The Old Testament Library. xxxi + 736 pp. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977; $25.00. With histories of Israel by Noth, Bright, de Vaux, and Herrmann readily available to an English speaking audience, one must ask whether there is need for another 700+ page book on the same topic? The editors of Israelite and Judean History have answered that question by producing a unique volume which fills a significant void in biblical studies and in the Westminster Old Testament Library series. What distinguishes this book from other biblical histories is the fact that it is a handbook and a composite work. The editors charged themselves and twelve other scholars "(1) to survey and evaluate the written and archaeological evidence pertinent to the period, (2) to indicate the historical issues which have emerged during the past scholarly discussions of this evidence, and (3) to reconstruct as much of the historical outline of the period as possible" (p. xv). The results are presented in an introduction and ten chapters each of which presents a bibliography of the significant and recent literature, surveys the scholarship pertaining to the period, summarizes the state of the most important questions, and presents the author's interpretation of the history of the period. The contents are The History of the Study of Israelite and Judean History (J. H. Hayes), The Patriarchal Traditions (W. G. Dever and W. M. Clark), The Joseph and Moses Narratives (T. L. Thompson and D. Irvin), The Israelite Occupation of Canaan (J. M. Miller), The Period of the Judges and the Rise of the Monarchy (A.

189

D. H. Mayes), The Davidic-Solomonic Kingdom (J. A. Soggin), The Separate States of Israel and Judah (H. Donner), Judah and the Exile (B. Oded), The Persian Period (G. Widengren), The Hellenistic and Maccabean Periods (P. Schaifer),and The Roman Era (A. R. C. Leaney and J. Neusner). The format which requires only occasional cross-references to other sections of the book allows each chapter to be read as a self-contained unit. This is helpful for readers who want an up-to-date treatment of a single historical period, but it means that the editors have had to tolerate some repetitions (e.g., discussion of Noth's deuteronomic history) and differences of opinion (e.g., the historical value of the biblical texts). However, such traits are bound to emerge in a cooperative publication, and Hayes and Miller have struck a happy balance between firm editorial control and tolerance for diversity in interpretation. They have preserved both the unity which the integrity of the subject matter and of the book dictates and the authors' freedom which the

advancement of scholarship requires. Their concern for the latter may be illustrated by Irvin's assertion that the David narratives and all the narratives of the pentateuch "are radically irrelevant as sources of Israel's early history" (p. 212). Issues such as this deserve a fuller treatment than can be given in a few lines of a single volume, but allowing them to be raised indicates that the editors have produced a challenging and provocative treatment of current biblical history. Although each chapter deserves to be evaluated separately, Dever's treatment of second millennium archeology, Miller's exposition of the issues surrounding the settlement, and Soggin's discussion of the rise of David merit mention for the skillful manner with which they summarize earlier scholarship and integrate it with the author's own contribution. These and other sections will win the book a place in everyone's biblical library. JAMES W. FLANAGAN

University of Montana

JERUSALEM SCHOOL RECEIVES GRANTS The Charles E. Merrill Trust has made a grant of $20,000 to the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. The grant will be used to support three kinds of activity. The Institute's library will be able to purchase much-needed new works for its collection. The grant will also enable Director Albert Glock to institute a series of lectures and other program activities by which the Institute's scholars and others will share their knowledge of Palestine's cultures and peoples with a mixed public of colleagues and lay persons. Lastly, a

190

Merrill Fellowship will be awarded in 1979-80 for work at the Albright Institute. The fellowship will include room and board at the Institute for ten months (valued at $3,500) plus a cash stipend of $1,500. Another gift of $2,000, to be put toward fellowship expenses at the Jerusalem center, has been received from the Helena Rubenstein Foundation of New York. All ASOR members and friends will appreciate the help signified by these acts of enlightened generosity.

DECEMBER 1978

Colophon

THIS PLACE RUMORD

TO HAVE BEEN SODOM

might have been. Certainly these ashes might have been pleasures. Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Places remark this place. Isn't it plain to all that these mounds were palaces? This was once a city among men, a gathering together of spirit. It was measured by the Lord and found wanting. It was measured by the Lord and found wanting, destroyd by the angels that inhabit longing. Surely this is Great Sodom where such cries as if men were birds flying up from the swamp ring in our ears, where such fears that were once desires walk, almost spectacular, stalking the desolate circles, red eyed. This place rumord to have been a City surely was, separated from us by the hand of the Lord. The devout have laid out gardens in the desert, drawn water from springs where the light was blighted. How tenderly they must attend these friendships or all is lost. All is lost. Only the faithful hold this place green. Only the faithful hold this place green where the crown of fiery thorns descends. Men that once lusted grow listless. A spirit wrappd in a cloud, ashes more than ashes, fire more than fire, ascends. Only these new friends gather joyous here, where the world like Great Sodom lies under fear. The world like Great Sodom lies under Love and knows not the hand of the Lord that moves. This the friends teach where such cries as if men were birds fly up from the crowds gatherd and howling in the heat of the sun. In the Lord Whom the friends have named at last Love the images and loves of the friends never die. This place rumord to have been Sodom is blessd in the Lord's eyes.

Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field. Copyright ? 1960 by Robert Duncan. Reprinted by permission of New Directions.

192

DECEMBER 1978

George H. Forsyth and Kurt Weitzmann

THE SAINT

OF MONASTERY AT CATHERINE MOUNT SINAI

The Church and Fortress of Justinian: Plates

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OF SAINI S A-I cMOcNASTERYAT MoLN I

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In a barrenvalley hemmed in by jaggedmountains, the sixth-century Byzantine Emperor Justinianbuilt a monasteryon the spot where God hadspoken to Moses througha burning bush, and in the shadow of Mount Sinai on which Moses had received the Tables of the Law. Today, fourteencenturies later, a handfulof Greek monks still tend an altarat the site of the BurningBushand carryon the quiet and lonely details of the austere life. This volume is a recordof the architecture,mosaics, and wall pAintingsof the monastery, and the productof fourarchaeologicalexpeditions conducted jointly by the University of Michigan,the University of Alexandria,and PrincetonUniversity. With450 color and black-and-white plates

The University of Michigan Press P.O. Box 1104 Ann Arbor,Michigan48106

$45.00

The encounter

of

a

giant

among

scholars

William Foxwell Albright had an impact on biblical studies in the United States matched by none. In an enormously active life of eighty years he witnessed, instigated, or participated in the emerging of an academic discipline in which his name has become a household word. From a modest beginning, it was during his directorship that the American School became a universally respected center of learning and research. It is not an intellectual history of Albright's scholarship, but it is a chronicle of his life. Nobody can question that this biography is a labor of love. What greater tribute can be given to William Foxwell Albright as a great human being. HANS GOEDICKE BASOR

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 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. It should be read by all those who seek to know the roots of contemporary biblical scholarship.

The life story of this greatest biblical archaeologist of modern times is based on data obtained from his voluminous published works, from numerous interviews with relatives, colleagues and friends, and from the rich private correspondence to which the authors had access. A wealth of material is presented in the compass of less than 450 pages, giving us not only the life story of a great orientalist, but also a glimpse of the climate prevailing during the half century in which Dr. Albright played an influential role in biblical and archaeological studies. Hence the book can be highly recommended, and for many years to come it will rank among the biographies of famous scholars.

EDWARD F. CAMPBELL

SIEGFRIED H. HORN

BA

Andrews University Seminary Studies

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In our day, many voices are heard claiming to know the secrets of biblical prophecy, and many books have been written to guide the faithful into an understanding of the meaning of the last days, and the signs which are seen on all hands as pointing to the end of the age. This book on prophecy is meant for all those who are interested in such matters, millions of believers, and especially those who are confused and disturbed by what they heard and read about the fulfilment of prophecy, especially in these times. Here is a calm, courageous guide through the intricacies of Scripture, and especially the prophetic literature of the Old and New Testaments. In this hardhitting series of essays on. the leading figures and their books of biblical interpretation, Professor Dewey Beegle takes on all comers, without fear or favor, and shows how each of them succeeds or fails in what he or she sets out to do. Dr. Beegle himself stands squarely in the main stream of biblical exegesis and employs the tried and tested tools of historical and linguistic interpretation. Not everything he says will be convincing to everyone, and serious scholars can and do differ about the interpretation of difficult passages. That is as it should be. This is not the final word on anything, but it is a current word, a serious word, and a valid word about the issues and problems which challenge men's and women's minds, and try their souls. DAVIDNOELFREEDMAN University of Michigan

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ANALECTA ORIENTALIA 49. FISHER L. R., Ras Shamra Parallels: Texts from Ugarit and the Hebrew Bible. Vol. I (1972), XXIII, 535 p. 50. FISHER L. R., Ras Shamra Parallels: Texts from Ugarit and the Hebrew Bible. Vol. II (1975), XIII, 508 p. Vol. III: in preparation. BIBLICA ET ORIENTALIA

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JANUARY ISSUE OF INTERPRETATIONtakes a new look at primary T HE issues in Old Testament prophecy. The writers are scholars whose work on

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