Canaanite Ceramics II

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

20 March 2010

When we look at the ceramics of Canaan we are looking at the territory today called Israel. There was a time when it was called Palestine and a time when Philistines thought it was their country. One misunderstanding we need to clear: the modern day Arabic population of this territory is not the ancient Canaanites. The anti-colonialism theology is a opportunistic political device by adherents of Liberation Theology, a theology that has no place in the Bible or Word of God at all except outside that Revelation in humanistic pursuits. The concept Canaanites is an umbrella term that included a variety of nations squatting in this territory at the time of Israel's arrival in 1410 BCE. The ceramics point to that as well. There are Mycenean I and Mycenean II ceramics all over the country. There are Mycenean IIIA ceramics and also ceramics from Egyptian. Modern opportunists are trying to argue that the Scripture of God is just a humanistic jewish attempt to propagandize their socalled illegal seizure of Canaanite territory, a territory that they wish to connect to modern peoples struggling in that area for land grabbing or land grabbed from. There is no link. Arabic nations are coming from their nomadic desert life in the Transjordanian areas. They filled the vacuum after the peoples of the past moved out or back to their own countries. Amorites, Hittites, Egyptian loyalists and a host of other nations were squatting in Canaan at this time of Israel's arrival.

In the previous discussion on Ceramics from Canaan we talked about Late Bronze IB ceramics ending in the time of the end of the life of Amenhotep III.

Late Bronze IIA Ceramics from the time of 1390-1295 BCE

With these ceramics, Israel are already on the highlands of Judea having Canaanites laboring for them but others fled out of the country to Ugarit. Canaanites included Amorites, Hurrians, Hittites, Egyptians and a host of other nations. The Habiru or SA.GAZ peoples (war tablets of Amarna dating to the time of the last years of Thutmosis IV 1410-1405 BCE) gives us the description of the 5 year war and turmoil in the country during the Joshua and Caleb years. The war lasted five years since in 1405 BCE Caleb asked his inheritance at Hebron. The migrants, merchants and other opportunists moved out of Canaan to Ugarit and elsewhere at this time. We must remember that the Exodus in 1450 BCE with the death of the Napoleon of Egypt, Thutmosis III at a high age of over 70 years old, was the greatest achievement with the help of God at the Red Sea that any nation in the Levant, suffering for 400 years under Egyptian colonialism and oppression can remember or have witnessed. The legacy of Israel's achievement sent shock waves throughout the Levant, as the books of Joshua and Judges tell us.

That is one of the reasons why the fame of Israel or the habiru spread all over the Levant as far as the two rivers. The Hittites and Hurrians heard of it. In the rift that existed between the Hurrians and Hittites, the Hurrians were pro-Egyptian and the Hittites were anti-Egyptian. With the success of Israel, the Hittites under general Suppiluliumas could kick-start their own superiority with emotional support from Israel. That is why Israelite law and Hittite laws display much in common. Various legal comparisons were made by scholars in the past and my prof. Charles Fensham, student of W. F. Albright, taught me the same. He was convinced that Hittite historiography and Israelite historiography had much in common.

There were imports during this time from Mycenean IIIA and Egyptian ceramics with the leaf pattern, lotus leaves and blue, red, white, black and yellow colors. We must remember that when the Israelites left Egypt, they were constantly wishing to go back to Egypt and they had Egyptian cultural baggages that they brought with them to Canaan. The golden calf at Sinai is one example.

The bowl was an open rounded one with a disc base and a ring base. It was a carinated bowl. It had a slight fold with concave disc bases which was only in the South (Amiran 1969: 129 no. 14).

Kraters have painted handles which was painted between the top and bottom of the handle.

The cooking pot has a naturalistic stylization with an everted triangular rim or an everted elongated triangular rim.

The storage jars were commercial jars like ones in Areopagos and Athens.

Commercial ties with Canaan after the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, the highlands at least and the agricultural plains, were stimuli to increased economic opportunity. It appears the Greece mainland and even Egyptian merchants found a space to do business here. The social morphology of the country has changed and that freedom which came in this part of the world would attract those nations which use to suffer also under Egyptian colonialism and heavy tax paying in the past. Amenhotep III was a spender and had relations with Mesopotamia, Hittites, Kassites and other nations as the Amarna letters of him shows. He was constantly looking for a young girl to marry. The propaganda about his love for his wife and how he built her a lake was recorded on a huge scarab that was duplicated and distributed even in Canaan. In all probability these scarabs served as killers of gossiping about his many girls he received from his relations with other nations. He was also a spender of the wealth of Egypt stockpiled from their colonial years in the past. Also Ikhnaton spent the whole budget of Egypt by moving the capital to a newly created city. He was the hippy of Egypt of his time. Suffered from obesity, alcohol abuse, overeating (food in every room of his palace) and other psychological problems, like the desire for naked exhibition in public of his whole family on a balcony.

This period of ceramics ended during the time of Ramesses II. It was a quiet century from Egypt as far as wars and military actions are concerned. Ramesses II was the first who had problems with the Hittites and he moved by way of the Negev and Transjordan up to Bethsean, thus circumventing Israelite territory to attack the Hittites north of the Lebanon and Ante-Lebanon at Qadesh. He was a big liar of reality. Breasted gave us nice examples of that.

In Judges 3:30 and Judges 4:1 the period of the judge Ehud between 1346-1266 BCE is described as a rest period of peace and safety in Canaan for the Israelites.

Late Bronze IIB Ceramics dating to 1295-1175 BCE

When we enter this period, we are already deep into the period of the Judges. The period of the Judges starts already in 1403 BCE and rolled on to the time of Samuel the prophet.  In the year 1266-1246 BCE the oppression of Jabin was a problem for Israel. Deborah and Barak brought peace between 1246-1206 BCE but in 1206 BCE it was the Midianites who invaded from the far South into Israelite territory. They oppressed Israel between 1206-1199 BCE. Gideon was a judge between 1199-1159 BCE. This is the time this period's ceramics ended. 

Mycenean IIIB were imported into Canaan during this time.

The bowls were openrounded and straight and the disc base was concave form that predominates in this period. Now the flat base was uncommon.

The bowls were carrinated. It had an everted rim and carinated below the rim.

The krater's decoration was too elaborate style in decadence. The palm complete motif was used. The style was very imaginative.

The cookingpot was everted elongated with a triangular rim.

The storage jar was commercial similar to the ones from the time of Ramesses II in 1296 BCE from Tomb 356 at Deir-el-Medineh. The storage jars from the time of Ramesses II will be expected to enter Canaan since it was during the peace and tranquility period of Ehud's judge period. See supra.

The jars has a emphasized horizontal shoulders, the handle is from the shoulders. The base is thickened and strong and the rim is thickened and simple.

Iron Age IA Ceramics dating between 1175-1125 BCE

With this period we enter the time of the arrival of the Philistines. The ceramics that were imported during this time were the Mycenean IIIC style. Abimelech, Tola and Jair were the judges during this time in Israel (Judges 9:22; 10:2 and Judges 10:3).

The northern bowls were of course workmanship with thick walls and little ornamentation. There was a canal just below the rim with pointed bands which were hemispherical.

The Late Bronze legacies were a. carination, band, filled with triangles, small bar-handle).

The southern bowls had a metotopic division of the inside of the bowl. Amiran thought it was a survival of the Canaanite type like one find at Gezer. There was a degenerated horizontal handle which is peculiar of the Philistines.

In a lecture that Charles Adelmann gave at Ashkelon to us for the Harvard Excavations team of the Leon Levy excavations at Ashkelon, he explained on the 7th of August 1991 that the Mycenean ware did not come out of the void. When he looked at various persectives on the Mycenean ware: exterior view, profile view, interior view he could see that the exterior was spiral. The white and black bichrome was without a spiral in the Philistine ware but during the Late Bronze period there was a spiral at the bottom. He felt that the Mycenean ware blend the bichrome ware with the new ware.

The Mycenean ware appeared at Ashkelon after 1230 and increased during 1190 and 1175 BCE. In the lowest strata of field 38 lower, he found that the simple form and more complex form could be found but that the later form was bichrome Mycenean.

The Mycenean ware was the study of a Swedish excavator, A. Formart in the 1940's. He also studied Mycenean IIIC ceramics. He went through the pottery, established a typology and converted it to a story. He found Mycenean IIIA, IIIB and IIIC. The Mycenean IIIC had spirals, tongs etc. At Cyprus they found Mycenean IIIA, then a destruction layer, then Pottery Mycenean IIIB and then outside people with Mycenean IIIC.

The concept Philistines is not a term to denote a specific race or people although there were unified characteristics about them in excavations that turned up. Philistine was a derogative term (skel woord) used to talk about migrants who illegally squat in territory that is not theirs. The Bible knows of Philistines in the days of Abraham during the Early Bronze Period before 2000 BCE.

The work of Trude Dothan on Philistine ceramics and their appearance in Israel, should be taken seriously. She indicates from various sites in Canaan how a cultural diversity is displayed in the ceramics of the 13th to the 11th century BCE. We will include her diagram. It is very insightful showing the arrival of the Philistines. The movement was from North to South and from the Coastal land to the inner coastland to the Shephelah and then Hillside and that was between 1191-1085 BCE. There was Late Bronze Canaanite-Mycenean, Egyptian, Mycenean IIIC:1a and 1b pottery, Philistine pottery. The Mycenean IIIC:1 pottery were simple but the Mycenean IIIC:1b pottery was more elaborate. We will also add the diagrams we made of the results of Dothan's analysis. The article is to be found in Seymour Gitin, William G. Dever, "Recent Excavations in Israel: Studies in Iron Age Archaeology," AASOR 49 (1989). In 1991 I saw Trudy Dothan at the Albright Institute after meeting S. Gitin briefly (the then Director of the Albright Institute in Jerusalem).