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Highlightsof the next BA In "The EblaTablets-An InterimPerspective,"Robert Biggs, a scholar with considerable experience with ancient scripts addresses claims which have been made about the relevance of the Ebla documents to biblical narrativesand urges cautious estimation of the significance of the Ebla finds. Eric Meyers, a specialist in Judaic civilization,shows how recent study of the earliest synagogues elucidates cultural and religiouscurrents of the Talmudic period. J. Kenneth Eakins,a licensed pediatricianand professor of archeology, tells how skeletal remains help archeologists understandhuman development and diseases as well as the historyof specific populations.
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BIBLICAL( ARCHEOLOGIST .,
Editor
David Noel Freedman Associate Editor
HarryThomasFrank Editorial Committee
FrankM. Cross,Jr. Tikva Frymer-Kensky Sharon Herbert CharlesR. Krahmalkov John A. Miles, Jr. WalterE. Rast Production Manager
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William H. Stiebing is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, where he has taught ancient history and archeology since 1967. He has served as a staff member on excavations at Tell es-Saidiyeh, Jordan and Sarafand, Lebanon. Joseph Naveh is a foremost Israeli authority in the area of Iron Age Canaanite inscriptions. He teaches West Semitic Epigraphy and Paleography in the Department of Ancient Semitic Languages and in the Institute of Archeology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. James H. Charlesworth is Professor of Religion and the Director of the International Center on Christian Origins at Duke University. A specialist in pseudepigrapha, he has published several important studies on early Christian writings.
Moshe Dothan is Professor of Archeology and Chairman of the Department of Maritime Civilizations at the University of Haifa. Having had extensive archeological experience, he began in 1973 to excavate Akko, where he is the Director of the Akko Excavations Project, an interdisciplinary exploration of the ancient tell and harbor.
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Printed by Printing Services, The University of Michigan.
2
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
William G. Dever is Professor of Near Eastern Archeology and Chairman of the Department of Oriental Studies, University of Arizona. A leader in the field of Syro-Palestinian archeology, he has authored or edited several books and has published over 40 articles. He is the editor of the Bulletinof the AmericanSchoolsof OrientalResearch. Burton MacDonald is Associate Professor in the Department of Theology at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. He has excavated extensively in the Middle East throughout the past decade and is currently the Annual Professor at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan.
Biblical Archeologistis published with the financial
assistance of Zion Research Foundation, a non-
sectarian foundation for the study of the Bible and the history of the Christian Church.
Cover:Pioneersin Palestinian archeology:PNreRolandde Vaux, Sir W. M. FlindersPetrie, BenjaminMazar,G. Ernest Wright,AlbrechtAlt, Dame KathleenKenyon,and William Foxwell Albright.
BIBLICAL(, ARCHEOLOGIST
Winter 1980
William H. Stiebing
Volume 43 Number 1
7 The End of the MyceneanAge A closelookat thebreakdownof AegeanandMediterranean civilizations in the last centuries of the 2nd millennium B.C.
Joseph Naveh
The Greek Alphabet: New Evidence
22
The adoption of the Canaanite alphabet by the Greeks: new evidence suggests the need to revise traditional theories and traditional dates. James H. Charlesworth
The Manuscripts of St. Catherine's Monastery
26
A recently discovered hoard of ancient manuscripts provides scholars with new evidence to answer old questions. Moshe Dothan & Avner Raban William G. Dever
The Sea Gate of Ancient Akko
35
An examination of an important structure at an ancient city and the conclusions that we can draw from its remains.
ArcheologicalMethod in Israel:A Continuing Revolution
40
Excavations at Tell el-Maskhuta
49
The evolution and development of Syro-Palestinian or "biblical" archeology: an examination of the excavations and the excavators. Burton MacDonald
The first season of excavation at a site east of the Nile delta brings to light artifacts from several different periods of history. Biblical Archeologist (ISSN: 0006-0895) is published quarterly (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall) by the American Schools of OrientalResearch.Its purposeis to providethe generalreaderwith an accurate, scholarly, yet easily understandableaccount of archeologicaldiscoveriesand theirbearingon the biblicalheritage. Unsolicited mss. are welcome but should be accompaniedby a stamped, self-addressedenvelope. The American Schools of Oriental Research is no longer affiliated with the Center for ScholarlyPublishingand Servicesat Missoula,Montana.Address all editorial correspondence and advertising to Biblical Archeologist, 1053 LS&A Building,Universityof Michigan,Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Addressall businesscorrespondenceto ASOR, 126 InmanStreet, Cambridge,MA 02139. Copyright 0 1980 American Schools of Oriental Research. Annual subscription rate: $12.00. Foreign subscription rate: $14.00 (Americancurrency).Currentsingle issues:$4.00. Second class postage paid at Ann Arbor, MI 48106 POSTMASTER:Send addresschangesto Biblical Archeologist, 1053 LS&A Building, Universityof Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
Letter to the Readers Polemics and Irenics Notes and News Book Reviews
5 60 63
Keel, The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms (Pritchard). Colophon
64
4
BIBLICALARCHEOLOGIST/WINTER1980 3
Letter to
the
Readers
David Noel Freedman
For this number of BA academic and professional skills and the democratization we have a rich and varied of knowledge and intellectual skills, and the extension of menu, articles ranging all culture to a much larger population than had been true over the Near East, from in the past makes this a subject of perennial interest, Egypt to the islands of the especially since the process has never come to an end. At the other end of the chronological chain is the Mediterranean,from Akko in northern Israel to the third report by James Charlesworth on the manuscript mountains of Sinai. Some hoard at St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai. Along with deal with the minutiae of the first published photos of sample documents comes handwriting or the arti- an explanation of their potential importance for biblical facts of archeological ex- studies and the history of manuscript transmission in the cavation, others with the Ist millennium C.E. basic issues of historical In addition to these period pieces we have an causation or the guiding principles of archeological important contribution to the ongoing debate of the role research. of Near Eastern archeology (in particular, the way it is Burton MacDonald takes us back along an old trail practiced in Israel) and its relationship to the study of to the place from which the Exodus began according to the Bible by an acknowledged master in the field, the the biblical account. While the report of archeological current editor of our sister journal, the Bulletin of the activity at Tell el-Maskhuta is mainly negative regarding American Schools of Oriental Research, William G. the Late Bronze Age (latter half of the 2nd millennium), Dever. His observations and conclusions, based on the generally accepted period of the Israelite movement years of fieldwork, archeological research, and publicaout of Egypt, many useful data have turned up, and a tion, advance the discussion significantly and will evoke general picture of the site is becoming clear. thoughtful reflection in many quarters. We hope there William Stiebing deals with the same general period will be equally thoughtful response and invite our but far to the north, where the great Mycenean readers to join in the exchange of opinions and insights. civilization was coming to an abrupt end. His original hypothesis about this dramatic transition is a subject of discussion and controversy in classical circles, but it also has important bearing on the upheaval farther south involving the countries on the Mediterranean littoral. The alphabet which is very much with us today has its own remarkable history and can be traced back in recognizable form to the Middle Bronze Age. The emergence of the direct ancestor of the alphabet which is in familiar use all over the world can be dated to the same period, when the great cultural change took place, along with corresponding shifts both seismic and political throughout the eastern Mediterranean area. However, the question of the date when the alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenicians by the Greeks has been the subject of much controversy; now Joseph Naveh has come up with a new theory and a new date. We may be sure that this provocative thesis will provoke responses from scholars on both sides-the Phoenician and the Greek-based upon newly discovered inscriptions as well as those formerly known. In view of all the known contacts on this frontier between Semitic and Indo-European-speaking peoples, it looks as though this particular borrowing took place earlier rather than later in the Early Iron Age. The incalculable effect of the spread of the alphabet on literacy, communications, commerce, the development of new areas of learning, of
ja,?J
4
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
A;?e~
LU
Polemics &
Irenics
Mycenean or Canaanite? I was struck upon reading Ephraim Stern's article (BA 40 [1977] 89-91) at the striking resemblance between the LB temple found at Tell Mevorakh and the LB temple found at Mycene and cleared in 1968-69 by Lord William Taylour. Though smaller (5.1 x 4.2 m), the Mycenean temple has the following features in common with the Mevorakh temple: (1) a rectangular plan, to be sure, with a forecourt; (2) three column bases (instead of one); (3) a staircase in one corner; and (4) 17 clay snake figurines; cf. the bronze snake figurine of Mevorakh. Royal Buscombe Northwestern University I wonder if the presence of Mycenean and Cypriot pottery, in view of the striking parallels with the temple from Mycene, may mean that this was a structure built The Parahyba Inscription not by Canaanites but by settlers from abroad. Reports Concerning the "Phoenician text" mentioned by by Taylour have appeared in Antiquity 43 (1969): 91N. Rosenstein in the September 1978 BA (41.3, p. 85), 97; and 44 (1970): 270-79. please let me make the following observations. A. Harif, in "Coastal Buildings of Foreign Origin in Ladislau Netto first made this so-called "Parahyba Second Millennium B.C. Palestine," Palestine ExploraInscription" public in April 1873, but as early as 1875, tion Quarterly 110 (1978): 100-6, also calls attention to and then again in a letter to Ernest Renan in 1885, he the affinities between a number of MB buildings on the himself admitted that this inscription was actually a Palestine coast and Aegean structures. blatant forgery. Unfortunately, he never admitted that he was the forger himself (understandably); in fact, he Edwin Yamauchi went so far as to suggest that the then emperor of Brazil, Miami University, OH Dom Pedro II, Netto's great benefactor, was the forger. In a recent study by G. I. Joffily (Zeitschrift der Prof. Yamauchi is absolutely right in his comment, and Deutschen Morgenliindischen Gesellschqft 122: 22-36), evidently there is a striking resemblance between the the final verdict of the author reads: plans of the LB sanctuary at Tell Mevorakh and that of the resemblance was brought to my Mycene. In Whoeverhas the opportunityto readthe unusualpamphlet attention long ago-at the time of the excavation-by .fact, of LadislauNetto entitled Lettreai M. Renan will easily A. Mazar, and I do intend to deal with it in the detailed perceivethat the Phoenicianinscriptionof Parahybawas a ,final report. But it also should be pointed out that this trick of internationalprojection,perpetratedby Ladislau resemblance is limited to the temple'splan alone. All the Netto himself. . . cult objects, pottery vases, and other small finds are different. Almost all the pottery vases found at entirely It is, therefore, wasted effort to attempt to uphold Tell Mevorakh are local, excluding a small number qf the genuineness of the so-called Parahyba Inscription or imports and a few sherds qf Mycenean vases. to draw from it any kind of philological or historical Cypriot (The last were examined by V. Hankey, who dated them conclusions. to the 14th century, that is, the second phase of our Gabriela Martin has attempted to defend the good sanctuary.) The same is true of the small finds, all of faith of Ladislau Netto, claiming that he was the victim which have many and close analogies in the LB of a fraud. But even she does not deny that this Canaanite in Israel. temples inscription is actually a fake (Revista de Hist6ria 51, It is true that the snake appears in both places, but no. 102: 511-16). the one from Mycene is entirely different, while our snake [at Tell Mevorakh] is a common 'find in many P. J. Balduino Kipper, S.J. local (Hazor, Beth-shan, Timnah, and others). temples Rei Cristo Colegio It seems, therefore, that the snake as a cult symbol had S. Leopoldo, Brazil an important but independent role in both cultures. Commendation I had decided to discontinue my subscription to Biblical A rcheologist, but articles in two of the more recent issues have changed my mind, notably, "The Essenes" and Carol Meyers' "Women in Early Israel." I have been a subscriber since the first issue but have not been happy with the emphasis on site excavation reports. On reviewing my recent issues I have concluded that I was being unfair, that there are many excellent recent articles on more general topics.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
5
To sum up, we may say that although there may be a certain amount of Mycenean influence on the Tell Mevorakh sanctuary (which should be studied carefully), this influence is not traced among the finds which should be regarded as purely Canaanite. For this reason, it seems to me that our designation of the Tell Mevorakh sanctuary as "Canaanite" is still valid. Ephraim Stern Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University Conquest in the Middle Bronze Age? I read with great interest the article on the Negeb in the May 1976 BA (39, pp. 54-76). Dr. Aharoni put forth a theory that the Conquest may be represented in the Negeb by the end of the Middle Bronze Age. He wrote (p. 73): We thereforearriveat a most startlingconclusion:the biblical tradition associated with the Negeb battles cannot representhistorical sources from the days of Mosesand Joshua,sincenowherein the Negebarethere any remainsof theLateBronzeAge.However,thereality described in the Bible corresponds exactly to the situationduringthe MiddleBronzeAge, whentwo tels, and two tels only,defendedthe easternNegebagainstthe desert marauders,and the evidencepointstowardsthe identificationof thesetels withthe ancientcitiesof Arad and Hormah. Thus the biblical tradition preservesa faithfuldescriptionof the geographical-historical situation as it was some threehundredyearsor morepriorto the Israeliteconquest. It occurred to me to see if this would be true in other areas of the Holy Land. My attention turned immediately to Jericho, because it is the first city that one thinks of when recalling the Conquest. Dr. Kathleen Kenyon, who worked at Jericho, could not find the LB city of Conquest times. I looked to see if the MB city might have been destroyed by a cataclysm as described in the Bible. Dr. Kenyon, describing the destruction of the MB city of Jericho in her book Archaeology in the Holy Land, wrote (p. 117): At Jericho,the evidencefor the destructionis evenmore dramatic.All the Middle Bronze Age buildingswere violentlydestroyedby fire. The stumpsof the wallsare buiedin the debriscollapsedfromthe upperstories,and the faces of thesestumpsand the floorsof the roomsare stronglyscorchedby fire. It seems possible that the central part of the Holy Land could also fit Aharoni's pattern. But what about the North? It has been said that although the Conquest cannot be found in any other parts of the Holy Land, it can be demonstrated at Hazor. Indeed, there is a level from the Bronze Age that might be forced to fit the situation, but is there also a MB level?
6
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
Dr. Yadin writes in his book Hazor, the Rediscovery Citadel of the Bible, "Considering that the city a Great of was founded on a thick layer of ash (evidence that a fire had destroyed its predecessor at the end of the Middle Bronze period) . . ." (p. 37). The destruction of the thick ash layer showed that the MB city was destroyed by a great conflagration. I do not understand, but it is possible that the story of the Conquest may be archeologically represented by the end of the Middle Bronze Age. Marvin Arnold Luckerman Docent Skirball Museum Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles
William H. Stiebing The Dorian invasion has been accepted commonly as the cause of the collapse of Mycenean civilization. But recently this hypothesis has come under strong attack. Among other alternatives proposed is the possibility that this collapse was part of a general breakdown of society which took place not only in the Aegean but throughout the ancient Near East as well. The cause of this decline was not an invasion of outsiders but a series of catastrophic droughts, followed by economic collapse and social chaos.
THE END OF THE MYCENEAN AGE
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The 13th century B.C. witnessed the zenith of Mycenean civilization, but within a century, most major cities were destroyed. The 13th century B.C. witnessed the zenith of the Mycenean civilization in Greece. Elaborate palaces, often within citadels protected by massive Cyclopean walls, flourished at Pylos, Mycene, Tiryns, Iolkos, Gla, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens. Then, within the span of the succeeding century, all but Athens were destroyed. Many Mycenean sites were abandoned, and some areas of the Peloponnese were seriously depopulated. At those sites which escaped destruction or which were reoccupied in the 12th century, there was a marked decline in material civilization. The cultural unity which had existed in southern and central Greece during the Mycenean Age was succeeded by many localized developments (Vermeule 1964: 269-71; Desborough 1975: 658-60). What caused this devastation of the Mycenean culture? The traditional answer has been "the Dorian invasion." The concept of an invasion of the Mycenean realm by less-civilized groups of Doricspeaking Greeks seemed to account best for the distribution of Greek dialects in historical times. It was in keeping with Greek traditions about their own past. And, of course, it provided an explanation for the widespread destruction of Mycenean centers. In classical times the Greeks were aware that they were divided
Still undeciphered after 75 years of examination by scholars, the Phaistos Disk (preceding page) is a witness to the craftsmanship and artistry of the Bronze Age Greek writing systems.
8
into several distinct groups, each speaking a different dialect (Hainsworth 1967). According to modern philologists the main division was between the East Greek dialects (Attic-Ionic, Aeolic, and ArcadoCypriot) spoken in Attica, Boeotia, Thessaly, most of the Aegean islands, the coast of Asia Minor, Arcadia, and Cyprus, and the West Greek dialects (Doric and Northwest Greek) spoken in all of the Peloponnese except Arcadia, as well as in Crete, Aetolia, and Epirus. Most interesting is the existence of an Arcadian dialectal "island" in the West Greek-speaking Peloponnese. This East Greek dialect is very closely related to the dialect of faraway Cyprus. When scholars deciphered the Mycenean Linear B tablets and proved that they were written in an East Greek dialect similar to Arcado-Cypriot, the explanation of the dialect distribution in classical times seemed plain. A fairly uniform Mycenean dialect (sometimes called "Achean'")must have been spoken all over southern Greece. Then West Greek speakers (Dorians) invaded the Peloponnese and settled the coastal regions, leaving untouched a pocket of Mycenean survivors in the mountains of Arcadia and driving others to settle in Cyprus. Subsequently, other East Greek dialects developed out of the once-common Mycenean tongue (Chadwick 1975: 810-19). It is also possible that a threefold division of East Greek existed already in Mycenean times. If so, Arcado-Cypriot would have descended from the dialect spoken in the Peloponnese in Mycenean times (Desborough 1964: 245).
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
The Return of the Heraclids This explanation of the dialect distribution of classical Greece also seemed consistent with ancient Greek traditions concerning the Dorian invasion or, as the Greeks preferred to call it, the Return of the Heraclids. (The relevant sources are conveniently gathered together in Hooker 1976: 213-22.) There are some differences and contradictions in detail between various ancient accounts, but the outline of the story seems clear. Sometime before the Trojan War the sons of Heracles were driven from the Peloponnese by Eurystheus, king of Mycene. These Heraclids and their descendants wandered from place to place, sojourning for a time at Doris in central Greece. Thus, they came to be called Dorians. After one or more abortive attempts to invade the Peloponnese by way of the Isthmus of Corinth, the Heraclids finally mounted a successful naval attack across the Corinthian Gulf some two generations after the fall of Troy. They then seized control of much of the Peloponnese, replacing the old dynasties in Messenia, Sparta, and Argos. Some of the refugees from these areas fled to Achea, while others made their way to Athens whence they later continued on to Ionia in Asia Minor. The area of the Peloponnese, which tradition claims was conquered by the Heraclids, is the same area where the Doric dialect was spoken in classical times. It was also the heartland of the Mycenean civilization and the area most devastated by the wave of destructions at the end of the 13th century. The traditions of the Dorian
Some scholars believe that the Sea Peoples overran Greecedestroying Mycenean civilization-and then departed without establishing permament settlements. invasion, then, seemed to be supported by both linguistics and archeology-so much so that some scholars have used these traditions to supply "historical" details to the archeological picture of Late Bronze Age Greece (e.g., Hammond 1975: 678-96; Nichols 1975: 312-15; Stubbings 1975: 350-58). The Evidence of Archeology In recent years, however, the idea that the Dorian invasion brought about the end of Mycenean civilization has come under increasing attack. Study of archeological remains from the end of the Mycenean Age and the following Sub-Mycenean period have failed to turn up any features which can be attributed to the Dorians. The introduction of a new type of sword and of the fibula (an early form of the safety-pin) has been credited to the Dorians, but both are found in Mycenean contexts before the onset of the great disasters (Vermeule 1964: 279; Desborough 1975: 661-62; Hooker 1976: 144-46). Changes which did occur after ca. 1200 B.c.-the use of iron in place of bronze, cremation rather than inhumation of the dead, and single or double burials in rectangular, stone-lined graves ("cists") instead of multiple burials in chamber tombstook place gradually and do not seem to be related to one another (Hooker 1976: 147 and the table on p. 239). Iron was probably introduced into the Aegean from the eastern Mediterranean area rather than from the north (Desborough 1964: 25-26, 70-71). The origin of the new burial practices has not yet been settled, but it is unlikely that
both cist burials and cremation were introduced by one group of newcomers (Desborough 1964: 3740). Since cist burials were common in Greece during the Middle Helladic period (ca. 1900-1550 B.c.) and appeared sporadically even in the Late Helladic period (the Mycenean Age, ca. 1550-1100 B.C.), they may not have been due to outsiders at all. Finally, these new features appeared in Attica, which was not conquered, and in Boetia and Thessaly, where Dorians did not settle, and in the Dorian region of the Peloponnese. This fact is difficult to understand if these new cultural elements are used as indicators of the Dorian presence in Greece. A further problem is the fact that some areas of the Peloponnese occupied by Dorians in classical times seem to have been seriously depopulated for some time after the destruction of their Mycenean palaces. Did the Dorians destroy these sites, move on to points unknown, and then return at a later date and settle down? Tradition knows nothing of this. According to the Greek stories, the Dorian settlement immediately followed the overthrow of the old dynasties of the Peloponnese. This is one instance where the ancient traditions about the return of the Heraclids definitely do not fit the archeological evidence. The Evidence of Language Linguistic evidence supporting the Dorian invasion hypothesis is also not as strong as it initially appears to be. It once was widely believed that the Mycenean Greeks (East
Greek speakers) entered Greece from the north about 1900 B.C. while the Dorians remained in the northern homeland. Then, about 1200 B.c. the Dorians moved southward, destroying the Mycenean civilization and occupying the Peloponnese and Crete. However, as J. T. Hooker. has pointed out (1976: 171), "The differences between West Greek and East Greek were never so great as to inhibit easy communication between the two areas: a remarkable circumstance, if the Dorians had really lived in isolation from the Mycenean world for the best part of a millennium." In fact, linguistic evidence indicates that the various Greek dialects developed only after protoGreek speakers arrived in Greece. One of the many vocabulary items which Greek borrowed from the language of the aboriginal inhabitants of Greece was the word for the cypress tree. Cypress trees do not grow north of the Aegean basin except in a few specially sheltered areas. Thus, these trees were probably unknown to the protoGreeks before they arrived in Greece. They had no word for "cypress" and therefore borrowed the native name. But the Greek word for "cypress" differs in a characteristic way from dialect to dialect, indicating that the dialectal divergence occurred within Greece after the word was appropriated into proto-Greek (Chadwick 1976: 3). Study has also shown that the Doric dialect had some features in common with various East Greek dialects. For example, the form of Poseidon's name found in Laconia (a Doric area) was closely related to
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980 9
the form used in Arcadia (an East Greek area). And, in Doric-speaking Crete certain forms of the article were of East Greek type (Chadwick 1975: 814). Such shared features probably indicate a fairly long period of close contact between Doric and East Greek dialectsalmost certainly a longer period than the chaotic century or so during which the Dorians were supposed to be entering Greece and destroying the Mycenean civilization. East Greek elements in Doric possibly were due to the survival of the Mycenean tongue among peasants who were conquered, but not destroyed, by the Dorians. The speech of the lower classes gradually might have influenced that of the Dorian ruling class (Chadwick 1975: 813). But the opposite of this theory is also equally possible. That is, in the Peloponnese during the Mycenean Age, the East Greek dialect of the Linear B tablets might have been spoken only by a ruling aristocracy who dominated a Doricspeaking population. When Mycenean power collapsed, the Doric dialect of the majority of the population would have become dominant (Hooker 1976: 170-73). Proponents of the latter theory also argue that their reconstruction fits the Greek traditions better than the Dorian-invasion hypothesis (Hooker 1976: 172). Tradition emphasized that the Heraclids were driven from the Peloponnese but returned to resume their rightful role as rulers there. The Heraclids (or Dorians), then, were considered a part of the Mycenean world. Even Plato, whose version of the "return" (Laws, 682e-683e) was somewhat
10
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different from that of other sources, regarded the Dorians as Myceneans dispossessed of their kingdoms. Only Herodotus speaks of a Dorian movement from as far north as Thessaly (which was still part of the Mycenean culture area). The source and accuracy of his account of the stages in the migration (Histories, 1.56.3) cannot now be determined. In the same passage, however, Herodotus claims that the Athenians were Pelasgians (pre-Greeks) who became Greek only by adopting the Greek language and that the Dorians were "true" Greeks. This statement does not inspire much confidence in the accuracy of the rest of his account of the Dorian
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
Above: Map of the Greek dialects of the 8th century B.C.Opposite: The Citadel of
Mycene,excavatedby HeinrichSchliemann,was constructedprimarilyof huge blocks of limestone,roughlyshapedand packedtogetherwith smallstones and yellow clay. The monumentalstructures discoveredwithinits 6-m-thickwalls attest to Mycene'spositionas the centerof a majorpoliticaland commercialempire; the ruinedconditionin whichit lay for centuriesatteststo the thoroughnessof its decline. migration. If Herodotus is following some ancient tradition here, the context would seem to indicate that it is as likely to be a reference to the entrance of the earliest Greeks into Greece long before the Trojan War as it is to be an account of the
Could internal conflict have been responsible for the end of Mycenean culture? Some modern scholars think so. "Return of the Heraclids" at the end of the Mycenean era. Greek tradition, then, seems to have known nothing of a Dorian invasion from some area north of Greece. On the other hand, suppose that a subject Dorian population, whose native rulers had been displaced by East Greek-speaking dynasts, rose up, overthrew their masters, and placed Dorians on the throne once more. Would it not be natural for their traditions (the source of the later Greek accounts) to view the situation as a "return" of the rightful rulers (Hooker 1976: 172)? Unfortunately, this theory also has its problems. Many sites in Thessaly and Boetia were destroyed at the end of the Mycenean period, but these areas were never occupied by Dorians. A Dorian revolt might have been responsible for the collapse of Mycenean rule in the
Peloponnese, but what caused the destructions in other parts of Greece? And how could a peasant uprising succeed against the wellarmed Mycenean aristocracy and their almost impregnable citadels? Furthermore, the supposed East Greek ruling class would have comprised only a small minority of the Peloponnese's inhabitants; most of the population would have been Dorians. Yet the 12th-century devastation was not confined to palaces. Many ordinary habitation sites also were abandoned. The archeological evidence indicates that there was a drastic decline in the total population of the area (Desborough 1972: 19-20; McDonald and Hope Simpson 1972: 142-43; Tegyey 1974; Betancourt 1976: 4041). Neither the Dorian-revolt hypothesis nor the Dorian-invasion theory adequately explains this fact.
The Sea Peoples These various difficulties have led many Aegean archeologists to abandon attempts to blame the Dorians for the destruction of Mycenean civilization. But if the Dorians were not responsible, who was? Desborough, a leading scholar in this field, argues for a land invasion by unknown northern groups who "did not settle in any of the areas which they overran, but departed" to other lands or returned to the place whence they had come (1964: 224, 251-52; 1972: 22-23). Other writers, unwilling to believe in such ghostlike invaders, have linked the Mycenean catastrophes with contemporary upheavals in the Near East. The guilty parties in both instances, they claim, were groups of marauders called "the Sea Peoples" (McDonald 1967: 413-14; Finley 1970: 58-68).
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
11
Archeological evidence shows a massive devastation at the end of the Bronze Age in western Asia: most of the cities of Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine were destroyed
about 1200 B.C.
As early as the fifth year of Merneptah's reign (ca. 1232 B.c.) a Libyan invasion of Egypt was supported by five groups of outsiders-Sherden, Shekelesh, Akawasha, Lukka, and Tursha-described in the Egyptian account as "peoples of the sea" (Breasted 1906: sections 569 ff; Gardiner 1947: 196). Merneptah turned back this assault, but the Libyans renewed their onslaught in the fifth year of Ramesses III (ca. 1194 B.C.) and were joined by tribes called the Peleset and Tjeker (Edgerton and Wilson 1936: 30). However, an even greater danger appeared three years later when Egypt was attacked by a coalition of land and sea raiders who had already caused havoc in Anatolia and Syria: The foreign countriesmade a conspiracy in their islands. All at once the landswereremovedandscattered in the fray. No land could stand before their arms, from Hatti [= the Hittite empire], Kode [= Cilicia], Carchemish[= an importantcity in Syria], Arzawa [= a country in western Anatolia], and Alashiya [= probablyCyprus]on, beingcut off at (one time). A camp (was set up) in one place in Amor [= PalestineSyria].Theydesolatedits people,and its landwas like that whichhas never come into being. They were coming forward toward Egypt, while the flame was prepared before them. Their confederationwas the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denye(n), and Weshesh, lands united. They laid their hands upon the lands as far as the circuit of the earth, their hearts confident and trusting:"Our plans will succeed!"(Edgertonand Wilson 1936:53; Wilson 1955:262).
12
Ramesses led his army into northern Palestine where he met and defeated the invaders who were traveling overland accompanied by oxcarts loaded with women, children, and baggage. The enemy fleet seems to have pushed on to the mouth of the Nile, where it too was destroyed by Egyptian forces: Those who cameforwardtogetheron the sea, the full flamewas in frontof them at the river-mouths,while a stockade of lances surroundedthem on the shore. They weredraggedin, enclosed, and prostrated on the beach, killed, and made into heaps from tail to head (Edgerton and Wilson 1936:54; Wilson 1955:26263). Archeological evidence appears to confirm the Egyptian accounts of the devastation caused by the Sea Peoples. The Hittite empire collapsed about 1200 B.C. Troy, Miletus, Tarsus, and other Anatolian cities (including Hattushash, the Hittite capital) went up in flames. In Syria, Carchemish, Qatna, Qadesh, Alalakh, and Ugarit were destroyed. Many Palestinian cities were also burned about this time, but since this is also the approximate period of the Hebrew exodus and settlement, the destruction of these sites usually has been credited to the Israelites. Where did these mysterious Sea Peoples come from? Of the various groups named in Egyptian inscriptions, only the Peleset can be identified conclusively. They are almost certainly the Philistines mentioned so frequently in the Old Testament. Akawasha has often been equated with Achaiwoi (Acheans),
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
the common Homeric appellation for the Mycenean Greeks, while the name Denyen may represent Danaoi (Danaans), a synonym for "Achaeans" in the Iliad. The Tjeker may be Teukroi (Teucrians) who, according to Greek tradition, settled in Cyprus after the Trojan War. Hittite and
Ugaritic texts mention a Lukka land which was somewhere on the western or southwestern coast of Asia Minor. The Lukka of the Egyptian documents were probably from this area-they may be the Lycians of later Greek accounts. The Tursha and Shekelesh have also
TroyVI, an exampleof technologicaladvancementand materialprosperityin the easternAegeanduringthe Myceneanage. Thiscitywas destroyedby an earthquake around1300B.c.Thecitythat was created fromits debrison the site, TroyVII, is probablythe citythat was destroyedin the fabled TrojanWarof Homer'sIliad.
been identified as Anatolians: Tyrsenoi (Tyrrhenians, the Greek name for the Etruscans, who Herodotus says journeyed from Asia Minor to Italy) and Sikeloi (Sicilians before they settled in Sicily and gave it their name). The Sherden or Shardana may have been Sardinians. The Weshesh, however, cannot easily be related to any other people known at present. Except for the Peleset, though, all of these identifications are questionable. While specific identifications of the various groups of Sea Peoples have been challenged (and rightly so), most scholars have agreed that the tribes in question came from western Anatolia and the Aegean. The Lukka are listed as one of the Anatolian allies of the Hittites at the
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
13
The Sea People's migrations appear to have been a result of the political, social, and economic collapse. battle of Qadesh, ca. 1300 B.C. (Barnett 1975: 359-60). And the -sha ending of some of the Sea Peoples' names has been regarded as an Indo-European nominative which was common as an ethnic ending in Asia Minor (Barnett 1975: 367). Biblical tradition claimed that the Philistines came from Caphtor, which is probably the Hebrew name for Crete (Deut 2:23; Jer 47:4; Amos 9:7). Some groups of Philistines were called "Cretans" ("Cherethites," 2 Sam 8:18; 20:23; Ezek 25:16; Zeph 2:5), and part of the Philistine coast was called "the Cretan Negev" (1 Sam 30:14). Egyptian texts refer to a place called Keftiu (their form of the name "Caphtor"), which is described as an island "in the midst of the Great Green" (the Mediterranean Sea). The people of Keftiu are depicted wearing MinoanMycenean costumes and bringing gifts of an Aegean type. Thus, Keftiu/Caphtor is generally accepted as the name for Crete, though it may have been used more broadly to refer to the entire Aegean region. Alessandra Nibbi has recently attacked the view that the Sea Peoples came from Anatolia and the Aegean, but her attempt to demonstrate that they were native Semitic inhabitants of Palestine-Syria is not very convincing. Nibbi argues that the Sea Peoples are called "Asiatics" in some of the Egyptian inscriptions, and that they are shown praising Ramesses III "like Bacal" (1974: 204; 1975: 79-80). Since Bacal was a Canaanite god, the Sea Peoples must have been Canaanites. The tribes which joined the Libyan attack during the reign of Merneptah are described as being circum-
14
cised (Nibbi 1975: 104). Furthermore, Ramesses III claims to have destroyed the Tjeker, Peleset, Denyen, and other Sea Peoples "in their own land" (Nibbi 1974: 204; 1975: 81, 100). It must be admitted that the Egyptian claim that some of the Sea Peoples were circumcised is puzzling. There is no evidence of the existence of this custom among the Minoans, Myceneans, or inhabitants of western Anatolia. However, this point by itself cannot sustain Nibbi's case that the Sea Peoples were Semites from Palestine-Syria. As Margaret Drower has pointed out (1974: 206), the Canaanite stormand war-god Bacal had been adopted into the Egyptian pantheon by the 19th Dynasty. Not only do Asiatics and Sea Peoples compare Pharaoh to Bacal in 19th- and 20thDynasty texts, but Egyptians and Libyans also do. In Egyptian inscriptions of this period the use of phrases referring to Bacal does not indicate the ethnic identity of the speaker. As for the description of the Sea Peoples as "Asiatics," virtually any group that lived to the northeast or north of Egypt could be placed under that label in Egyptian texts. But when Egyptian artists illustrated various groups of "Asiatics" they had no difficulty distinguishing between the Sea Peoples from "northern lands" and the enemies Egypt had known for centuries. The Sea Peoples are shown with characteristic ships, costumes, and equipment which differ from those of Nubians, Libyans, or the traditional "Asiatics": Amu, Retjennu, Canaanites, Hittites, and Hurrians (Drower 1974: 206).
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
Finally, Ramesses III's references to defeating his various enemies in their own land and adding their frontiers to those of Egypt are probably propagandistic bombast which should not be taken literally. However, it is likely that there were some Sea Peoples settled as Egyptian mercenaries at a few sites in Palestine from the 19th Dynasty onward (G. E. Wright 1966; Albright 1975: 50911). Perhaps the existence of these colonies served as justification for Egyptian claims that the Sea Peoples' land was conquered. But even if the traditional view of a migration of Sea Peoples from Anatolia and the Aegean is correct (as it seems to be), their role in the destruction of Mycenean Greece is not established. Could tribes which had sacked the mighty citadels of Mycene, Tiryns, and Gla and which had crushed the powerful Hittite empire be defeated so easily by the weakened Egypt of Ramesses III? No evidence of the Sea Peoples has been found at Boghazkoy the site of the Hittite capital, Hattushash), and it is doubtful whether they could have penetrated into the center of the Hittite empire (Schaeffer 1968: 754-68). Moreover, some of the Sea Peoples were mentioned in Egyptian texts as early as the reign of Amenhotep III, and others were Hittite vassals and allies for a century before the disastrous invasions (Albright 1975: 508; Barnett 1975: 359, 368). Since they had been a part of the Mycenean and Hittite world long before ca. 1200 B.c., these groups cannot be Desborough's mysterious invaders from the north. It is very unlikely that invasion by Sea Peoples caused
the destruction of Mycenean civilization or the fall of the Hittite empire. Rather, the Sea Peoples' migrations appear to have been a result of the political, social, and economic collapse which occurred in Anatolia and the Aegean at the end of the 13th century B.C. Internal Conflict To blame the Sea Peoples for the destruction of Mycenean civilization
Left: The Treasury of Atreus, ca. 1300 B.c. Actually not a treasury at all
but a tomb of the tholos or "beehive" type, this structureis consideredby many to be the greatestexampleof Mycenean architecture.Right:One of the most magnificent monuments in Greece, the Lion Gate was a major entrance into the
Citadelof Mycene.Its reliefdepictsa sacredpillarflankedby two lions, who servethe dual purposeof defendingthe pillarand the gate. The lions' heads, which probablyfaced towardthose who approachedthe gate, are now missing.
is really to put forward a variation of the internal-revolt or internecinestrife hypothesis. Greek tradition recalled the 13th century B.C. as a period of almost constant warfare between Mycenean states-the Seven against Thebes, the Athenian attack on Eleusis, the Heraclids against Mycene, to mention just a few. Then, after the Trojan War, kings returned to find usurpers in their
BIBLICALARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER1980 15
The primary causes of the Mycenean collapse were probably an overly centralized, highly specialized economy and a period of climatic change. palaces and discord within their kingdoms and families. Could this internal conflict have been responsible for the end of Mycenean culture? Some modern scholars think so (Vermeule 1964: 278; Nichols 1975: 200-5), agreeing with the assessment of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides: Afterthe TrojanWarGreecewasin a state of ferment;therewereconstant resettlements,and so no opportunity for peacefuldevelopment.It waslong beforethe armyreturnedfrom Troy, and this fact in itself led to many changes. There was party strife in nearly all the cities, and those who were driven into exile founded new cities. .... Thus many years passed by
and many difficultieswere encountered before Greece could enjoy peace or stability, and before the period of shiftingpopulationsended (The Peloponnesian War I.12; War-
ner 1954: 19-20). But the Mycenean kingdoms must have fought previously with one another, and thrones must have been usurped previously. Why did this war or series of conflicts destroy the basic fabric of Mycenean society? Why did parts of Greece become depopulated? Why did the Philistines and other groups decide to move from the Aegean? Why did the Lukka and other Hittite vassals in western Anatolia not only revolt, but also migrate southeastward? Warfare-whether due to internal strife or to invasions by Dorians, unknown northerners, or Sea Peoples-does not provide a sufficient answer to such questions. Strife there must have been, but it was probably not the major cause of the Mycenean demise. 16
Economic and Natural Forces European civilization suffered similar upheaval and cultural change during the fall of the Roman empire in the West and at the end of the Middle Ages. In both instances invasion, civil war, or internecine strife contributed to cultural collapse but
were not the primarycauses of it.
Rome had economic problems whose origins stretched back to the creation of the empire. An inadequate tax system aggravated by. deficiences in the imperial governmental structure did more to cause the end of the Roman empire than did German invaders. At the end of the Middle ages, Europe was stricken with plague which caused a severe labor shortage. This in turn produced spiraling inflation. There were basic economic changes due to the growth of trade and cities. New military weapons such as cannons and muskets were developed, resulting in changes in military tactics. These developments operating together caused the collapse of the feudal and manorial systems, the basic components of medieval civilization. These examples of cultural collapse teach us not only to expect multiple causes of decline, but also to beware of overlooking the possible involvement of economic and/or natural forces. Rhys Carpenter (1966) has put forward the interesting suggestion that climatic change produced famine which destroyed both Mycenean Greece and the Hittite empire. He argues that a shift in the trade winds would have caused drought in Anatolia, Crete, and much of southern Greece, while a few areas such as Attica, Thessaly,
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
Achea, Kephallenia, and the western coast of the Peloponnese would have received normal or above normal amounts of rainfall (Carpenter 1966: 59-66). Carpenter's theory would account for archeological evidence of Mycenean movements into Achea, Attica, Kephallenia, and Cyprus, as well as the depopulation of the eastern and southern portions of the Peloponnese. There is also textual evidence of famine in the Hittite empire shortly before its fall. The Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah (ca. 1236-1223 B.C.) sent a huge gift of grain to alleviate a famine in Hittite lands (Barnett 1975: 360). And among the last letters to be received at Ugarit before its destruction around 1200 B.C., three suggest famine in Anatolia. One missive from the Hittite king demands that the king of Ugarit send 2000 measures of grain to Cilicia at once, for it is a matter of life or death (Astour 1965: 255; Barnett 1975: 369). There have not been enough scientific studies of the ancient environment of Greece to prove the validity of Carpenter's hypothesis, but recent research has demonstrated that the weather pattern he postulates is a possible one (Lamb 1967; Bryson, Lamb, and Donley 1974). A pattern of precipitation almost identical with the one suggested by Carpenter occurred in 1954-55, and climatologists see no reason why this pattern could not have been the dominant one for a century or more at some time in the past (Bryson, Lamb, and Donley 1974: 46-47). There is also some evidence from other areas that a
When the famine was at its peak, virtually all of the Mycenean centers in Greece were sacked, either by neighboring Myceneans or by their own starving subjects. precipitation pattern like that of 1954-55 did prevail around 1200 B.C. (Bryson, Lamb, and Donley 1974: 47-50, refuting H. E. Wright 1968). However, the data is not yet sufficient enough to be conclusive. The economy of a Mycenean state was managed centrally with the royal bureaucracy supervising all aspects of production and distribution. It also appears to have been excessively specialized (Betancourt 1976: 42-45), relying on the production of wheat and barley as well as the raising of sheep and some cattle, as the Linear B texts demonstrate. There was little emphasis on exploitation of natural resources such as minerals, lumber, fish, or other marine life. Agriculture and animal husbandry not only fed and clothed the local population, but they also provided the primary products (perfumed oils, wine, and woolen cloth) which Myceneans traded abroad for metals and other raw materials. It would have been difficult for such an economy to withstand even a limited period of crop failures (Betancourt 1976: 44). The factors which led to the end of Mycenean civilization were undoubtedly as complex and as interrelated as those which produced the fall of Rome and the end of the Middle Ages. But the primary causes of the Mycenean collapse were probably an overly centralized, highly specialized economy and a period of climatic change. While the validity of this theory has not yet been proven, it seems to fit the evidence best. The onset of drier weather in a few regions of Greece probably led the rulers of those areas to supplement their kingdoms'
caused by famine. Some groups left the area to join the Libyans (whose lands also would have been afflicted by drought) in an attack on Egypt. That this was no mere raid in search of booty is indicated by the fact that the raiders were accompanied by wagons carrying women, children, and baggage. At about the same time, the Hittite king appealed to Egypt for grain to relieve a famine in Anatolia-a request honored by Merneptah. The famine seems to have reached its peak around 1200-
food supply by raids into neighboring kingdoms whose crops had not been affected. The internal unrest remembered by Greek tradition and testified to by the 13th-century construction and strengthening of Cyclopean fortifications at many Mycenean sites would thus be explained. Even in areas affected by the drought, such fortifications would have been necessary to protect whatever food supplies still existed (or had been obtained by raids), for the palace was the center of the distribution system. The Linear B tablets from Pylos give no indication of crop failures or drought (Pylos was in an area which would have had normal precipitation), but it is clear that preparations had been made to guard against attack by land or sea. Such watchfulness must have been a fact of life in 13th-century Greece. As the agricultural crisis in the Aegean worsened, outbreaks of disease probably added to the misery +6we W
Wet
+20 +40
1190 B.C. Virtually all of the
Mycenean palace-centers in Greece were sacked, either by neighboring Myceneans or by their own starving subjects. (See the accounts of recent drought and famine in Brazil in Carpenter 1966: 68-69. In 1953 people from the drought-stricken countryside there descended en masse to pillage towns where food had been stored.) Normally an attack by enemies or a revolt of the 0
,&20
.so
0o Dry
-60 0 S-40 Wet-2
Map showing the departure of precipitation from normal in January 1955 (in per cent). This month represents a precipitation mode which fits Carpenter's pattern of population change around 1200 B.C.
Dry
-
o0
-20 3C
0
p-P
0
4b
\
o6
Dry -20
Used with permission.
BIBLICALARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER1980 17
local population would have failed to take any of the highly fortified Mycenean citadels. Their fall must have been due to lack of water or failure to defend them (the defense forces may have joined the looters in taking whatever supplies were available). Only Athens (which was in an area which would have had normal precipitation) managed to hold out. Refugees streamed into Achea, Kephallenia, and Attica while parts of the Peloponnese became almost totally unoccupied.
18
A wave of Peloponnesian emigrants sailed to Cyprus where they defeated earlier Mycenean settlers and established themselves in power. Even in Messenia, which had not experienced drought, the population decline was considerable. Without the distribution system and direction of the palace bureaucracy at Pylos (which had been destroyed), the large population of former times could not be sustained. In Anatolia also the situation must have been desperate. Revolts
BIBLICALARCHEOLOGIST/WINTER1980
Among the richest archeological discoveries of all time, the Mycenean
grave circleyieldedmanygoldentreasures to its discoverers.The royalshaft graves found withinthe 26-m-diametercircle containedthe remainsof rulersand aristocratsof the ancientcitadel.The men were buriedwith goldenmasksand golden breastplates.At theirsides were swords,daggers,and goldenand silver drinkingcups. Womenwere buried wearinglargeamountsof goldenjewelry. Childrenwerewrappedin sheet gold.
The catastrophes had produced a breakdown of the entire structure of Mycenean Greece. The old centralized bureaucracies were gone and no one remembered how they functioned. broke out against the Hittite king who could no longer provide for his subjects. Torn apart by the effects of famine, the empire disintegrated. Ugarit sent its fleet to the western coast of Asia Minor to aid the Hittite king in suppressing revolt and was thus virtually powerless to defend itself against marauding tribes. Along with Hattushash, Carchemish, and other major sites, Ugarit went up in flames. As was the case in Greece, some of these destructions were probably due to attack by migrating peoples; others were probably brought about by their own subjects. Troy was also destroyed about this time, and its fall must have been connected with the general crisis taking place in the eastern Mediterranean. Greek tradition remembered the attack, but it romanticized the motivation for it and exaggerated the number of people involved. Groups of western Anatolians and a few Mycenean tribes accompanied by carts full of women and children migrated into Syria where Ramesses III met and defeated them. Some were allowed to settle in Palestine as Egyptian vassals. A century later an Egyptian text records that the Tjeker inhabited the coastal city of Dor, while the Philistines became prominent enough to give their name to the entire land of Canaan. Other migrants from western Anatolia became the founders of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms which would flourish in Syria during the early part of the Iron Age. Some parts of Palestine also would have experienced drought, and possibly this situation contributed to the creation of stateless
brigands and groups of seminomads who joined with a band of escaped slaves from Egypt to form the Israelite tribes. After two or three generations, the weather patterns probably returned to normal. Dorians moved (back?) into the depopulated areas of the Peloponnese. People became settled once more and the population began to increase. But the Mycenean culture could not be restored. The catastrophes had produced a breakdown of the entire political, social, and economic
structure of Mycenean Greece. Even in Athens the crisis had taken its toll. The old centralized bureaucracies were gone, and no one remembered how they had functioned. The art of writing and keeping records had been lost. It was a new Greece which recovered from the period of drought and famine. The Mycenean civilization had vanished, and in its place there was a new social order and a very different economic system ready to develop into the civilization of classical Greece.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
19
CHRONOLOGICAL CHART
DATE
GREECE
1550 Late Helladic I & II Periods
Shaft graves at Mycene
EGYPT
18th Dynasty (1570-1320)Late Bronze I Period The New Kingdomor Empire ThutmoseIII(1504-1450)
1400
Late Helladic IIIAPeriod
Knossos destroyed(?) 1300 Late Helladic IIIB Period-
"TheMyceneanAge" Palace builtat Pylos
AmenhotepIII(1417-1379) Akhenaton(1379-1362) Tutankhamun (1361-1352) 19th Dynasty (1320-1200) Ramesses 11(1304-1237)
Wallsstrengthenedand/or citadels enlarged at Mycene Tiryns,Gla,&Athens Gla,lolkos,Tiryns,Pylos,and part of Mycene burned 1200 Late Helladic IIICPeriod
Manysites in Thessaly, Boeotia, and Peleponnese abandoned
Mycene destroyed 1100
20
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
THENEAREAST
Palestine-SyriaunderEgyptian control LateBronzeIIAPeriod Hittitesconquermuchof Syria Hittiteempireat its height LateBronze1iBPeriod
HebrewExodusfromEgypt(?) Merneptah(1236-1223) 1st attackby Sea Peoples
Faminein Hittiteempire Hittiteempiretroubledby revolts; Hattushashdestroyed
20th Dynasty (1200-1085) Ramesses III(1198-1166) 2nd attackby Sea Peoples Invasionof Sea Peoples
iron I Period Beginningof Israelitesettlement in Palestine(?) Philistines& otherSea Peoples settle Palestiniancoast
Bibliography Albright, W. F. 1975 Syria, the Philistines, and Phoenicia: I. The Sea Peoples in Palestine. Pp. 507-16 in vol. 1, part 2 of Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edition, eds. I. E. S. Edwards, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Astour, M. 1965 New Evidence on the Last Days of Ugarit. American Journal of Archaeology 69: 253-58. Barnett, R. D. 1975 The Sea Peoples. Pp. 359-78 in vol.1, part 2 of CambridgeAncient History, 3rd edition, eds. I. E. S. Edwards, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Betancourt, P. P. 1976 The End of the Greek Bronze Age. Antiquity 50: 40-47. Breasted, J. H., ed. 1906 Ancient Records ofEgypt, 3. Chicago: University of Chicago. Bryson, R. A.; Lamb, H. H.; and Donley, D. L. 1974 Drought and the Decline of Mycenae. Antiquity 48: 46-50. Carpenter, R. 1966 Discontinuity in Greek Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Chadwick, J. 1975 The Prehistory of the Greek Language. Pp. 805-19 in vol. 1, part 2 of Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edition, eds. I. E. S. Edwards, et aL Cambridge: Cambridge University. 1976 The Mycenean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Desborough, V. R. d'A. 1964 The Last Mycenaeans and Their Successors. Oxford: Clarendon. 1972 The Greek Dark Ages. London: Benn. 1975 The End of the Mycenaean Civilization and the Dark Age: (a) The Archaeological Background. Pp. 65877 in vol. 1, part 2 of Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edition, eds. I. E. S. Edwards, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Drower, M. S. 1974 Discussion of Alessandra Nibbi's of the 'Sea "The Identification People.'" P. 206 in Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean, eds. R. A. Crossland and A. Birchall. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes. W. F., and Wilson, J. A. Edgerton, 1936 Historical Records of Ramesses III. Chicago: University of Chicago. Finley, M. I. 1970 Early Greece: The Bronze and Archaic Ages. New York: Norton. Gardiner, A. H., ed. 1947 Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, 1. Oxford: Oxford University. 1961 Egypt of the Pharaohs. Oxford: Clarendon. Hainsworth, J. B. 1967 Greek Views of Greek Dialectology. Transactions of the Philological Society: 62-76. Hammond, N. G. L. 1975 The End of Mycenaean Civilization and the Dark Age: (b) The Literary Tradition for the Migrations. Pp. 678-712 in vol. 1, part 2 of Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edition, eds. I. E. S. Edwards, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Hooker, J. T. 1977 Mycenaean Greece. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lamb, H. H. 1967 Review of R. Carpenter, Discontinuity in Greek Civilization (1966). Antiquity 41: 233-34. McDonald, W. A. 1967 Progress into the Past: The Rediscovery of Mycenaean Civilization. New York/ London: MacMillan. McDonald, W. A., and Hope Simpson, R. 1972 Archaeological Exploration. Pp. 11747 in The Minnesota Messenia Expedition, eds. W. A. McDonald and G. R. Rapp, Jr. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Nibbi, A. 1974 The Identification of the "Sea Peoples." Pp. 203-5 in Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean, eds. R. A. Crossland and A. Birchall. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes.
1975 The Sea Peoples and Egypt. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes. Nichols, M. 1975 Man, Myth, and Monument. New York: Morrow. Schaeffer, C. F.-A. 1968 Commentaires sur les lettres et documents trouv6s dans les bibliotheques privies d'Ugarit. Pp. 607-768 in Ugaritica 5, eds. C. F.-A. Schaeffer, et al. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale/ P. Geuthner. Stubbings, F. H. 1975 The Recession of Mycenaean Civilization. Pp. 338-58 in vol. 1, part 2 of Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd edition, eds. I. E. S. Edwards, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Tegyey, I. 1974 Messenia and the Catastrophe at the End of Late Helladic IIIB. Pp. 227-31 in Bronze Age Migrations in the Aegean, eds. R. A. Crossland and A. Birchall. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes. Vermeule, E. 1964 Greece in the Bronze Age. Chicago: University of Chicago. Warner, R. 1954 Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War. Baltimore: Penguin. Wilson, J. A. 1955 Egyptian Historical Texts. Pp. 227-64 in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd edition, ed. J. B. Pritchard. Princeton: Princeton University. Wright, G. E. 1966 Fresh Evidence for the Philistine Story. Biblical Archaeologist 29: 70-86. Wright, H. E., Jr. 1968 Climatic Change in Mycenaean Greece. Antiquity 42: 123-27.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
21
The
NEW
Joseph Naveh
GREEK
For years, scholars of Greek and Canaanite epigraphy have tried to determine the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the Canaanite alphabet by the Greeks. Now a recent reevaluation of the evidence has led one prominent epigrapher to push back the traditional date of this occurrence by 350 years.
EVIDENCE
?VA
"1
AOO
1
P
9
q
yII
?v Y I
EarlyGreekletterforms.
22
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
4
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The Greek alphabet developed from West Semitic writing, but when this occured is disputable. A date of ca. 750 B.C. has been widely accepted since Rhys Carpenter's study (1933) "The Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet." Recent progress in the research into the early evolution of the West Semitic alphabet (Cross 1967), however, has to affect our dating of the Greek alphabet. I published (1973) a short paper suggesting that the adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks must have taken place ca. 1100 B.C. The Semitic alphabet was born in Canaan in the 17th or 16th century B.C. Now called Proto-Canaanite, it was a pictographic-acrophonic writing consisting of 27 signs. Each was a pictograph representing the first consonant of the picture's name, e.g., the picture of a house, bet in Canaanite, stood for b. Later, the pictographs developed into linear letter-forms. Already in the 13th century B.C. the 27 consonantal signs had been reduced to 22, but the pictographic conception continued into the mid-Ilth century B.c. This means that until ca. 1050 B.c. the letter stances were not stabilized and the direction of writing was not yet fixed. Although writing in vertical columns disappeared in the late 12th century, both the horizontal left-toright or right-to-left directions and horizontal boustrophedon (writing alternate lines in opposite directions) still existed until the mid-Ilith century.
In the second half of the 1lth century B.C.the changes became so marked that this alphabet is conventionally distinguished from the Proto-Canaanite by the name "Phoenician." In the Phoenician alphabet from that time on, there were 22 linear letters with stabilized stances which were written only in right-to-left lines. From the beginning of the first millennium B.C.,cursive letter-forms evolved, which began to affect their lapidary counterparts. By the mid-8th century the Phoenician alphabet had developed a uniform script with cursive and lapidary styles. Although the earliest Greek inscriptions known today belong to the 8th century B.C., the characteristics of the archaic Greek script recall the late Proto-Canaanite rather than the 8th-century Phoenician script. Like Proto-Canaanite, the archaic Greek alphabet was a lapidary script; the direction of writing was in horizontal lines either from right to left, or from left to right, or in horizontal boustrophedon, and the letter stances were not stabilized. All these traits indicate a pictographic conception. Moreover, some letters still preserved the Proto-Canaanite pictographic forms: e.g., the omicron with a central dot equals the ProtoCanaanite cayin, i.e., the pictograph of an eye with the pupil; the mu of five strokes of the same length resembles the pictographic mem designating water. The archaic Greek alphabet used the 22 West Semitic letters-some of them for designation of vowels-and invented 5 supplementary letters. The form of the first supplementary letter, Y, seems to be borrowed from the 10th-century Phoenician waw. Most of the archaic Greek letters, however, resemble the Proto-Canaanite letters of ca. 1100 B.c. Therefore, it is difficult to believe that the Greeks adopted the developed Phoenician script in the 8th century and turned it into a less-developed writing system, just as it was used by the ancestors of the Phoenicians 300 or 400 years before. It is more reasonable to assume that the Greeks borrowed the ProtoCanaanite alphabet ca. 1100 B.C.
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BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980 23
The only epigraphic difficulty with this theory is the form of the archaic Greek kappa. It does not resemble the Proto-Canaanite kap, but the 9th-century Phoenician kap. I have suggested that the Greek kappa was a later adoption because the original Proto-Canaanite kap was used for khi. This interpretation is supported by the double adoption of the waw. The original ProtoCanaanite waw was used in Greek for the consonant vau (later developed into the digamma). During the 10th century, when the Greeks invented the vowel signs and needed a letter for u, they turned to the Phoenician script and reused the waw as an upsilon (Naveh 1973: 7-8). Even if this explanation of the origin of the kappa is wrong, it hardly refutes the whole theory of an early adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks. True, this theory is based solely on epigraphic comparisofis and ignores such issues as the "argument from silence"-the Homeric question and the first attested date of the Olympic games-and the presence of a bilingual environment where the actual transmission could have taken place. Nevertheless, the epigraphic issue is paramount. I have suggested (1973: 8) that during quite a long period only a few Greeks used the new writing (perhaps in Crete and possibly Thera, where the most archaic letter-forms were preserved), while later it spread to the Greek mainland and other islands. Today we have two finds which may be helpful in determining the place where the Greeks adopted the alphabet. F. M. Cross (1974) drew attention to the oldest West Semitic inscription found in the Western Mediterranean. This is a fragmentary stele from Nora in Sardinia.
The ostraconfrom Izbet Sarta.
Nora . . . has produced two archaic
A fragmentarystele
from Sardinia (CIS I, 145).
24
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
inscriptions,the famous Nora Stone of the ninthcenturyB.C.anda fragmentary stele which has receivedlittle attention. Thelatterwasfirstpublishedin 1890arid laterin the CorpusInscriptionum Semiticarum[I, No. 145]upsidedown leading to confusionwhichhas preventedrecognition of its antiquity and its proper
decipherment.The inscriptionis written in boustrophedon,the first line from rightto left, the secondfromleft to right, a practicewhichdied out in Phoenician scribalcirclestowardsthe middleof the eleventhcenturyB.C. It reads sinistrograde: ]'n . pC/[, and dextrograde: ]It . ht[. In the first sinistrograde line, one can read 'in p5ccl or '~n pocal which means "there is no one to do" or "there is no deed." Cross dates this fragment to the I Ith century. The boustrophedal writing and the letter forms, mainly the cayin with a point in its center and the box-shaped het (which are well known also in the archaic Greek alphabet), corroborate the assumption that this fragment bears late ProtoCanaanite letters. At any rate, we must now reckon with a Canaanite or Phoenician settlement in Sardinia from the I Ith century B.C. The second item is more intriguing but, for the present, should be regarded with considerable reservation. This is an ostracon (9 x 11 cm) which was found recently in Israel at a small site named Izbet Sarta, ca. 18 km northeast of TelAviv and 3 km east of Tell Aphek (Antipatris in the Roman period). The excavator, M. Kochavi, discovered an ancient unfortified settlement from ca. 1200 to 1000 B.C., roughly covering the period of the Judges. Kochavi believes that Izbet Sarta was an Israelite settlement near biblical Eben-ezer, which is described in I Samuel 4 as the gathering point of the Israelites before their battle against the Philistines who were assembled at Aphek. The ostracon contains more than 80 late Proto-Canaanite letters shallowly incised. The main line is an abecedary, but the decipherment of the other four lines is very difficult. Although most of the letters can be identified with certainty, it is difficult to tell in what direction they were written. The letters of the abecedary are larger than the others. All are by the same hand, though apparently the scribe used different instruments. It seems clear that the abecedary was the first line of writing. Therefore, we may reckon that the abecedary was written from right to left, or
downwards in a vertical column. As no text has been discerned so far in the other lines, their direction could not be fixed. Kochavi (1977) and Demsky (1977) wrote separate articles on this ostracon. Both believe the sherd was inscribed by an Israelite in the period of the Judges, and more precisely in the 12th century B.c. Demsky suggests further that the pe-cayin order occurring in the abecedary might have been an early Israelite innovation which survived into later biblical times in the alphabetic acrostic of Lamentations 2, 3, and 4. This suggestion, however, cannot be substantiated because the pe-cayin order at Izbet Sarta simply may indicate confusion, since zayin and het also are reversed. There are further mistakes in the abecedary: the writer confused the forms of bet and lamed, as well as qop and re'. The shapes of some other letters (e.g., the waw) do not follow what we know of the Proto-Canaanite tradition. Moreover, the remaining four lines apparently do not comprise any meaningful Semitic text. Now, if we consider this ostracon as a late Proto-Canaanite inscription, we must regard it as the scratching of some semiliterate person who, after unsuccessfully writing the abecedary, merely practiced writing various letters. The abecedary may indicate that the writer was a Canaanite student learning how to write. If so, he was surely a bad pupil. In this case, in lines 2-5 there is no text, merely an agglomeration of letters. Both Kochavi and Demsky" pointed out that some letters occurring in this ostracon are very similar to the archaic Greek alphabet. Demsky even tried to remove the obstacle of the kap in my thesis for an early adoption of the alphabet by the Greeks because the kap in the Izbet Sarta ostracon has a long leg which, in his opinion, might be the prototype of the Greek kappa. I do not share this view and even question whether the writer of this ostracon was a speaker of a Semitic language (Naveh 1978). There is a faint possibility that the ostracon from Izbet Sarta was
written by a Philistine. The origin of the Philistines is still obscure, but there is a scholarly consensus that they came to Egypt and Canaan in the late 13th century with the migration of some other peoples, the collective name of which is the Sea Peoples. According to the OT (Amos 9:7; Jer 47:4), the Philistines came from Caphtor, which is generally identified with Crete. In Canaan they lived mainly in five cities, three of which were on the Mediterranean coast. Philistine pottery produced in Canaan is decorated in a style similar to the Mycenean decorated ware. The hypothesis that the Izbet Sarta ostracon was written by a Philistine can be tested by an attempt to decipher the so-far unread four lines. If these lines form a text in some dialect used in the Aegean area, there would be some basis for the assumption that the Proto-Canaanite alphabet was transmitted to the Greeks through the Philistines who had settled in the Canaanite coastal area. As yet, this is only a hypothesis, but further progress with the decipherment of the Izbet Sarta inscription and future discoveries of alphabetic inscriptions in the general area should help to resolve the outstanding issues. Bibliography Carpenter, R. 1933 The Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet. American Journal of Archaeology 37: 8-29. Cross, F. M. 1967 The Origin and the Early Evolution of the Alphabet. Eretz-Israel 8: 8*-27*. 1974 Leaves from an Epigraphic Notebook. Catholic Biblical Quarterly 36: 490-93. Demsky, A. 1977 A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary Dating from the Period of the Judges and its Implications for the History of the Alphabet. Tel-Aviv 4: 14-27. Kochavi, M. 1977 An Ostracon of the Period of the Judges from Izbet Sartah. Tel-Aviv 4: 1-13. Naveh, J. 1973 Some Semitic Epigraphical Considerations on the Antiquity of the Greek Alphabet. American Journal of Archaeology 77: 1-8. 1978 Some Considerations on the Ostracon from Izbet Sartah. Israel Exploration Journal 28: 31-35.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
25
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James H. Charlesworth The cache of manuscripts discovered in St. Catherine's Monastery at Mt. Sinai continues to present scholars with new information, new insights, and new questions. In this article, the 26
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third in a series about the discovery, a noted specialist in early Christian documents discusses the manuscripts themselves and their significance for paleography, textual studies, history, and religion.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
A few years ago a hoard of manuscripts and art treasures was discovered accidentally in the northern wall of one of the oldest fortress-monasteries in the world, St. Catherine's Monastery, which is situated deep in the Sinai Peninsula. Long before monks came to the site
Fragmentsfroma liturgicalbook in uncial script.The rightand leftfragmentsarenot necessarilyfromthe samepage. of St. Catherine's, Sinai-that vast and rocky wilderness-held traces of the religious life of its prehistoric inhabitants. Egyptian worship on the peninsula goes back at least to the 19th century B.C., as is shown by the monuments of Amenemhat III (ca. 1840-1792) at Serabit el-Khadem and the extraordinary temple which the kings of the 12th Dynasty built there. Sometime after 1490 B.C., Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III used Asiatic slaves to reopen the copper and turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadem and to expand and enhance the temple to Hathor, "Lady of Turquoise."' After the 20th Dynasty (ca. 1185-1069 B.C.) no royal Egyptian inscriptions are found in Sinai. The central religious significance of Sinai lies in the over 3000-year-old recital of God's action in the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses. Contemporary Jewish and Christian celebrations, especially at Passover, relive the biblical Sinai traditions which are focused in the events that immediately preceded and followed the Exodus. While pasturing the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, Moses comes to Mount Sinai (=Horeb), sees a burning bush, and hears God's voice: "Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exod 3:5, RSV). After the Exodus, Moses leaves the people of Israel encamped in the wilderness of Sinai, ascends the mountain upon which the Lord had descended (Exod 19:11, 18, 20; cf. 24:16), and receives the gift of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19-24). Centuries later, Elijah made a pilgrimage to "the mountain of God" (1 Kgs 19:8), but that site cannot be identified with any certainty. Indeed, Sinai fades from history until the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.,when monks and anchorites settled at various mountains identified by local traditions as the place where Moses stood before God. In the 4th century, Ammonius, an Egyptian monk, took 18 days to travel from Jerusalem to Jebel Musa, which he identified with Mount Sinai. In that same century, Helena, mother of Constantine the
Great (A.D. 288-337), built a small church at Jebel Musa, one of the tallest (2,285 m above sea level), tooth-shaped mountains in southern Sinai.2 This mountain was identified as Mount Sinai, but many monks continued to venerate other sites in the 4th and 5th centuries in spite of Helena's prestige and in the face of violent attacks by hostile marauders. But when Justinian (A.D. 527-65) dedicated a church to the Virgin Mary at Jebel Musa and built a fortress to protect it, the monks gradually deserted other sites and
The author of this prayer obviously revered Mount Sinai, and in contrast to the tradition that celebrated God's abode above the Temple in Jerusalem (cf. viz. Pss 68:28-29 and 78:67-69), he geographically localized God's presence at Sinai.4
"... an incomparablegem for scholarshipand the Church." sought safety behind Justinian's walls. These walls are still preserved in part at St. Catherine's. In the 8th or 9th century, the bones of St. Catherine, a victim of Roman persecution against Christians, are said by local tradition to have been found buried on a nearby mountain and were taken to the monastery which ever since has been known by her name. To a certain extent this famous monastery had been protected because of its recognized sacred history, monastic purity, and desert location; but it also has received the legal protection of many rulers (notably Muhammad and Napoleon),3 and the monks once found it prudent to erect a mosque within their walls to discourage hostile natives. Although many holy mountains in Sinai were woven deep into the fabric of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions, God is seldom depicted as dwelling on Mount Sinai. The Prayer of Jacob, however, preserved in a 4thcentury Greek papyrus fragment in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, praises the "Lord God of the Hebrews" as follows: The God o[f the p]owers; The G[od of ang]elsa[nd a]r[cha]ngels; Ki[ng... He who s[i]t[s]upon h[oly] Mount Sinai...
Monumental Discoveries In two recent issues of BA,5 attention was drawn to the manuscripts and works of art that were discovered in this monastery on 26 May 1975. In the present article I will discuss briefly some of the important features of these manuscripts and their significance for scholarship. An attempt to select the most important aspects of this discovery causes uneasiness-not only because of the many significant factors but also because of the emotions evoked by my own visit to the monastery. There are, on the one hand, the vivid and profound impressions made upon me as I was ushered into the apse of the basilica of the monastery and looked up at the late 6th-century (preiconoclastic) mosaic of the transfiguration, and subsequently led, after removing my shoes, through the Chapel of St. James the Less to the traditional site of the burning bush. There are, on the other hand, the memorable feelings of arising at 3:15 A.M.in order to ascend Jebel Musa, and of awaiting the rise of the sun over the mountains of Saudi Arabia far to the east. Nearby in the cold morning were others: Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Of the significant-even sensational-aspects of this discovery, four seem at present to be monumental: (1) the recovery of additional pages of Codex Sinaiticus, (2) the almost unbelievable clarification of the history of the Greek script, (3) the valuable content of ancient biblical texts, and (4) the discovery of formerly "lost" documents. First is the recovery of at least 8-perhaps even 14-folios from Codex Sinaiticus, the major portion of which is preserved in the British Library (formerly subsumed under the British Museum). Fewer than 400 of the approximately 730 original folios of this Greek manuscript were discovered in St. Catherine's Monastery in 1844 and 1859 by Constantin
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
27
By permissionof the Librarianand the Archbishopof St. Catherine'sMonastery.
The transfigurationof Jesus,depictedin mosaicfrom the late 6th centuryA.D. in the basilicaof St. Catherine'sMonastery. At Jesus'rightstandsElijah,at his left, Moses. Beloware John, Peter,and James.
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*-Z f.-= ? M-,--? f von Tischendorf, who in a letter to his in a closet in his cell.8The folios are now in the BritishLibrary(Museum wife, Angelika, in 1859, called it an MS 43725).Third,at least 8 folios of "incomparable gem for scholarship and the Church."6 These recently this 4th-centurymanuscriptwere still recovered folios are therefore in the monastery,hiddenin the cache to in the northernwall, wherethey were biblical extremely important discoveredin 1975.These folios are scholars; they fill some of the gaps in still unavailableto scholars,but it is one of the two most ancient, clearthey preserveportionsof the invaluable volumes of the Bible (the other is, of course, Codex Vaticanus). Old Testament,as is readilyobvious by the presentdescriptionin the Unfortunately photographs of them BritishMuseum:"TheOld Testament are not included herein; apparently the Archbishop of the monastery is seriouslymutilated,most of the conceals them, and, to my knowledge, earlierbooks being almost wholly lost, but the New Testamentis they have not been photographed. It is clear that long before the perfectlypreserved,and is followed 19th century the binding of Codex by two non-canonicalworks, the Sinaiticus was broken and the folios Epistleof Barnabasand the dispersed into at least three separate 'Shepherd'of Hermas." places in St. Catherine's Monastery. A Treasure Trove of Greek Scripts First, ca. 130 folios were found somewhere in the monastery by The oldest script employed by scribes Tischendorf in 1844; 43 of these are to copy the Bible is the uncial, that now in Leipzig. Second, 346 folios is, large capital letters in script. (and a fragment) were obtained by Although Codex Sinaiticus is written in uncials, the script is exceedingly Tischendorf, who in 1859 (according rare. Added to the world's treasure of to his account)7 was shown the rare manuscripts (thanks to the new in a red cloth, manuscript, wrapped by a steward who had been keeping it discoveries) are 10 almost complete
28
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST/ WINTER 1980
and over 50 incomplete codices. Our knowledge of this script is so vastly increased that its history will need to be rewritten. This cache contains the largest collection of uncials in the world. Greek writing on papyri, ostraca, leather, and vellum is a continuum that stretches from the present into the remote centuries prior to the appearance of Judaism and Christianity. There is a lacuna in this series; the period from the mid-7th to the mid-9th centuries (ca. 650-850) is so poorly represented that it is known as the "period of great silence." The cache preserves a large quantity of manuscripts from this period. When these pieces are made available for study by Greek philologists, a massive jigsaw puzzle will be put together for the first time. The continuum of Greek calligraphy will be recovered. Ancient Copies of the Bible Biblical students will be eager to hear more about the abundance of manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments and about the biblical passages preserved in fragments of liturgical texts. Two examples have been chosen in order to illustrate the significance of the find for biblical studies. The first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, is preserved in a very early uncial script, which probably dates from the late 4th century.9 The script is, therefore, almost as old as Codex Sinaiticus. Both manuscripts date from approximately the same time and possibly were produced in the same monastery. The left column of the text pictured on p. 29 contains Gen 27:42b-45, the right preserves Gen 28:3b-6a. It is exciting to discover that this text shares with Codex Alexandrinus a variant reading in Gen 28:6; both omit ekeithen (Codex Vaticanus does not contain this chapter). Portions of the earliest gospel, Mark, have also been discovered among the recently recovered manuscripts. The script is early uncial; it perhaps dates from the 6th century,
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a palpable record of the liturgical Two columnsof Genesisin early uncial script.The left columncontains27:42b-45; use of the Bible in Christianized the rightcolumncontains28:3b-6a.This Semitic cultures. They should be fragmentis close in date to Codex in light of the traditions examined Sinaiticus, ca. 4th century A.D. preserved in the Christianized Testaments of Isaac and Jacob. or approximately to the time of Justinian and the construction of the Extraordinarily significant are the palimpsests, manuscripts with an fortress and monastery of St. Catherine. A cursory comparison early script written above an earlier of the fragment on p. 30 with writing. It will be interesting to discover what is written, for example, Aland's (et al.) The Greek New Testament reveals that the text of in Estrangela" beneath the Greek of a Mark in the fragment contains in 7:4 Menaion. 2 a variant, kai klinin, found in The Discovery of Formerly "Lost" Alexandrinus, Bezae Cantabrigiensis, and other uncials and minuscules; and Treasured Documents The initial probes into the cache have it witnesses to a transposition in 7:5: not yet produced a document now hoi mathrjltai sou is placed immedidia after "lost" but known through citations in ti. ately the Fathers. Nevertheless, there have Among the Greek manuscripts are been similarly exciting discoveries. bilingual texts. Some codices have one column in Greek and another in For example, a 7th-century text of Arabic, or one in Greek and the other St. John Climacus' "Ladder of in Karshuni.'o These treasures are Paradise" has been recovered. This
Abbot of St. Catherine's Monastery lived from around 570 to 649; hence the text is contemporaneous with the author himself. It could have been written by St. John Climacus himself or perhaps even be the autograph of the klimax tou paradeisou. It is obvious that this text will enable specialists to prepare the first critical edition of this document. Of considerable significance also is the recovery of an 8th- or 9thcentury copy of Homer's Iliad. The interlinear translation in Greek prose is heretofore unknown. Professor Ihor Sevienko of the Department of the Classics at Harvard University will publish a critical study of these folios and their content in the near future. The above comments have been limited to the manuscripts in Greek; yet most of the three or four thousand recovered treasures are not
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST / WINTER 1980
29
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in Greek. Some are in Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, Latin, or Slavonic. But no one has been permitted yet to examine these fragments, papyri, and partially preserved codices.
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Intriguing Possibilities A most intriguing question concerns the content of these non-Greek manuscripts. One example of the potential riches yet undisclosed will suffice for the present, and that has to do with the history of the transmission of the writings. The Bodleian Library in Oxford, the University Library in Cambridge, the Monastery of Koutloumous on Athos, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Monastery of John the Theologian on Patmos, the Biblioteca Nazionale de S. Marco in Venice, the Library of the Laura on Athos, the Library of the Turkish Society of History in Ankara, and the Monastery of Vatopedi on Athos each preserve only one Greek manuscript of the supremely important pseudepigraphon, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome has two Greek manuscripts of this document. Thereby are listed the known extant Greek manuscripts of this pseudepigraphon;that is, except for those in the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai. It preserves three. 13 Two are of the 17th, the other of the 18th century. Each of these three contains a memorable preface, rendered literally as follows: "Information by John, a
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