|
< Back to Seal Controversy: From Temech to Shlomit Introduction Seal Controversy: From Temech to ShlomitHebrew Seals and the Rush to Biblical Judgment Talkback Add Your Comment
Palaeography and Identification of the CharactersWith the seal reversed to reflect its impression, I understand the inscription as follows.
Women in West Semitic SealsWhile the seal does not bring the Temech family to life or leave us “astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find,” as Mazar puts it,8 it does give us the name of a female owner in Šlomit. Female names on West Semitic seals are particularly rare, but they do exist, and some scholars unfortunately tend to associate the personal stamp seal as status objects exclusively used by males of high office. We do have evidence of women who owned and used these important prestige objects, but sadly they are rarer than we might like. An accounting of Avigad’s comprehensive Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (WSSS) reveals only nineteen stamp seals with a female name.9 Who were these women? Provenanced
Unprovenanced
Many readers of Biblical Archaeology Review will be familiar with the problems associated with archaeological objects, especially inscriptions, which are unprovenanced. Artifacts obtained from the black market do not only forfeit the credibility of finds discovered during controlled scientific excavation, but they also carry the stigma or looting or forgery. Careful epigraphers should always distinguish between inscriptions that are provenanced and unprovenanced to eliminate the contamination of suspect data from their analysis. For the corpus of stamp seals with female names, I am sad to report that the Šlomit seal from Jerusalem (to my current knowledge) is only the third published, provenanced specimen in West Semitic prior to the Persian period. As a scholar particularly interested in the recovery of both genders of Judean culture, I am excited about Mazar’s discovery, but also deeply saddened to consider the small female company that Šlomit keeps. Would that we knew much more about these obscure but important women. Hebrew Seals and the Hebrew BibleWhen reading seals, epigraphers may commonly reverse the letters in their minds as their eyes pass over inscribed characters, but it is always important to remember to reverse the order of the whole inscription as well! Mazar’s oversight may be a little embarrassing, but it is the kind of mistake that is easily pointed out and corrected by a company of colleagues as fastidious as those in the archaeological and epigraphic community. No harm done. But there is a moral to this story, which does hint at a wider issue for those of us who excavate in archaeological periods pertinent to biblical history. In the mad dash to report biblical artifacts to the public or connect discoveries with the most obscure persons or events reported in the Bible, there is sometimes a tendency to compromise the analytical caution that objects of such value so dearly deserve. Archaeological recovery of deceased cultures is a way of bringing dignity to real people whose experiences of love, loss, triumph and grief might otherwise be lost to human memory. We recover those experiences as a way of honoring not only the integrity of those lost lives, but also all the loves and losses that we share with them as human beings. When we rush to judgment about the past, we say a lot about the present as well.  Ryan Byrne is an expert in West Semitic epigraphy and co-director of the Tel Dan excavations. He teaches at Rhodes College in Memphis. Notes1. The term ductus refers to the logistical construction of the incised character, i.e. direction of strokes, number of strokes, but it may (and should) also take into account the effect that medium (stone, potsherd, etc.) has on the means of inscription (incising, brushing, etc.). Some hard media like stone or fired ceramics will complicate the scribe’s ability to inscribe a character as well as he might have were he using an ink brush on leather, papyrus, or an ostracon. Imagine the difference between trying to inscribe your name into wet cement soon after it is poured and the point at which it begins to harden. The state of the medium changes and so does its effect on the scribe’s ability to manipulate it with consistent elegance or curving lines. Many personal stamp seals are inscribed into semi-precious stones (carnelian, agate, etc.), which are easier to incise. In the case of this seal, however, we see the ductus of two letters (the Šin and the mem) perhaps compromised by the poorer quality of the stone, which also exhibits the kind of erosion less common for semi-precious varieties of chalcedony. 2. Nahman Avigad, Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1986). 3. Yohanan Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981); Harry Torczyner, Lachish I: The Lachish Letters (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938). 6. See Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions, pp. 133-135; Avigad, Hebrew Bullae, nos. 2, 21, etc. 7. Avigad, Hebrew Bullae, no. 154. 8. As quoted in Etgar Lefkovits, “First Temple Seal Found in Jerusalem,” Jerusalem Post, January 17, 2008. 9. Nahman Avigad and Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1997.
Seal Controversy: From Temech to ShlomitLooking at the famous seal I noticed the shape of the 'crescent moon'is not logical. To me they look like bull's horns. The bull's horns depicted in this way might be related to the awaiting of the return of the King of Heaven. The bull has also been a religious metaphor in Egypt, Sumer, Anatolia etc. So I propose a reconsidering of the crescent moon as being the bull's horns. • • • • • • • Mazar's InterpretationIf a true greenhorn might inquire, does "Shlomit" mean "peace," with the feminine ending, "-t" in Semitic added? The only related language which I actually studied was ancient Egyptian and it is only distantly related, so I am at somewhat of a disadvantage here. • • • • • • • wrong lettersthe letters printed in this article are Tav Mem and Hay not Tav Mem and Chet like it should be! someone needs to edit their articles better before publishing them! • • • • • • • Response to Ryan ByrneRyan Byrne has made a conclusive case about the stratigraphic position of the Hazeva seal. Indeed it is this sort of evidence which helps to determine the date within the final phase of Iron Age IIC at least at Hazeva. I do warn, however, against dogmatism and I am afraid that Byrne has not quite appreciated what I was trying to say in terms of the chronology. What do you mean by 'mid 7th century'? Exactly the archaeology of the mid-7th century BC is very difficult to determine, which explains why there has been more discussion on this topic in recent years (e.g. by Nadav Na'aman, Yifat Theareani-Susseley, Israel Finkelstein, etc.). What do we actually mean, what should it be represented by (e.g. pottery wise)? Some scholars like Finkelstein like to push the early stage of 'Lachish II' and contemporary sites (City of David Str. 10; Tel Arad VII-VI' etc. back into the first half of the 7th cent. BC. Others like myself (and this is an important part of my postdoctoral research) suggest that the so called Lachish Stratum III horizon (but not necessarily Lachish itself, which seems to have been destroyed by Sennacherib in 701 BC) - e.g. sites in the Arad-Beersheba Valley region : Beersheba Str. II, Tel Ira VII - suggest a terminus ad quem down to c. 650 BC. This also would probably include City of David Stratum 12 (Jerusalem was not destroyed by Sennacherib!). If the lowering of dates for some of these sites is anywhere near reality, the subsequent phases slide down by some (30-50) years. Although I do believe that many subsequent strata terminated with the Babylonian invasions (604, 597, 586, 582 ... ud 553/2 BC), I tried to make clear that these things are just not as securely fixed as one would like them to be (and they are much less fixed than in our text books). A mid-7th cent. BC date could well 'in reality' correspond to a late 7th cent. BC date close enough to the time of the Babylonian invasions. This could put the Jerusalem seal nearer to 604 BC - if it were contemporary with the Hazeva seal (the supposedly terminus post quem indicated by me previously), but this is not so much the point I am making here. The stratigraphical position is one, the date assigned to it on the absolute chronology time balk is another question. I really admire Byrne's comments on his work at Hazeva, but it is methodologically wrong to start from one's conclusions re dates. As long as we have not got provenanced inscriptions attributable to a historical event or person (which/who can be independently dated!!!) in a clearly definable primary stratigraphic position, it will always be difficult to be very precise about dates. This is an area which has not received sufficient attention and that is why I dealt with this in great detail in my PhD thesis (Bristol, 2005). • • • • • • • The pertinence of silicon dioxide to terminus ante quemPeter van der Veen asks a good question. How does one determine whether a seal discovered below one meter of extrinsic clay terrace fill (otherwise aceramic) intended to manufacture an upper surface (above which there was mid-seventh-century detritus, in turn below additional use phases) dates earlier than the early sixth-century pottery distributed elsewhere at the site? If one can exclude a well-concealed contamination of a single late artifact penetrating some 130 cm (give or take) of successive use phases and densely compacted, otherwise completely empty clay, then one might appeal to the stratigraphic curiosity of superimposition. That’s what we did at Hazeva anyway. The Shlomit seal is interesting, but it’s seriously not that interesting. Byrne, over and out. • • • • • • • Response To Drs. Byrne and van der VeenIconography and epigraphy are not sciences. This sentiment about epigraphy is also held by Dr. Naveh. The "palaeographic quiddities" just are not there to be dogmatic(Dr. van der Veen is correct that the letter forms are found on WSS 1071 ca. 550 B.C. at the very least), and the "iconographic diagnostics" just are not there either(Dr. Byrne is correct that "the clergy of Harran hardly held a patent on the shape of the crescent.") In Dominique Collon's book, First Impressions, the crescent is found dated at least to the 19th Century B.C., pages 44-45, and the specific crescent altar is found at least as early as the 14th century B.C., pages 63-65. So, I agree with both of you, and I disagree with both of you. I do agree with my friend Dr. van der Veen that iconography, epigraphy, and pottery finds must be used TOGETHER in determining the date of a seal. It will be interesting to see if this is a Greek Tower sitting on top of Persian period finds or a Tower of Nehemiah sitting on Persian/Babylonian period finds. Hopefully Dr. Mazar's excavation report will bring some clarity to the dating of the seal of ShLMT. With Much Gratitude, Sincerely Yours, Michael Welch, Deltona, Florida • • • • • • • Response to Ryan ByrneI do want welcome several ideas expressed by my colleague Ryan Byrne. Some points on the other hand are not so conclusive and require a response. First of all, I fully agree that iconographic traditions often have a long duration. We must therefore be very careful not to jump too quickly to our conclusions. I fully agree. Even though this is generally true (especially with indigenous 'Canaanite' as well as Phoenician/Egyptianized symbols within the glypthic repertory of the S. Levant), however, it does not necessarily apply also to Mesopotamian iconography, which has a much shorter tradition within the Southern Levant. Although the Assyrians marched to Damascus and to Northern Israel during the second half of the 9th century BC, it was only during the later 8th century that Neo-Assyrian influence took effect in the region (first in the N. Kingdom of Israel, soon however also in Judah as well as in the Philistine coastal cities). Neo-Assyrian influence became especially dominant after the 701 BC (Sennacherib) disaster when several towns in Judah (especially so in the Shephelah) were captured and destroyed by the Assyrians and several rulers became vassals of the empire (including kings Hezekiah and Manasseh). Assyrian influence reached its peak in the region during the so-called Pax Assyriaca, especially so in Judah during the reign of the pro-Assyrian monarch Manasseh during the first half of the 7th century BC (I am currently working on the archaeology of the reign of Manasseh for my post-doctoral research). Neo-Babylonian influence only reached the area after 604 BC when many rulers in the Levant swore allegiance for the first time to Nebuchadrezzar. Neo-Babylonian influence, however, reached its peak in the area when several former kingdoms had already been annexed and had become formal provinces of the Babylonian state (i.e. after 586 BC in Judah and 582/1 BC in Ammon and Moab). Edom was a pro-Babylonian state early in the 6th cent. BC, but was annexed by Nabonidus in 553/2 BC (evidence of this is indeed attested e.g. on the Sela rock relief). Now as for the Edomite or Edomitish (is it really Edomite or rather Edomite related ????) seal from Hazeva, the following. How can you be so sure that the level you were excavating was late 7th cent. BC? Surely this date is only very approximate and you do not possess positive historical evidence from this stratum that precisely dates it, do you? The pottery from this stratum is said to be typical late 7th-6th cent. BC. Sites not destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 and 582/1 BC respectively maintained their Iron Age IIC pottery repertoire as I indicated in detail in my PhD thesis (2005). Surely they did not stop producing this pottery over night. There is no straight bottom line for Iron Age IIC as there is none for the other archaeological periods either (except for in our text books). Hazeva may well have continued down to 553 BC and if so we would be right in the middle of the Neo-Babylonian period in the Levant. I clearly said that the Jerusalem Shlmt seal could be from any time post-604 BC down into the 5th cent. BC. I fully agree that iconography cannot settle the caseby itself. But I would not trust palaeography too much on its own either. As I argued in my PhD thesis it is the combination of evidence (iconography, palaeography, seal types, names, titles, small finds and pottery found in its close vicinity etc.) that all must be taken into account in order to establish a firmer date. Therefore we must wait and see how strong Eilat Mazar's evidence for a Persian period date for this seal really is. Maybe she is wrong and we indeed do refer to the very end of the Monarchy or else to the time of the Babylonian exile (some people stayed behind even in Jerualem - cf. the tombs at Ketef Hinnom). Best wishes Peter • • • • • • • Iconographic diagnosticsThe palaeographic quiddities must inform the late seventh- to early sixth-century BCE date for the Shlomit seal. The iconographic features are not chronologically diagnostic. The altar scene is commonplace on purportedly Iron II Moabite seals. As these seals are largely unprovenanced, however, I elected not to cite them as parallel specimens. For a provenanced parallel from Transjordan, see the Edomite Hazeva seal, which Joseph Naveh published in 2001 (Atiqot 42, pp. 197-98). Not only does the seal exhibit the operative priestly duet flanking a crescent altar, but its date also situates the appearance of the artistic leitmotif in the southern Levant earlier than the Persian period. I am comfortable with its terminus ante quem, insofar as I personally unearthed this seal in 1994 from terrace fill below a late seventh-century occupational surface. It behooves us also to exercise some caution where the urge arises to conflate iconographic parallelism with religious syncretism. One may intersect with the other, of course, but it cannot stand surety for it empirically or epistemologically. The clergy of Harran hardly held a patent on the shape of the crescent. This fact also touches on the alleged Babylonian evidence for date. Should one wish to consult empirical data for the possible reconstruction of Babylonian dialogue with Transjordanian material culture as early as the mid-sixth century BCE, consider the Sela‘ sculpture published by Dalley and Goguel in 1997 (ADAJ 41, pp. 169-76). For evidence of earlier Mesopotamian engagement with Transjordan, see pertinent comments in BASOR 331 (2003). • • • • • • • Reply to Michael Welch IIAlthough the examples of local Neo-Babylonian type seals from Tall al-Mazar in Jordan are indeed of the conical and octaganal seal types (so typical of the Babylonian administration), scaraboids are also attested (both provenanced and unprovenanced), even in Mesopotamia proper. Good examples can for instance be found in: L. Jakob-Rost, Die Stempelsiegel im vorderasiatischen Museum Berlin, Von Zaber, Mainz, 1997, e.g.: No. 331 (with two priests flanking an altar!; No. 280-287 + 318-319 with single priest and altar; No. 296 and 328 with single priest; No. 244 priest with dog and 8-pointed; etc. several others with astral images etc.). I just cannot agree with you here. I admire your insight a lot, but here I must firmly disagree with you. Best wishes, Peter • • • • • • • Response To Dr. Peter van der VeenDear Dr. Peter van der Veen, It is always a pleasure, my friend, to hear from you. The seal of ShLMT is a scaraboid of blackish-gray steatite? or limestone?. This scaraboidal shape seems to be more indicative of pre-exilic seals. All the examples that I gave in WSS are scaraboidal. I concentrated on ones with TWO Figures facing each other. The reason I used mostly unprovenanced material was simple. As you know, it is the vast majority(85 to 90%) of what we have to work with. You are correct, I goofed up and made Tell el-Mazar or Tall al-Mazar as you call it synonymous with Ein or En-gedi. I did read about the finds from Tall al-Mazar in Dr. Stern's 2007 En-gedi I Volume. Please correct me if I am wrong, because I do not have pictures of all of the seals. These types of Neo-Babylonian Seals are pyramidal octagonal or pyramidal conical and are made of higher quality stone like agate or chalcedony. They are NOT scaraboidal like the seal of ShLMT. In Dr. Stern's descriptions of the seals from Tall al-Mazar there are no close parallels to the seal of ShLMT. There are: just the ONE priest before an altar, a winged lion, a stag, a mountain goat, a bird, and a hero struggling with two horned animals. Dr. Stern also continues on page 257 saying: "It should be noted that one of the Tell Mazar agate seals was executed in the shape of a duck rather than in the usual conical or pyramidal form." You are correct, and I agree with you 100% that the letters like the 'Aramaizing Taw' are Hebrew. I find nothing particulary diagnostic of the Shin, Lamed, Mem, or the Taw. They look pretty much this way from the late Eighth Century until the Fifth Century. I also agree with you that Hebrew can be written right along side of Aramaic, and it obviously was, like on your aniconic WSS 1071 seal. To boil all of this information down to a few sentences, if I picked up the seal of ShLMT and was looking for a good comparison, I just would not look at your Neo-Babylonian examples and say, "Yes these are close parallels." Iconography like Epigraphy are not sciences. It is to a large degree up to what the beholder sees. I do look very much forward to Dr. Mazar's excavation report to see the seal of ShLMT's find spot. It is really only then, that we can have some certainty in this matter. I Wish You and Your Family The Very Best Of Everything, With Much Gratitude, Sincerely Yours, Muchael Welch • • • • • • • Reply to Michael WelchI'd like to briefly reply to Mike Welch's interesting points. I agree fully with him that we must be careful not to rush to our conclusions and yes he is right that there may be earlier precursors of the iconography of 'Babylonian' priests flanking an altar. But I am not convinced by his examples. Nearly all of them are unprovenanced. The palaeographic dates given by Prof. Avigad are very approximate and sometimes also not consistent. Crude scripts may look older. Some of Mike's examples are unrelated, compare WSS 154 (Phoenician/Canaanite type, men flanking a life tree), WSS 738 (completely different two Egyptianized princes with scepters). Neo-Babylonian seal images appear in Israel and Jordan from the late 7th cent. BC onwards, i.e. from the time of Babylonian supremacy. Their hey-day is the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Who can tell me that the relevant specimens (though unprovenanced - always difficult!) WSS 1044, 1047, 1053, 1058 are not in fact 6th cent. BC (as Mike himself suggests), hence from the time of the Babylonian occupation (i.e. from the time of the Babylonian annexation of Judah, Ammon, Moab, Edom [the latter from 553/2 BC onwards])? The 'taw' is not Aramaic, but reveals 'Aramaizing' features. That is not completely the same thing. And why should Jews after (and some stayed behind in the Land - so also during) the exile not also have written Hebrew? Surely Aramaic was used in official state documents (at least we think so). Though somewhat inconsistent wion with the unprovenanced seal WSS 1071 is very telling. The name of the owner Yehoyishma is written in Hebrew characters from the 'pre-exilic' period (very similar to the ones on the new seal from Jerusalem, compare the typical shin) and the name of his father with a Babylonian name Shawassarusur is written in what Avigad calls 'Aramaic' (it includes the same taw!). This seal is supposed to date to the later 6th cent. BC or even to the beginning of the return from exile. By the way, I was not referring to Tel Goren (Ein Gedi), but to the Jordanian site of Tall al-Mazar (if you like). Best wishes and keep up the stimulating discussion, Peter van der Veen • • • • • • • Always ControversyYou know why I love BAR, it is always showing us how much controversy exists in Field. Nothing can be newly found without many different opinions and varying views on the subject. To me this is an exciting time with the Jesus Tomb, now the seal just found, the James ossuary, and so on. Thanks BAR for keeping us on the edge of our seat and up to date on all the new finds and opinions. Lou Sloat, Natural Resource Consultant • • • • • • • My ErrataObviously I have my own errata. Tell el Mazar is in Jordan and is not synonymous with Tel Goren or En-gedi. However Dr. Ephraim Stern does discuss its finds on pages 256-257 of his mammoth sized book. Also, it would have probably been better to keep the Hebrew letter T as Taw instead of Tau. With Much Gratitude, Sincerely Yours, Michael Welch, Deltona, Florida • • • • • • • Iconography and EpigraphyDr. Peter van der Veen is an intelligent, thoughtful scholar. He tries hard to get information correct. On a personal level both he and I have exchanged books. I look forward to purchasing his forthcoming book. I do have to challenge his thinking on both iconography and epigraphy. First on iconography: it is true that Dr. Ephraim Stern has written about Neo-Babylonian seals from Tell el-Mazar or you may know it as Tell Goren or as Ein or En-Gedi. In Dr. Stern's more recent 2007 mammoth sized En-Gedi Excavations I Final Report(1961-1965) on page 256, the seals are found again. The problem that I have with this comparison to the seal of ShLMT is that there is only one, very schematic worshipper on the side of an even more schematic altar. These seals are also usually only accompanied by Aramaic Inscriptions, whereas, ShLMT is clearly Hebrew. I agree with Dr. van der Veen that this particular type of Neo-Babylonian seal dates from approximately 550-450 B.C. I just do not think you can safely classify the seal of ShLMT in the Neo-Babylonian style. In WSS by Drs. Avigad and Sass there are many more seals that are closer parallels. Mr. Yitzhak Sapir in a recent ANE-2 message was talking about a seal excavated in Samaria. I believe he was talking about WSS 1078. It is much more closer parallel than Dr. van der Veen's examples. No date estimate is given in WSS. Another very close seal is WSS 1026. It is in the Moabite section and could easily be Hebrew because it has an extra tic on the Yod(which is characteristic of the Samaria Ostraca and LMLK Ziph seals). It is dated to the 8th to 7th Centuries. There are several others either Hebrew, Moabite, Edomite or Phoenician (and I may be missing one or two). They are WSS 154(no date), WSS 402 A,B, mid 7th per Avigad's Bullae Book, WSS 738 9th-8th, WSS 1043 7th, 1044 7th, and 1047 (no date), WSS 1053 early 6th, WSS 1058 is also very close (no date). I would consider these seals much closer parallels. Since all four letters on this seal are Hebrew, and we know the find spot, I see no reason for Dr. van der Veen's Aramaic Tau. At the very least in the late eighth century under King Hezekiah, we have archaeologically excavated in Israel, Shins, Lameds, Mems, and Taus, excavated in Lachish and Jerusalem. These are found on the two-winged sun disc LMLK MMShT Seals. If you combine the two LMLK MMShT Seals, you have all FOUR LETTERS, even the "Aramaic Tau" is found on the undivided bottom register seal. These examples combined with Dr. Byrne's examples lead me to believe that this seal is indeed pre-exilic. I look forward to Dr. Mazar's excavation report to see if this seal was actually found among arrowheads of a Babylonian Destruction, late Seventh or Early Sixth Centuries. With Much Gratitude, Sincerely Yours, Michael Welch, Deltona, Florida • • • • • • • Shelomit SealI wish to commend Eilat Mazar in the highest terms for her reappraisal of the seal's reading. Dr. Mazar, you are a true scholar in the finest tradition. Thank you for your honesty and love of truth, no matter where it leads. • • • • • • • Eilat Mazar's revised readingI really would like state also that was so happy to see that Eilat Mazar has agreed with the reading Shlomit (which I suggested first to her and was confirmed by so many colleagues). She revised her original reading. By so doing she proved to be an openminded and very honest scholar, very willing to discuss and revise ideas and let the arguments speak for themselves. Thanks so much, Eilat! • • • • • • • Wise as a Serpent, Harmless as a DoveIf I were an archeologist, & found a really neat artifact with an inscription on it that may or may not have a Biblical connection that will probably never be proved nor disproved, what could I do to bring international attention to it? In one of the best-written, succinct & profound theological teachings I've ever read, Todd Bolen recently blogged about an incident between him & his son. Rather than simply telling his son what they were gonna do for fun that evening, he set up a scenario where his son had the opportunity to choose the event, which brought him great joy even though it's what Todd had planned anyway; then he wondered aloud if God ever set up analogous situations for us. So if I were the archeologist (especially an already-established, well-respected senior one like Dr. Mazar), even though I know a thing or two about Paleo-Hebrew seals, I'd completely misread the inscription, publicize it quickly, then sit back & allow younger, less known scholars like Peter van der Veen, Christopher Heard, & Ryan Byrne to make important observations about it, to share the prestige, & to stimulate/encourage others. Then I'd figuratively slap my forehead & say, "Oh, you're right! Why didn't I see that!" In one fell swoop, she fueled a fantastic online discussion, generated tremendous P.R., & gave a great demonstration of how an ideal academic peer-review system should work. All in less than 1 month! She's brilliant! Behold the future of academic publishing! • • • • • • • More WomenDr. Byrne has written a fine article. I agree with him that the date of the seal is more than like ly late 7th or early 6th century. This is especially true when Dr. Mazar says in her The Trumpet article that a Tower built by Nehemiah sealed the debris layers that the seal was found in. Thus, it was found in layers older than the 5th Century tower and was apparently found along with many arrowheads, which are probably from a Baylonian Destruction. There are many more women in the West Semitic Seal Corpus than those listed by Dr. Byrne. There is Yaffa, daughter of Sema'ayahu and 'Abbirs'a, daughter of Ba'alnatan in Drs. Deutsch and Heltzer's book, New Epigraphic Evidence From The Biblical Period(1995), pages 61-68. On page 61 they give a list of fifteen seals of daughters alone! In Biblical Period Hebrew Bullae The Josef Chaim Kaufman Collection(2003) by Dr. Robert Deutsch, there are three new female bullae listed nos. 44,45,46,---"Ala, wife of Shallum, 'Immadiy(ah), wife of Yishma'("el), and Paltah, daughter of 'Ahiqam. Concerning provenance of seals and bullae Dr. Byrne and most of the younger group of scholars cannot have it both ways. They deride the unprovenanced material, then quote from it, such as Dr. Byrne's quotation of Hebrew Bullae From The Time Of Jeremiah, by Dr. Nahman Avigad. Analyses can been done on these bullae, such as the recent ones done by Professor Yuval Goren which has determined at least two of the unprovenanced Royal Bullae Of King Hezekiah to be authentic. His use of the microscope can be done on others as well. Those that were actually burnt by fire can even have one more test--Thermoluminescence, which can help determine their age. With Much Gratitude, Sincerely Yours, Michael Welch, Deltona, Florida • • • • • • • Byrne's own rush to judgmentI very much appreciate Ryan Byrne's article posted here, and consider it the best analysis of the seal published to date. However, there's an irony: Byrne himself rushes to the judgment that Shlomit was a woman. On what basis may we assume this? No person mentioned in the Tanakh actually bears the name shin-lamedh-mem-tav; all of the variations include one or more "matres lectiones." The attested variations are shin-lamedh-mem-yodh-tav, shin-lamedh-vav-mem-yodh-tav, and shin-lamedh-mem-vav-tav. If you take all such names together as a pool for testing people who might own a seal inscribed shin-lamedh-mem-tav, the males outnumber the females two to one. See http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=917 for more details and discussion. • • • • • • • Let There Be (Alternate) LightIf y'all have any power over Dr. Mazar, could ya please persuade her to publish another photo with the lighting shifted about 45 degrees so as to prove/disprove whether the Lamed has the typical curved hook at its bottom? If it's there, it's not very deep, & can't be seen in this shot, though there seems to be plenty of room for it, & I expect it to be there. Thanks in advance, because I know you're an omnipotent force in the realm of Biblical archaeology! • • • • • • • re: Eilat Mazar’s reactionActually, Peter van der Veen's suggestion, and much of the reaction to Eliat Mazar's initial report was made not on a blog, but on a mailing list: ANE-2: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/ The thread discussing the issue begins at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ANE-2/message/7125 All are welcome to join ANE-2! • • • • • • • Refreshing honestyMazar is to be commended for her immediate and straightforward acceptance of the correction, which makes a stunning contrast with the conduct of Cross and Eshel with respect to the famous "Yahad" ostracon, on which, as Golb, Yardeni and others have indicated, the word "yahad" is nowhere to be seen. For reasons that have never been explained, Cross and Eshel ignored the criticisms and published their erroneous reading in their Oxford edition of the ostracon, long after the mistake had been pointed out for all to see at a major international conference in Jerusalem. • • • • • • • About the report's title ...Kudos to Mazar for revising her reading. But why is this special report entitled "'Temech' Seal Controversy," if everybody now agrees that the seal belonged to a Shlomit, removing the controversy? [We thank Christopher Heard and have modified the title. We expect, however, to add more scholarly discussion on this topic, and not all issues (the date of the seal, for example) are settled, so the seal remains somewhat controversial.--Ed.] • • • • • • • Seal reading by MazarThe openness of Mazar to the comments of others scholars is refreshing. Much better, in my opinion, than some of the recent media presentations of sensational notions without peer review! • • • • • • • inscribed sealWhen I saw the news on this seal and watched the inscription, I immediately said that the letters had to be inscribed as a mirror, to be read the way Eilat Mazar announced... And I was right! • • • • • • • Mazar object01-30-08/1618-cst No matter which 3 or 4 letters is indeed correct, Mazar discovered the seal. Stating instead of suggested is hind-sight and I could made an alternative translation from my LZ-boy. WELL DONE, MAZAR! wlb • • • • • • • inscription seal found by MazarIt is always refreshing when an archaeologist, or any scholar, can alter a position after careful review by other scholars, and with such a good attitude. • • • • • • • |
|
INFORMATION |
PUBLICATIONS |
BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY SOCIETY NETWORK LINKS |
The Jerusalem Post recently reported that Eilat Mazar, a member of Israel’s most famous archaeological family, had discovered a stamp seal in Jerusalem bearing a Hebrew name mentioned in the Bible. The seal featured a fairly common motif with two bearded figures flanking what appears to be a horned (?) altar with a crescent symbol in the upper center. This scene is especially common on seals from Iron Age Transjordan. On the bottom of the seal, Mazar read three characters: taw, mem, and het, or the name tmh, which she associated with the family name Temech mentioned in Nehemiah. Given that Mazar did not read the characters in reverse order, as the seal would impress them into clay, it is clear that the inscription cannot read taw, mem, het and thus cannot refer to the biblical family of Temech. Reading the characters in the proper order also requires us to reject het as the first character. Instead the seal appears to read šin, lamed, mem, taw, or the Hebrew name Šlomit. The apparent desire to connect the seal with the family mentioned in Nehemiah also seems to have informed Mazar’s preference to place the seal’s manufacture in Babylon and lower its date far later than the palaeography of the characters suggests. A date in the late seventh or early sixth century is preferable. The glyptic scene, as I mentioned, is perfectly suitable for the Iron Age Levant and need not require so elastic an explanation as Babylonian influence. There is hardly a consensus among West Semitists, moreover, that the upper crescent must specifically signify the god Sîn in favor of the poorly understood lunar imagery indigenous to the Levant.
The šin is made with four oblique incisions, which is customary for most specimens throughout the Iron Age. Whereas the lines of most šins make perfect intersections with each other (resembling the modern “w”), in this instance, the scribe’s first three lines overlap or cross over each other. This is most likely a reflection of the difficulty of incising lines into lesser quality stone than a deliberate or idiosyncratic ductus of this scribe.
The best reading for this letter is a lamed, although it is clear that the character is either incomplete or partially eroded due to the poor quality of the stone in which the scribe incised it. Notably missing is the characteristic hook at the bottom of the vertical shaft, which should circle upward to the right. It is possible to make out the faintest curvature at the letter’s bottom, but this may be a trick of the light. It is worth noting, however, that there are several examples of early sixth-century lameds, in which the hook is little more than an upward right tick. In some instances, the tick (or hook) is barely noticeable. In fact, in some ostraca (Lachish 9, 13, 16, and Arad 2, 6, 7, 8, 16) there are examples of a lamed missing the hook altogether; the entire lamed may appear as a single calligraphic stroke. This accords well with the character in our seal. For examples of ductus with a very weak tick, see additional ostraca from Lachish (3, 4, 6, 10, 13) and Arad (1, 5, 11, 12, 13, 17, etc.).
The identification of this character as mem is beyond doubt. The interesting ductus occasions some commentary, however. The conventional mem features three oblique strokes, which form the crown of the letter, with the right-most stroke also producing the tail of the letter, which typically curls leftward at its foot. These vertical strokes are usually connected either by loops or a crossbar transected them. In this instance, note that the three vertical strokes stand independent of each other without any loop or horizontal stroke to bind them. While this is by no means the dominant form, there are numerous examples of “disembodied” verticals in the bullae from the City of David (4, 15, 16, 30, 38, 39, 40, 75c, 78, 79, 80, 83, 87, 89, 98, 100, 108, 113, 118, 154, 163, and 174).
The fourth letter taw is unremarkable unless the down left direction of the vertical stroke concerns sticklers for stance. Ordinarily, we would expect to see a down right oblique stroke during the late seventh and early sixth centuries, producing a character with a stance resembling a modern “x”.
