Ayelet Gilboa | The Rise of Ancient Israel and Other Problematic Entities

good evening welcome hello and thank you for coming out on this rainy chilly fall night which it's kind of exciting thing thank you for coming to the members lecture this kicks off our centennial year of members lectures and this year we're also supplementing the lectures with a film series starting on the 11th and 12th with an Indiana Jones Film Festival and continuing throughout the year we also have a bunch of other Centennial year programs I invite you to come to our or visit our websites and check out everything we have to offer and now I'd like to introduce research associate professor here at the OU I York Rowan thank you very much Matt and thank you all for coming out good evening welcome to our first oh i centennial year members lecture my name is York Rowan I'm an archaeologist I've been an archaeologist in Israel for over 30 years and thus it's my honor to introduce our speaker this evening professor IL at Gilboa head of the zenman institute of archaeology at the University of Haifa professor Gill boas accomplishments from publications to fieldwork are so extensive that i could deliver a lecture of my own based on her 60 page CV as a resource however rather than consume her lecture time I will only highlight a few aspects of her career in research professor Gilboa received her PhD or masters and bachelor's degrees from the Institute of archeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem before becoming head of the Zinman Institute of archeology at Haifa she was chair of the department between 2007 2009 she's received many grants awards and prizes supervised over 25 graduate student theses presented at more than 50 international conferences and published three edited volumes with another soon to appear her publication record is even more impressive with 44 journal articles and several more and press 14 book chapters and too many other publications in conference proceedings encyclopedias and museum volumes to even begin to enumerate professor Gilboa co-directs the Tel d'Or excavation and publication project in Israel the latest publication door titled excavations at door final report area G the late bronze and iron ages appear just last year with her students she is currently publishing the legacy site of Chicana excavated in the 1970s chick Mona was a fortified production site for purple dye and weaving textiles the only one known from biblical times to other large Phoenician projects follow her long-term research interests sourcing different materials using chemical and isotopic techniques particularly silver and ivory in the bronze and iron ages in addition she has a large Petra graphic project on Phoenician ceramics which attempts to trace specific commercial spheres and symbolic properties and I'm sure we'll hear more about some of these research trends this evening so I've only given you the briefest of summaries of Professor Gill Bowman's dynamic career as an archaeologist but feel confident that we will learn more about a research in her lecture the rise and fall of ancient Israel and other problematic entities in archaeological perspective so with that let me welcome professor Ayala at Gilboa [Applause] okay Thank You York I'm very happy to be here and I'm very grateful to the Institute for inviting me to Chicago this really wonderful city I have many things to say but I was asked to concentrate on early Israel so this is what I'll do and I hope I will get to the other problematic entities but I'll see I don't think you want to stay here too long so try not to extend the lecture between the fifth beyond the 15 minutes that I have been allotted so let us start the first question to be asked when you're tackling a topic like ancient Israel is from a geological perspective is what is actually archaeologists role in this in this question because as you know the question of ancient Israel can be tackled from historical perspectives from biblical perspectives and for many years my profession meaning dealing with the history archaeology his the archeological point of Israel history and the Spirit was tagged as biblical archaeology we were all considered biblical archaeologists and I must say that for many year biblical archaeology had a very bad reputation globally you know this vision of an archaeologist working with the Bible in one hand and with the archaeological tools in the other was very romantic but was to a certain degree very unprofessional archeology was perceived perceived and actually practiced as you know the maiden of history it was seen as a discipline actually illustrating the Bible and archaeologists to a large large extent really succumbed to the his circle perspective or to the perceived historical perspective that the Bible was providing so this is a very good example for instance this is an artist that depicted was intended to depict Solomon or David maybe today with looking from his palace on the city of David but the Archaea archaeological elements used to depict David's Palace are real archaeological real Akkad architectural elements but taken from a much later period from the ninth century BC from Israel and not from Judah and actually it was when I put the slide on I forgot that the actual only capital ever found that really showed that those this sort of capital these sorts of capital was decorated is just displayed here in the Oriental Institute Museum so this is the way people thought of Biblical Archaeology let's say in the first half of the 20th century and even later is a discipline illustrating the Bible things have changed from that period mainly I think archaeology worldwide not only the archaeology practiced in Israel has matured and has become a discipline on on its own right but still they are lingering question of how archaeology of the periods I'm going to talk about what we call archaeologically the bronze and iron ages what is our conceptual framework is it related at all to the Bible are we biblical archaeologists are we archaeologists of Palestine or the southern Levant as people like to call it because that's the most neutral term we can use regarding our region region so what are what are we actually doing can we actually do archaeologist of these periods without thinking of the Bible without using the Bible my question would be yes this is maybe what we should be doing but I don't think any of us can do archaeology of the Spirit you know distracting extracting what we know from the Bible so the Bible is always there even if we're trying to do totally neutral archaeology and the next question is how do we I mean assuming that we cannot forget about the Bible that could not ignore other written sources regarding the period how should we go about archaeology of the Spirit do we do what I always claim try to do neutral archaeology first and then only after we've reached our conclusions based on archaeological tools look up and say okay let's see now does it fit what the Bible says does it contradict can the to be combined which actually what has priority the text or or the archaeological evidence this question is not only asked visibly the Bible but also relation to other written records and will be speaking as on part of these what is our responsibility as archaeologists and especially us what I call dirt archaeologists archaeologists who are actually excavating and our immersed in the material cultures cultures of the sites were excavating and then on top of everything is maybe Veen main disciplinary conundrum in archaeology the relation between the material culture we are excavating excavating and the big questions of ethnicity of identity is this is ethnically for instance something that we can deduce from the material culture imagine you know your various communities in Chicago with archaeologists in the future be able to tell different communities apart only by considering the daily object they will find eventually in their houses will there be anywhere close to the mark so these are the more general conceptual questions we should consider before we come something happen here but never mind you can see the title the real title is up there so this is going to be the topic of my lecture you can see the general time frame but before we do that we have to understand and this will take a few minutes the background what happens in the region where I am considering before the 12th to ninth century and I'm taking you back to the time of the Canaanites the Late Bronze Age in archaeological parlance because there's no way we can understand what was going in the Iron Age the main period were going to talk about without consider what happened before so a very quick detour to Canaan towards the end of the Canaanite area as you can see the 14 to 13 century BC this is a period that is very well known mainly because the Levant in this region wait a minute let me try to use that here was divided between two major powers the Hittite Empire here in Anatolia and more important to our subject today the Egyptian Empire with as you can see the brown area ruled the area that is today Israel Canaan Canaan of the 14th and 13th century BC and because those two empires were interested in Canaan there are many written records about the spirit some of them as you can see were found in Egypt other were found in other regions like in you great a very famous Syrian town so we know a lot about Late Bronze Age Canaan and again especially from the Egyptians because the Egyptian ruled this area for hundreds of years by the way a situation that the Bible doesn't know of I will never ever mentions Egyptian rule in Canaan in all the narratives that relate to the peers were discussing today the Egyptian rule is known from monuments in Egypt itself and from abandoned archaeological evidence like Egyptian administrative administrative sites in Israel this is one example from the city of Jaffa today actually within Tel Aviv a gate of an Egyptian settled fortress several actually dozens and dozens of Egyptian monuments scattered throughout throughout Canaan the Egyptian had held a firm grip on Canaan from several hundred years why the reason are obvious first of all as you can imagine all traffic leaving from Egypt northbound to fight the Hittites to fight other countries in the northern event had to pass through the Sevilla van today's Israel so this was a major of thorough way and Egypt also depended always depended on the agriculture produce of the Mediterranean area and you have to consider that we Israel Canaan were the closest Mediterranean to closest Mediterranean Egypt closest to Egypt so whatever the Egyptian needed and could not supply for themselves wheat for instance barley especially the northern negative today the closest supplier of these produce was important and Egypt also needed for everyday life and I would say also for everyday everyday death the prada arboreal products from the mediterranean region mainly resins because it could not function without resin neither in daily life as i said for instance gluing boards of shapes performing performing rituals and also embalming the these mediterranean products were essential for Egyptian and daily life and for Egyptian ritual we know a lot about the Canaanites from the archaeological record we know their sites the major tell sites of Israel lakish so Megiddo we know the temples we know closely the canine ritual by the gods by the shrines most of the examples here are from the site of Hetzel and Megiddo we know the their gods from archaeological finds and mainly from the various texts that pertain to these Spears these are them and some nice period pieces uncovered in recent years in so we know they're popular cult with these figurines of there's a big debate whether they actually represent deities or women's they are found in almost every Late Bronze Age tomb in Canaan and especially the spirit is known the Late Bronze Age the 14th to the 14th and 13th century by its extensive commercial context across the Mediterranean the region of Canaan that we were talking about was part of a very extensive network that exchanged commodities with as you can see Egypt the Hittite Empire empires Cyprus as a main supplier for instance of copper which was the which was the oil of that type copper was the main commodity that the whole Mediterranean was was consuming and contacts reaching as far as you can see as the Aegean Greece and the Aegean area and even indirectly two regions further to the south the central Mediterranean and even to the Atlantic coast of Africa and in Europe so a very extensive international network and this is why several archaeologists actually think of the Late Bronze Age is the period were actually the concept of globalization can be applied to were several economies and social systems were depend we're interdependent at least across the eastern part of the Mediterranean and this again because we had those very elaborate administration administration's ruling Egypt the high tides and other other political entities there are ample records of this commercial network both as you can see in Egyptian inscription and Egyptian tombs this is a depiction of Syrian ship ships arriving in an Egyptian port and archaeological evidence of these exchanges are endless and just showing you part of the commodities that were exchanged both luxury items and luxury materials raw materials like glass almost everything was exchanged across the Mediterranean I would especially want to highlight in this in this respect that among the commodities exchange we now know that an extensive part originated originated on a part of our part of Canaan that I will try to get to by the end of my lecture the calomel Coast which is part of the Phoenician sphere that I hope that after finishing with the Israelites and the Philistines will manage to get to it mainly because my sites are situated on Israel's caramel coast however all this very prosperous picture this is what I I learned when I I was an ant undergrad undergraduate student in Jerusalem is actually very misleading because Canaan under the Egyptians were actually a very dilapidated country all the impressive pictures that we saw the palaces besides the palaces the art originated actually in very specific sites you can see maybe the major labor on Sage sites in Israel these and especially at all and Megiddo in the north produced most of most of every thing you will usually find in papers in magazines everywhere about Late Bronze Age Kaelin the rest of the country was actually demographically very poor so if you have in your mind you know the cities that the Israelites conquered when they entered Canaan like Jericho for instance they were all very small sites Canaan throughout this period was stupefied by demographic crisis most of the cities were actually not even cities were very small settlements the areas that were hardly settled or almost completely empty for instance the central hill country of Israel or this area here between the lake of galilee the mountainous area between the area and the sea of galilee and the dead sea was almost empty of of settlements the galilee this area here was almost empty of settlements the desert region of israel the Negev was almost empty to the world regions that were hardly settled and even in the more fertile fertile regions when you compare the situation to previous areas Canaan Canaan was not at its best we also know both from written records and archaeological discoveries that a large part of the population lived actually outside the urban matrix of Canaan so there was a large population that was not permanent not permanently settled populations of semi nomads that we again know both from the Egyptian records the Egyptian called them Shasu or appie who habeeboo a term that by the way a few scholars associate to the early Hebrews by the etymology the sound of the word we know them archaeologically because we find cemeteries that are not connected to any settlements because we find temples that are not connected to any settlements so it is quite clear that within this demographically poor canaan there was a significant part of the population that was a semi-nomadic that was not settled and this is usually the sort of population that the archaeology can locate only seldom that easily located usually in desert areas like this cemetery in Jordan part of Canaan but they're definitely less visible to the Archaea archaeological radar than you know permanent settlements the regular settlements we usually excavate towards the end of this period this steely Egyptian steely was erected perhaps one of the most important documents regarding the rise of ancient Israel it was its a 13th century steely and as you can see it mentions for the first time the name Israel this is a actually record of an Egyptian conquest in Canaan you see what they're the menephta the Pharaoh is reporting he has conquered Ashkelon he's conquered Gaza is courting his conquered gen you know I'm a city apparently in northern Israel Israel is laid waste and whoo-hoooo Canaan has become a widows so use a conventional victory steely but for us of course the important important issue in this theory that this is the earliest mention of the name Israel and as part of this the earliest external mention of the word Israel this is our Israel was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs what is even more interesting about this name is that as some of some of you may know Egyptian words were very often preceded by a determinative meaning an explanation of the category the name belongs to so if you have if you write the name Chicago you will have before Chicago the determinate if for a city so you know that you cargo is a city Ashkelon and gather in this inscription for instance are preceded by the turbulent ease of City the name of Israel is not because the determinative that you can see you can see of a seated men men and a seated woman describes usually a non sedentary population so it's some may be a tribe something that is not urban that is not settled so the importance of this steely is that it tells us the G Egyptians in the late 13th century knew of some entity called Israel that was apparently probably unknown nomads or at least not a settled entity regretfully of we don't know we have no idea of where this entity of Israel was located somewhere in Canaan because as you saw between Ashkelon Gaza it's somewhere that it's Ana Canaan and Canaanite context but we this is what we know but let's remember this occurrence somewhere around 1200 BC so before our story starts the Bronze Age economical and political Mediterranean collapsed of course it didn't happen in one day but around 1200 BC this is the picture we get the Mycenaean the Mycenaean culture collapsed with most of the site the Hittite Empire collapsed totally almost totally politically the Egyptians lost their grip on Canaan and on other areas they were controlling and many settlements across this entire regions was were destroyed or abandoned so this is really an end of an area the commercial and the very extensive commercial enterprises that have I mentioned stopped so in button a few dozens of years or the system just didn't exist anymore and when we wake up three hundred years later I'm skipping a period of interest for moments when we wake up 300 years later our region the southern Levant looks completely different first of all it is stiff eyed by territorial States some would call them national states I prefer territorial we will be talking about the rise of the Kingdom of Israel about the rise of the Kingdom of Judah but actually in this period you see kingdoms in the area that is today Jordan across the drawing Ammon and Moab and Edom rising Vieira may aramean states in the north act and actually you can follow the same process around the Mediterranean with the Greek police and city kingdom in Cyprus the political configuration is totally different that's the area of as I said the territorial States from this moment in uh from this moment and aren't from the ninth century BC everything is relatively clear we know about those territorial states we know how they were cold we know how they the names of most of their kings from from the Bible but also from non biblical records so from this point from the 9th century and on things are relatively easy just a few examples in the famous Moabite stone of the midnight century BC King Umbria of Israel is mentioned so there's there's a state or actually let's call it the Kingdom which is a more accurate definition there's a kingdom named Israel with a king named Emery exactly as we know of the Bible and as part of this we know of yahweh the god known by Israel's neighbors in the ninth century there's also a possibility that the house of the name of David is mentioned but this is debatable so let's leave this for the time being some other examples again all in the ninth century when the Assyrians started to make the first moves to the Near East a coalition a Near Eastern coalition was organized and a hab the Israelite was the second most important force with mm cherry 'its again the most important thing is that there's concrete evidence both of kingdom both regarding the Kingdom of Israel and its King same period approximately black obelisk I saw you just saw there's a copy of of it here in the museum yahoo son of Omri he was not the son of away but nevermind as you can see seeing succumbing to the Assyrian Emperor so from the ninth century we have ample evidence both of the existence of the Kingdom of Israel mind you nan Judah Kingdom Israel is a more more important Kingdom although you know we from the Bible all know as especially about Judah because the Bible was written in Judean circles so Israel takes in the Bible takes the secondary seat but it was actually the more important Kingdom and one of them most important discoveries of the of the last decades in Israel was this era mean steely uncovered at Tel Dan society in the north of Israel mentioning the house of David house of David so the general let's say political off of the biblical narrative is confirmed by historical by external historical evidence from the ninth century BC and we see the same picture archaeologically from the ninth century BC fortified city is related ministers Israelite administrative centers fortified with elaborate gates with water systems with public facilities for grain storage as you can see granaries and building for storage and stables I mean from the ninth century you can actually see and feel the Kingdom of Israel this is the storage building that we have excavated during the last season adore really from nice and ninth century things are relatively clear beyond the public facilities we also start to have standard buildings there's a standard Israel at architecture of which the main architecture type is what we call a forum house the exact details are not that important but as you can see it's typifies by the use of those columns Square many squarish scholars it's this it's so typical it's used for everything it's used for domestic units for industrial units this for room concept is v Israelite concept in Israel cities also adapt related in Judah and actually it is unknown in the spirit anywhere outside these two kingdoms please remember this forum house with its columns because we will be getting back to it from the ninth century we have evidence of literacy and literate administration's with against some examples from Tel Aviv in the Jordan Valley of inscriptions that mention a mention names that we know from the Bible some of you who may know your Bible who isn't him she does anyone is the name ring a bell name she was the father of Yahoo who was actually the person that terminated the UM right dynasty so that's the name we know from the Bible more important is that these inscriptions can already be read as Hebrew as opposed to other West Semitic languages we have taxing documents in Hebrew the beyond the fact that they are in Hebrew please have a look at the names as you can see the endings of the name what we call the CEO for ik endings endings that are usually shortened version of the name of the main deity are all as you can see God yo yo yo they finished with you'd valve which is the shortening of again yeah javi so it's all these people I mean we assume that these people are people that actually worship Yahweh not although not all of them by by the way some of the Sumerians of these people of the Spirit have names that finish with Bal the Canaanite baths so not all of them apparently we have a worshippers and from the eighth century and on this becomes really a flood was inscribed objects most of them objects that exhibit literacy like boule clay claim clay ceilings that are stamped with Hebrew inscription in inscriptions including those of Kings that we know from the Bible this is what just one recent example uncovered in Jerusalem but there are hundreds of them some of them with names we do specific specific Kings we know from the Bible but from the Judah hide administration there are really endless and again as you can see they have again the names the private names have feel for ik endings like this one yours new yahoo and ends with you which again indicates that the person that the person was you have a worshipper this is what I like best the one the ceilings not too many that belong to women Madinah madam not daughter of the king we don't know her but she was a daughter of one of the Judah eight King the fact that Yahweh was worshipped in both Israel and Judah is also exemplified but either saw other sorts of inscriptions for instance in this site name considered a Judas you can see where it is it's on the border between the Negev and Sinai two dates is it's within Egyptian territory again there's a fortress there I will not talk about it other than showing you that in some of its inscriptions Yahweh is mentioned in a strange way there's yeah hava of Somalia as you can see in English and in Hebrew there's a you have a of taemin you have of the South so there was a Yahweh but they were apparently several llaves but this is again not a problem I will consider today so to sum up from the ninth century and into the eighth after which as far as some of you know the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians and then Judah was destroyed by the Babylonian from the ninth century on and on we clearly say see a major Israelite Kingdom and a minor Judah eight Kingdom there are kingdoms they have all the material signs of Kingdom they have a literate administration's they have administrative facilities they administer their administration's are later and at least let us say no known natural higher should say that but at least the royal houses and he leads the one that are writing our worshiping Yahweh but my question today is what happens in between how did we get from this late bronze age Canaanite collapse around 1200 to the ninth century what happens in between what happens in between is much more problematic because a we hardly have or maybe that's the main the main problem is that after the Late Bronze Age collapse with the collapse of the administration the hittite administration's administration's in many Canaanite cities the hardly any written records left for the entire period between 1200 and 900 BC we have very few documents and the narratives that some of you you know are for the rise of Israel are based on the biblical description and again a problem I cannot dive into today but as some of you may know for the last two decades the very fierce debate about the historicity of the Bible can we actually should we take the so-called historical parts of the Bible like judges and King at face value is this history where these books meant to be historical books or are they literally religious some would say propagandistic books this is again a debated we need to remember at the background but there's no way I will enter it today and this is as most of you know the biblical narrative regarding early Israel you know slaves in Egypt so Joel forty forty years in the desert entering Cana there are several versions from the south from the east but basically the idea is that a foreign entity enter Canaan enter scale and conquers the k99 cities although even in the Bible there are some discrepancy and even the Bible describes it as you know in the book of Judges some coexistence between the Israelites and the Canaanites but basically Israel is a foreign element in Canaan regarding the Philistines there's a very similar concept among historical and archaeologists not based on the Bible this time but based on inscriptions and artistic depictions relief found in a temple in Egypt the mortuary temple of Ramses the third you can see this is around the Year 1200 and the both inscriptions and reliefs depict Egypt battling a group of enemy enemies that archaeology has called sea people including several groups one of them is the Palash - which unequivocally are to be equated with the biblical Philistines so for both these groups the usual scholarly interpretation till recently was of groups entering Canaan from outside regarding the Phoenicians my third entity I'm not showing you anything because hardly anything is that maybe one documenter thrill may relate to finishing this time I'm not sure I have time to mention it but really hardly anything is written in ancient records the Philistines for instance as you can see they are very evocative reliefs because you can see with the Egyptians the ones are fighting the Philistines those was the so feathered feather crowns or whatever as you can see they are accompanied by civilian population it's not a regular combat scene so you have as you see women and children and they accompanied by their livestock this is really unusual and enforced the scholarly interpretation of really a civilian population coming attacking Egypt and the Near East and this generated what I call the d-day scenario a bit exaggerated in the slide were and but this is again the scholarly view that was dominant and may perhaps even still at her to by some scholars were by groups of see people among them the Philistines are attacking the coast of the Levant settling on the coast of the Levant while in the north let today's Lebanon with people called Felicia nothing happens everything is quiet and live life goes on again I will get back to this picture later on so this is basically it's a bit of an exaggeration and schematize asian of scholarly opinions prevailing till very recently and i would like to check what archaeology what the facts in the ground actually are and i would would like to start with the region was the hilly region of israel the area that eventually this this region the Galilee I'm not talking about Transjordan today but about the Galilee and the central hill country of Israel which were eventually the core areas in which the kingdoms of both Israel and Judah developed so the first thing I want to say that demographically demographically there's a there's a real revolution I think you may see it here it's not it's not clear enough but in all the mountainous regions of Israel the Galilee the central hill country were previously as I told you in the Late Bronze Age there was hardly any settlement these area just fill up what you can what you see on the Mac is really only part of the picture because the dots and the map are only sites that have been excavated but beyond these sides we know hundreds of sites that are known only through surveys that sites that have not been excavated but the picture everywhere is the same suddenly there are hundreds literally a hundred hundreds of new settlements most of them are very small villages even Hamlet's or single or sometimes even single buildings no no cities no urban centers but small settlements just crowding the Galilee the central hill country and even if you can see here the northern negative the arid part of Israel is just filled with new settlements you know on the face of it this really matches the biblical description suddenly we don't really know what suddenly is it's suddenly with a scope of two hundred years who cannot be more specific than that because as I said they are very small and very poor and you know the poor the material culture is its it is more difficult to date so somewhere in the 12th and 11th century BC so this is suddenly those areas fill up as I said the sites are small but they are from the beginning from the moment they are established they exhibit a very uniform architecture what we what we call free room with houses you see house let's let's take this one as an example you see it has three spaces the columns that you already know is dumb in our dominant in these houses this is the architectural type that eventually will become V Akkad architectural type typifying both Israel and Judah there's an strong architectural connection between those sides and eventually all those that will the main sides of Israel and Judah which will have not the three room house by the forum house which is conceptually the same typifying their cities either facet of material culture in these sites however are purely Canaanite there's nothing that indicates any external source the pottery you'll have to believe me is typically Canaanite but here and there there's the awesome special features for instance they avoid the use of decorated pottery decorated pottery was a very popular among the Canaanite this is something you don't find in these centers people have been relying on the fact that these in all these sites pork is not consumed I'm less impressed because pork was also never consumed in in earnest in in Canaanite sites you know Perth does not usually they're just not adjusted to the Mediterranean climate so basically pork is not part of the Mediterranean diet so this is less less impressive and this is what we know about these sites that they are small that the architecture is related to what will happen next from the ninth century and on but the king but the material culture is completely Canaan and this is the way apparently we should imagine all those sites in the hill country in that period a new discovery again new over the last decade was made by the late Adam zertal from my University in several places in the Jordan Valley just to remind you where the Jordan Valley is he found this cluster of sites you can see this one here in the aerial photograph but we'll see the better one is here of site that he called the footprint enclosures and he found all sorts of symbolic connotation to the foot trip foot brick footprint shape I don't agree with this interpretation so I will not delve into it but the what the fact is their enclosures there are no not settlement they seem like ritual and closures they are on the east as you can and let us would be reminded again on the eastern margins of along the Jordan Valley and they date to the very early Iron Age to the 12th or the 11th century so Adams hotel interpreted as sites belonging to the Israelites entering Canaan from the east you know it's an interpretation but definitely they definitely look like some ritual asides if you can see here though apparently people were apparently able to walk you see there's this double wall just encircling this side which really looks like a path where people could actually walk there are the and closer and smaller enclosures within these sites that are really strange people are not trying to publish them they'd a to the correct big period and supposedly they belong to this big let's say they may belong to an a population entering Canaan from the east I would like to sum up the situation in this territories that will become the main the core areas of Israel and Judah there's definitely a new from the 12th into the 11th century there's definitely a new wave of settlement the main question is where are all these people coming from are they really coming from outside from Egypt and I think everyone will agree that it's a possibility but there's no archaeological evidence to support it and I think most of care of most of the archaeologists in Israel will today agree that most of these speak most of this population is actually the local the Caine and I'm population that if you remember in the Late Bronze Age actually was vanished from the archaeological radar all this semi-nomadic settlement which now because of circumstance circumstances that were not really sure not not actually sure which which circumstances exactly but possibly the withdrawal of the Egyptian from the region possibly other regions not don't have the time for this today are actually starting to resettle in areas that were abandoned from centuries so this is the debate today were were they're coming from if they're coming from anywhere and the second related question is are they actually coming to this region of settling in this region as a well-defined and unified entity the Israelites or something that I will get back to does the Israelite identity form in situ and again this is going this is a topic I will return to after we see what happens elsewhere in Canaanites so meanwhile in Philistia in the area as you can see that is roughly south of Tel Aviv's the coast of area the coastal area from Tel Aviv from the Elkhorn River in southward does is a totally different story in this region's first of all as opposed to the hill country we have some substantial urban centers the most impressive one is a tel McNair in the in my glasses for this just a second tell McNair which is here identified with people with no doubt with biblical a a corn but actually we know well all the major sites the Bible mentions as the major biblical sites so we have Ashkelon the coastal site the only coastal site by the way so if it people usually associate the Philistines with maritime activities but actually from all among other sites the only one that is really coaster which is Ashkelon Ashdod he is drawn on the coast is not really on the coast Gaza which we know know nothing about archaeology got any corn are the five cities of the Philistines that are mentioned in the Bible they're all excavated we know their material culture well only as I said only tell McNair corn is a really imposing urban site all the other ones continue Bronze Age sides are not very big some of them are actually smaller than their canine predecessors so there are urban centers but not very impressive what is impressive is that there's a wide range of media the show that the people living in those sites have exhibit foreign traditions in their material culture the most the most conspicuous foreign traditions are exhibited in the poetry first of all you see decorated pottery that you didn't see in the hill countryside's tradition traditions in portrait decorate decorating are either Greek Mycenaean or Cypriot other active artifacts like this special this sort of dagger are Cypriot undoubtedly we found in Cyprus you can find these sorts of daggers in the hundreds their cult objects for instance this figurine a she dota we called it we called her because she was the first first to discover first of we discovered English daaad there are many like her but she's the only complete one so that's the one we always show as you can see she it's some sort of conceptualization of a woman combined with a chair this is definitely a Mycenaean feature where women on chair goddesses may be on chair and sometimes actually combine really combined with the chair this is undoubtedly the conceptual background for these Philistine figurines daily life installations and objects like those basins and these are the examples from Philistine sites you can see their counterparts in in the Aegean area in might in the Mycenaean actually we have some counterparts in Cyprus to its cycle it's the the background for all the traditions we find in Philistia are mostly secret and Greek Mycenaean however the picture is not that simple because several of the Philistine sites actually continued the Bronze Age sides on which they were constructed the know this did a scenario of people arriving from the west and conquering and destroying the site doesn't really happen either in the one side that I showed you tell me click on it doesn't happen in the others in the other side and although you can whatever you touch you feel the you feel and see the Aegean and Cypriot traditions even in really very the very basics of life like for instance in weights used for weaving we're in the same household you can see the Canaanite the weights in Kenya a tradition those doughnut-shaped ones and the spool shaped ones which are Aegean or separate we do not really know cooking plants again in the same household you have the Canaan and the wider types Canaanite cooking pots and the Aegean or secret cooking pots so you can see foreign and Canaanite traditions in the same household although in other respects for instance the consumption of pork in the in the Philistine sites is so high that these are rates that you know no one has seen in Canaan since the fifth millennium BC and no one will see again till the Crusaders arrive in the country we actually know today by DNA studies that this is apparently the period were European pig DNA enters enters the Levant and actually blends with the local a wild boar DNA so it's not only as if they're actually bringing pigs wisdom so again the picture is less less dramatic as we would like as we used to picture it there's unequivocal evidence for people arriving from Cyprus and the Aegean and probably other regions around the Mediterranean but there's no violent conquer conquest and the settlement of those foreign elements is again more peaceful probably a very lengthy period and again they do not come it seems and they do not come as a consolidated entity it's not the Philistines arriving because the minute when they arrived they were not yet Philistines they were Mycenaeans from this city and Mycenaeans from from another city they were Cypriots there were people from all over the Mediterranean and as I will try to argue Philistine identity is something that was forged in situ part of this identity is the local is the local population because again you see the different traditions in the same swords and I'll come to my favorite now am i with time yeah I knew it must watch just stopped me the time from someone with a watch a 10 okay so I should be finishing okay so let me just say about this is my favorite region I cannot skip it on the north northern part of Israel the Carmel coast you see doe that's the site of excavating again the picture is totally different I was talking about Philistines from Tel Aviv from the Elkhorn River to the south now I'm talking from the about the region north of the Elkhorn River this is tell doe the major site in this area and we claim today that doe is the main city where you can see the consolidation the early steps of the culture that we call Phoenicians we call them finishin they didn't call themself Phoenicians this was a term first coined by Greeks in the 8th century so these people didn't know that someone will ever call them Phoenicians but this is what scholarship calls the Finnish culture and is usually located only in Lebanon we have in Lebanon we have proved in recent years that is mainly because the main centers in Lebanon are important not impossible but very difficult to excavate because the the overburden of medieval and modern cities on most of the Lebanese sites though that is free luckily free of later constructions is decide work you can study the beginnings of myself initial period I will skip a few slides about though it's today three main site around the entire method a Mediterranean in which in the spirit were discussing between the 13th and ninth century you can see imposing architecture really monumental architecture and at door to the main material culture is Canaanite just as an example the main types of houses we have what we call Canaanite courtyard houses you can see why the courtyard is in the middle is the main feature of the house so again the basic matrix is Canaanite and I will just keep some of the slides I'll give you maybe the bottom line the bottom line of what's happening at door is that this is the only region were in this Dark Age the 1200 to 900 we could see ample evidence of overseas trade which didn't happen in the hill country but didn't have an even in the Philistine coastal sites so just to a few examples extensive trade with Egypt this desert this is Egyptian Jones I'm skipping that extensive context with Cyprus with material coming from Cyprus and shipped from dough to Cyprus we know it this was defined forever by and by everyone is Phoenician material and when people said Phoenicians they meant southern Lebanon tyre in Sidon but we analyzed the composition of the those vessels in Cyprus and found that there are dough made so this again and forces our conviction that dough is an example may be the exam today of early finish and culture though is also the first site in the Levant that consumes silver from faraway destination in the Mediterranean from Sardinia silver from Sardinia is also present in other sites in the vicinity and this exact same area can see the area of dough and the caramel is also the first the place the small site of an office that doesn't exist anymore it was built built over produce the first server that is known in the way in the east from Iberia so the the Carmel cost today I'm going to skip the other the other you know maybe except this slide the same Eric produced the first evidence miserably looking flats the first evidence for spices arriving from the Far East cinnamon cinnamon certainly nutmeg were not so sure so let's stay with cinnamon so again the bottom line of what I wanted to I want to say that this region of the common coast let me skip those is the main region were after the Late Bronze Age collapse overseas trade is prospering again the reasons I can enumerate on another lecture the only thing I would still want to say about though when you think about who were these people who are generating all this international commerce other than the basic Canaanite substratum the ample evidence of people arriving from Cyprus because part of the material culture of doorframes of those large jars p3 we call them are produced in separate tradition this is how they look and though this is how they look in Cyprus you see with this wavy band if you have been to Cyprus wherever you visit in Cyprus in there some so numerous in Cyprus and they're so big they don't have place to store them so in the airport or in every public edifice you'll find as this for instance is the as you can see a picture from Larnaca Airport and other other aspects of those material culture exhibit a very strong secret substratum but it's different than it is it looks totally different it's also separate but it looks totally different than what we witness in philistine so let me skip to tell maybe one thing one other thing that I cannot forego is today another finishing speciality the purple dye industry which everyone forever has been calling you know the purple has been for those of you do not know the purple dye is produced from various species of the murex gel forever scholarship has associated the purple dye with again lebanon mainly with steyr in from in Roman Greek and Latin and modern sources it's always called tirant purple and Greek had that had the legend of how the purple was discovered which was repeated in in literature and in art as you can see de facto the only region were to date there's ample evidence of purple dye production in the early Iron Age is the Carmel coast both adore these are examples from the other orb in test the camel chemically and they are born of either a purple but mainly in an and another side I'm not excavating it it was excavated in the 70s but we're now publishing it a small site in Haifa Kaushik mona as you can see it's a very small mouth we now know after we started a process the finds that the whole site is actually a factory for for extracting the dye from the cell for the shell for spinning and weaving and dyeing the tech the textile this is that another site were excavating now so the common region is a core area what of what we should be calling in the early finish and country culture Lebanon is also part of it but Lebanon as you can see is less known because of the modern construction on the major sites so to conclude in the 12th to 11th centuries after the Bronze Age collapse and especially after the withdrawal of the Egyptians the southern Levant is in social and demographic ever havoc especially in the south close to Egypt where the disappearance of the Egyptians is particularly felt this enables the relatively peaceful infiltration of newcomers flee fleeing the Elbe collapse the Late Bronze Age collapse in the core mountainous area of the future kingdoms of Israel and Judah populations are largely of Canaanites descent even in the other areas in the coastal areas no large-scale and violent population in fluxes are in evident but in the region's we now called Philistia let's say south of Tel Aviv newcomers mainly from Cyprus and the Aegean mingled with the locals achieving high status because of the social chaos and formed a new identity these are the Philistines separate newcomers also reach the more northerly coasts of modern Israel and coastal Lebanon certainly but the material manifestations of these Cypriots and the societies they were absorbed into these also should not be forgotten is entirely different than in Philistia today we call them Phoenicians they are again for reasons there's no time to explain everything these were the main sailors and traders of the area and by the way only after dough and the attack on Elko is annexed by the Israelite kingdoms and though by and large loses its maritime importance this is the minute when the kingdoms of tyre and sidon gain gain supremacy because the competition is gone so Israelite Philistines Phoenicians are all genetically mostly Canaanite in ancestry ethnogenesis the formations of new identity groups occurs in situ new separate identities emerge within Canaan in opposition to each other as we know this is also a future feature of our society dictated by geographical and the demographic setting economy extent the for an interaction and yes also by external population arriving after the bronze age collapse construction of identities occurs in tandem and is interdependent thank you and we do have a time here's one right here two questions quickly can you speak to the origin of the Hebrew language did that emerge from an amalgam I'm sorry can you speak to the origin of the Hebrew language the was it an amalgamation of different groups in different languages merging or where did it come from exactly like all west submitter West Semitic national or let's call them regional languages or it originates the language and the script from Canaanites from what was once called protic in a night and why we called early Canaanite at a certain point or again poor when I say points it's probably a process Canaanite splits into the various Semitic West Semitic regional languages like more bite and ammonite and Hebrew and Phoenician than army and there's a very extensive debate on when this happened usually the more traditional date was 10th century BC people nowadays tend to say that it happens in the ninth and ninth century BC this I agree with this point although this was really not my area of speciality till about it that only from the 9th century BC as I showed from with the inscriptions from till of is there a large agreement on the on the differentiation between the languages and the script from the ninth century and are most people agree and what can be called Phoenician versus Ebru versus ammonite a little bit later beforehand it's very it's very difficult so it's a general canaanites language another question the segment would be can we speak of the stories in the Hebrew Scriptures the plagues in Egypt the Exodus as being maybe he thought of can we think of them as symbolic statements that were reflecting the collapse of the Bronze Age an expression of what was actually happening at the time in a poetic way the Exodus exemplified the labor that the Egyptian domination this is what this is what people were saying a because there is the exodus narrative and because of this writ problem is that the whole Egyptian domination period is not reflected in the Bible at all so this is a sort of way out of it I don't think it's true I don't think there's a connection and people saw again the exodus from Egypt as symbolizing a much later period for instance conflicts versus the Egypt in the 7th century BC if you ask me again as an archaeologist the only answer I could give you is no facts in the grounds but again what would you expect from people wandering in the desert with 40 years it certainly didn't carry anything with them that lasted for 40 years what would you expect so I think archaeology is not the means to answer the question of the Exodus intelligent did you did I may have misheard you but was there trade you mention Iberia as a source of silver was it was there trade then what today we would call Spain there was that much international commerce yes Iberia mainly in an area called Rio Tinto is since Andalusia in southwestern Spain is one of the most rich source of metals in Europe it has everything the copper and zinc and lead and it was the most important silver source to Roman times and the Romans apparently finished it so after the Roman period I mean Romans exploited this region to the death copper also though copper copper still remains a little bit it was again it was not if the copper mines were abandoned for many years they have been reactivated recently because the rise of the price of copper but they say I think that they have copper there for a few more years and then it's really finished but yes and again if you're the Bible mentions joint ventures by King Solomon and Kazan of Tyre to a place named Tarshish whence they brought silver and there's a region in again southwestern Spain that the Romans quarter thesis so the thesis anthem sheesh are considered to be synonymous which is probably true so people were expected to find silver from this table sheesh in Iberia in Israel and we found it I mean the silver in not a door as I said though it still Sardinia Iberia is represented in Israel from the eighth century BC not in Solomonic times but later we have time for one more question yeah that structure you're excavating so close to the water was that normally constructed so close to the coast or was that an example of sea level rise over time like global warming no it was it was not that close to the coast because part of the tape is missing it was eaten by wave action through even even during the last few winters we could see that you know part of this part of the Dead is collapsing I don't know how I actually I have no explained explanation for it because at this rate the TEL should have been shouldn't have existed anymore so I think there's some something about wave action in the last five years or so that is more extensive than before but the tech I mean the TEL is certainly all of the Israeli coastal sides are slowly being eaten by the waves I think in ever-growing pace I have no idea whether it relates to global warming probably everything relates please join me in thanking professor go Bob [Applause]

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Published: Mon Oct 07 2019

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Oriental Institute Membership lecture: The Rise of Ancient Israel and Other Problematic Entities: An Archaeological Perspective Ayelet Gilboa, director of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology