The Biblical Archaeologist - Vol.37, N.1

24 Pages·1974·2.39 MB·English

by  American Schools of Oriental Research

The
t ,
Biblical
Archaeologist
Publishedb y
The American Schoolso f Oriental Research
126I nmanS treet, Cambridge,M ass. 02139
;ii~i~~iiiii;;ii ..........
(cid:127):::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :ii::::::::::
... .... .... ....
::::::::::::::::::::::::::
i:ii:(cid:127): i::i i~:2::ii(cid:127)(cid:127):ik:i iii~:~j iii~
(cid:127) :(cid:127):(cid:127)(cid:127):i:(cid:127)::(cid:127):(cid:127):
. ......
... ... .. ... ... .. ... .. ....... .........
..
..... .......
............................
Now
...... ....... ..... ....... .
....................... . ... .... .... .. .... ..:. ... .. . .... . .... .... . .... ... . ... . .. .. ... ... .. .. . . .. . ... . . . . .. .. .. . .i.~ . . ....!!
.............................
........ ....................
.................................
................................
Volume 37 No. 1 March,1 974
2 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 37,
The Biblical Archaeologist is published quarterly (March, May, September, December)
by the American Schools of Oriental Research. Its purpose is to provide readable, non-technical,
yet thoroughly reliable accounts of archaeological discoveries as they relate to the Bible. Authors
wishing to submit unsolicited articles should write the editors for style and format instructions
before submitting manuscripts.
Editors: Edward F. Campbell, Jr. and H. Darrell Lance, with the assistance of Floyd V. Filson
in New Testament matters. Editorial correspondence should be sent to the editors at 800 West
Belden Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60614.
Art Editor: Robert H. Johnston, Rochester Institute of Technology.
Editorial Board: G. Ernest Wright, Harvard University; Frank M. Cross, Jr., Harvard Uni-
versity; William G. Dever, Jerusalem; John S. Holladay, Jr., University of Toronto.
Subscriptions: $5.00 per year, payable to the American Schools of Oriental Research,
126 Inman Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139. Associate members of ASOR receive
the BA automatically. Ten or more subscriptions for group use, mailed and billed to one address,
$3.50 per year apiece. Subscriptions in England are available through B. H. Blackwell, Ltd.,
Broad Street, Oxford.
Back Numbers: $1.50 per issue, 1960 to present: $1.75 per issue, 1950-59; $2.00 per issue
before 1950. Please remit with order, to the ASOR office.
The journal is indexed in Art Index, Index to Religious Periodical Literature, Christian Periodi-
cal Index, and at the end of every fifth volume of the journal itself.
Second class postage PAID at Cambridge, Massachusetts and additional offices.
Copyright by American Schools of Oriental Research, 1974
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, BY TRANSCRIPT PRINTING COMPANY
PETERBOROUGH, N. H.
Contents
The Horned Altar of Beer-sheba, by Yohanan Aharoni .... .............. 2
Life in the Diaspora: Jews at Nippur in the Fifth Century B.C.,
by Michael D. Coogan 6
......................................................
The Works of Amminadab, by Henry O. Thompson and Fawzi Zayadine .......... 13
"Biblical Archaeology": An Onomastic Perplexity, by D. L. Holland ..............19
From the Editor's Desk: A Note of Gratitude and an Announcement ........... .23
Cover: A horned incense altar from Megiddo. Photo courtesy of the Oriental Institute, University
of Chicago.
The Horned Altar of Beer-sheba
YOHANAN AHARONI
Tel Aviv University
Until now, the altar of the Arad temple was the only altar for burnt
offerings of the First Temple period discovered by archaeologists; it was
described in The Biblical Archaeologist six years ago (Vol. 31 [1968], 19-
21 and Fig. 14). It was a square structure of five cubits, standing three
cubits high (cf. Exod. 27:1), built of clay and small undressed stones, in
accordance with the biblical law (Exod. 20:25, etc.). On its surface was
a large flint slab surrounded by two plastered runnels, and there were
no traces of horns at its corners. However, the Arad altar was covered by
a white plaster which was not preserved at the corners. It is possible,
therefore, that the altar originally had horns made of clay and plaster,
which were broken off with its destruction and burial.
This theory now becomes plausible with the discovery of the stones
of a large horned altar in the 1973 season at Tel Beer-sheba. Unlike the
Arad altar, this one was not preserved in situ but its stones were found
1974, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 3
re-used as part of a repaired wall of the storehouse complex of Stratum
II, belonging to the 8th century. This section of the wall (see Fig. 3)
was rebuilt with well-smoothed ashlar blocks of calcareous sandstone, a
harder substance than the common limestone used in the Beer-sheba
buildings.
I "s.
Le/
AM:j
#4p
:,WI
Fig. 1. The horned altar from Beer-sheba as reconstructed; some members are missing, but the
height is correct.
The four altar horns were found arranged one beside the other in
the wall, three intact and the fourth with its top knocked off. Their in-
terpretation as altar horns is assured by their similarity to the horns of
the small incense altars found in Megiddo (cover). Other similarly
worked ashlar blocks were found above these horns in the same wall, as
well as in the area nearby, one of them on the slope outside the gate.
After the stones were reassembled, it was apparent that, except for
all four horns, only about half of the altar stones had been discovered.
Their arrangement, shown in the figure above, is unlikely to be the orig-
inal one, but we were able to reconstruct its height with certainty. There
are stones of two different sizes, indicating that the altar was constructed
of three layers; from this we may conclude that its height was about 157
cm. (ca. 63 inches), measuring to the top of the horns. This is the mea-
surement of exactly three large (royal) cubits, similar to the height of
the altars at Arad, the Tabernacle (Exod. 27:1) and probably the orig-
inal altar of the Solomonic temple (2 Chron. 6:13).
4 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 37,
Unfortunately, the width of the altar cannot be reconstructed with
certainty. The combination of two horns constitutes approximately the
same measurement as its height, i.e. a square of three cubits. This is the
minimum size, however, because additional stones may have been be-
tween the horns. It is therefore possible that its size was a square of five
cubits, like the altars at Arad and those described in the biblical ref-
erences just mentioned.
ml
R?
Wl~ 11l Z ~:~
X, .9-WIV
0S, AL~ "'A
.44
Mw, ?~
Fig. 2. Engraved decoration of a twisting snake on one of the altar stones.
All stones are well-smootheda shlar masonry,w hich seems to stand
in contradiction to the biblical law that the altar should be built "of
unhewn stones, upon which no man has lifted an iron tool" (Josh. 8:31,
etc.). This ancient tradition evidently was disregarded at Beer-sheba;
alternatively,w e could suppose that the law was taken literally and the
dressing was done with tools of bronze or stone instead of the common
iron. One stone has a deeply engraved decoration of a twisting snake
(see Fig. 2), an ancient symbol of fertility widely dispersed throughout
the Near East.T he symbolo f a snakew as veneratedi n Israel from Moses'
times (Num. 21:8-9) and the bronze serpent was worshipped in the
Jerusalem temple until the days of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:4).
The horned altar is frequentlym entioned in the Bible. Though the
meaning of the horns is nowhere explained (some scholarsb elieve that
they were substituted for original massebots tanding on the corners of
1974, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 5
the altar), they were considered to be the holiest part of the altar. They
are mentioned as the first item in its construction (Exod. 27:2; 38:2);
on them the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled (Exod. 29:12; Num.
9:9; etc); to cut them off desecrated the altar (Amos 3:14). Twice we
hear that when a refugee "caught hold of the horns of the altar" he ob-
tained the right to asylum (1 Kings 1:50; 2:28).
N- p
Q- M-AAL--
I.,. ............
.... .... .
COW~
oil .::_
Fig. 3. Stones of the altar as found, re-used in a wall of a store-house from the last years of the
8th century B.C.
Sometimes, incense altars were equipped with horns (Exod. 30:2),
the best examples having been found at Megiddo. It is now clear that the
shape of their horns is an imitation of the shape of those of the large
altar for burnt offerings, which was the central edifice in the courtyard
of a temple.
Discovering the altar at Beer-sheba was a highlight of the excava-
tion, but no great surprise for us. In my essay on the Arad temple, I
developed the hypothesis that there was an institution of royal border
sanctuaries, and, consequently, that the most promising site for the dis-
covery of another Israelite temple would be the tell of biblical Beer-sheba
(BA, 31 [1968], 32). It took us five years to find it, but now with the dis-
covery of the altar we have confirmation of a temple's existence. The goal
of the coming season will be to locate the temple's place in the city plan.
The beautiful altar indicates that the temple must have been a far more
elaborate structure than the simple shrine at Arad.
6 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 37,
One other factor, the demolition of the altar, is of much interest. The
storehouse in which the altar stones had been re-used was destroyed at
the end of the 8th century B.C.E. (Stratum II), probably during Senna-
cherib's campaign in 701. It appears that the repair of the building and
the concomitant dismantling of the altar took place in the reign of Heze-
kiah. This is a most dramatic corroboration of the religious reform
carried out by him, as expressed in the harsh accusations of Rabshakeh
in 2 Kings 18:22: "But if you say to me, 'We rely on the Lord our God,'
is it not he whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to
Judah and to Jerusalem, 'You shall worship before this altar in Jeru-
salem'?"
Life in the
Diaspora
Jews at Nippur in the Fifth Century B.C.
MICHAEL DAVID COOGAN
St. Jerome's College, The University of Waterloo
In 594 B.C., some three years after the deportation of King Jehoiakin
and several thousand craftsmen and military and court officials to Baby-
lonia, Jeremiah advised the exiles: "Build houses to live in, and plant
gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters....
Multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the peace of the city to which
I have sent you, and pray for it to Yahweh, for in its peace you will have
peace" (Jer. 29:4-7). Apart from the fragmentary cuneiform records
listing rations provided to Jehoiakin in Babylon,' little is known of the
life of the deportees of 597 and 587 B.C. But they and their descendants
must have followed Jeremiah's advice, to judge from a remarkable
collection of documents dating from the following century in which
Jewish names frequently occur.
This collection, the most important single source for our knowledge
of the Babylonian Diaspora during the Persian period, was found in 1893
during the excavations at ancient Nippur by the University of Pennsyl-
vania.2 It is a corpus of some seven hundred and thirty tablets dating
from the reigns of Artaxerxes I (464-424 B.C.) and Darius II (424-404
B.C.). Known as the Murashu documents, after the head of the banking
family whose records they were, these tablets, although prosaic in content,
have proven to be of considerable interest for orientalists. In the follow-
1. See WV. F. Albright, BA, 5 (1942), 49-55.
2. For a brief account of the discovery of the tablets, see H. V. Hilprecht, Explorations in
Bible lands During the 19th Century (1903), pp. 408-12. Most of the tablets were edited by
Hilprecht and A. T. Clay, and were published as Vols. IX and X of The Babylonian Expedition
of the University of Pennsylvania, Series A (1898 and 1904), and as Vol. II, Part I of Publica-
tions of the Babylonian Section of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania (1912). Hence-
forth we shall cite these volumes as IX, X, and UM, respectively.
1974, 1) THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST 7
ing pages we will examine some of the documents in which Jews are
mentioned in order to sketch the life of the exiles in Nippur.
The Murashu documents are written in Akkadian cuneiform. On
many of them a brief inscription written in Aramaic with ink has also
been preserved. Called dockets or endorsements, these inscriptions usually
contain a brief summary of a document and the name of the person with
whom the banking firm was doing business; they served as filing labels.
(The practice of enclosing a tablet in a clay envelope inscribed with a
duplicate contract had been discontinued by the Neo-Babylonian period.)
Most of the tablets also have seal impressions (or occasionally fingernail
marks) of one or more of the principals and witnesses (see Fig. 4).
:~ :
-4~a~e
":I
;a~I .*~i
Fig. 4. Seals of two of the witnesses on the left edge of UM 148. (Photograph courtesy of Dr.
A. Sjoberg, Curator of the Tablet Collections, University Museum, The University of
Pennsylvania.)
The names of the principals and witnesses in the various contracts
show that Nippur was a cosmopolitan city under Persian rule. Apart from
the large number of individuals with Babylonian names there were also
many Persians, Medes, Egyptians and West Semites; the last group in-
cluded Jews with biblical names such as Hanani, Shabbatai and Jona-
than.3 An initial problem is to isolate those individuals and families
which were Jewish. The fact that a name which occurs in the Murashu
documents is also attested in the Bible is not significant, for many of the
names in use in Jewish communities at various periods are not exclu-
sively or identifiably Jewish. As we shall see, many of the Jews at Nippur
had names which we can identify linguistically as Aramaic or Babylonian;
but such names were naturally not restricted to Jews. Notorious biblical
examples of this practice are Esther and Mordecai, whose names are
derived from the Babylonian deities Ishtar and Marduk; further exam-
3. In one of the Aramaic endorsements this name is written in alphabetic script as ylzwntn;
its cuneiform spelling was ya-(a)-hu-!-na-ta(n)-nu.
8 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 37,
ples of this kind of religious syncretism are discussed below. In addition,
because of the close relationship between Aramaic and Hebrew, it is often
impossible to identify the language of a name more precisely than to say
that it is West Semitic. This is especially true in the case of nicknames
and abbreviated names, generally called hypocoristica. Despite such am-
biguities, however, we can isolate with certainty several Jewish families
in the Murashu documents by combining linguistic and genealogical
data.
One example is the family of Tob-yaw. The only published contract
in which it occurs is X.118, unfortunately too fragmentary to translate
here (see Fig. 6); from what remains of the tablet we can establish the
membership of this family as follows:
Tob-yaw
Bana-yaw Bil)iya Zabad-yaw Zalina Hanani
Ba'l-yaw Minahhim (?)
Four of these names, Tob-yaw, Bana-yaw, Zabad-yaw and Ba'l-yaw, have
as their second element the form of the divine name Yahweli used
-yawz,,
in final position in personal names at Nippur in this period (and else-
where in other periods, notably in the Samaria ostraca some three cen-
turies earlier); these individuals were certainly Jews. The biblical
equivalents of their names are Tobiah, Benaiah, Zebadiah, and Bealiah.
It is thus reasonable to assume that the rest of the family was Jewish as
well. Of the remaining names, Hanani is a common hypocoristicon of
names such as Hananiah; Minahhim is the equivalent of biblical Mena-
hem; Zabina is Aramaic, but was used by Jews, for it is one of the names
of the returning exiles (Ezra 10:43); and Bibiya is an Akkadian name
meaning "baby" which occurs in the form Bebai in Ezra 2:11.
In IX.454 several Jewish principals have jointly made a contract with
the sons of Murashu:
Yadi'-yaw, the son of Bana-'el; Yahu-natan, Shama'on and
Ahi-yaw, the sons of Yadi'-yaw; Satur, the son of Shabbatai;
Baniya, the son of Amel-nana; Yigdal-yaw, the son of Nana-
iddin; Abda, the son of Apla; Nattun, the son of Shillim; and
all their partners in Bit-gira; spoke freely to Ellil-shum-iddin,
the son of Murashu, as follows: "Rent to us for three years the
Mares' Canal, from its inlet up to its outlet, and the tithed field
4. This tablet, along with twenty-four others, most of them previously unpublished, was found
in a trunk belonging to II. V. Hilprecht's wife after her death, and was re-edited by Oluf Krtick-
mann in 1933. Other translations of the Murashu documents into Eng'ish may be found in J. B.
Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (1969), p. 221, and in
D. W. Thomas, Documents from Old Testament Times (1961), pp. 95-6. The most complete study
of the tablets is G. Cardascia, Les archives des Mura~su (1951).
1974, 1) THE BIBLICAL. ARCHAEOLOGIST 9
which is on this canal, andl the field which is to the left of the
Milidu Canal, and the three marshes which are to the right of
the Milidu Canal, except the field which drinks (its) waters
from the Ellil Canal; and we will give you annually 700 kur of
barley according to the standard measure of Ellil-shum-iddin,
and, as an annual gift, 2 grazing bulls and 20 grazing rams."
The rest of this typical contract quotes Ellil--shum-iddin's acceptance of
the terms, describes the mutual responsibilities of the lessees, and con-
cludes with the usual list of witnesses and the date formula (year 36 of
Artaxerxes, or 428 B.C.).
By combining the data of this tablet with those found in another
tablet, IX.25, we can reconstruct the following genealogy:
Bana-'el
Yadi'-yaw
Ahi-yaw Yahu-natan Pada-yaw Shama'on
Four of the names of the members of this family are Yaliwistic, and all
have close biblical parallels from the post-exilic period (as do most of
the Jewish names in the Murashu documents): compare, respectively,
Benaiah, Jedaiah and Jediael, Ahijah, Jehonathan, Pedaiah and Shimeon.
Of the other principals in the contract, Yigdal-yaw is certainly
Jewish; his name, like its biblical parallel Igdaliah, means "Yaliweh is
great". It is interesting to note that his father, Nana-iddin, has a Baby-
lonian name. Nattun and Satur may be Jewish, but the genealogical and
linguistic evidence is not conclusive.
In this document Yadi'-yaw, his sons and his partners have agreed to
lease certain properties with irrigation rights from the Murashu firm for
three years at a rate of 700 kur of barley per year plus a small surcharge
(the bulls and the rams). Since money was not generally used for local
transactions in Nippur, payment in kind was the ordinary medium of
exchange used by tenant farmers such as Yadi'-yaw and his group. A kur
was about four bushels, so they were renting a sizeable acreage. The land
was not owned by the Murashu firm itself, but belonged to absentee
landlords who invested their property with the firm in exchange for a
guaranteed rate; the firm was thus primarily a middleman.
Neither in this tablet nor in any of the others which mention iden-
tifiable Jewish individuals is there any hint of discrimination or of re-
striction on religious or ethnic grounds;5 Jews are engaged in the same
5. It is worthy noting, however, that none of the scribes of the more than 500 published
tablets has a non-Babylonian name. This is doubtless due to the indigenous character of the
scribal schools, as well as to the difficulty of acquiring fluency in the Neo-Babylonian syllabary.
10 THE BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST Vol. 37,
types of contractual relationships, at the same interest rates, as their
non-Jewish contemporaries at Nippur. Thus, MIan-dan-yaw, the son of
Shulum-babil (UM 148), was a sheep and goat herder; 'Aqab-yaw,,the
son of Bau-etir (UM 27 and 89), was a date-grower; Zabad-yaw, the son
of Hinni-bel (UM 208), was a fisherman. Another (?) Zabad-yaw was a
partner of Abi-yaw, the son of Shabbatai (UM 218), in the cultivation of
"bow-land" (bit qashti); this was a type of fief originally granted to
military colonists of the Persian Empire who had to provide an archer
and/or his equipment to the army in exchange for the grant of land.
(Similar fiefs were called "horse-land", "chariot-land", etc.)
: :::::::j::::: ?::xS:i :?::::.::I::j::~8: :~v5:i: :":2 ~, i
....... .......:..:.. :,.+ :,+ ;Bs~8i
::iii:
:iiiii..l.i~iii1
:
:::::-:::1::::1ii~ii
:::::;iiiii(cid:127)4i ?':':' '
i iiiiiii iiiii(cid:127) ,!(cid:127):,ii
Fig. 5. X.65, which mentions Yishrih-yaw, the son of Pilli-yaw on lines 9 and 14 of the
obverse (left). Shabbllatai andl his brother \linyamin occur amnong the witnesses on line 4
Cofo llethctei onrse, versUe In ie(rrisgithyt ). (lPhotogra'1p1h' he cIoIunri\tveesrys ityo f olf) rP. enAn.s ylSvjainiribae.)r g, Curator of the Tablet
(cid:127)1useuLIn,
At least two Jews had relatively imnportant positions. In UM 121
El-yadin, the son of Yadi'-yaw, is associated with Rimut-ninurta, a mem-
ber of the Murasihu firm, as co-creditor in a transaction. The reason for
this association is not clear; since tile tablet was not written at Nippur
but at Sin-belslltlun, it is possible that El-yadin was tile representative
of tile firm in tlhat (unidentified) locality. Secondly, in X.65 (see Fig. 5)
and UMA2 05, Yishlril)-yaw, tile son of 1Pilli-yaw, is mentioned; the former
tablet speaks of him as the: clief officer (shak/u) of the serfs of the royal
treasury, apparently a or rotating position, since the latter
temlporary
tablet, written tile following year, ascril)es tile same title to a certain
Ismun.
As we have observed, not a few of the Jewislh exiles mentioned in the
Muraslhu documents have non-Yahlwistic names. Since tlhey occur in
legally binding documents, they must Ilave been tile names actually used
by their bearers, at least in public. Both extra-biblical and ibiblical sources