Cuneiform tablet found south of Temple

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

12 July 2010

In the Jerusalem Post it is reported today by Ben Hartman that the fragment of an Akkadian cuneiform tablet dating to the 14th century BCE, was found by the Hebrew University Excavations by the workers of the Excavator Eilat Mazar.

"The find was uncovered in a fill taken from the Ophel area, which lies between the Old City southern wall and the City of David. The Ophel digs are being carried out by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Arch[a]eology, through funding from US donors Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman of New York".

The Ophel area was excavated over the years by various teams and excavators and thanks to these donors, excavations can furnish us with further finds.

"According to Mazar, the fragment was discovered over a month and a half ago during wet sifting of the Ophel excavations", the report reads.

A careful archaeologist allocate the century [14th] to a particular level of excavation, based on the ceramic shapes that are found in the same level. Of course the cuneiform's orthographical and linguistic features is also a big help.

"Hebrew University Prof. Wayne Horowitz, a scholar of Assyriology, deciphered the script with the assistance of his former graduate student Dr. Takayoshi Oshima" the report continues.

This is very important. I am not aware of dr. Oshima's capabilities but I am aware of a very good Japanese Assyriologist dr. Akio Tsukimoto from Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan, who excavate every year north of Bethshean. It would be an added plus if he can also look at the piece this summer.

"The tiny fragment is only 2 cm. by 2.8 cm. in surface area and 1 cm. thick and appears to have once been part of a larger tablet."

The signs were deciphered by Horowitz to read you, you were, them, you do? and later.

Cuneiform tablets in Israel

In case people think that Israel is void of any cuneiform tablets, they need to read more. Currently, I am aware of over 70 fragments or tablets of cuneiform writing existing in Israel. It is all over the country. Megiddo, Bethshean, Jericho, Tel el-Hesi, Aphek, Taanach, Hazor, Shechem and a longer list of other sites as well. There may not have been as yet hundreds found in an archive as we have in Ugarit, Boghazkoi, Nuzi, Mari, Babylon, Sippar, Larsa, Nippur, Drehem and a host of other places in Mesopotamia and Syria. But, fragments and texts do exist. This cuneiform tablet from Jerusalem is a welcome addition.

Context of this cuneiform tablet

It is not speculation when you bring relevant texts dealing with the same area as the find together and start to think diagonal, horizontal and vertical around the text and through the text.

Firstly, the nations that were using cuneiform script in the 14th century were the Hittites, Hurrians, Kassites and people living in Ugarit. Some even talked about the Ugarit letter from Aphek.

Biblical evidence:

Canaanite culture/religion adopted

When Joshua died in 1405 BCE, a few years later, the Israelites adopted Canaanite culture and worshipped Baal and Astoreth. (Biblical chronology is a subject that cannot be just guessed. One has to follow the Masoretic Text or Hebrew text painfully strict and literal. Thus we used 1 Kings 6:1-4 as the pilot text from Solomon's fourth year as 970 BCE to calculate the exodus in 1450 BCE and from this point everything else was just mathematics. Dogmatism should be given flexibility since solar and lunar calendars did bring with it its own problems as compared to a Julian reckoning). At Ugarit was a Dagon temple and religious mythical texts of Baal were found in a scribal rectory near area H24 on the Acropolis. The period under discussion is the time of Niqmadu II who reigned in the time of Suppiluliumas (Hittite ruler). He had a pro-Hittite policy but close to the death of Suppiluliumas or thereafter, he had a anti-Hittite policy (see RS 19.68 ca. 1346 BCE, for an exact date of the death of Suppiluliumas).

The presence of Baal (1405-1403 BCE) can be seen in Judges 1:11: Israelites started to worship the religion of the Canaanites in this period.

Various nations lived side by side with Israel

Various nations are said in the book of Judges to have remained among the Israelites after the end of the conquest. In Judges 3:3 it reads: "Namely the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon from mount Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath"

It is then clear that the Amorites, Hittites, Canaanites, and three other groups identified as Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites lived among the Israelites. This is clear from the Masoretic Text recording of the situation dating to the period shortly before the first Judges in 1403 BCE. Thus, between 1405-1403 BCE these nations could be found in Israel.

These nations included the Jebusites. The old name for Jerusalem was Jebus. It must have been a cosmopolitan city very similar to that of Ugarit: Akkadian Kassites (see Ras Ibn Hani texts), Hurrians, Hittites, Amorites, Egyptians, Mycenean travelers, Cypriotic merchants. In the case of Jerusalem there were also Israelites or Habiru. Mixed indeed. This cuneiform tablet written in the language and script of Hittites, Hurrians, Ugaritic Akkadians, Kassites is a witness of any of these groups in Jerusalem or Jebus.

Baal religion in LB Canaan

Various cuneiform texts that were found in Palestine, provide evidence of the presence of Baal worship in the country. Dating to the fifteenth century BCE by the early excavators, the following tablet is evidence:

1. Tell el-Hesi

Source for the Tell el-Hesi tablets:

Frederick Jones Bliss, A Mound of Many Cities: Tell el-Hesi Excavations (London: A. P. Watt & Son, 1894): 50-58; 184-187 for the photos of the tablets.

line 1. [a-na am]ila raba ki-be-ma Ba-al (?) . . .

line 1. to the officer say: Baal(?). . .

2. Taanach letters 5 and 6 in their lines 3 are the words:

line 3: ^dBa'lu napishtata-ka li-is-sur

line 3: May the god Baal protect your life

Asherah religion were also in Late Bronze Canaan

Evidence for this is found at Taanach. A fifteenth century BCE dated tablet found between 1903-1904 at Tell Taanach reads:

Source for the Taanach cuneiform texts:

William F. Albright, "A Prince of Taanach in the Fifteenth Century B.C.", PEQ 94 (1944): 12-27, for this text, see pages 16-20. Compare also the rendering of the same text by Friedrich Hrozny in Tell Ta'annek, in the section as an appendix at page 113f. See also plates I and III. As Albright pointed out, these texts were translated also by Ugnad, Ebeling, and Maisler (see Albright p. 16 at footnotes 16-19).

The text reads:

line 21. ^dA-shi-rat lim (?)-ni-nu

line 21. of goddess Asherah, let her tell our fortunes

Perizzites towards their identity:

It is not clear to scholars who the Perizzites were. This researcher suggest that the answer should be looked for in the direction of the Egyptians. A cuneiform letter from Tell Balata 1378 reads:

line 1. a-na Pe-ra-ash-she-na

(or Pe-ra-rum-she-na VAN WYK 2005)

(Albright Bi-ra-ash-she-na)

line 1. To Pirashena (or Pirazina)[or Pe-ra-rum-she-na = Pa-Ra-em-Heb of Beth-sean, so VAN WYK]

(Albright reads? Bi-ra-ash-she-na)

Dating of the Shechem cuneiform text:

Looking at all options, we tend to think the text dates to 1407 BCE and that is the date of the text from Tell Balata.

Source for the Shechem cuneiform text:

Franz M. Th. De Liagre Bohl, "Der Keilschriftbrief aus Sichem (Tell Balata); F. M. Th. De Liagre Bohl, "Anhang. Die bei den Ausgrabungen von Sichem gefundenen Keilschifttafeln", ZDPV 49 (1926): 321-327, plates 44-46 with photos of both Texts and drawings by Bohl. For a convenient history of American excavations at this tel and also the history of the site in Biblical context, see the article of the Seventh Day Adventist Biblical Archaeologist cited by Bohl (p. 22) Siegfried H. Horn, "Shechem, History and Excavations of a Palestine City", JEOL 18 (1965): 284-306. See also W. F. Albright, "A Teacher to a man of Shechem about 1400 B.C.", BASOR 86 April 1942: 28-31, especially 30-31.

Copy of the Shechem cuneiform text:

Franz M. Th. De Liagre Bohl, "Der Keilschriftbrief aus Sichem (Tell Balata)", F. M. Th. De Liagre Bohl, "Anhang. Die bei den Ausgrabungen von Sichem gefundenen Keilschifttafeln", ZDPV 49 (1926): 321-327, plates 44-46 with photos of both Texts and drawings by Bohl.

Van Wyk notes and wraps it up:

1. The name of Pe-ra-ash-she-na may be connected to a high official that was either king or under the king of Beth-sean in this researcher's understanding. The way it works is that the cuneiform sign ash can also be read phonetically as rum. This will give the form Pe-ra-rum-she-na. This name shows strong resemblances to the name of an Egyptian king or official mentioned on a stela that was set up in the Mekal temple (a temple build for Thutmosis III who died in 1450 BCE during the Exodus of Israel out of Egypt). The temple was build by the father of the stela designer. The stela read: Top: "Mekal, the [great] god, the lord of Beth-sean". This is above the figure of the god Mekal. The five lines at the top reads: "Made for the builder Amen-em-Apt, true of word, by his son, Pa-Ra-em-Heb". The lower register of the stela contains a prayer to Mekal: "An-offering-which-the-king-gives to Mekal, the great god, that he may give thee life, prosperity and health, keen vision, honour and love, a prosperous mouth, the footstep [in its] place, [until] thou reachest a venerated state in peace. For the ka (double) of the favored of his god, the builder, Amen-em-Apt, true of word, [and his son Pa-Ra-em-Heb]".

2. The name of Pa-Ra-em-Heb can be seen on Plate 33 of Rowe's publication of Beth-sean (see below for the bibliography under Beth-sean). It is the last two registers on the right of the top of the stela. The bird at the top is the determinative article pa. Underneath it is the sign for Ra, a circle. Below it is the letter m or em that looks like a hairpin. Below it is the Heb. The closest we could come to this form is the word for hippopotamus in Middle Egyptian. However, in that word there is a vowel representation of a bird in the middle between the /h/ and the /b/ and this word does not have it. It may still be the same word but instead of a hippopotamus pictographical sign at the far right or last register, the sign for "ruler" is found there. This imply that Pa-Ra-em-Heb may be the king of Beth-sean or ruler after his father. The name of the city Beth-sean can be seen on the stela on the top left, namely the last two registers, the bottom three characters and the top of the last as the /s/ and /n/ with the pictorial sign for city.

This brings us to the suggestion that Pe-ra-rum-she-na is the cuneiform phonics of the Egyptian name Pa-Ra-em-Heb. Shechem may have been subordinate to Beth-sean during the period that the letter of Shechem was composed. The period that we expect Beth-sean to have suffered turmoil would be in the reign of Thutmosis IV (his last five years between 1410-1405 BCE). This is the biblical time of the major conquest of Canaan. Another turmoil of a lesser kind, was the one that preceded this conquest of the Habiru and that is the period after the death of the Napoleon of Egypt, Thutmosis III in 1450 BCE during the Exodus. Rowe indicates that the evidence from Beth-sean displays a drop in presence of Egypt during the days of Amenhotep II and Thutmosis IV, thus between the level when Thutmosis III build the Mekal temple in which this stele was found and the level VIII of Beth-sean when Amenhotep III was present at the site. Scholars say that the evidence indicate that Mesopotamia was more present during this period. It may have been a flourishing time for the Hittites, Cassites and Hurrians after the death of Thutmosis III. Which of the two turmoil periods of Egyptian colonialism of Palestine it was, cannot be said with surety. Both can equally apply, provided that Pa-Ra-em-Heb was a ruler at Beth-sean for a long period even during the time of Thutmosis IV in 1410-1405 BCE. During the conquest, Beth-sean's ruler will not be able to keep his promises to the subsidary cities under his responsibility.

Perizzites as loyalists to the Egyptian Pe-ra-ash-she-na

The name Perizzites in the book of Judges, may have a connection to loyalists of this Egyptian official (Pe-ra-ash-she-na or Pe-ra-rum-she-na or Bi-ra-ash-she-na or Pa-Ra-em-Heb). Phonologically, chronologically and geographically all these sets of data are related so that it opens the way to consider this conclusion more seriously.

Source for the new cuneiform tablet:

1. http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=181135

2. Ben Hartman, "Oldest written document ever found" Jerusalem Post 12 July 2010.

Qui vadis with this cuneiform tablet?

One has to see if it belongs to any of those nations we have listed above. What genre is the text, a dictionary [lexical list text], a grammar? It would be a plus to the science if Horowitz would ask Tsukimoto to also look at the text.