Life at the Dead Sea: Proceedings of the International Conference Held at the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz Smac, February 21-24, 2018, Chemnitz (Agypten Und Altes Testament) 9783963270826, 3963270829

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Ägypten und altes TestamenT 96 ÄAT 96 Life at the Dead Sea

Life at the Dead Sea Proceedings of the International Conference held at the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (smac), February 21–24, 2018, Chemnitz

Edited by Martin Peilstöcker and Sabine Wolfram for the smac www.zaphon.de

Zaphon

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Life at the Dead Sea Proceedings of the International Conference held at the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (smac), February 21–24, 2018, Chemnitz

Edited by Martin Peilstöcker and Sabine Wolfram for the smac

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

ÄGYPTEN UND ALTES TESTAMENT Studien zu Geschichte, Kultur und Religion Ägyptens und des Alten Testaments

Band 96

Gegründet von Manfred Görg Herausgegeben von Stefan Jakob Wimmer und Wolfgang Zwickel

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Life at the Dead Sea Proceedings of the International Conference held at the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (smac), February 21–24, 2018, Chemnitz

Edited by Martin Peilstöcker and Sabine Wolfram for the smac

Zaphon Münster 2019

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Illustration auf dem Einband: En-Gedi, Photo Martin Peilstöcker Begleitband zur Ausstellung Leben am Toten Meer. Archäologie aus dem Heiligen Land 27.09.2019 – 29.03.2020 Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz Das smac ist eine Einrichtung des Kooperationspartner der Tagung

Ägypten und Altes Testament, Band 96 Life at the Dead Sea. Proceedings of the International Conference held at the State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz (smac), February 21–24, 2018, Chemnitz Edited by Martin Peilstöcker and Sabine Wolfram for the smac © 2019 Zaphon, Münster (www.zaphon.de) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Prepress: wisa-print, Frankfurt am Main Printed in Germany Printed on acid-free paper

ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 ISSN 0720-9061

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Table of Contents 7 Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram Foreword 9 Abbreviations 11 Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram Life at the Dead Sea. The Exhibition Draft 19 Wolfgang Zwickel The Dead Sea in the Bible 35 Felicity Cobbing The Work of the Palestine Exploration Fund in the Dead Sea Region 45 Lutz Martin Jericho in Berlin 53 Hermann Michael Niemann Ernst Sellin, Carl Watzinger and the German Excavation of Jericho, 1907–1909 67 Katharina Galor Gender at Qumran. Between Text and Material Culture 75 Frank H. Neumann – Wolfgang Zwickel Settlements, Climate and Vegetation at the Dead Sea from the Neolithic until the Crusader Period 95 Jutta Häser Water-Management in the Dead Sea Region 105 Eva Kaptijn Surviving the Summer. Ancient Water Management in the South­ ern Jordan Valley as Compared to the Central Jordan Valley 121 Verena J. Schuenemann Genome Sequences of 6,000-Year-Old Barley Provide New Insights into the History of Crop Domestication 125 Andrea Orendi Development and Importance of Agrarian Resources in the Dead Sea Region in the Bronze and Iron Age 139 Lorenzo Nigro Jericho and the Dead Sea. Life and Resilience © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Table of Contents

157 Susanne Kerner The Chalcolithic Period in the Dead Sea Area 173 Florian Klimscha ‒ Danny Rosenberg The Pace of Progress. Technical Innovations in the Prehistory of the Dead Sea Region and the Jordan Valley 189 Eliot Braun A Brief Survey of Human Activity in the Dead Sea Region in Late Prehistory 195 Gunnar Lehmann Ancient Society and Economy at the Dead Sea from the Neolith­ ic Through the Persian Period 207 Gideon Hadas Excavations in the Oasis of En-Gedi 211 Jürgen K. Zangenberg Farms and Fortresses. Exploring the Diversity of Life Around the Dead Sea in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods 225 Hans-Peter Kuhnen Guarding the Dead Sea. Military Concepts and Sites Between Herod and Justinian 235 Győző Vörös Machaerus. 50 Years of Excavations at the Herodian Fortified Royal Palace and City Overlooking the Dead Sea in Transjordan (1968 – 2018) 251 Stefan Jakob Wimmer Kallirrhoe – Herod’s Hot Springs Resort. The German Excava­ tions by August Strobel 1986–1989 263 Konstantinos D. Politis, Archaeology at the Lowest Place on Earth. Ghor es-Safi, Jordan 285 Marcello Fidanzio Qumran Cave 11Q Through the Ages 293 Itamar Taxel The Byzantine-Early Islamic Transition in the Dead Sea Region 317 Jean-Baptiste Humbert Qumran and Machaerus on a Hasmonean Axis 339 Orit Shamir – Naama Sukenik Textiles from the Neolithic until the Medieval Period in the Dead Sea Region 359

List of Authors

Plates 1 – 16

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Foreword

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Foreword

Since 2016 the Staatliches Museum für Archäo­logie Chemnitz / ​State Museum of Archaeology Chemnitz, in short smac, has been preparing an exhibition on the archaeology of the Dead Sea region for the autumn and winter of 2019/2020. While researching on the subject we read the work of and talked to many colleagues from many different countries, who are currently working in the area or have done so in the past. Over time we considered it would be appropriate to bring all this knowledge together in a conference. The international conference finally took place in Chemnitz from February 22 – 24, 2018. From the start we planned to publish the papers presented in six sections at the conference, and this publication is the result of our endeavor. At the get-together of the conference on February 21 we gave a short introduction into our exhibition, the updated draft of which introduces into this publication, too. The paper on Jericho by Lorenzo Nigro could be added to these proceedings. We are aware that more research is under way in the region, but not all colleagues could follow our invitation to Chemnitz – for one reason or the other. Hopefully this gap can be closed at some point in the near future. The team at the smac, especially Frauke Schilling, did a wonderful job organizing the conference. Many thanks to her and the smac’s technical staff for all their support. Memorable was also the catering offered by Café Schocken based in the smac, thus we would like to thank Marco Weidlich and his team, too. We are furthermore grateful for the support granted by the Deutsche Archäo­lo­gi­sche Institut (German Archaeological Institute), the Universität Leipzig and the Freunde des smac e.V. Already during the conference Wolfgang Zwickel and Stefan Wimmer offered to publish the conference proceedings in their series Ägypten und Altes Testament. Both of them as well as Kai Metzler from the publishing company Zaphon were endlessly supportive and we hope this publication is an adequate thank you to them. We would also like to thank the editing team at the smac led by Jennifer Wilde, assisted by Sarah Bergner and Christina Michel. Last but not least we would like to thank all speakers for making the conference with its lively discussions the most friendly experience we have ever had and for being part of this book. Many thanks to you all. Martin Peilstöcker Sabine Wolfram

Spring 2019

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Abbreviations

Common abbreviations and the abbreviations for journals and series follow the guidelines for publications of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI): https://www.dainst.org/de/publikationen/ publizieren-beim-dai/richtlinien. Abbreviations for ancient authors and their works are listed in Der Neue Pauly III (1997) XXXVI – XLIV. Further frequently used abbreviations are: PPN ���������������������������������� Pre-Pottery Neolithic PPNA ������������������������������ Pre-Pottery Neolithic Phase A PPNB ������������������������������ Pre-Pottery Neolithic Phase B EBA I/II/III/IV ��������������� Early Bronze Age I/II/III/IV IBA ���������������������������������� Intermediate Bronze Age MBA I/II ������������������������� Middle Bronze Age I/II LBA I/II ������������������������ Late Bronze Age I/II IA I/II ������������������������������ Iron Age I/II

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Life at the Dead Sea. The Exhibition Draft

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Life at the Dead Sea. The Exhibition Draft Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram

Why an exhibition on the archaeology of the Dead Sea? Beyond any doubt, the Dead Sea is one of the few regions in the world literally everybody knows. Having said this, it is rather surprising that it has never been the subject of an exhibition in Germany, Europe, or the US. The archaeology of the region is presented in regional museums, such as the “Museum at the Lowest Place on Earth” in Jordan, and specific topics such as the Dead Sea Scrolls have been displayed in various exhibits around the world. However, the region as such, with all its characteristics, was never introduced to a broader public. Until the present day the Dead Sea is associated with •  the lowest point on Earth’s surface (at present, some 420 m below sea level). •  the many biblical stories that take place around the Dead Sea, or the Salt Sea (‫ )ים המלח‬as it is called in  Hebrew. For example, the expression “to be turned into a pillar of salt” refers to a biblical story (Genesis 19:1 – 29): during their flight from the city of Sodom, Lot’s wife disobeys a clear command by looking back on the city, and is consequently transformed into a pillar of salt. Sodom and Gomorrah were situated on the shores of the Dead Sea, and the cities have become familiar even to secular people as an epitome of sin. Various traditions localise the two cities at different sites around the Dead Sea. The history of Lot and his wife is well documented both in the New Testament (Luke 17:28 – 30) and the Koran (e. g. in Surahs 7:80 – 84, 11:77 – 83, 15:58 – 77). In Arabic, the Dead Sea is even called Baḥr Lūṭ (       ), the Sea of Lot. •  the large number of world famous archaeological sites such as Qumran (with its famous scrolls), Masada, Machaerus or Jericho. Also, the curative powers of its very specific climate are known to aid the treatment of neurodermatitis and psoriasis and the Dead Sea is particularly famous for the fact that a swimmer will not sink in its waters due to their high salinity.

The exhibition draft Having said this and intrigued by these associations the smac decided to present the archaeology of this unique region to the broader public in a special exhibition. Despite the hostile environment of the Dead Sea, the region was always settled, although during certain periods only sparsely. Human activities over thousands of years provide us today with some of the most important sites of the Holy Land. Our exhibition aims to show why and how people could not only survive, but live in the region and what aspects structured their lives. To answer these questions, we will present the cultural history from the first human traces up to the Early Islamic period of the region following six key aspects: Nature and Subsistence – Mobility – Wellness, Medicine, and Cosmetics – Caves, Villages and Cities – Power and Powerlessness and Cult and Religion. Furthermore, the show will deal with the History of Research (Fig. 1). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram

Fig. 1 Exhibition concept.

The exhibition will present the entire region across the modern boundaries of states and areas, based on sites, original finds and research from Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. 1 The following passages will provide a short insight into the main topics of the exhibition, which will mostly be presented in a chronological framework stretching from the final Palaeolithic to the advent of Islam, with an additional outlook on later periods up to the present (Tables 1 and 2). The sequence of the sections reflects the state of planning of the exhibition in February 2019. 2 The exhibition will start with introducing visitors to the region and subject, asking the question: “What do we associate with the Dead Sea today?” This prologue will be followed by spotlights on the exciting discovery of the region:

The History of Research The region is certainly suited to serve as a microcosmic mirror of the different stages of archaeological and historical research in the Near East. The exploration of the region and in particular of sites such as Jericho or Qumran has been ruled by religious, scientific and political aspirations or a combination of those, in particular from the 17th century until today. 1

The smac’s loan processes follow the provisions set up by the federal ministries, the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany (AA) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM) with regard to loans from said countries. Of course, international law will be respected as well.

2

The exhibition will take place in Chemnitz from September 27, 2019 until March 29, 2020 and in spring / summer 2020 in the LWL-Museum in der Kaiserpfalz in Paderborn. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Life at the Dead Sea. The Exhibition Draft Table 1: Sites and topics. Topics /  Sites

Khirbet Qumran

Nature and Subsistence

Caves, Villages, and Cities

x

x

“Caves at the Dead Sea” En-Gedi

x

Mobility

x

x

x

x

x

x

Tel Goren

x

Έn Boqeq x

Nah ̣al Mishmar (Cave of the Treasure)

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x

Nah ̣al Ze‘elim

x

x x

x

x

Tuleilat Ghassul

x

x

Wadi Feinan

x Bab edh-Dhra‘

x

Numeira

x

Ghor es-Safi Project

Ghor es-Safi / ​ Zoara

x

x

x x

x

x

x x

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x

Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata (St. Lot Monastery) Kallirrhoe

x

x

Machaerus

x x

x

x

x

Herodian Palaces

x

x

Khirbet el-Mafjar

x

x

x

x

x

Dead Sea Plain Project

Tell es-Sultan

x

x

Nah ̣al Ḥever Tel Arad

History of Research

x

x

Nah ̣al Ḥemar

Wellness, Medicine and Cosmetics

x

x

Masada

Jericho

Cult and Religion

Temple Kibbutz En-Gedi

x

Power and Powerlessness

x

x

x x x x

This section will cover the time span and works from Justinus and Galenus to the travellers of the early 19th century, such as Ulrich Jasper Seetzen to the American, German, French and British travellers of the later 19th century, the research of the Palestine Exploration Fund, the excavations in Jericho to modern day projects by national and international scholars and institutions. Hereby we will try to show how the protection of monuments and management of cultural heritage has evolved from being a “pastime of visiting strangers” during the colonial era to a system of joint ventures between local authorities and foreign organisations today and what were the religious, scientific or political motives for research. From the History of Research the exhibition will move to the actual fields of research or rather the cultural history.

Nature and Subsistence Throughout the ages, the Dead Sea region was (and still is) an inhospitable desert landscape. To describe the arid character of the region and how people managed to live here is the main issue of this section. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram

Table 2: Sites and main settlement periods to be represented in the exhibition. Neo- Chalco- Bronze Age Iron Persian Hellen- Roman Byzan- Early lithic lithic EBA MBA LBA Age istic tine Islamic

Periods /  Sites Khirbet Qumran

x

„Caves at the Dead Sea“ En-Gedi

x

Temple

x

x

x

x

x

x

Tel Goren

x

x

x

Kibbutz En-Gedi ’En Boqeq Masada

x

Nah ̣al Mishmar

x

Nah ̣al Ḥemar

x

Nah ̣al Ze‘elim

x

Tel Arad

x

x

x

x

x

x

x x x

Tuleilat Ghassul

x

x

x

Wadi Feinan

Ghor es-Safi Project

x

x

Nah ̣al Ḥever

Dead Sea Plain

x

x Bab edh-Dhra‘

x

Numeira

x

Ghor es-Safi / ​ Zoara

x

x

Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata (St. Lot Monastery)

x

x

Kallirrhoe

x

x

Machaerus

x

x

x

x

Jericho

Tell es-Sultan Herodian Palaces

x

x

x

x

x

x

Khirbet Mafjar

x

It will begin with explaining crucial facts about the Dead Sea such as the high salt content of the water, what causes it and that it is therefore “dead”, i. e. nothing is able to live in it. From here the presentation will move on to the changing sea levels up to the present phenomenon of the so-called sink holes and plans to partially refill the Dead Sea with water from the Red Sea (project: From Red to Dead). Since the German audience is not well acquainted with desert landscapes, the nature of this environment will be described for arid and less arid phases in the past, illustrating it with pictures of plants and animals and their habitats such as wadis. The question that arises from this presentation is: but why did people actually decide to live in the Dead Sea area? The answer lies in raw materials / resources such as salt, minerals, asphalt, its climate and its remoteness, which could be useful in times of trouble. Aiming to show how people actually lived, the presentation will dwell on the role of fresh water and the oases (e. g., Kallirrhoe, Zoara and En-Gedi), the necessity of water storage (e. g., Qumran and Machaerus) and irrigation and finally the range of plants that were cultivated: in the southernmost part of the Fertile Crescent barley was already cultivated in Jericho in the 8th millennium BCE followed by wheat, legumes etc. Furthermore, the importance of dates (Jericho) and balsam (En-Gedi) and since the 11th century CE of sugar cane (Ghor esSafi) for export will be discussed. Here too, a window into the present will be opened and current water management and the cultivation of plants such as tomatoes will be discussed. Finally the role of goats, sheep and camels within the subsistence strategies will be illustrated. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Life at the Dead Sea. The Exhibition Draft

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Mobility The goal of this section is to show with whom the inhabitants of this region were in contact and how they travelled. For most of history, the Dead Sea was a peripheral region. None of the important trans-regional roads such as the Via Maris or the King’s Highway traversed the region. Nevertheless, the people living here enjoyed some mobility: products and raw materials from the Dead Sea and the surrounding region were exported – and others were imported. It is the latter category of objects that provides us with materialized evidence of mobility. From an early time on people would also travel to the Dead Sea for health reasons, as the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus reports of King Herod. On the one hand, this mobility made use of a system of roads, and on the other, it relied on the shipping on the lake. The existence of roads has been substantiated north of the Dead Sea, the route from Jerusalem to Jericho and on through Wadi Shu'eib to Syria being one example. Other roads were constructed to provide better access to the region or to connect locations with one another, as in the case of the ancient road from Kallirrhoe to Machaerus. Shipping is documented for different periods with finds of anchors, e. g. in the vicinity of En-Gedi. Epitaphs found in the Ghor es-Safi region provide another illustration of how mobile people were and from which far-off regions they came. This situation produced a very heterogeneous and multi-layered population around the Dead Sea. Even religious tourism to the region began at an early date: the site where Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt became a place of pilgrimage, while other traditions led to the construction of temples, synagogues, churches, monasteries and mosques.

Wellness, Medicine, and Cosmetics As mentioned above, the climate of the Dead Sea, its hot springs, salts and minerals were reasons why people would visit the region and which provide a strong connection between the past and the present. At the centre of this presentation will stand “balsam” as a link between economy, mobility and health and beauty in the past. Balsam was introduced to the region by the Queen of Sheba, and was used for producing perfumed oils and drugs. Since the Iron Age it was produced at En-Gedi and Ἑn Boqeq and became a very important export product. One of the most famous historical personages involved in the contest for the region during the Roman era is Cleopatra. Flavius Josephus reports that her lover, Marc Antony, gave the region to her as a gift in 35 BCE. Her pronounced interest in the cosmetic products of the region is well attested, but surely she had an economic interest, e. g. in the prosperous balsam industry, too. Cleopatra is also credited with the founding of the spa industry at the Dead Sea. The hot springs at Kallirrhoe were the reason why King Herod visited the region when he was terminally ill, i. e. on his way to Machaerus and before returning to Jericho, where he died very soon afterwards. The remains of baths in the area witness the advent of the Roman bath culture, but some installations may have had a ritual character or evolved out of Jewish ritual traditions. Thus, this exhibition section is connected with that on cult and religion, too, and though a “small” section a very important topic.

Caves, Villages, and Cities In this section we intend to present in chronological order the various types of settlement. We will ask about the location (oasis, caves, etc.), about the kind of social structures (villages, cities, camp-sites etc.), about their monuments (buildings and architecture) and about the reasons for settling on a specific spot (agriculture, trade-routes, strategic advantages etc.) A large number of excavated sites illustrate the way people have lived in the region throughout the ages. Even though rural life in villages was the dominating settlement pattern, the oasis settlement of Jericho can be interpreted as an early example of a city of the Neolithic period. It persisted to exemplify, just like the site at Bab edh-Dhra‘, the slow process of early urbanisation in the Early Bronze Age. Impres© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram

sive remains of a Middle Bronze Age city and burials have also been documented on the Tell es-Sultan (Jericho). As an example of the new foundations of settlements in the Iron Age, the exhibition will also present the settlement on Tel Goren near En-Gedi, which flourished in the Persian era. A number of oasis settlements of the Hellenistic and Roman eras (Qumran with Ἑin Feshkha, En-Gedi, Ἑn Boqeq, and Kallirrhoe) around the Dead Sea show the plurality and diversity of the region at this time. The same observation holds true for the Early Islamic period. In the Ghor es-Safi area, the different ethnic groups seem to have coexisted peacefully while living in their separate village communities.

Power and Powerlessness The people behind the early cultures, e. g. the Ghassulian, kept a mistrustful distance from their neighbours. But from the Iron Age at the latest, the peoples of the region, the Israelites, Moabites and others, were locked in constant conflict over local supremacy. The struggle between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties is also clearly discernible in the region, not least through their minting of rivalling coinage. King Herod instituted a system of palace fortresses around the Dead Sea in order to demonstrate and secure his claim to the region. Two of these, Masada to the west and Machaerus to the east of the Dead Sea, have been thoroughly examined by ar­chaeo­lo­gists. These fortresses demonstrate how the claims of rulers were turned into reality. With their defensive systems of walls and ramparts, and the siege ramps built by attackers, they illustrate the sophisticated tactics employed and the intensity of conflicts in the region. The caves in the valleys on the western shore of the Dead Sea were definitely used as places of refuge in these times. One of the most fascinating stories concerns a woman called Babatha: forced to flee from her home near Ghor es-Safi with her family during the Bar Kochba rebellion, she reached one of the caves at Naḥal Ḥever, where her personal possessions and documents, including a marriage contract, were found. The documents indicate that she originally came from Maoza, a settlement on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea with a mixed population of Jews and Nabataeans. The written fixation of the religious texts which would later constitute the Bible also became an in­ stru­ment of power around this time. From now on, written tradition would be the basis of authority and of how religion determined people’s lives, particularly in Judaism.

Cult and Religion Archaeology again and again points to the intensive cultic and religious activities of the inhabitants of the region. During certain periods of history the region even seems to have been a magnet for certain religious groups. The aim of this section will be to show cultic and religious activities on a personal level as well as of (ethnic) groups and societies in chronological order yet pointing out that the shifting religious practices were not an evolutionary process. The exhibition will show the most important objects and present sites and their cultic and religious buildings. A special focus will be put on the development of the three Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The section will start with the Neolithic phenomenon of ancestors cult as observed in Jericho or Naḥal Ḥever. It will be followed by the question about cult and cult practices in the Chalcolithic period as evidenced by the wall paintings in Tuleilat Ghassul, the “Cave of the Treasure” hoard and the En-Gedi temple. For the following Bronze Age, temples will be shown as an integral element of an urban culture in the Early as well as the Middle Bronze Age. In addition the cemeteries found in Bab edh-Dhra‘ (EBA) and Jericho (EBA, MBA) will be presented by selected objects from tombs. For the MBA the phenomenon of intra-mural graves will be discussed concerning ideas of an “after-life”. Gilgal will serve as an example of how cultic places found their way into the Hebrew Bible. The changes during the following periods caused by the ideas of Hellenism will be shown as relevant for the Jewish communities, which can be identified by mikvaoth, stone vessels and other finds. For © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Life at the Dead Sea. The Exhibition Draft

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the Hellenistic and Roman period the phenomenon of the first synagogues will be presented, followed by the first churches in the Byzantine era and mosques after the emergence of Islam. Of course, the role of Qumran and the Dead Sea scrolls will be discussed, being the most important source for early religious texts to become the (Hebrew) Bible later. Other aspects such as the birth of the first Christian traditions (e. g. the baptism site on the Jordan River), early monasticism (Masada, Jericho), and the co-existence of Jewish, Christian, and later Islamic groups in the society will be demonstrated for sites such as Jericho (Khirbet el-Mafjar) or Zoara. The section will be completed by a summary of the most important events related to cult and religion in the Crusader and Ottoman periods, reaching out to present times. Although the concept follows the idea to present the Dead Sea according to the topics outlined above the exhibition will also introduce key settlement sites such as Jericho, Masada, Kallirrhoe, Tuleilat Ghassul or Ghor es-Safi. Also, important finds, such as the Madaba mosaic map, providing us with the earliest illustration of the region, will be shown as original or facsimile.

Conclusions It is our aim that visitors will leave the exhibition with at least some answers to the questions posed above about the meaning of life at the Dead Sea. They should experience the unique landscape and climate of the region and learn about myths and mysteries and about the cultural heritage and the remains of the material culture of peoples. P. S. As mentioned above, this paper reflects the state of planning in early spring 2019. Since then we decided to add another topic: textiles. This was done to give full credit to the extraordinary finds from Israel which will be presented in the exhibition. Topics such as textile technology and questions of textiles and ethnicity will be discussed. M  P and S W

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Martin Peilstöcker – Sabine Wolfram

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

The Dead Sea in the Bible

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The Dead Sea in the Bible Wolfgang Zwickel

1   Introduction The Dead Sea is an unpleasant, waste and extremely hot area, a region where nearly nobody wants to live. Surprisingly, there are many stories in the Hebrew Bible which are located in this territory. This paper will present an overview of these stories and the sites mentioned in these stories (Table 1; Fig. 1). Before doing so we have to describe the area which we consider to belong to the greater territory of the Dead Sea. The shoreline of the lake changed often in anti­quity depending on its actual water levels. However, these changes were limited in scope and relevant only in the southern part of the Dead Sea which is extremely flat and may dry out during low water levels. Alternatively, high water levels may shift the shoreline further to the south in the flat area of the Ghor. Therefore, settlements as far south as the prominent mining site of Feinan, the biblical site of Punon, are included in our research area. North of the Dead Sea the area of the oasis of Jericho is included because the settlers there definitely benefitted from the salt and asphalt found at the Dead Sea. On the eastern and western side, steep slopes border the Sea. Only these slopes and their upper edges are included in the summary table at the end of the text, while the territory on top of the hill country is not referred to. Before taking a closer look at the Biblical stories, we also have to discuss the different names of the Dead Sea in the Hebrew Bible. The usual name is Salt Sea (Gen 14:3; Num 34:3,12; Deut 3:17; Jos 3:16; 12:3; 15:2,5; 18:19; Sir 39:28) because of its high concentration of salt. In 2 Chr 20:2 the lake is called Sea of Aram / ​Edom, most likely because the Edomites settled in the southern part of the Dead Sea area. The name Sea of the ‘Arabah (Deut 3:17; 4:49; Josh 3:16; 12:3; 2 Kings 14:25) is connected with its position in the ‘Arabah Valley. The name Eastern Sea (Ezek 47:18; Joel 2:20; Sach 14:8) is only meaningful if the writers lived west of the Jordan River, as most of the Biblical writers most certainly did. Diodorus Siculus (II,48,6 – 8; XIX,19,98 – 99) calls it Asphaltitis lacus on account of the asphalt sometimes found swimming on top of the water. Josephus uses the corresponding Greek expression (Ios. Bell. Iud. I,657; III,515; IV,437 – ​438.453.455 – ​456.474.476; VII,168.281; Ant. Iud. I,174; IV,85; IX,7.206; XV,168; c. Ap. I,174; cf. Tac. hist. V,6; Strab. XVI,2,42 – 43; Plin. nat. V,15,71 – 72). In 4 Esra 5:7 we find the name Sea of Sodom because this prominent site was situated at its shore. The name Dead Sea was not used before the 2nd century CE. The Arabs today call it Bahr Lut, Sea of Lot, recalling the well-known story of Gen 19. The ‘Arabah (Deut 1:1,7; 2:8; 3,17; 4:49; 11:30; Josh 8:14; 11:2,16; 12:1,3,8; 18:18; 1 Sam 23:24; 2 Sam 2:29; 4:7; 2 Kings 25:4; Jer 39:4; 52:7; Ezek 47:8), the valley in which the Dead Sea is situated, is also called either Valley of Siddim (Gen 14:3,8,10) or Valley of Salt (2 Sam 8:13; 2 Kings 14:7; 1 Chr 18:12; 2 Chr 25:11; Ps 60:2). This territory is also known as the Plain of the Jordan (Gen 13:10 – 12; 19:17.25.28 – 29; Deut 34:3; 2 Sam 18:23; 1 Kings 7:46; 2 Chr 4:17; Neh 3:22; 12:28; 2; Matth 3:5; Lk 3:3). The wilderness region around Jericho may be called the ‘Arabah of Jericho (Josh 4:13; 5:10; 2 Kings 25:5; Jer 39:5; 52:8), while the Transjordanian wilderness north of the Dead Sea is called the ‘Arabah of Moab (Num 22:1; 26:3,63; 31:12; 33:48 – 50; 35:1; 36:13; Deut 34:1,8; Josh 13:32) or the Fields of Moab (Gen 36:35; Num 21:20; Ruth 1:1,2,6,22; 2:6; 4:3; 1 Chr 1:46; 8:8). Sometimes the Dead Sea is regarded as the eastern border of Canaan (Num 34:12; Deut 3:17 and Ezek 47:18; cf. Ezek 48:28). There also exist some specific names for the slopes leading down to the Dead Sea. Generally, the territory east of the Judean watershed is called only desert (Josh 15:61; 1 Sam 23:14; 25:4,14; 1 Kings © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 1 Sites and landscapes around the Dead Sea according to Biblical texts and Flavius Josephus (© Wolfgang Zwickel). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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2:34) or more specifically Desert of Judah (Judg 1:16; Ps 63:1). This desert is divided into different parts. The southernmost part is called Desert of Zif (1 Sam 23:14 – 15; 26:2). Unfortunately there are two sites with this name in Judah, one is in the first Judean district (Josh 15:24) situated in the south, the other one is located in the eighth district (Josh 15:55). Since the second site with this name, convincingly identified with Tel Zif (2 Chr 11:8; cf. also 1 Chr 2:42 and the many LMLK stamp seals mentioning this name; Palestine grid 162.048), is situated west of the watershed, it should not be connected with the Desert of Zif. It is more likely that the southern Zif should be associated with this desert, which would therefore refer to the very southern part of the Judean Desert. North of it lies the Desert of Maon (1 Sam 23:24 – 25; 25,1 – 2), followed by the Desert of Jeruel (2 Chr 20:16), the Desert of En-Gedi (1 Sam 24:2) and the Desert of Tekoa (2 Chr 20:20; 1 Macc 9:33).

2   Stories connected with the Dead Sea As already mentioned we find references to the territory of the Dead Sea in many Biblical books. There are several references in the books of Genesis and Numbers of the Pentateuch, but also in the books of Joshua, Judges and in the David cycle in the books of Samuel. Surprisingly few references exist in the books of Kings. The prophets refer very often to this region, sometimes revisiting the stories of the Pentateuch. The following overview will present the main texts. There will be nearly no discussion of literary criticism (in the sense of German Literarkritik), but some remarks regarding the historicity and the date of writing the texts are added.

2.1   The Lot saga A first cluster of references to this region is found in the Lot saga. Returning from Egypt into the central hill country near Bet-El and Ai (Gen 13:1 – 4), Abraham and Lot realized that their flocks had become too many to stay together. Lot decided to settle in the Jordan Valley including the whole area of the Dead Sea (Gen 13:10 – 11), while Abraham stayed in the hill country. The traditional Biblical story continues in Gen 18. Gen 14 is a young addition and will be discussed separately. Both chapters Gen 18 and 19 belong to the same redactional composition that compares the attitudes of Abraham and Lot and arranges them as counter-texts. Abraham offered excessive hospitality to the three men visiting him (Gen 18:2 – 8), just as Lot, a former nomad now living as a foreigner in the city of Sodom, did to the two men coming into his town (Gen 19:1 – 3). Hospitality is an indispensable duty for nomads. But the outrageous citizens of Sodom, not being familiar with nomadic traditions, tried to rape the guests of Lot. As a punishment for this attempt, God destroyed the whole area of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:24 – 25). The explanation of the different ethics of nomads and citizens is only one aim of this story. It also wants to explain why the area around the Dead Sea is so desolate. God punished the people of the Dead Sea area for their bad behavior. It is likely that people from the 1st millennium BCE were aware of the ruins of important towns like Bab edh-Dhra‘ or Numeira, built up in the Early Bronze Age, and invented stories to explain their former existence in such an unfavorable territory. The destruction of Sodom became the most prominent Old Testament story regarding God’s punishment of human misbehavior. Sodom, sometimes also Gomorrah, are very often referred to by authors from all periods of the 1st millennium BCE (e. g., Deut 32:32; Isa 1:7,9,10). According to Deut 29:22, all the soil in the area of Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma and Zebojim – Adma and Zebojim are mentioned only here in connection with Sodom and Gomorrah (but cf. Gen 14:2) – was burned out during this destruction by sulfur and salt. Maybe during the time the writer wrote this text the southern part of the Dead Sea south of the Lisan Peninsula was still dried out. The story of Lot’s daughters becoming pregnant from their father (Gen 19:30 – 38) is traditionally connected with a cave near ‘Ain ‘Abata at the southeastern end of the Dead Sea. The Biblical text locates the scene in the Transjordanian hill country (Gen 19:30), where the Moabites and the Ammonites lived. This story was supposed to demonstrate that the Ammonites and Moabites were regarded as relatives of the Judahites even though the relation was problematic and shameful. Although the Ammonites and © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Moabites on the one hand and the Judahites on the other hand both originated in the new political systems arising at the end of the Late Bronze Age, they were hostile to each other. The story thus wants to provide a fundamental reason for the hostility between these neighbors.

2.2   Genesis 14 Gen 14 is one of the youngest texts in the Pentateuch. In Gen 14:2,8, five kings from towns nearby the Dead Sea (Sodom, Gomorrah, Adma, Zebojim and Bela / ​Zoar) are mentioned. Their enemies (Gen 14:1,9) are all fictive kings. Although their names can probably be connected with historical kings, they never ruled at the same time. In addition, the Valley of Siddim is mentioned. In Gen 14:3 it is identified with the Dead Sea, in Gen 14:10 it is full of asphalt pits – a main economic source for the people living at the shores of the lake.

2.3   The Eastern Jordan passage on the way to the Holy Land The Israelites had to go around the Dead Sea on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land and traversed or bypassed the Edomite, Moabite and Ammonite area (Num 21:10 – 20; 33:37 – 49; Deut 2:1 – 2). Literary criticism has demonstrated that those texts envisage four different routes (Fig. 2; cf. Zwickel 2015a). The choice of a specific way always depended on the actual political situation of the storywriters. If there was a good relationship with the neighboring country, the Israelites traversed their territory; if the neighboring country was at war with Israel and Judah, the Israelites had to circumvent their territory. Finally the Israelites camped in the Plains of Moab opposite Jericho (Num 22:1; cf. 26:3,63; 31:12; 33:48 – 50; 35:1; 36:13; Deut 34:1. 8) until they crossed the Jordan River as described in the book of Joshua (but cf. the sites mentioned in Deut 1:1).

2.4   The Bileam story The complex of the Bileam stories (Num 22 – 24) is connected with the aforementioned stay of the Israelites directly north of the Dead Sea. The Moabite king summoned the prophet Bileam to curse the Israelites, who instead blessed them repeatedly. The Biblical story of Bileam wants to demonstrate that foreign prophets were not able to harm Israel since Jahwe took care of his people. Only a few site names are explicitly mentioned in the Biblical story: Kirjat-Huzot (Num 22:39), Bamot-Baal (Num 22:41), Pisga (Num 23:14), Peor (Num 23:28) – all situated at the transition area from the Moabite hill country to the slopes falling down to the Dead Sea. Connected with the site of Peor is the story of an Israelite misbehavior (Num 25:1 – 5; cf. Deut 4:1 – 4) which was admonished several times in later periods (Josh 22:17; Ps 106:28; Hos 9:10): Israel honored the god Baal of Peor. The historical context of this allegation is not certain at all. Peor is situated in the territory of the tribe of Ruben, and since the story referred to in this text cannot have happened during the unhistorical hike of the Israelites to the Promised Land, it must be connected with some later misbehavior of this tribe.

2.5   Deuteronomy Deut 1:1 locates the speeches of Moses “opposite Suf, between Paran and Tofel, Laban, Hazerot and DiZahab”. Paran is a landscape in Edom (Gen 21:21; Num 10:12; 12:16; 13:3,26; Deut 33:2; 1 Kings 11;18; Hab 3:3), the other sites are not exactly locatable (Di-Zahab is possibly connected with the Edomite name Me-Zahab mentioned in Gen 36:39). Generally, sites are not important in the book of Deuteronomy al­ though there are some references to other biblical stories like Sodom and Gomorrah. Only at the very end, in Deut 34:1, a locality is mentioned again: before his death “Moses went up from the Plains of Moab to © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 2 Different passages of the Israelites (© Wolfgang Zwickel).

Mount Nebo, to the top of the Pisga, which is opposite Jericho, and Jahwe showed him the whole land”. Mount Nebo is an excellent lookout. Sometimes the churches on top of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem are visible, but it is completely impossible to have an overview over the whole Promised Land. Moses was buried opposite Bet-Peor (Deut 34:6), but the exact location of the tomb is unknown.

2.6   Israel’s conquest of the territories west of the Jordan River The area around the Dead Sea is of twofold importance in the book of Joshua. The texts in the beginning of this book are situated around Jericho and Gilgal, and the distribution of the land in Josh 13 – 19 specifies even the smallest settlements in this area. The story of Joshua 1 – 6 certainly belongs to the best known Biblical stories. It is an old insight that the conquest of Jericho by the Israelites is not an historical report, but a relatively young text. According to this text the Jordan River marks the border of Israel, but before 733 BCE Israel also had territories east of the Jordan River. The border changed only after the Assyrian conquest of wide territories in Transjordan, which constitutes a necessary premise for the writing of this text. Therefore, the basic story of Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho must be younger than 733 BCE and was written at least 500 years later than the described events. In addition, this text underwent several redactional phases in the follow© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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ing centuries. We do not need archaeology to understand such a late edition of this text. Archaeology does confirm, however, that Jericho was unsettled in the 13th century BCE – the time when Joshua reportedly conquered this town. When Israel stayed in the Plains of Moab in Shittim (Josh 2:1), Joshua sent out scouts across the Jordan River to Jericho. They returned with the news that there was a good chance of conquering the territory because “Jahwe has given it into the hands” of the Israelites (Josh 2:24). Already at the beginning of the conquest of the Promised Land the Bible informs the reader about the future success of the battles. Trusting in this promise the Israelites set out from Shittim (Josh 3:1) and crossed the Jordan River whose waters stood still (Josh 3:14 – 17). This story clearly recalls the crossing of the Sea of the Reeds (Ex 14), but also the crossing of the Jordan River on dry ground by Elija and Elisha (2 Kings 2:8). The Israelites took 12 stones from the riverbed (Josh 4:1 – 9) and placed them in Gilgal to remember the crossing of the Jordan River (Josh 4:19 – 24). Gilgal was an important sanctuary in Israel (e. g., 1 Sam 7:16; Hos 4:15; 9:15; 12:12; Am 5:5), and this is the foundation legend of this cultic place. Josh 6 describes the Israelite procession around Jericho and the fall of the town with­out any military attack – the conquest of Jericho is nothing else than a gift of God! The following chapters Josh 7 – 10 do not describe a typical conquest, the Israelites only surrounded Judah along the borders of both Benjamin and Judah with­out entering the interior of the country. The Israelite troops finally returned to Gilgal (Josh 10:43). Only after Solomon’s death in 926 BCE did the tribes of Benjamin and Judah form a political unity. This fact, too, clearly demonstrates that the text must be significantly younger than the described event.

2.7   The distribution of the Land Joshua 13 – 19 describes the distribution of the whole land to the different tribes. Concerning the tribes east of the Jordan River, there exist two lists which specify different borderlines for the allocated territories. The territory of Ruben is mentioned in Josh 13:15 – 23 and in Num 32:37 – 38, the territory of Gad is referred to in Josh 13:24 – 28 and Num 32:34 – 36. Less concrete is a third distribution text for these two tribes in Deut 3:16 – 17. Of specific interest are the Cisjordanian distribution texts. The northwestern shore of the Dead Sea is assigned to the tribe of Judah (Josh 15) and especially to the 12th Judean district (Josh 15:61 – 62): “In the wilderness: Bet-Araba, Middin, Sechacha, Nibshan, Ir-Melach and En-Gedi.” The northern border of Judah is also exactly described: “The boundary on the north side [of Judah] runs from the bay of the sea at the mouth of the Jordan River, and the boundary goes up to Bet-Hogla and passes along north of Bet-Araba; and the boundary goes up to Debir from the Valley of Achor, and so northward, turning toward Gelilot, which is opposite the ascent of Adummim, which is on the south side of the valley; and the boundary passes along to the waters of En-Shemesh and ends at En-Rogel” (Josh 15:5 – 7). The description of the borderline ends south of Jerusalem. North of the Judean territory is the area of Benjamin (Josh 18:11 – 28). The southern border of Benjamin is common with the northern border of Judah, but oriented from west to east, starting next to Jerusalem with En-Rogel and En-Shemesh and ending at the northern bay of the Dead Sea (Josh 18:15 – 19). The town list in Josh 18:21 – 24 specifies additional sites in this territory (“Jericho, Bet-Hogla, Emek-Keziz, Bet-Araba, …” – all other Benjaminite towns mentioned in this list are definitely or most likely situated in the hill country). The northern border of Benjamin north of Jericho (Josh 18:12) is common with the southern border of Ephraim (Josh 16:1; cf. 16:7), where Jericho is mentioned, too. Many years ago, Albrecht Alt has shown that the boundary lists in these chapters were written in the 10th century BCE during the reign of the kings David and Solomon, while the town lists derive from the 7th century BCE (Alt 1968). These lists allow us to reconstruct even the smallest villages around Jericho relatively exactly. According to the book of Joshua, the eastern Jordanian tribes participated in the conquest of the west-Jordanian territories before settling east of the river. After the conquest of the territory west of the Jordan River, the tribes of Manasse, Ruben and Gad were dismissed by Joshua to return to their own territories (Josh 22:1 – 8). Before they left the west-Jordanian territory they erected an altar (Josh 22:9 – 11). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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2.8   The Dead Sea in the Deuteronomistic History The book of Judges includes stories about several heroes or local judges that were later compiled by a redactor in order to present a continuous list of rulers in Israel antedating the foundation of the kingdom. One of the stories is situated in Jericho. Eglon, the king of Moab, conquered this town but the Benjaminite judge Ehud killed Eglon and freed Jericho (Judg 3:12 – 30). According to another story the sons of Hobab went from the City of Palms (= Jericho) into the Desert of Judah, which lies in the Negev near Arad (Judg 1:16). The sanctuary in Gilgal was evidently very important in early times and is mentioned repeatedly in connection with the Benjaminite judge Samuel and Saul, the king of Israel. Samuel (1 Sam 10:8), Saul (1 Sam 13:7 – 15) and the whole nation (1 Sam 15:21) gathered there to sacrifice and Saul was crowned king of Israel there (1 Sam 11:15). The spot also served as the central meeting point before a war in order to propitiate God with a sacrifice (1 Sam 13:7 – 15). Furthermore, the Amalekite king Agag was killed by Samuel in this sanctuary (1 Sam 15:33). Maybe there originally existed a cycle of legends connected with this cultic site. The Judean Desert became once again famous in the stories of Saul who sought to kill his adversary David (1 Sam 23:14 – 26:25). In this context, 1 Sam 25 describes David as a merciless leader of mercenaries who controlled the territory with his troops. The transition area between the Judean hill country and the slopes bordering the west coast of the Dead Sea is ideal for pasturing flocks in winter. Even east of the watershed there is plenty of meadowland during the winter months. Only in spring when it becomes drier do the flocks return to the hill country. In this region near the site of Carmel, the Judean Nabal was tending to his sheep and goats (1 Sam 25:4,15) before the spring shearing, when David sent men to him in order to encash deliveries for the alleged shelter he provided (1 Sam 25). According to another tradition located in the area, David hid himself and his troops in the very south of the Judean Desert at the southern end of the Dead Sea, but the people of Zif (1 Sam 23:19,24; 26:1; Ps 54:2; 1 Sam 26 is a doublet to 1 Sam 23) went to Saul in order to betray David to him. Before Saul’s troops arrived David marched north into the Desert of Maon (1 Sam 23:24 – 25; 25:1 – 2). The region of the Judean Desert (1 Sam 23:14; cf. Ps 63:1) and more specifically the Desert of En-Gedi (1 Sam 24:2) is also the setting for another story in this context (1 Sam 24). When Saul went to toilet in a cave, David had the opportunity to kill his enemy but spared his life. In all likelihood, this story is only a fictive unhistorical text to demonstrate the generosity of David. Benaja, one of the fighters of David, originated from Kabzeel situated at the slopes falling down to the very southern end of the Dead Sea (2 Sam 23:20; 1 Chr 11:22). His knowledge of the region and his contacts with local settlers were probably helpful for David during his time in the Judean Desert. Generally, the Dead Sea is not a main setting in the Books of Kings. No cycle of legends is located in this area besides the Elisha stories, and the small number of citations seems to be congruent with the marginal political and economic importance of this territory. The site of Tamar, a small fortress guarding a trade route, was fortified by Solomon (1 Kings 9:18). Jericho was rebuilt during the time of Ahab (1 Kings 16:34), although archaeology clearly demonstrates that this was more of an enlargement rather than a re-foundation of the site which must have taken place at least 100 years before. During the reign of Jehu the territories east of the Jordan River were conquered by the Arameans (2 Kings 10:32 – 33) for a short while. Remarkably, several Elisha stories are connected with Gilgal where the prophet had a meeting house for his disciples (2 Kings 2:1; 4:38), and he stayed several times in Gilgal nearby Jericho (2  Kings 2:4,5,18). Elija and Elisha also crossed the Jordan River on a dry bed (2 Kings 2:14). Gilgal was remembered in some texts, and this seems to be a historical information.

2.9   The Dead Sea in the Books of the Chronicles and other late historical texts The so-called Ascent of Ziz (2 Chr 20:16) from En-Gedi to Tekoa is archaeologically confirmed by a chain of small resting places and was already used in the Iron Age I period (cf. Kochavi 1972; Zwickel 2015b, fig. 3). 2 Chr 11:6 testifies that Tekoa, situated at the upper end of the ascent, was fortified either © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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by the Judean king Rehabeam (so 2 Chr 11:6) or more likely in the 7th century BCE. This is the only period in which all sites mentioned in 2 Chr 11:5 – 10 were settled simultaneously. According to 2 Chr 20:1 – 30 Moabites, Ammonites and Meunites collected their troops in En-Gedi in order to climb up the Ascent of Ziz to the Judahite hill country. The Judean king Joshaphat fought a battle against this coalition and destroyed their armies with God’s help (2 Chr 20:22) in the Desert of Tekoa (2 Chr 20:20). This story is not related in the Books of Kings, and its diction is typical for the Books of Chronicles, which was written in the late Persian and Hellenistic period. Even the political situation is typical for the postexilic period, when En-Gedi was the southernmost border town of Judah in the Judean Desert. After 445 BCE the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt by the few people living in the town, assisted by settlers from all over Judah. Among them were people from Jericho and Tekoa (Neh 3:2.5.27). The Judean Desert east of Tekoa was always an ideal hiding place. The Maccabees Jonathan and Simon hid themselves in the Desert of Tekoa when they were pursued by the Seleucid general Bakchides (1 Macc 9:33) who also fortified the fortress of Jericho in 160 BCE (1 Macc 9:50). The Maccabean ruler Simon was killed in the fortress of Dok near Jericho (1 Macc 16:11 – 16).

2.10   The Prophetic books Compared to the relatively few citations of sites around the Dead Sea in the historical books of the Bible there are plenty of citations in the prophetic books. On the one hand, the prophets draw on biblical stories like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Isa 1:7.9 – 10; Jer 23:14; 49:18, 50:40; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:46 – 56; Amos 4:11; Zeph 2:9), the sin of Peor (Hos 9:10; cf. Ps 106:28) and Bileam’s blessings (Mic 6:5) as a warning to the faithless people. By contrast, the Valley of Achor (cf. Josh 7:24,26) becomes emblematic of the promising future of God’s people (Isa 65:10; Hos 2:17). On the other hand, settlements and regions are mentioned in the oracles against Moab (Isa 15:1 – 9; Jer 48; Ezek 25:8 – 11). Finally the sanctuary of Gilgal is still referred to by the prophets of the 8th century BCE (Hos 4:15; 12:12; Amos 4:4; 5,5; cf. Hos 9:15). A very hopeful text describes the Temple’s fountain (Ezek 47:1 – 12): a fountain arises at the threshold of the temple in Jerusalem and runs down to the Dead Sea, the waters becoming deeper and deeper. This brook transforms the salty water of the Dead Sea into fresh water full of fish. Against the background of the desperate time of the Exile or the early postexilic period, this text wants to demonstrate God’s ability to change the situation completely and to replace misery by a propitious future. Anyhow, the swamps and marches, which were important for the salt economy and by extension for the income of the settlers living along the shores of the Dead Sea, were supposed to survive (Ezek 47:11). In Joel 3:18 a similar situation is pictured: in a pleasant future, the Valley of Shittim north of the Dead Sea will be abundant with water.

2.11   Additional texts A list not belonging to any of the sources of the Pentateuch mentions the Edomite kings (Gen 36:31 – 39). Adad, one of these kings, defeated the Midianites in the Plains of Moab (Gen 36:35; 1 Chr 1:46). Perhaps this text describes a territory at the southern end of the Dead Sea where Edomites and Midianites would have been in contact with one another. Ruth settled in the Plains of Moab when there was a famine in Judah (Ruth 1:1,2,6,22; 2:6; 4:3). In this text, by contrast, the expression most likely refers to the north­ ern area of the Dead Sea (cf. also Num 21:20; 1 Chr 8:8). In Song of Songs 4:14, a text written in the Hellenistic period, the situation has already changed completely. Now the territory around En-Gedi is planted with henna plants and vineyards. In Sir 24:18, a text from the 2nd century BCE, the palm trees at En-Gedi and the rose plants in Jericho are referred to as the typical plants of this region. The region was cultivated again in the late postexilic period and became well known for its prosperous wine, henna, perfume and especially palm tree production (cf. the name “city of palm trees” for Jericho, Deut 34:3; Judg 1:16; 3:13; 2 Chr 28:15). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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2.12   New Testament The New Testament refers only to a few sites in this area. Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned several times as an example for the sinful actions of human beings (Matt 10:15; 11:23 – 24; Lk 10:12; 17:29; Rom 9:29; 2 Pet 2:6; Jude 7; Rev 11:8). On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus healed two blind men in Jericho (Matt 20:29 – 34 /  / ​Mark 10:46 – 52 /  / ​Luke 18:35 – 43). Also, Zacchaeus, a tax collector living in Jericho, met Jesus at this site (Luke 19:1 – 10). The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25 – 37) takes place on the desert way leading from Jericho to the temple in Jerusalem. Evidently an inn existed along this route (Luke 10:34). Besides the Q-material concerning the healing of the two blind men, only Luke knows stories situated in Jericho, while John does not mention the town at all. He only refers to nearby Bethany where John the Baptist was baptizing (John 1:28). According to Josephus, Ant. Iud. XVIII,119, John the Baptist died in the fortress of Machaerus on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, while the New Testament (Matt 14:6 – 12; Mark 6:21 – 29; Luke 3:19 – 20) does not present any data for the site of his death.

3   Roads in the Dead Sea area The roads on the eastern and western side of the Dead Sea are both very recent and were built only in the last decades. This was also true for the Biblical period. Archaeological sites in this area inform us about road systems. Two small roads are attested in the northwestern part of the Dead Sea. One ran for a distance of approximately 20 km directly along the shore, ending in Ain et-Turabe (Palestine grid 188.112). The other one ran about 5 km further to the west through the Buqei‘a Valley ending in Ain et-Turabe, too. Both roads were used to col­lect asphalt and salt from the Dead Sea and to transport the goods to the major center Jericho to the north of the Sea. The other roads used in anti­quity all led down from the western or eastern hill country to the shores of the Dead Sea. The course of the few existing roads can be exactly described. In the north the Ascent of Adummim (Josh 15:7; 18:17) connected Jerusalem and Jericho. This road was changed into a Roman road. The Ascent of Ziz (2 Chr 20:16), archaeologically confirmed by many resting places from the Iron Age, connected Tekoa with En-Gedi. Another small road connected Arad with the Dead Sea shore, ending finally south of ‘En Boqeq. Some forts were built along this road as a shelter for traders. The so-called Ascent of Aqrabbim (or Ascent of the Scorpions; Num 34:4; Josh 15:3; Judg 1:36) is found further to the south, connecting the Beersheba Valley with the site of Tamar. Some archaeological remains indicate the existence of another road at the southern end of the Dead Sea, running from the Negev to the site of Obot. Only few Iron Age sites are known on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, yet some road connections are confirmed by literary and archaeological sources. Mesha from Moab built a road along the Arnon River (Mesha Stela line 26). We also know the Ascent of Luhit (Isa 15:5; 48:5) connecting the Moabite hill country with the southern end of the Lisan peninsula. It is likely that a road ran from the area south of the Dead Sea to the northern territories of Edom, crossing the Desert of Edom (2 Kings 3:8,20). Further in the south, another road certainly led from Feinan up to the Edomite hill country. Only in the Hellenistic and mainly Roman period more roads were established on the eastern slopes of the Dead Sea.

4   Sites situated around the Dead Sea On the whole, the Old and New Testament as well as other important texts from the Biblical period mention a surprisingly high number of sites around the Dead Sea, which is quite impressive in view of the unpleasantness of the territory. This demonstrates that the area was settled and well known in Biblical times. Except of few sites like Jericho, En-Gedi or Sodom, all these settlements were relatively small, partly consisting of no more than a single farmstead with only a few people living there. The area, however, was an economic niche used in specific periods either to col­lect salt and asphalt, to cultivate balsam, wine and date palms, or to produce perfumes. In addition, the area served as a retreat in times of danger where people hid themselves and their treasures like, for example, the scrolls in the Qumran caves. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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The following table lists the names of these sites from north to south, the citations, a proposal for the identification of the site and the coordinates.

Table 1: Biblical sites and landscapes in the Dead Sea area.

Ancient Name

Citations

Modern Name

Palestine grid

WGS 84

Bet-Nimra

Num 32:36; Josh 13:27

Tell Nimrin

209.145

31.89696, 35.62167

Nimra

Num 32:3

Tell Nimrin

209.145

31.89696, 35.62167

Bethennabris

Ios. Bell. Iud. IV,420

Tell Nimrin

209.145

31.89696, 35.62167

Jericho (OT)

Tell es-Sultan Num 22:1; 26:3,63; 31:12; 33:48,50; 34:15; 35:1; 36:13; Deut 32:49; 34:1,3; Josh 2:1 – 3; 3:16; 4:13,19; 5:10,13; 6:1,2.25 – 26; 7:2; 8:2; 9:3; 10:1,28,30; 12:9; 13:32; 16:1,7; 18:12,21; 20:8; 24:11; 2 Sam 10:5; 1 Kings 16:34; 2 Kings 2:4 – 5,15,18; 25,5; 1 Chr 6:63; 19:5; 2 Chr 28:15; Esra 2:34; Neh 3:2; 7:36; Jer 39:5; 52:8; Jdt 4:3; Sir 24:18; 1 Macc 9:50; 16:11,14; 2 Macc 12:15

192.142

31.87108, 35.44399

City of Palms

Deut 34:3; Judg 1:16; 3:13; 2 Chr 28:15

Tell es-Sultan

192.142

31.87108, 35.44399

Dok, Dagon

1 Macc 16:15; Ios. Bell. Iud. I,56; Ant. Iud. XIII,230

Jebel Qarantal

189.142

31.87039, 35.42077

Bet-Gilgal

Neh 12:29

Ard el-Mefjir? 194.142

31.87032, 35.46304

Gilgal

Deut 11:30; Josh 4:19 – 20; 5:9,10; 9:6; 10:6 – 7,9,15,43; 14:6; Judg 2:1; 3:19,(26); 1 Sam 7:16; 10:8; 11:14 – 15; 13:4,7 – 8,12,15; 15:12,21,33; 2 Sam 19:16,41; 2 Kings 2:1; 4:38; Hos 4:15; 9:15; 12:12; Amos 4:4; 5:5; Mic 6:5; (1 Macc 9:2; read Galilee), cf. Ios. Ant. Iud. V,20

Ard el-Mefjir? 194.142

31.87032, 35.46304

Jericho (NT)

Matt 20:29; Mark 10:46; Luke 10:30; 18:35; 19:1; (Heb 11:30); several citations in Ios. Bell. Iud. and Ant. Iud.

Tulul Abu el-Alayik

191.139

31.85144, 35.43646

Cypros

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,407,417; II,484, Ant. Iud. XVI,143

Tell el-Aqabe

190.139

31.84334, 35.42071

Bet-Araba

Josh 15:6,61; 18:18,22

En el-Gharbe

197.139

31.84320, 35.49466

Abel-Schittim

Num 33:49

Khirbet el-Kafren

210.139

31.84278, 35.64256

Schittim

Num 25:1; Josh 2:1; 3:1; Hos 5:2; Joel 4:18; Mic 6:5

Khirbet el-Kafren

210.139

31.84278, 35.64256

Abila (Adida)

Ios. Bell. Iud. II, 252; IV,438.486; Ant. Iud. IV,176; V,4

Khirbet el-Kafren

210.139

31.84278, 35.64256

Abella

Zenon 59004 I 5

Khirbet el-Kafren

210.139

31.84278, 35.64256

Herodion

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,419

el-Habbassa?

214.138

31.83365, 35.67421

Inn of the Good Samaritan

Luke 10:25 – 37

–

184.137

31.816357. 35.358931

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29

The Dead Sea in the Bible Ancient Name

Citations

Modern Name

Palestine grid

WGS 84

Bet-Haran

Num 32:36; Josh 13,27

Tell er-Rama

211.137

31.82474, 35.64247

Betharamptha / ​ Betharanphtha

Ios. Bell. Iud. II,59; Ant. Iud. XVII,277; XVIII,27

Tell er-Rama

211.137

31.82474, 35.64247

Ioulias / ​Julias

Ios. Bell. Iud. II,252; IV,438; Ant. Iud. XVIII,27; XX,159

Tell er-Rama

211.137

31.82474, 35.64247

Betanien

John 1:28 (cf. 3:26)

Tell el-Kharrer

206.136

31.81589, 35.58963

Bet-Hogla

Josh 15:6; 18:19,21

Der Hajla

197.136

31.81614, 35.49457

Bethagala

Ios. Ant. Iud. XIII,26

Der Hagla

197.136

31.81614, 35.49457

Para

Josh 18:23

Khirbet En Fara

179.134

31.82544, 35.30448

Debir

Josh 15:7

Toghret et-Debr

187.134

31.79829, 35.38893

Bet-Jeschimot

Num 33:49; Josh 12:3; 13:20; Ezek 25:9

Tell el-Uzeme

208.132

31.77975, 35.61059

En-Shemesh

Josh 15:7; 18:17

En el-Hod

175.131

31.77135, 35.26220

Middin

Josh 15:61

Rujm el-Bahr?

198.131

31.77137, 35.51250

Pisga (mountain)

Num 21:20; 23:14; Deut 3:17,27; 4:49; 34:1; Josh 12:3; 13:20

Ras Sighara

218.131

31.77036, 35.71612

Nebo (mountain)

Deut 32:49; 34:1

Ras Sighara

218.131

31.77036, 35.71612

Peor

Num 23:28; 25:18; 31:16; Josh 22:17

Khirbet Uyun Musa

220.131

31.77028, 35.73723

Baal-Peor

Num 25:3,5; Ps 106:28; Hos 9:10

Khirbet Uyun Musa

220.131

31.77028, 35.73723

Bet-Pegor

Deut 3:29; 4:46; 34:6; Josh 13:20

Khirbet Uyun Musa

220.131

31.77028, 35.73723

En-Rogel

Josh 15:7; 18:16; 2 Sam 17:17; 1 Kings 1:9

Bir Eyyub

172.130

31.76234, 35.23053

Nebo (town)

Numb 32:3,38; 33:47; 1 Chr 5:8; Isa 15:2; Jer 48:1,22; Mesha-stela line 14

Khirbet 220.128 el-Mukhayyat

31.74984, 35.74393

Bet-Kerem

Neh 3:14; Jer 6:1

Khirbet Salih

170.127

31.73984, 35.21618

Kerem

Josh 15:59

Khirbet Salih

170.127

31.73984, 35.21618

Sechacha

Josh 15:61

Qumran?

193.127

31.74173, 35.45944

Bamot(-Baal)

Num 21:19 – 20; 22:41; Josh 13:17

Khirbet el-Quwejiye

220.127

31.73420, 35.73702

Bet-Bamot

Mesha-stela line 27

Khirbet el-Quwejiye

220.127

31.73420, 35.73702

Hyrkania

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,161.167.364.664; Ant. Iud. XIII,417; Khirbet Mird XIV,89; XV,366; XVI,13; XVII,187

184.125

31.71716, 35.35712

Kirjatajim

Gen 14:5; Num 32:37; Josh 13:19; Jer 48:1,23; Ezek 25:9

215.124

31.70735, 35.68413

Khirbet el-Qureya

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Ancient Name

Citations

Modern Name

Palestine grid

WGS 84

Kirjaton

Mesha-stela line 10

Khirbet el-Qureya

215.124

31.70735, 35.68413

Kirjat-Huzot

Num 22:39

Khirbet el-Qureya?

215.124

31.70735, 35.68413

Betlehem

Gen 35:19; 48:7; Jos 15:59; Judg 12:8,10; 17:7 – 9; 19:1 – 2,18; Ruth 1:1 – 2,19,22; 2:4; 4:11; 1 Sam 16:1,4,18; 17:12,15,58; 20,6,28; 2 Sam 2,32; 21:19; 23:14 – 16; 23:24; 1 Chr 2,51,54; 4:4,22; 11,16 – 18,26; 2 Chr 11:6; Ezra 2:21; Neh 7:26; Jer 41:17; Mic 5:1; Matt 2:1,5 – 6,8,16; Luke 2:4,15; John 7:42

Bet Lahm

169.123

31.69921, 35.19887

Etam

Josh 15:59; 1 Chr 4:32; 2 Chr 11:6

Khirbet el-Khokh

166.121

31.68116, 35.16724

Nibshan

Josh 15:62

Mazin?

192.121

31.68093, 35.44384

Baal-(Baal-) Meon

Numb 32:38; Josh 13:17; 1 Chr 5:8; Ezek 25:9; Mesha-stela line 30

Main

219.120

31.67111, 35.72612

Bet-Meon

Jer 48:23

Main

219.120

31.67111, 35.72612

Herodeion

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,265.673; III,55; IV,518.555; VII,163; Ant. Iud. XIV,360; XVI,13; XVII,199

Jebel el-Furedis

173.119

31.665833, 35.241389

Netofa

2 Sam 23:28 – 29; 2 Kings 25:23; 1 Chr 2:54; 9:16; 11:30; 27:13,15; Ezra 2:22; Neh 7:26; 12:28; Jer 40:8

Khirbet Badd Falukh

171.119

31.663130, 35,219970

Asphar

1 Macc 9:33

Bir el-Khashm?

174.116

31.63807, 32.25764

Tekoa

Josh 15:59; 2 Sam 14:2,4,9; 23:26; 1 Chr 2:24; 4:5; 11:28; 27:9; 2 Chr 11:6; 20:20; Neh 3:5.27; Jer 6:1; Amos 1:1; Ios. Bell. Iud. IV,518; Ant. Iud. VIII,246; 9,12; XIII,15; Vita 420

Khirbet et-Tuqu‘

170.115

31.62706, 35.20942

Ir-Melach

Josh 15:62

En el-Ghuwer?

189.115

31.62690, 35.40968

Libba / ​Lemba

Ios. Ant. Iud. XIII,397; XIV,18

Khirbet Libb

222.112

31.59883, 35.75734

Kallirrhoe

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,657; Ant. Iud. XVII,171

‘Ein ez-Zara

203.111

31.59051, 35.55711

Atarot

Mesha-Stela line 11

Khirbet Attarus

213.109

31.57215, 35.66238

Machaerus

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,161.171 – ​172; II,485 – ​486; III,46; IV,439.555; VII,164.168.170.210; Ant. Iud. XIII,417; XIV,83,89,94.96; XVIII, 111 – ​112.119

Khirbet el-Mukawir

210.108

31.56324, 35.63074

Kajin

Josh 15:57

Khirbet Yaqin?

165.100

31.49176, 35.15680

En-Gedi

Josh 15:62; 1 Sam 23:29; 24:1 – 2; 2 Chr 20,2; Cant En-Gedi 1:14; Ezek 47:10; Sir 24:18

187.098

31.46459, 35.38830

Hazezon Tamar

Gen 14:7; 2 Chr 20:2

En-Gedi

187.098

31.46459, 35.38830

Engaddi

Ios. Bell. Iud. III,55; IV,402; Ant. Iud. IX,7.11

En-Gedi

187.098

31.46459, 35.38830

Karmel

Josh 15:55; 1 Sam 15:12; 25:2,5,7,40; 30;29

Khirbet Kirmil 162.092

31.41958, 35.12530

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The Dead Sea in the Bible Ancient Name

Citations

Modern Name

Palestine grid

WGS 84

Maon

Josh 15:55

Main

163.090

31.40155, 35.13583

Kerijot

Josh 15:25

Khirbet el-Qaryaten?

162.084

31.34743, 35.12279

Zif

Josh 15:24; 1 Sam 23:19,24; 26:1; Ps 54:2

Khirbet et-Tayyib?

164.082

31.32214, 35.13433

Masada

Ios. Bell. Iud. I,237 – ​238.264.266.286.292 – ​ 294.303; II,408.433.447.653; IV,399.404.504. 506.516.555; VII,252.275.407; Ant. Iud. XIV,296.358.361 – ​362.390 – ​391.396 – ​397.400. 413; XV,184

es-Sabba

183.080

31.31131, 35.34599

Kabzeel (Jekabzeel)

Josh 15:21; 2 Sam 23:20; 1 Chr 11:22; Neh 11:25

Khirbet et-Tayyibe?

164.079

31.30247, 35.14181

Dimon

Isa 15:9

Khirbet el-Kharaziya

216.077

31.28342, 35.69250

Madmen

Jer 48:2

Khirbet el-Kharaziya

216.077

31.28342, 35.69250

Arad

Num 21:1; 33:40; Judg 1:16; Josh 12:14; 1 Chr 8:15

Tell Arad

162.076

31.27527, 35.12543

Horonajim / ​ Oronas

2 Sam 13:34; Isa 15:5; Jer 48:3.5.34; Ios. Ant. Iud. XIII,397; XIV,18

Ed-Der

215.073

31.24738, 35.68182

Horonan

Mesha-stela line 32

Ed-Der

215.073

31.24738, 35.68182

Sodom

Gen 10:19; 13:10,12,13; 14:2,8,10 – 12,17,21 – 22; 18:16,20,22,26; 19:1,4,24,28; Deut 29:22; 32:32; Isa 1:7,9 – 10; 13:19; Jer 23:14; 49:18; 50:40; Lam 4:6; Ezek 16:46,48,49,53 – 56; Amos 4:11; Zeph 2:9; Sap 19:13; Matt 10:15; 11:23 – 24; Luke 10:12; 17:29; Rom 9:29; 2 Pet 2:6; Jude 7; Rev 11:8; Ios. Bell. Iud. IV,453.483.485

Bab edh-Dhra‘?

204.072

31.25392, 35.53418

Jagur

Josh 15:21

Khirbet Sumra?

163.071

31.23620, 35.13698

Kina

Josh 15:22

Khirbet Ghazze?

165.068

31.20313, 35.15697

Luhit

Isa 15:5; Jer 48:5

Katrabba

209.060

31.13497, 35.62604

Gomorrah

Gen 10:19; 13:10; 14:2,8,10 – 11; 18:20; 19:24,28; Deut 29:22; 32:32; Isa 1;9,10; 13:19; Jer 23:14; 49:18; 50:40; Amos 4:11; Zeph 2:9; Matt 10:15; Rom 9:29; 2 Pet 2:6; Jude 7

Numeira?

201.059

31.13158, 35.52939

Bela

Gen 14:2,8

Khirbet eshShekh Isa

195.048

31.01347, 35.47124

Zoar

Gen 13:10; 14:2,8; 19:22 – 23,30; Deut 34:3; Isa 15:5; Jer 48:34

Khirbet eshShekh Isa

195.048

31.01347, 35.47124

Zoora

Ios. Bell. Iud. IV, 482; Ant. Iud. I,204; XIII,397; XIV,18

Khirbet eshShekh Isa

195.048

31.01347, 35.47124

Tamar

1 Kings 9:18; Ezek 47:18 – 19; 48:28

En Arus?

183.043

30.97758, 35.34552

Rehobot-Nahar

Gen 36:37; 1 Chr 1:48

Ras er-Rihab

208.038

30.91224, 35.54214

Obot

Num 21:10 – 11; 33:43 – 44

En Husb

173.024

30.80955, 35.24391

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32

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Ancient Name

Citations

Modern Name

Palestine grid

WGS 84

Punon

Num 33,42 – 43 (cf. Gen 36:41; 1 Chr 1:52)

Feinan

198.004

30.62556, 35.49106

Landscape names (in alphabetical order) (Mountain of) Abarim

Num 27:12; 33:47 – 48; Deut 32:49; Jer 22:20

(Valley) Achor

Josh 7:24,26; 15:7; Isa 65:10; Hos 2:17

(Ascent of) Adummim

Josh 15:7; 18:17

Ar

Num 21:15,18; 22:36; Deut 2:9.18.29; Isa 15:1

Araba

Num 22:1; 26:3,63; 31:12; 33,48 – 50; 35:1; 36:13; Deut 1:1,7; 2:8; 3:17; 4:49; 11:30; 34:1,8; Josh 3:16; 4:13; 5:10; 8:14; 11:2,16; 12:1,3,6; 13:32; 18:18; 1 Sam 23:24; 2 Sam 2:29; 4:7; 15:28; 17:16; 2 Kings 14:25; 25:4,5; Isa 33:9; Jer 17:6; 39:4 – 5; 52:7,8; Ezek 47:8; Amos 6:14; Job 39:6

Ascent of Aqrabbim / ​Ascent of the Scorpions

Num 34:4; Josh 15:3; Judg 1:36

Ascent of Luhit

Isa 15:5; Jer 48:5

Ascent of Ziz

2 Chr 20:16

Atarim

Num 21:1

Beracha (valley)

2 Chr 20:26

Desert of En Gedi

1 Sam 24:2

Desert of Jeruel

2 Chr 20:16

Desert of Judah

Josh 15:61; Judg 1:16; 1 Sam 23:14; 25:4,14; 1 Kings 2:34; Ps 63:1

Desert of Maon

1 Sam 23:24 – 25; 25,1 – 2

Desert of Tekoa

2 Chr 20:20; 1 Macc 9:33

Desert of Zif

1 Sam 23:14 – 15; 26:2

Fields of Moab

Gen 36:35; Num 21:20; Ruth 1:1,2,6,22; 2:6; 4:3; 1 Chr 1:46; 8:8

Jordan area (hebr. kikkār)

Gen 13:10 – 12; 19:17.25.28 – 29; Deut 34:3; 2 Sam 18:23; 1 Kings 7:46; 2 Chr 4:17; Neh 3:22; cf. Matt 3:5; Luke 3:3

Road along the Arnon River

Mesha Stela line 26

Shittim (valley)

Joel 4:18

Siddim (valley)

Gen 14:3,8,10 Rivers

Arnon

Num 21:13 – 14,24,28; 22:36; Deut 2:24,36; 3:8,12,16; 4,48; Josh 12:1 – 2; 13:9,16; Judg 11:13,18,22,26; 2 Kings 10:33; Isa 16:2; Jer 48,20

Jordan

Many references

(Waters of) Nimrim

Isa 15:6; Jer 48:34

Sered

Num 21:12; Deut 2:13 – 14

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33

The Dead Sea in the Bible Ancient Name

Citations

Modern Name

Palestine grid

WGS 84

Not identified sites (in alphabetical order) Adma

Gen 10:19; 14:2,8; Deut 29:22; Hos 11:8

Beer-Elim

Isa 15:8

Beon

Num 32:3; (1 Macc 5:4 ?)

City in the Valley

Josh 13:9,16; Deut 2:36; 2 Sam 24:5

Di-Zahab

Deut 1:1

Eglajim

Jes 15:8

Eglat-Shelishija

Isa 15:5; Jer 48:34

Emek-Keziz

Josh 18:21

En-Eglajim

Ezek 47:10

Gelilot

Josh 15:7; 18:17

(Gibea) Hachila

1 Sam 23:19; 26:1,3

Hazerot

Deut 1:1

Horesh

1 Sam 23:15,16,18,19

Laban

Deut 1:1

Rocks of the Wild Goats

1 Sam 24:3

Seira

Judg 3:26

Stone of Bohan

Josh 15:6; 18:17

Suf

Deut 1:1

Sufa

Num 21:14

Tofel

Deut 1:1

Waheb

Num 21:14

Zebojim

Gen 10:19; 14:2.8; Deut 29:22; Hos 11:8

Zeret-haSchachar Josh 13:19

REFERENCES Alt 1968 A. Alt, Das System der Stammesgrenzen im Buche Josua, in: A. Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israels I 4(München 1968) 193 – ​202 Kochavi 1972 M. Kochavi, Judaea, Samaria and the Golan. Archaeological Survey 1967 – ​1968 (Jerusalem 1972; Hebrew)

Zwickel 2015a W. Zwickel, Der Durchzug der Israeliten durchs Ost­ jordanland, in: W.  Zwickel, Studien zur Geschichte Israels, Stuttgarter Biblische Aufsatzbände 59 (Stuttgart 2015) 9 – 34 Zwickel 2015b W. Zwickel, Die Landnahme in Juda, in: W.  Zwickel, Studien zur Geschichte Israels, Stuttgarter Biblische Aufsatzbände 59 (Stuttgart 2015) 35 – 60

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The Work of the PEF in the Dead Sea Region

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The Work of the Palestine Exploration Fund in the Dead Sea Region Felicity Cobbing

The Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) was instrumental in establishing reliable geographical, archaeological and environmental data for the Dead Sea region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This paper will look at the most significant studies conducted on behalf of the PEF, or associated with it, from its foundation in 1865 up to the outbreak of the First World War in July 1914. The exotic and legendary Dead Sea region, with its extraordinary geology and climate, biblical and ancient historical references 1 was always going to be of interest to western explorers, 2 and in particular to an organisation such as the PEF, founded as it was to record scientifically the flesh and bones of the Land of the Bible (Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund 1874, 3). Just prior to the PEF’s foundation in 1865, a team of Royal Engineers (R. E.) led by Captain Charles Wilson, employed on the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem, ran a series of levels from the Mediterranean coast to the Dead Sea to measure the absolute level of the latter below sea level. On March 12, 1865, they recorded the surface of the Dead Sea at 1,292 feet below the surface of the Mediterranean, establishing as fact this defining characteristic (Wilson 1865, 21 – 23 pl. 6 – 9) (Fig. 1). The PEF and its associates remained deeply interested in the Dead Sea region. Charles Warren visited in the summer of 1867 (Warren 1876, 162 – ​205) as did Canon Henry Baker Tristram in 1863 (Tristram 1865, 191 – ​331) and the Orientalist Edward Henry Palmer and Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake on their voyage to the eastern shore in 1869 (Palmer 1871). Much of the details of their visits are recorded in the pages of first the Proceedings and Notes of the Palestine Exploration Fund Vol. 1 – 4, 1865 – 1​ 869, and its successor as the journal of the Fund, the Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (PEFQst) from 1869 onwards. The Surveys of Western and Eastern Palestine of the 1870s and 1880s were key studies which included these accounts, as well as adding important clarification and detail (Fig. 2). The Survey of the Wadi ‘Arabah in the winter of 1883 – ​1884 (Hull 1886) focused on the Rift Valley itself, with particular attention to the geology of the region. This survey was led by Edward Hull, the Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland.

1

The Dead Sea is mentioned frequently in the Hebrew Bible, referred to as the ‘Salt Sea’ (Gen 14:3 and Josh 15:5), the ‘Eastern Sea’ (Ezek 4:7, 18) and the ‘Sea of the ‘Arabah’ (Deut 4:49) and other ancient sources. The term ‘Dead Sea’ is first found in the writings of Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus of the 1st century BCE / ​CE (Iust. 36, 3, 6 – 7). Jericho and its environs in particular carried significance to early PEF explorers, primarily because of its central role in the Israelite Conquest narrative in the Hebrew Bible (Josh 2:1 – 6:26). The region’s famed fecundity and economic importance in anti­quity is frequently referenced in the Bible (e. g., Deut 34:3; Judg 1:16; 3:12; 2 Kgs 2:29; 2 Chr 28:15; Song 1:4) and in other ancient texts (Ios. Bell. Iud. 4, 369. 455. 468; Strab. 16).

2

There were several attempts by 19th century travellers to explore the Dead Sea itself in more detail. In 1835, the Reverend Christopher Costigan procured a boat and made an ill-advised journey onto the lake in the heat of August, an adventure which cost him his life. The same fate befell Lieutenant Thomas Molyneaux R.N. who attempted the same expedition in the summer of 1847, but more success was had by Lieut. W. F. Lynch of the U. S. Navy the following year (Masterman 1911, 12 – 27). Lynch’s survey is considered the first thorough analysis of the Dead Sea itself. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 1 Section drawing showing the results of the measurements from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea taken by the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem in 1865 – 1​ 866 (PEF-M-WS-208.2).

Subsequent studies of the environment, archaeology, and ethnography of the Dead Sea region, as well as regular measurements of the water level taken from the ‘PEF Rock’ were also recorded in the Quarterly Statement (Masterman 1901 – ​1913) and we will return to these later. The archives and collections of the PEF are an exceptional research resource, often adding detail and data which, for one reason or another, did not make it into the final publications. Both the Warren expedition and the Survey of Western Palestine team visited the northwestern shores of the Dead Sea – the area around Qumran, the Wadi Qelt, and the Jericho plain – in 1867 to 1868, and during 1873 to 1875 respectively (Fig. 3). The Warren expedition visited the Jericho region for a few days in April 1867, and more extensively the following spring (Warren 1865 – ​1869, 1 – 16). They explored particularly around Tell es-Sultan and the north shores of the Dead Sea, making notes of the environment, recording details of standing remains and the topography. There were two main branches of their work: firstly, a survey of the whole region of Jericho, and secondly, the first excavation of some of the ʻtells’ which peppered the Jordan Valley, with a view to determining their nature. At the time, most of the material culture of the pre- and post-classical era in Palestine was almost entirely unknown, and no archaeological method for dating such finds existed. Petrie’s excavations for the PEF at Tell el-Hesi when some answers to these questions began to emerge were 20 years in the future (cf. Flinders Petrie 1891). Their primary focus was the network of ancient aqueducts and roads – the isolation and poverty of the region in their own era seemed at odds with the enthusiastic descriptions by ancient authors as to the areas productivity and economic importance. 3 In this respect they were very successful, identifying numerous aqueducts in the Wadi Qelt, and closer to Tell es-Sultan, from all phases from the Roman period onwards. Whilst they were not able to trace completely this network of aqueducts, they made a significant contribution to the beginnings of what would evolve into the archaeological study of the hinterland of the Jericho region which is an ever-growing area of research. 4 Regarding the tells themselves, the question was whether these prominent features of the Rift Valley landscape were natural or artificial features. The received wisdom of the time was that they were natural 3

The PEF and other explorers found a rather different landscape than that described by the ancient authors. Jericho’s moniker ‘City of Palms’ (Deut 34:3) was noted by (among others) Edward Robinson, Charles Warren and Charles Tyrwhitt-Drake as being somewhat inaccurate in their own time, though the potential for fecundity was not doubted (Robinson 1860, 552; Warren 1876, 184; Tyrwhitt-Drake 1874a, 75; Tristram 1897, 115), and Frederick J. Bliss referred to the region as “an unsettled country” (Bliss 1894, 177). One author remarks “but the traveller, parched and weary, is often prompted or provoked to ask, ʻWhere now are the honey, the opobalsam, and the meeting abundance of these plains?’ The region was called the divine; it is now the blighted, like a place that has been sown with salt. Here, at let, ‘the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain’” (Tweedie 1874, 123).

4

For example, the Khirbet el-Mafjar Archaeological Project (2010 – ​2014) led by Dr. Mahmoud Hawari on behalf of the University of Oxford and Birzeit University, aimed to define the functional relationship of the architectural remains of Hisham’s Palace and other sites in the Jericho region with remnants of agricultural industry and land use surviving in the wider vicinity, thereby reconstructing a complex ancient agrarian landscape at the heart of which was the Umayyad era palace (Hawari 2010). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

The Work of the PEF in the Dead Sea Region

Fig. 2 Professor E. H. Palmer (standing) and Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake in Jerusalem, in the spring of 1870, during their survey of the Negev. Photo by Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake (PEF-P-1477).

Fig. 3 Manuscript map of the Dead Sea region surveyed from the En-Gedi Camp, by the Survey of Western Palestine team on March 3, 1875 (PEF-MWS-155.1). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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features. 5 Warren sunk test trenches at several tells, including Tell es-Sultan. Though he didn’t know it, he had actually uncovered a part of what Kenyon would in the 1950s define as the Early Bronze Age city wall. 6 Warren speculated that these tells might be watchtowers or forts guarding trade and communications routes through the Jordan Valley and up the various wadis into the surrounding hills (Conder – Kitchener 1883, 224 – ​226). Whilst this seems a rather bland conclusion, it reflects the brief nature of his investigation, and the embryonic state of research in the subject at the time. Warren knew how little he knew and did not indulge in idle speculation. However, he should be duly acknowledged as the ʻdiscoverer’ of the ancient tell landscape of Palestine. The Survey of Western Palestine team, led by Lieutenant Claude Reigner Conder with Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake as his second in command, visited the Jericho region first in the winter of 1873 – 1​ 874 and then for a few more days over the Christmas and New Year of 1875, with Lieut. Horatio H. Kitchener replacing the by then deceased Drake 7 (Conder 1874a, 35 – 45; Tyrwhitt-Drake 1874a, 68 – 74; Tyrwhitt-Drake 1875, 30 f.). Following Warren’s assessment that the tells in the Jordan Valley were artificial, the Survey Team examined them further. Drake concluded that they were ancient towns or at least defensive forts, protecting routes up through the mountain passes on either side (Tyrwhitt-Drake 1875, 30 f.). Further to the south, Drake visited Khirbet Qumran with Charles Clermont-Ganneau. The visible ruins are briefly described in his report, but no hypothesis as to their date or function is given. The numerous mud brick graves in the vicinity were a puzzle, with no grave goods, and their apparent dissimilarity from other known forms of burial. Only one worn copper coin, presumed to be Jewish, was reported (Tyrwhitt-Drake 1874a, 74). 8 The Survey team also focussed their energies on understanding the region’s ancient aqueducts, bridges and roads. They described and characterised these features in an ordered way, taking into account any dating which could be reasonably ascertained. Two aqueduct systems were identified: those of Qanat Musa to the north and west of Jericho, and those of the Wadi Qelt to the south (Conder – Kitchener 1883, 206 f. 227 – ​229) (Fig. 4). Further south, in March 1875, the Survey team, this time with­out Kitchener who was collecting supplies from elsewhere, triangulated the Dead Sea desert, noting vegetation in the wadis, and the remnants of sugar mills, and visiting the spring at En-Gedi and the Herodian fortress at Masada. In 12 days they triangulated 330 square miles, in appalling weather conditions – howling gales with driving rain, sleet and hail – so bad their experienced but elderly guide, Sheikh Hamzeh, had to be tied onto his pony to stop him from falling off! (Conder 1875, 125 – ​138). To visit Masada, the party left camp at 6am, and rode 14 miles, reaching the site at 9am. They surveyed until 3pm, riding back to their camp, surveying as they went. The bad weather they experienced elsewhere in this part of the expedition didn’t let up whilst on top of Masada, making it impossible for the team to explore the more precipitous parts of the site. In a letter to the PEF in London, Conder describes it as being a “perfect hurricane” adding that “your subscribers will also be shocked to know that we have worked straight through Sunday and indeed have

5

Warren remarks that Robinson appears to have regarded the tells as natural features (Warren 1876, 190; see Robinson 1857, 328 for his description of Tell el-Husn at Beisan and Robinson 1860, 556 for that of Tell es-Sultan, from which it is clear he does not regard them as artificial despite their close association with ancient remains). Elsewhere in the Jordan Valley, Robinson notes the presence of several tells, but does not speculate as to their nature (Robinson 1857, 310).

6

The evidence for Kenyon’s dating of the Early Bronze Age remains at Jericho are to be found throughout the final excavations reports, particularly in Kenyon – Holland 1981. However, Kenyon presents a clear summary of her reasoning in her popular account of the excavations, Digging Up Jericho (Kenyon 1957, 256 – ​265).

7

During the Survey party’s expedition to the Dead Sea in the winter of 1873 – ​1874, Tyrwhitt-Drake contracted what Conder, in his memorial article in the Quarterly Statement refers to as “Jericho fever”, which afflicted ten members of the survey party, including Drake. He finally died at the Mediterranean Hotel in Jerusalem on June 23, 1874 (see Conder 1874b, 131 – ​134). Kitchener replaced him later that year, and accompanied the party to Jericho in the December and January of 1874 – ​1875 (cf. PEF Archives letters from Claude R. Conder to Walter Besant: PEF-DAWS-CON-119. 120).

8

Later, Gurney Masterman would also visit Wadi Qumran (Masterman 1903). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 4 Medieval bridge over the Wadi Nawimeh, north of Jericho, 1867. Photo by Sergeant Henry Phillips R. E. (PEF-P-824).

been on our legs all day & often awake for fear of being blown down all night” (Palestine Exploration Fund Archives – PEF-DA-WS-CON-133). Despite the difficulties, and the impossibility of taking photographs in these conditions, the team managed to triangulate a fair plan of the fortress-palace, and fixed the positions of the Roman camps below, and the site is described at some length in Conder’s report in the Quarterly Statement (Conder 1875, 133 – ​137) (Fig. 5). Captain Conder returned to the shores of the Dead Sea this time on the Jordanian side in 1881 – 1​ 882 during the Survey of Eastern Palestine with Lieut. Mantell (Conder 1889) and Major Kitchener accompanied Edward Hull on the Survey of the Wadi ‘Arabah in the winter of 1883 – 1​ 884 (Fig. 6). This latter survey was, as well as a geographical survey of the ‘Arabah, a geological survey of the southern Levant, with a particular focus on the Rift Valley, and is published as the ‘Geology’ volume of the complete Survey of Western Palestine Memoirs (Hull 1886). This was the last of the PEF’s ‘Surveys’ before the society’s attention turned more specifically to archaeological excavation of particular sites in the coming decades. However, there were smaller teams of explorers associated with the PEF who were very interested in the environment of the Dead Sea including Sir John Gray Hill, who in 1897 went on a voyage down the east coast of the Dead Sea which went rather wrong. Disarmingly, and with incredibly contemporary phraseology, he writes in the Quarterly Statement of 1900: “It may, perhaps, interest some of the readers of the Statement if I give an account, taken from my journal, of the little voyage down the east coast….It may serve at any rate as a warning against the indulgence of enthusiasm with­out caution or consideration, and as an example of ʻhow not to do it’” (Hill 1900, 276 f.). Sir Gray was told by locals of sculptures of men and camels, and even inscriptions carved into the rocks above the River Arnon, and so went on an arduous journey involving fever stricken sailors, winds blowing the wrong way, and boats being lost, in search of King Mesha’s legacy, only to find they were rocks which ‘looked like’ a camel and its rider (Hill 1900, 279). Many locals and visitors were struck by the significant fluctuations in the water levels of the Dead Sea (Warren 1876, 175). Noticeable changes in the coastline, and the flooding with brackish water of previously sweet water areas, suggested a rise in levels of up to 15 feet from the time of Wilson’s measurement back in 1865. Some, like Tyrwhitt-Drake in 1874 (Tyrwhitt-Drake 1874b, 188) and Sir John Gray Hill in 1900 (Hill 1900, 273 – ​276) speculated that these fluctuations might be due to uplift and subsidence of the Dead Sea bed itself, but others including Charles Wilson preferred a meteorological explanation, pointing to the exceptionally wet winters of recent years, which had been fastidiously measured and reported in the Quarterly by the PEF Chairman, Mr. James Glaisher and his team of observers posted around the country (Wilson 1900, 366). To facilitate the ongoing study of the Dead Sea, Wilson advocated marking a rock near Ἑin Feshkha or a convenient point “at a measured height of 8 or 10 feet © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 5 Plan of Masada drawn by Lieut. Claude R.  Conder during the Survey of Western Palestine visit in March 1875 (PEF-M-WS-253).

above the level of the water on November 1st, which it is at its lowest, and that the level of the water with reference to this mark be measured at the end of each month of the rainy season. I would also suggest [he writes] that travellers be asked to send to the Fund notes on the level of the lake with reference to the drift-wood which marks the high water line, and the dates of their visits” (Wilson 1900, 368). Later that year on October 9, another famous PEF name, Robert Stewart Macalister, together with Dr. Gurney Masterman, chose a spot at Ἑin Feshkha to be the ‘PEF Rock’ which henceforth provided a constant point of reference for measuring the levels of the Dead Sea (Masterman 1901, 4 f.). These measurements were taken regularly for the next eight years until they were suspended in 1909 for reasons which are not clear. Masterman reported on these trips in the Quarterly Statement, in articles titled ‘Dead Sea Observations’, on which he was usually accompanied by Mr. Charles Alexander Hornstein. From 1892 until the outbreak of war in 1914, Masterman was medical doctor for the Church Mission to the Jews based in Jerusalem, and travelled widely in Syria and Palestine in the course of his duties. He was closely involved with the PEF during his time in the Levant, acting as Local Secretary in Jerusalem from 1910 onwards, and from 1920 to 1936 was its Honorary Secretary in London (see PEFQst Notes and News) (Fig. 7). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 6 The Survey of the ‘Arabah Team 1883 – ​ 1884 in their tent. From left to right: Sergeant George Armstrong R. E., Professor Edward Hull, Henry Hart, Major H. H. Kitchener R. E. and Reginald Laurence. Photo by E. Gordon Hull (PEF-P-4196).

Charles Hornstein was the nephew of the proprietor of the Mediterranean Hotel in Jerusalem. He grew up surrounded by PEF explorers such as Warren, Wilson, Conder and Kitchener, all who would have stayed there frequently, and undoubtedly caught the exploring ‘bug’. He became Principal of the London Jews Society and Bishop Gobat’s Boys School in Jerusalem. He was a keen explorer and photographer of some skill (Abujaber – Cobbing 2006, 227 f.). It was not just the measurements of the Dead Sea levels that Masterman and Hornstein were interested in, but the whole environment of the region. They reported on wildlife seen, the weather, the terrain travelled through, Bedouin movements, the productivity of local crops, and the variable visibility of the Jordan Valley. The trips were resumed in the spring of 1910. The level of the Dead Sea was recorded in Masterman’s Quarterly Statement article of the same year as being 12 feet 5 inches below the obFig. 7 The PEF Rock at ‘Ein Feshkha. Mr. Hornservation mark (Masterman 1910, 290 f.). stein holding the tape, November 9, 1911. In the 1913 edition of the Quarterly StatePhoto by F. G. Newton (PEF-P-MACK-218). ment, Masterman published a summary article which included a graph showing all the measurements which had been taken (Masterman 1913, 192 – ​197) (Fig. 8). Masterman’s opinion, in line with that of Wilson and Warren previously, was that the fluctuations in level were entirely due to seasonal fluctuations in rainfall, snowmelt, and evaporation, and because of tectonic activity. However, Gray Hill was not content with this explanation, and wrote an article detailing historical accounts of the appearance of the Dead Sea which appeared in the Quarterly Statement for January 1914, in which he hypothesised that other geological factors must be at play. He proposed mounting a boat expedition to measure the sea bed at various points, and for making a proper survey of the east bank (Hill 1914, 23 – 29). Gray Hill died suddenly in Jerusalem on June 19 in the same year (see PEFQst Notes and News). War broke out shortly after, and so the pattern of exploration and reporting on the Dead Sea in this era came to a rather sad end. This has been, by necessity, a very brief summary of the PEF’s interest in the Dead Sea region, with many omissions, but I hope I have been able to give a flavour of the nature of the society’s contribution over the first 50 years of its existence, and the material in its archives (Pl. 3,1). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 8 Graph showing the results of successive measurements taken at the PEF Rock from 1900 to 1913 (PEFQSt 1913, p. 193).

REFERENCES Ackroyd 1904 W. Ackroyd, On a Principal Cause of the Saltness of the Dead Sea, PEFQst 34, 1904, 64 – 66 Abujaber – Cobbing 2006 R. S. Abujaber – F. Cobbing, Beyond the River: Ottoman Transjordan in Original Photographs (London 2006) Bliss 1894 F. J. Bliss, Notes on the Plain of Jericho, PEFQst 24, 1894, 175 – ​183 Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund 1874 Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, Our Work in Palestine: Being an Account of the Different Expeditions Sent Out to the Holy Land (London 1874) Conder 1874a C. R. Conder, Gilgal and the Plains of Jericho. Lieut. Claude R. Conders Reports XVIII, PEFQst 6, 1874, 35 – 45 Conder 1874b C. R. Conder, In Memoriam. Charles F. Tyrwhitt-Drake, PEFQst 6, 1874, 131 – ​134 Conder 1875 C. R. Conder, The Survey of the Dead Sea Desert and a Visit to Masada. Lieut. Claude R. Conder’s Reports XXXII, PEFQst 7, 1875, 125 – ​138

Conder 1889 C. R. Conder, The Survey of Eastern Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography, Archaeology etc. I. The ‘Adwân Country (London 1889) Conder – Kitchener 1883 C. R. Conder – H. H. Kitchener, The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoirs of the Topography, Orography, Hydrography and Archaeology III. Sheets XVII – ​XXVI: Judaea (London1883) Flinders Petrie 1891 W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tell el Hesy (Lachish). Published for the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund by A. P. Watt (London 1891) Hamilton – Falconer 1854 H. C. Hamilton – W. Falconer (eds.), The Geography of Strabo in Three Volumes (London 1854) Hawari 2010 M. Hawari, Archaeological Landscape Survey at Khirbat al-Mafjar — 2009 and 2010, Bulletin for the Council for British Research in the Levant 5,1, 2010, 21 – 32 Hill 1900 G. J. Hill, The Dead Sea, PEFQst 32, 1900, 273 – ​276 Hill 1914 G. J. Hill, The Dead Sea, PEFQst 46, 1914, 23 – 29

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The Work of the PEF in the Dead Sea Region Hull 1886 E. Hull, The Survey of Western Palestine: Memoir on the Geology and Geography of Arabia Petraea, Palestine, and Adjoining Districts with Special Reference to the Mode of Formation of the Jordan – Arabah Depression, and The Dead Sea (London 1886) Kenyon – Holland 1981 K. M. Kenyon – T. A. Holland (eds.), Excavations at Jericho III: The Architecture and Stratigraphy of the Tell (Jerusalem 1981) Kenyon 1957 K. M. Kenyon, Digging Up Jericho (London 1957) Mastermann 1901 – ​1913 G. Masterman, Dead Sea Observations, PEFQst 1901, 4 f.; 1902, 7. 160‒167. 297‒299; 1903, 177 f.; 1904, 83‒89. 163‒168. 280 f.; 1905, 8. 158 f.; 1906, 69. 232‒234; 1907, 84. 302‒304; 1908, 85. 160 f. 172; 1909, 68‒70; 1910, 290 f.; 1911, 59‒61. 158‒161; 1912, 213; 1913, 42‒44. 192‒197 Masterman 1903 G. Masterman, Notes on Some Ruins and a Rockcut Aqueduct in the Wâdy Kumrân, PEFQst 33, 1903, 264 – ​267 Masterman 1911 G. Masterman, Three Explorers in the Dead Sea Valley, PEFQst 43, 1911, 12 – 27 Meehan 1958 D. Meehan (ed.), Adomnan’s ‘De Locis Sanctis’ (Dublin 1958) Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement (PEFQst) Notes and News Dr. Masterman’s appointment as PEF Local Secretary in Jerusalem, PEFQst 42, 1910, 6 Sir John Gray Hill’s death, PEFQst 46, 1914, 102 Dr. Masterman’s appointment as Honorary Secretary in London, PEFQst 52, 1920, 3 Dr. Masterman’s retirement as Honorary Secretary in London, PEFQst 68, 1936, 122 Palmer 1871 E. H. Palmer, The Desert of the Exodus. Journey on Foot in the Wilderness of the Forty Year’s Wanderings Undertaken in Connexion with the Ordnance Survey of Sinai and the Palestine Exploration Fund. Part 1 & 2 (London 1871) Robinson 1857 E. Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine. Vol. 3 (Boston 1857)

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Robinson 1860 E. Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine. Vol. 1 (Boston 1860) Thackeray 1927 H. St. J. Thackeray, Flavius Josephus, Bellum Judaicum (Harvard 1927) Thackeray 1930 H. St. J. Thackeray, Flavius Josephus, Antiquities Books 1 – 3 (Harvard 1930) Tristram 1865 H. B. Tristram, The Land of Israel. A Journal of Travels in Palestine, Undertaken with Special Reference to its Physical Character (London 1865) Tristram 1897 H. B. Tristram, Bible Places, or The Topography of the Holy Land (London 1897) Tweedie 1874 W. K. Tweedie, The Rivers and Lakes of The Bible (London 1874) Tyrwhitt-Drake 1874a C. F. Tyrwhitt-Drake, Mr Tyrwhitt-Drake’s Reports XVI, PEFQst 6, 1874, 64 – 79 Tyrwhitt-Drake 1874b C. F. Tyrwhitt-Drake, Mr Tyrwhitt-Drake’s Reports XVIII, PEFQst 6, 1874, 187 – ​190 Tyrwhitt-Drake 1875 C. F. Tyrwhitt-Drake, Mr Tyrwhitt-Drake’s Report XIX, PEFQst 7, 1875, 7 – 34 Warren 1865 – ​1869 C. Warren, Notes on a Journey up the Jordan made by Lieutenant Warren in February 1868. Vol. 3, in: C.  Warren, Proceedings and Notes Volumes 1 – 4 (London 1865 – ​1869) 1 – 16 Warren 1876 C. Warren, Underground Jerusalem. An Account of some of the Principal Difficulties Encountered in its Exploration and the Results Obtained. With a Narrative of an Expedition through the Jordan Valley and a Visit to the Samaritans (London 1876) Wilson 1865 C. Wilson, Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem. Notes. By Captain C. W. Wilson, R. E. under the direction of Colonel Sir Henry James,1864 – ​1865 (Southampton 1865) Wilson 1900 C. Wilson, The Dead Sea, PEFQst 32, 1900, 365 – ​369

ARCHIVAL SOURCES Palestine Exploration Fund Archives for Warren’s Expedition to Jerusalem and the Survey of Western Palestine.

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Jericho in Berlin 

 1

Jericho in Berlin Lutz Martin

1  Introduction With its 500,000 objects representing the material remains of some 9,000 years of history from the Late Neolithic to the age of Alexander the Great, Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum in the south wing of the Pergamonmuseum houses one of the world’s greatest collections of ancient Near Eastern antiquities Pl. 4,1). Among them are some 2,700 objects from the German excavations in Palestine, specifically from Megiddo and Jericho, excavations which were undertaken in the early days of the 20th century. From Jericho itself we have 1,404 objects from all ages belonging to a range of material categories: glass (a few), bone (a few), metal (mainly bronze), and ceramic (1,143 objects), as well as stone / silex (Pl. 3,2. 3).

2  The first partages of finds for the Vorderasiatische Abteilung Before turning to the Jericho collection itself, some preliminary remarks on the Vorderasiatische Abteilung – now the Vorderasiatisches Museum – founded at Berlin’s Königliche Museen in 1899 are necessary: The Königliche Museen had acquired some relief panels and casts of sculptures from Nineveh and Nimrud as early as 1855. Following the founding of the German Empire in 1871, Germany sought to gain political influence in the Middle East, and to this end initiated archaeological expeditions of its own, whose impressive finds were to fill Berlin’s museums. As the museums themselves could not raise the funds needed for large-scale excavations, Adolph Erman, head of the Königliche Museen’s Ägyptische Abteilung, which from 1885 also housed the ancient Near Eastern antiquities, proposed the formation of a committee for the exploration of the ancient Near East. The idea was to set up a special fund that would advance the sums required for proper excavations. It was felt that the sale of the finds at “cost price” to the museums would later provide a revenue stream in the other direction. The committee, called the “Orient-Comité”, was founded on February 26, 1888, and the excavations in Zincirli, the capital of a Late Hittite-Aramaic principality in south­east Anatolia, began that same year. In a message of greeting sent to the newly founded Orient-Comité in 1888, the German Kaiser Fried­rich III, whose reign was to last just 99 days, announced the objectives of the proposed archaeological digs in the most unambiguous terms: “Ich begrüße diese Bestrebungen, welche im Interesse der deutschen Wissenschaft von hervorragenden Gelehrten unternommen und von patriotisch denkenden Männern capitalkräftig unterstützt werden,” he wrote, adding “daß ihre Ausbeute eine fühlbare Lücke unserer Museen ausfüllen wird” 2 (Kaufmann 1893, II – ​III).

1

I am obliged to the organizers for the invitation to be part of the conference “Life at the Dead Sea” at the Staatliches Museum für Archäo­logie Chemnitz. I would like to thank very much Frederico Buccellati, Berlin, for the correction of the English text and valuable references.

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“It is with great pleasure that I welcome these endeavors undertaken by outstanding scholars in the interests of German science and financed by patriotic men … that their spoils might fill a palpable gap in our museums.” © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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The first finds arrived in the Königliche Museen between 1888 and 1894. Among them were some monumental Late Hittite-Aramaic stone sculptures from the successful excavations headed by Felix von Luschan (1854 – ​1924) in Zincirli / ​Samal. The Orient-Comité’s concept did not work out as planned, however. The museums were unable to meet the financial demands made of them, with the result that the collaboration between the Königliche Museen and the Orient-Comité was terminated as early as 1893. Five years later its place was taken by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, a society which was founded in the peristyle of the Neues Museum on January 24, 1898, Friedrich II’s birthday, and whose patron was Kaiser Wilhelm II, an ardent fan of archaeology. The society’s statutes declared that its purpose was to promote the study of the civilizations of the ancient Near East and above all to support the efforts of Berlin’s Königliche Museen to acquire ancient Near Eastern antiquities (Crüsemann 2001, 181). On March 26, 1899, working hand in hand with the museums, the society commenced its first field studies in Babylon, the ancient city on the Euphrates familiar to us from the Old Testament. It was the expectation of large numbers of finds from this expedition that led to the founding, on May 6, 1899, of the Vorderasiatische Abteilung, whose founding director was Friedrich Delitzsch, Professor of Assyriology at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, today’s Humboldt University, in Berlin. It was again Delitzsch who in 1907 advised Ernst Sellin, Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of Vienna and from 1908 at the University of Rostock, to turn to the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft for assistance in financing his planned expedition to Jericho.

3  The Jericho Collection at the Vorderasiatische Museum The society had already supported the excavations in Megiddo undertaken by the German-American civil engineer, Gottlieb Samuel Schumacher, on behalf of the Deutsche Palästinaverein between 1903 and 1905. The society had provided a budget of 10,000 marks for those excavations and had specified what it expected in return in Paragraph 2 of its contract with the Deutsche Palästinaverein: “Der Deutsche Verein zur Erforschung Palästinas verpflichtet sich als Gegenleistung: a) Die Fund­ob­jek­te, deren Ausfuhr auf Antrag des Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas von der türkischen Regierung zu erlangen ist, an die Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft für das Vorderasiatische Museum zu Berlin abzugeben.” 3 Fourteen crates of pottery, bronzes, utensils, silex tools, seals, and jewelry from Megiddo arrived at the Vorderasiatische Abteilung in Berlin in 1908. In the case of Jericho, however, the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft was itself the client, but was able to raise only 13,200 marks. James Simon, the great patron of the Königliche Museen and a founding member of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, thereupon stepped in with a further 52,000 marks to be spent on two campaigns in 1908 and 1909. No doubt Simon was motivated by the pulling power of the site’s name, Jericho being one of the oldest sites in Palestine and a name familiar to most people from the Old Testament (Matthes 2000, 243 f.). Yet there seems to have been some confusion concerning the distribution of the finds, for clearly Carl Watzinger, by then a professor in Rostock and already working as an archaeologist for the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in Jericho, felt obliged to raise the matter once again in a letter to the society’s secretary, Bruno Güterbock. On January 19, 1908 he acknowledged: “… die DOG rechnet doch darauf, dass ein Teil der Funde (vorausgesetzt, dass wir welche machen) nach Berlin kommt, und sie hat das doch auch Sellin bereits zu verstehen gegeben. Kürzlich kam die Rede darauf, da meinte er, die Grabung wäre doch eine österreichische und ginge unter diesem Namen und er müsse dann doch erst in Wien anfragen, ob man dort die Funde nicht wolle…. Mir scheint, dass da eine Unklarheit geblieben ist, die behoben werden muss. Vor allem müssen wir, glaube ich, darauf bestehen, dass die Auswahl dann, was in das Museum nach 3

SMB-ZA, III / ​DOG II.2.1.1. “The Deutsche Verein zur Erforschung Palästinas in return undertakes: a) to hand over any uncovered objects, having duly applied for, and obtained, an export license for the same from the Turkish government, to the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft for the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin.” © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Jericho in Berlin 

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Fig. 1 Excerpt of the Erwerbungsjournal showing the accession of finds from Jericho (nos. 21, 23 and 24) and Meggiddo (nos. 5, 10 and 18) in 1908 (© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum / Olaf M. Teßmer).

Jerusalem, was nach K’opel [Konstantinopel, L. M.] und was nach Deutschland kommen soll, hier an Ort und Stelle mit dem Kommissär erledigt wird und, solange wir noch hier sind.” 4 Two months later Watzinger wrote to Güterbock again: “Es hat sich alles hier bereits geordnet dank des grossen Entgegenkommens unseres Kommissars, und Sie werden für die Deutsche Orientgesellschaft eine feine Sammlung von Dubletten erhalten, allerdings zunächst ohne Wissen von K’sopel.” 5 According to the inventory of antiquities entering and leaving the Vorderasiatische Abteilung, which was kept from May 1899 onwards, Prof. Watzinger sent seven crates of antiquities from Jericho to Ber-

4

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SMB-ZA, III / ​DOG II.2.6.21 Briefe Watzinger. “… the DOG is counting on some of the finds (assuming there are any) going to Berlin, as Sellin has already been given to understand. When the subject was raised just recently, he opined that the excavation was an Austrian one and went under that name and that he would first have to inquire in Vienna whether the finds were not wanted there. It seems to me that there is still some confusion here that must be rectified. We must insist above all, I think, that the choice of what should go to the museum in Jerusalem, what to Constantinople, and what to Germany, should be made here on the spot with the commissioner while we are still here.” SMB-ZA, III / ​DOG II.2.6.21 Briefe Watzinger. “Thanks to our commissioner’s readiness to compromise, everything has now been sorted out at this end, and you will receive a fine collection of duplicates for the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, albeit unbeknownst to Constantinople for the time being.” © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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lin (Fig. 1). While these finds were donated to the Vorderasiatische Abteilung by the Deutsche OrientGesellschaft, those from Megiddo were instead acquired, that is to say directly purchased. 6 The Jericho finds in Berlin are not only from Sellin’s excavations, however. In March 1908, Hugo Gressmann, from 1907 Professor of Old Testament Studies at Berlin University, gave the Department of the Ancient Near East three crates of pottery shards from Jericho which he himself had collected while at the Deutsche Evangelische Institut für Altertumswissenschaft des Heiligen Landes in 1906 – 1​ 907. 7

4  The Ottoman Antiquities Act and the export of archaeological finds The Ottoman Antiquities Act that had been in force since 1884 in fact outlawed the export of antiquities. The distribution of such finds as a rule rested on separate agreements between Hamdy Bey (1842 – 1​ 910), the Ottoman Empire’s Director of Antiquities and of the Constantinople Museum on the one hand, and the heads of the various foreign missions on the other. The Königliche Museen were represented by Theodor Wiegand, external director of the Königliche Museen in Constantinople from 1899 to 1911. A note verbale of 1899 from the Ottoman Empire’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the German Embassy nevertheless offered a basis for the future distribution of finds. The note verbale read as follows: “Le Ministère des affaires Etrangères a l’honneur d‘informer l’Ambassade de Sa Majesté l’Empereur d’Allemagne qu’un Iradé de Sa Majesté Impériale le Sultan autorise le Musée de Berlin à garder pour lui moitié des antiquités qu’il découvrirait au moyen des recherches autorisées, en en laissent l’autre moitié au Gouvernement Impérial.” 8 The museums were informed of this agreement by the Prussian Minister of Culture, who at the same time decreed that the directive should be kept secret, “… damit nicht durch Bekanntwerden der getroffenen Vereinbarungen ein schädlicher Wettbewerb anderer Nationen zur Erzielung der gleichen Vorteile veranlaßt werde …” This also explains why it is often referred to as the “Geheimvertrag” (Secret Treaty). 9 For Hamdy Bey, however, the sultan’s decree had always been a thorn in his side, and he certainly did not want it to be understood as a license to share all finds. The German Ambassador at the Sublime Porte, Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim (1859 – ​1915), recalls Bey responding to an appeal to the agreement by declaring: “Was das bisherige Teilungsverfahren betreffe, so sei eine Berufung auf dasselbe nicht angängig. Denn eine eigentliche Teilung oder Überlassung von Funden an die fremden wissenschaftlichen Unternehmungen stehe in direktem Widerspruch mit dem türkischen Antikengesetz, welches bekanntlich den Leitern der letzteren nur die Anfertigung von Copien und Abklatschen gestattete …” 10 Thus it comes as no surprise that an effort was thereupon made to soften Hamdy Bey, including by awarding him the Prussian Order of the Crown, 1st Class, in 1894. The Minister of Culture explained the nomination to Kaiser Wilhelm II as follows: 6

Journal für die ein- bzw. ausgehenden Antiquitäten [accession book] der Vorderasiatischen Abtheilung Mai 1899 bis …, 1908, No. 5. 10. 18 and 1908, No. 21. 23. 24.

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Journal für die ein- bzw. ausgehenden Antiquitäten der Vorderasiatischen Abtheilung Mai 1899 bis …, 1908, No. 14.

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Archiv des DAI, NL Wiegand, Kasten 43, Sammelmappe: “Ausgrabungen Kleinasien, Samos, Babylon.” “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has the honor of informing the embassy of His Majesty the Kaiser of Germany of a decree by His Imperial Majesty the Sultan empowering the Berlin Museum to retain half of the antiquities discovered in the course of authorized exploration work, the other half having to be handed over to the Imperial Government.”

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GStAPK, I. HA. Rep. 89, Nr. 20774, Bl. 81 – 82, Kultusminister an Wilhelm II, 8.12.1890. “… to prevent its disclosure giving rise to potentially harmful competition on the part of other nations wishing to obtain the same advantages.”

10

Quotes after Crüsemann 2001, 180. “As far as the distribution method applied hitherto is concerned, there can be no appealing to the same. For the distribution of finds as such or their relinquishment to foreign scientific expeditions is in direct contravention of the Turkish Antiquities Act, which, as is well known, granted the leaders of the said expeditions permission only to make copies and counterproofs.” © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Jericho in Berlin 

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“Die Ausführungen der türkischen Antikengesetze vom Jahre 1882, welche die Ausfuhr von Antiken aus der Türkei verbieten, untersteht seiner [Hamdy Beys, L. M.] amtlichen Aufsicht, und es ist daher sein Einfluß sowohl was Ankäufe in jenem Lande, als auch insbesondere was die Vornahme von Ausgrabungen und die Überlassung etwaiger Funde anlangt, in erster Linie entscheidend. Zu allen Zeiten hat er diesen Einfluß in einem den Kgl. Museen günstigen Sinne und oft unter großen Schwierigkeiten und persönlicher Verantwortlichkeit ausgeübt, dergestalt, daß dank seiner Vermittlung Seine Majestät der Sultan sich nach jeder von preußischer Seite gemachten Ausgrabung bewogen gefühlt hat, die gedachten Gesetzte außer Anwendung zu lassen und die Ausfuhr eines wesentlichen Theils der Funde zu gestatten.” 11 Despite the Order of the Crown, however, neither Hamdy Bey nor his successor Halil Bey felt bound by the “Secret Treaty” once the new Antiquities Act of 1906/1907 came into force, even if the Germans chose to assume its continued validity (Crüsemann 2001, 180). The excavations at Tell el-Mutesellim, the site of ancient Megiddo, and at Tell es-Sultan two kilometres northwest of today’s city centre of Jericho were nevertheless able to take advantage of the “Secret Treaty” so that the finds discovered there were indeed shared out.

5  The Palestinian Collection in Berlin The question of where the finds expected from Jericho and Megiddo should be housed was one of the items on the agenda of the annual general meeting of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft on May 9, 1908. The initial plans for the Pergamonmuseum drawn up in 1907 by Alfred Messel, as the architect entrusted with designing it, show certain rooms in both the basement and on the first floor earmarked for the finds from Palestine (Crüsemann 2001, 211, note 558). The excavations in Jericho were discontinued following the campaign of 1909 and the finds that had arrived in Berlin in 1908 were consigned to the vaults. For Walter Andrae, from 1928 to 1952 Director of the Vorderasiatische Abteilung, which was housed in the south wing of the Pergamonmuseum complex when it opened in 1930, the finds from Palestine did not play any role at all. Only in Andrae’s description of the Department of the Ancient Near East written for the mass-circulation Illustrierte Zeitung in late May 1934 were they deemed important enough to warrant a mention: “Kurz gesagt ist es die Kunst des Alten Orients, welche die Vorderasiatische Abteilung der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin zu zeigen hat, das heißt Kunst aus dem 4. Jahrtausend vor Christi Geburt, Kunst aus Mesopotamien, Iran, Armenien, Kleinasien, Syrien, Phönikien, Palästina, Arabien.” 12 The first serious effort to catalogue and index the finds from Jericho and Megiddo was that undertaken in 1934/1935 by Heinz Otto, a classical archaeologist who later worked as a freelance consultant to the Istanbul Department of the Deutsches Archäo­lo­gi­sches Institut. We know that Otto worked on the Jericho and Megiddo finds from the storage index that he himself drew up. Research in our own archives has also turned up a letter dated February 21, 1936 from Carl Watzinger to Walter Andrae, in which Watzinger inquires about Otto, who had apparently intended to continue studying under him in Tübingen. 11

GStAPK, I.HA. Rep.89, Nr. 20773, Bl. 137, Kultusminister an Wilhelm II. 12.10.1894. “The enforcement of the Turkish Antiquities Act of 1882 outlawing the export of antiquities from Turkey falls under his [Hamdy Bey’s, L. M.] official remit. His influence is thus the one that counts most with regard to both acquisitions in that country and, even more so, the undertaking of excavations and subsequent relinquishment of any finds. Acting on his own personal responsibility and often in very difficult circumstances, he has at all times exercised this influence in the interests of the Kgl. Museen so that it is thanks to his mediation that His Majesty the Sultan has thought fit, after each new Prussian-led excavation, to desist from applying the law as it was intended and has granted permission for a large portion of the finds to be exported.”

12

SMB-ZA, I / ​VAM 080, Allgemeiner Schriftwechsel H – N, 1934, Bl. 67 – 69. “In short, the mission of the Vorder­ asiatische Abteilung of the Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin is to show the art of the Ancient Near East: in other words art from Mesopotamia, Iran, Armenia, Asia Minor, Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine, Arabia from the 4th millennium BC onward.” © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Andrae’s reply of February 26, 1936 makes explicit reference to his work on the finds from Palestine: “An Jericho und Megiddo hat er sich umsichtig betätigt. Wenn Sie herkommen, werden Sie die Ordnung, die er mit den Sachen hergestellt hat, nachprüfen können, was mir im Interesse der VA [Vorderasiatischen Abteilung, L. M.] ausserordentlich erwünscht wäre.” 13 After Otto, however, the museum did not initiate any further work on the objects from Jericho and Megiddo for nearly fifty years. Then, however, from September 20, 1985 to August 17, 1986, the Vorderasiatisches Museum opened a small exhibition called “Palästina im Altertum”. This was curated by Evelyn Klengel-Brandt, who in her opening address remarked that since the museum had reopened in 1951, the finds from Jericho and Megiddo had never once been exhibited en bloc (Klengel-Brandt 1985). Of the eighty objects on show, only ten – all of them pots – came from Jericho. The exhibition attracted considerable attention in the press.

6  The Palestinian Collection at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in the future While preparing the Pergamonmuseum for its full-scale modernization, the finds from Jericho and Megiddo were moved to the Archaeological Center’s new storage facility that opened in 2012 (Figs. 2. 3). On completion of the work on the Pergamonmuseum, now scheduled for 2033, the Museum of Islamic Art is to be housed in the north wing, leaving the whole of the south wing at the disposal of the Vorderasiatisches Museum. The concept that we have developed, the fundamentals of which we hope will indeed be implemented, is entitled “Unlocking Architectures – Communicating Cultures. Ancient Near Eastern Worlds in the Vorderasiatisches Museum,” whose three floors are to be dedicated to the following themes: 1.  The lower level entitled “Underworlds  – Ancient Near Eastern Funerary Architectures” Fig. 2 The new Archaeological Center of the Natiowill take the visitor on a journey into metaphorinal Museums of Berlin (© Staatliche Museen cal “underworlds” by describing different forms zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum / Olaf of ancient Near Eastern funerary architecture. M. Teßmer). 2.  The main floor exhibit will be devoted to “Outside Worlds: Monumental Architecture in the Ancient Near East” and will present examples of ancient Near Eastern monumental architecture as they stood outside, thus conveying an impression of what ancient Mesopotamia looked like. 3.  The motto of the upper floor, in the section called “Inner Worlds: Knowledge and Cultural Prac­ tice in the Ancient Near East” is “Let’s look inside!” The display here will incorporate more than just elements of architectural interiors, however. Avoiding an exclusively spatial approach, the focus for the first time will be on the “inner worlds” of ancient Near Eastern cultures and their players. The exhibit will illuminate inner-societal discourses and development processes, while also visualizing the strategies

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SMB-ZA, I / ​VAM 085, Allgemeiner Schriftwechsel, R – Z [nach Absendern, auch Institutionen] 1935 – ​1936, Bl. 200. “He worked with circumspection on Jericho and Megiddo. When you come here, you will be able to check his ordering of the things, which in the interests of the VA [Department of the Ancient Near East, L. M.] I would very much appreciate.” © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 3 Depot 01 of the Vorderasiatisches Museum in the new Archaeological Center with the Jericho Collection (© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum / Olaf M. Teßmer).

of ancient Near Eastern societies, with their diverse cultures, to develop ways for dealing with the world around them. 14 On this third level there will be a section called “Ancient Near East – Cultural Dynamics”, which in turn will have a subsection headed “With Bible in Hand” devoted to the early days of archaeological exploration in Palestine, taking Jericho and Megiddo as examples. The exhibition planned by the Staat­ liches Museum für Archäo­logie Chemnitz, as well as a research project on Berlin’s Jericho holdings, which hopefully will begin at the Humboldt University of Berlin, have thus come at just the right moment, since the new Vorderasiatisches Museum will be able to take into account the findings they yield when deciding how to exhibit these items to maximum effect.

REFERENCES Crüsemann 2001 N. Crüsemann, Vom Zweistromland zum Kupfergraben. Vorgeschichte und Entstehungsjahre (1899 – ​ 1918) der Vorderasiatischen Abteilung der Berliner Museen vor fach- und kulturpolitischen Hintergründen, JbBerlMus Beih. 42 (Berlin 2001) Hilgert – Cholidis 2018 M. Hilgert  – N. Cholidis, Architekturen erschlie­ ßen  – Kulturen vermitteln. Altorientalische Lebens­ welten im Vorderasiatischen Museum – Nutzer­spe­zifi­zierung zur Konzeption der neuen Dauerausstellung des Vorderasiatischen Museums im Südflügel des Pergamonmuseums, Stand: 27. September 2018 (unpublished) Kaufmann 1893 R. von Kaufmann, Vorwort des Orient-Comités, in: Mittheilungen aus den Orientalischen Sammlun-

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gen X. Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli I (Berlin 1893) II – ​III Klengel-Brandt 1985 E. Klengel-Brandt 1985, Eröffnungsrede zur Ausstellung “Palästina im Altertum” 1985, Vorderasiatisches Museum – Ausstellungen 1985 (unpublished) Martin 2019 L. Martin, Unlocking Architectures  – Communicating Cultures: Ancient Near Eastern Worlds in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, in: G.  Emberling  – L. P. Petit (eds.), Museums and the Ancient Middle East: Curatorial Practice and Audiences (London 2019) 73 – 86 Matthes 2000 O.  Matthes, James Simon. Mäzen im wilhelmini­ schen Zeitalter (Berlin 2000)

The basic ideas behind the new exhibition concept for the VAM were elaborated by Markus Hilgert and Nadja Cholidis in collaboration with Birthe Hemeier, Geraldine Saherwala, and the author. These ideas will shape the collection and its message once the overall renovation of the Pergamonmuseum has been completed (Hilgert  – Cholidis 2018 and Martin 2019, 78 – 84). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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L. Martin, Lutz Jericho Martin in Berlin

ARCHIVES Archiv des Deutschen Archäo­lo­gi­schen Instituts, Berlin = Archiv des DAI Archiv des DAI, NL Wiegand, Kasten 43 Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz = GStAPK GStAPK, I.HA. Rep.89, Nr. 20773, Bl. 137, Kultusmi­ nister an Wilhelm II. 12.10.1894 GStAPK, I. HA. Rep. 89, Nr. 20774, Bl. 81 – 82, Kultusminister an Wilhelm II, 8.12.1890 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Zentralarchiv = SMB-ZA SMB-ZA, III / ​DOG II.2.1.1: Vertrag zwischen der

Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft und dem Deutschen Palästina Verein SMB-ZA, III / ​DOG II.2.6.21 Briefe Watzinger SMB-ZA, I / ​VAM 080, Allgemeiner Schriftwechsel, H – N, 1934 SMB-ZA, I / ​ VAM 085, Allgemeiner Schriftwechsel, R  – Z [nach Absendern, auch Institutionen] 1935 – ​1936 Vorderasiatisches Museum Journal für die ein- bzw. ausgehenden Antiquitäten der Vorderasiatischen Abtheilung, Mai 1899 bis…

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Ernst Sellin, Carl Watzinger and the German Excavation of Jericho, 1907  – ​​1909

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Ernst Sellin, Carl Watzinger and the German Excavation of Jericho, 1907 – 1​ 909 Hermann Michael Niemann

1  Archaeology in Palestine in the early 20th century Compared to today, the number of excavations before the First World War in Palestine is remarkably small (Fig. 1). The first excavators had only little experience. A turning point was provided by William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1891; 1904) with the introduction of stratigraphic observations and a ceramic typology for Palestine and furthermore by the innovative approaches of George Andrew Reisner (1924) and later Mortimer Wheeler and Kathleen Mary Kenyon, who maintained that not only architectural remains and the so-called small finds (objects) but also fillings, deposits, destruction, decay and erosion layers were important findings. Reisner, for example, who worked in Samaria from 1908 to 1910, distinguished different layers of construction, earth, rubble and erosion (Niemann – Lehmann 2006, 175 – ​179). Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger knew about Reisner’s methodology and the innovative work of Petrie in Tell el-Hesi (1890), Petrie’s pupil Frederick Jones Bliss in Tell el-Hesi (1891 – 1​ 892), Tell Zakariya (Azeka) (1898 – ​1899), Tell es-Safi (1899) and Tell Sandahanna (Maresha) (1900) and Wilhelm Dörpfeld in Troy (1882 – ​1883 and since 1890). While, for example, the excavations by Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister in Gezer from 1902 – ​1903 and 1907 – ​1909, which coincided with the Jericho excavation, did not take the innovations of Petrie, Bliss and Reisner into account, Sellin referred to them during his first excavation in Taanach at least to some extent.

1.1  Ernst Sellin and his projects in the context of Palestinian archaeology (Fig. 2) As a biblical scholar, Sellin never claimed to be a trained archaeologist but instead sought the cooperation with archaeologists and architects. During his first excavation at Tell Taanach from 1902 to 1904, he made some beginner’s mistakes because he worked with­out professionals. The later excavation in Shechem (1913 – ​1924) was overshadowed by the conflict with the archaeologist Gabriel Welter, but after the latter was replaced by the architect Hans Steckeweh, the campaign also achieved some good outcomes. It is no coincidence that Sellin’s second excavation in Jericho from 1907 to 1909 became the most successful of his projects with a staff of loyal and capable colleagues. The most important among them was Carl Watzinger.

1.2  Carl Watzinger (Fig. 3) Watzinger became professor of Classical Archaeology in Rostock in 1905 and Sellin exchanged the Old Testament chair in Vienna with that in Rostock in 1908. Both knew each other already through the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft and taught in parallel in Rostock up to Watzinger’s appointment as professor at the University of Giessen in 1909 and Sellin’s departure to Kiel in 1913. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 1 Excavations in Palestine before the First World War (after Niemann – Lehmann 2006, 178).

2 Background, course of events, results and interpretations of the excavation in Jericho By the end of his first excavation at Tell Taanach in 1904, Sellin had already begun negotiations with the owner of Tell Dotan, Hafiz Pasha in Jenin, but the project did not materialize because the latter presented “very exaggerated demands” (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 3). Sellin’s already granted license to dig at Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish) was withdrawn in 1906 by the Turkish authorities. Instead, in 1907, he received the license for an excavation at Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) (Pl. 2). Sellin obviously had a feeling for important © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig.  2 Ernst Sellin (after Niemann – Lehmann 2017, 75 fig. 1; © Archiv der EvangelischTheologischen Fakultät Wien).

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Fig. 3 Carl Watzinger (after Hausmann 1988, 194).

places in the history of ancient Israel: Taanach was not far from the important site of Megiddo, which was excavated a little later by Gottlieb Schumacher (1903 – ​1905). Tell Dotan marks the transition to the Central Palestinian (Samarian) mountains, i. e. the core area of Israel. Lachish, Sellin’s next object of interest, was the second most important place in Judah after Jerusalem. Since excavations in Dotan and Lachish were denied to him, he moved on to Jericho because of the importance of the biblical story in the book of Joshua. Consequently, after completing his work in Taanach, he decided to carry out his next excavation there.

2.1  Sellin’s and Watzinger’s predecessors in Jericho In 1868, Charles Warren had dug test shafts and trenches through the tell on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund. He missed the famous massive tower of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (9th millennium BCE) by only about 1 metre. He concluded that the search for the remains of ancient Jericho was not worthwhile and did not, at any rate, require more extensive excavations. This negative view was contradicted by Frederick J. Bliss, who, in 1894, discovered a brick wall at the so-called Quell-Hügel at the eastern side of the tell. He immediately associated it with the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Jeri­cho. Before Sellin and Watzinger’s excavation, the tell had only been subject to further investigation as part of the Survey of Western Palestine (1871 – ​1877) by Claude R. Conder and Herbert H. Kitchener.

2.2  The excavation of Sellin and Watzinger Sellin was wary because of Warren’s “failure”. For this reason he undertook a trial excavation financed by Austrian benefactors from April 5 to April 26, 1907 (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 3). Immediately he came upon a city wall and published it soon thereafter. This shows a strength of Sellin who was conscien© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 4 Felix Langenegger. Drawing by Arnold Nöldeke, 1903 (after Nöldeke 2003, 354).

Fig. 5 Arnold Nöldeke (after Nöldeke 2003, cover).

tious and quick to publish his research results. Sellin and Watzinger collaborated successfully with the architects Felix Langenegger in 1908 and Arnold Nöldeke in 1909 who had both worked under Robert Koldewey in Babylon (Figs. 4. 5). After some problems in Taanach, where he had dug alone with his Palestinian workers, Sellin had understood that archaeological excavations were team work. For geological determinations the excavators of Tell es-Sultan therefore consulted the Professors Blanckenhorn, Rathgen, Thiele and Dr. Bütt­ner. The Berlin Egyptologist Heinrich Schäfer, a former student of Adolf Erman, advised Sellin and Watzinger in his field. Following the advice of his colleague Franz Delitzsch, Sellin was able to gain the support of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft for his excavation. The first campaign lasted from January 2 to April 8, 1908, and the second campaign from January 15 to April 2, 1909. Sellin relied on his Taanach-proven supervisor Nikola Datodi as well as experienced foremen from Haifa, who oversaw “an average of 200 male and female workers” (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 4; Fig. 6). Sellin’s careful documentation is clearly discernible in that he even recorded days off due to rain and the organization of a field railway from Baalbek. He noted the total cost of the excavation, largely borne by James Simon (Berlin). The excavation attracted attention and was visited by numerous colleagues and travelling groups. The size and importance of the excavation led Sellin and Watzinger to leave the excavation fields open for viewing purposes, despite the risk of erosion (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 5 f.).

2.3  Excavated areas and findings (Pl. 5) In order to highlight the characteristic procedures and methodology of the excavation, it it less important to present a plethora of finds than to discuss the main findings, their initial interpretation and dating in 1903 and the way in which these changed over time. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 6 Jericho Excavation 1908. Seated from left to right Carl Watzinger and Ernst Sellin, standing to the right (with horse) the architect Felix Langenegger. Standing behind Watzinger in a light colored suit is N. G. Datodi from Haifa, the foreman (photo: estate of Carl Watzinger reproduced with kind permission of Professor Thomas Schäfer, University of Tübingen, Institute of Classical Archaeology; after Niemann 2012, 155 fig. 4).

The excavations An up to 6 m deep trench in the middle of the central west-east section (F5) revealed traces of the prehistoric time in its western part (dark brown on the excavation plan, see Pl. 5). On the whole, the excavators distinguished four layers here, with the pottery stopping in the second layer from the top (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 17 – 20). Nevertheless, the bedrock was not reached. A mud brick wall with a width of 5.6 m in the northwest corner of the tell stretched for 30 m from north to northeast. It consisted of a base of unhewn fieldstone, and above that a mud brick wall with large bricks (0.7 × ​0.4 × 0.1 – ​0.19 m). Another west-east trench run across the southern plateau (K, L 4 – 6), with solid Byzantine houses in the east and houses of the “Canaanite” era in the west. A main objective of the excavation was to trace the “(old) Canaanite” mud brick wall, up to 3 m in height and 3 m in width, and the “accompanying wall” with a width of 1.5 to 1.6 m (1913, 20 – 33; Bieberstein 1995, 7 f.; dark blue on the excavation plan, see Pl. 5). This (Early Bronze Age) double wall, which Garstang and Kenyon later associated with 12 construction phases, was uncovered over a distance of 81 m in the north and 250 m in the west and south. According to Kenyon, however, they never functioned together as a double wall ring because a layer of debris covered the inner wall on which the younger wall ring was erected (Bieberstein 1995, 15 f. 23 f.). Watzinger compared the settlement area which extended for ca. 200 m from north to south and ca. 120 m from east to west with the Coliseum in Rome: Jericho was a little larger. Compared to Troy II (with­out the lower city) Jericho was about twice as large. Watzinger reported on four blocks of residential building structures in the interior of the “Canaanite” settlement (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 33 – 45): behind, i. e. south of the northern inner wall, in the west-east section, in the southern section and to the west of the “Quell-Hügel” (Pl. 5). The design is uniform: a field stone base (1 – 3 layers) with a width of 0.6 – ​0.9 m, covered by a double brick layer. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Figs. 7. 8 Photographic and graphic documentation of the findings in the northern part of the tell: “Israelite” retaining walls, staircases and Byzantine houses on top of the “Canaanite” city wall in D6 and D7 (after Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 49 f. figs. 27. 28).

In the east, west and south of the tell, parts of another wall, “a majestic construction”, were discovered (1913, 7). In an open-area excavation of ca. 1,350 square metres in the north between the outer and the two inner walls about 30 small house plans from a “late Jewish period” were laid free. A stone staircase came to the fore in the north (1913, 51). Later, another eight staircases with a similar construction were found in the north, west and south­east; they led radially to the top of the wall, so that the debris plateau behind the inner wall could easily be reached for spilling and building (1913, 49 – 54; Figs. 7. 8). Watzinger interpreted these stairs as a means of construction of the “Israelite layer” (red in Pl. 5), following the destruction of the “Canaanite” city. After “burying” the ruins, the construction of a “great embankment wall” began (1913, 54 – 62). Watzinger observed an “underfilling layer” consisting of rubble stones, the “inward sloping retaining wall with bulge” on the slope and a partially preserved “vertical wall of mud bricks” on the edge of the slope (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 54 – 59 figs. 32 – 35; Bieberstein 1995, 11). Watzinger estimated that the core of the city expanded 307 m north-south and 161 m east-west. The “post-Canaanite” settlement opposite the Canaanite fortress “thus increased by a third” (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 61). The Bible-related background is recognizable when “the infinite superiority of (Israelite, HMN) fortress archicture” over the Canaanite period “becomes clearly apparent” to Watzinger (1913, 61). He also devoted himself to the buildings of the “Israelite city”, more precisely “inside the city” (1913, 62 – 72), comparing them to contemporary houses of fellahin at Ar-Riḥa, while also paying attention to the storage pits (1913, 66 fig. 39). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 9 “The stamps on the amphora handles from the Israelite and Jewish period” (after Sellin – Wat­zinger 1913, pl. 42).

On the eastern slope (J6) a large building with stately stone foundations appeared. The “fortress-type” building reminded Watzinger of a Ḫilani building, but older than the one in Sendschirli (i. e. the 10th and 9th centuries BCE), therefore testifying to “the independence of Israelite architecture already in the time of Solomon” (1913, 69). Because settlements concentrate around springs, the excavation paid special attention to the so-called Quell-Hügel, where clay walls, houses and eight graves of the simplest kind were found (1913, 70 f. fig. 43). The excavation revealed in the middle of the tell (H5, 6; G6) a “Jewish village” with walls between 1.0 and 2.2 m high and “rich content”. Building remains of the late Jewish period from the 5th century onwards, as opposed to the “older Jewish layers” of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE (1913, 79 – 82) were interpreted by the excavators as “the youngest traces of Jewish settlement in the north behind the city wall” (1913, 79). The excavators observed here three settlement periods, characterized by “numerous amphora handles with the Jahu-stamp and many fragments of terracotta animals from reddish brown coarse clay. Among the oldest objects... are archaic terracotta heads from the 6th century, to the youngest objects belong Greek vase shards of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, a few Hellenistic fragments and Rhodian amphora handles” (1913, 80). © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Table 1: “The stamps on the amphora handles from the Israelite and Jewish period” (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, pl. 42) (GGG5: Keel – Uehlinger 2001; IPIAO 2 and 3: Schroer 2008 and 2011). Sellin – Watzinger 1913

Reference

Period

Comment

pl. 42 a

IPIAO 2, p. 37

Middle Bronze Age IIB

pl. 42 d

GGG , no. 1a IPIAO 2, no. 430 (?)

Middle Bronze Age IIB Middle Bronze Age IIB

Less likely GGG5, no. 177b (Iron Age IIA), tree instead of branch?

pl. 42 d1

GGG5, no. 133a, c, d? cf. rather GGG5, no. 268b

Iron Age I ? Iron Age IIB

GGG5, no. 268b shows a lion with nb mark, which in GGG5, no. 133 is unclear or missing

pl. 42 e

GGG5, no. 199 or 269

Iron Age IIB

Sellin: “Israelite”, “perhaps already Jewish”

pl. 42 f

GGG5, no. 140a

Iron Age I

pl. 42 h (l-mlk-stamp, Socho, with double-wing sun disc)

GGG5, no. 276a

Iron Age IIB (end of 8th century)

pl. 42 n

GGG5, nos.  380 – ​382

Iron Age III

Sellin: “late Jewish” (i. e. 5th/4th c. BCE)

pl. 42 o

GGG5, no.  222a – c (cf. GGG5, no. 154a,b = Iron I and IPIAO 3, nos.  849 – ​855 (Late Bronze)

Iron Age IIB

Sellin: “late Jewish”

5

Sellin: “Israelite”, “perhaps already Jewish”, cf. GGG5, no. 161 ? = Iron IIA Sellin: “certainly Jewish”; photo not usable, stamp not recognizable

Findings begin again in early Byzantine times (1913, 82 – 92). In the northeast, a Byzantine grave with four people in the main crypt and three more in the anteroom was uncovered with many grave goods. Christian marked items are missing. Watzinger’s report ends with “Muslim graves” in the north (C6) (1913, 92 – 96).

The finds Watzinger also wrote the chapter on “Die Funde” (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 97 – ​169). A few remarks: in connection with the pre-Israelite period (1913, 97 – 1​ 21 [strata 1 – 3]) he classified large storage vessels according to typology, material, dimensions, decor, etc., using parallels from literature as well as photographs and profile drawings. Copper devices are analyzed in detail, for example nine axes, one of which was chemically examined in Berlin’s Königliche Museen (1913, 116 – 1​ 20). Because of the find context Watzinger argued that the “Kupferhort” should be dated to the time of Thutmosis III (ca. 1,486 – ​ 1,425 BCE). Among the finds was an “idol” of white limestone from the “Canaanite” settlement in the north of the tell (1913, 120 f. fig. 107; Fig. 10). The pottery of the Israelite and Jewish periods is divided into “Israelite Pottery”, “Imports”, and “Jewish Pottery” (1913, 122 – ​148 [Strata 4 – 6]; Pl. 5). Watzinger presents “Terracotta and Fayence Objects” (1913, 149‒151), and finally “Bronze and Iron Tools” (1913, 151 f.). Iron occurs only in the “Jewish” layers. The section on “Vessels and Implements of Stone and Other Material” (1913, 152 – 1​ 56) covers household devices such as hand mills. This is followed by Sellin’s discussion of the “The Israelite and Jewish Stamped Amphora Handles” (1913, 156 – 1​ 59; Fig. 9; Table 1). After consulting the Egyptologist Heinrich Schäfer, Sellin documented 11 handles with scarab stamping, produced at the latest around 1,550 BCE, but probably still in use from the 13th to 9th century according to Sellin. Would this make Sellin’s Jericho inhabited during the “immigration time” of the Israelites? The other, badly photographed stamp impressions require closer examination. As far as I could determine with the aid of new reference books, they include pieces from the entire settlement history of Jericho. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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From the Byzantine period (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 160 – ​168) Watzinger documented clay vessels and terra sigillata, lamps, glass vessels and objects made of bronze, iron, stone, bone and other materials. Finds from the (early) Arab period are dealt with only on one page (1913, 169). On the whole, it is not apparent whether Sellin and Watzinger documented all findings. They seem to have selected the most significant ones.

2.4  Sellin’s interpretation of the         excavation Sellin wrote a “Summary of the Results of the Excavation” (Sellin – Watzinger 1913, 171 – ​190). With all due respect for the achievements of that time, Sellin’s interpretations are partially double outdated: first, through Watzinger’s correction of the dating of the main strata and the further excavation history, and second, through the ongoing development of Old Testament exegesis which renders the basis for Sellin’s interpretation (mostly) obsolete. But Sellin’s summary is historically interesting. It reflects his and some of his contemporary colleagues’ Bible-centered argumentation. The first part deals with “The History of Jericho According to Literary Sources”. The colourful picture presented here is based on Sellin’s poFig. 10 “Idol no. IV, 1” (after Sellin – Watzinger sition within the exegesis of his time and is shaped 1913, 120 fig. 107). by an unrestrained willingness to hypothesize in order to remain as close as possible to the Biblical text and to seek confirmation of its historicity. Behind the “whore Rahab” stands a “Canaanite tribe”, who remained in Jericho besides the conquering Israelites. “Chiel” (1 Kgs 16:34) was a “provincial governor or city captain” in the time of King Ahab. All that is for “sure”, namely in view of the “fact” that “in the days of Solomon and Rehoboam as well as Jeroboam … castles arose everywhere in Israel” (1913, 176). In Sellin’s view, the further history of Jericho according to the literary sources coincides beautifully with the archaeological evidence. The (relatively sparse) excavated remains play no significant role when Sellin pursues the history of Jericho until the conquest by Ibrahim Pasha and the growth of the village Arīḥa (1913, 177 – ​179). The second part of Sellin’s interpretation outlines “The Historical Result of the Excavation” (1913, 179 – ​185). That the results of the excavation “on the whole offer … a very desirable illustration” of Sellin’s sketch of Jericho’s history is “a matter of course from the outset” (!). There “certainly” was a radical destruction and redevelopment of the city at the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 2nd millennium, with everyone thinking “involuntarily” of Genesis 14 (1913, 180). When “the proud castle with the double wall” falls, it is “obvious” that “there must be some connection between … this event and that reported in the Bible (Joshua 2 – 7)”. Canaanite Jericho must have fallen “quite clearly” around 1,500 BCE, perhaps as early as 1,600 (1913, 181). In the 15th to 12th centuries Jericho was poorly developed, inhabited by Israelites and the Canaanite clan Rachab. Impressive, however, is the beginning of the “cultural upswing” of the “Israelite era in the 11th to 9th century”, as evidenced by the re-habitation of Jericho’s old “city ruins” and “the Chiel buildings”, called by Sellin “Burg und Serail zugleich”, likewise the big city wall, © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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the “upswing in pottery” and the “abundance of imported goods” by lively “traffic relations”. A “royal stamp” confirms the relationship with Jerusalem. Jericho developed under Ahab’s “governor Chiel” into a “stronghold against the Moabites”, it was also “the seat of a prophets group which stoked widespread national-religious enthusiasm” (1913, 183). After 586 BCE, “in the wake of the edict of Cyros” Sellin sees a resettlement (cf. Ezra 2:34, Neh 7:36 and Neh 3:2) in the north of the tell (1913, 183). The late Jewish period in the late 6th to 4th centuries BCE comes under Greek influence. There follows a from today’s point of view adventurous conclusion which is structurally and methodically typical for Sellin: through the centuries, the tradition was upheld that Canaanite Jericho was located at the spring and on the “Quell-Hügel” above the “huge ruin of the old Chiel building”, lying open in Byzantine times, as the shards showed, “which are paired here with the Israelite ones. There can be little doubt that with the Chiel building we have found the place of the legendary house of Rachab” (1913, 184)! Sellin ends with “The Cultural-Historical Results” (1913, 185‒187) and “The Religious History” (1913, 187‒190). Religious objects are rare, “because the actual city sanctuary ... was located half an hour east of Jericho” in Gilgal, where Joshua had his “theophany” and where the “old place of circumcision of the country” lay, which Sellin apparently takes for a historical fact. Sellin presents “a stone idol”, probably from the “older Canaanite stratum” with parallels in Megiddo and Gezer (1913, 120; Fig. 10). Finally, he points to “jar handles with the Jah and the Jahu name from the late Jewish period”. He interprets them according to Zech 14:21 as a first conscious sign that “people from the congregation founded by Ezra and Nehemiah ... harshly opposed the rising Greek element” (1913, 188 f.). Sellin finds it remarkable that not a single “idol of bronze or clay” was found in the “Israelite city”, with only one or two objects deriving from the Jewish city. Only in the late Jewish period is there a slight increase of such findings. Sellin thinks that in the desert and the eastern outskirts of Jericho, “the Israelite religion preserved itself more purely in its peculiarity, in its rejection of pictorial representations of the deity, as in its rejection of other deities besides Yahweh”. According to Sellin this also explains the appearance of Elijah, Amos, Hosea, etc. The prophets were “backed up”, for example, by the people of Jericho who “clung to the one god of Sinai” and hosted a “Propheten-Genossenschaft” (1913, 190). Today, as then, most of these ideas found little acceptance in the wider research community.

2.5  Sellin and Watzinger’s first dating of the stratigraphy Under the Muslim graves of stratum 8 Byzantine settlement remains were found (stratum 7, Pl. 5 [yellow]). On the northern slope “late Jewish” settlement remains came to light which are today dated to the Iron Age IIC period (stratum 6 [light green]). The best preserved stratum 5, designated “Jewish”, is concentrated in the east of the “Quell-Hügel” (dark green; today: 10th – 8th / early 7th centuries BCE). The “Israelite” stratum 4 (red; today: Middle Bronze Age II) consists, above all, of the large building in the east of the “Quell-Hügel” and the enclosure wall. A few remains of the “Late Canaanite” period (stratum 3 [light blue]) were found on the northeastern slope while the “Canaanite” stratum 2 (dark blue; today: Early Bronze Age, i. e. the 3rd millennium BCE) stretches across the north of the tell with the two inner perimeter walls. Everything under stratum 2 is “prehistoric” (stratum 1 [dark brown]), especially in the northwest (D5, C5.6) and in the deep trench of the west-east section (F3). In addition, transitional layers can be detected.

2.6  Self-correction of the excavators 13 years later, Watzinger (1926) revised the absolute chronology under the influence of numerous interim excavations. The 1913 “blue = Canaanite” designated stratum with the double brick wall now extended to the 3rd millennium (1926, 136). What was initially regarded as the “red = Israelite” city was founded around the turn of the 3rd to the 2nd millennium: Watzinger dated the “glory days” of Jericho with the mighty fortress wall with embankment and “Breitraum-Haus”-type buildings into the beginning of the 2nd millennium. Their destruction took place “perhaps soon after 1600” (1926, 134). The Late Bronze Age between 1500 and 1200 “is almost non-existent in Jericho”. “In the days of Joshua Jericho was a © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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heap of ruins” (1926, 134 f.). “Only very gradually” did the settlement recover again in the 10th to 9th centuries, but “much more insignificantly” than previously assumed, a village mainly on the “Quell-Hügel” until the 8th century. Since the 6th century finds were increasingly sparse (1926, 135).

2.7  Helga and Manfred Weippert’s analysis of Jericho’s Iron Age After the campaigns of John Garstang (1930 – 1​ 936) and Kathleen M. Kenyon (1952 – ​1958) Helga and Manfred Weippert resumed the discussion about Jericho, especially in regard to its Iron Age ­(Weippert – Weippert 1976). Even after Garstang and Kenyon’s research, the view still prevailed that the Late Bronze Age settlement ended in the 14th century (Weippert – Weippert 1976, 109 – ​112). Yet the question remained if there was a settlement between the Late Bronze Age destruction and the 7th century BCE, even more so as Garstang had found settlement remains of the Iron Age I – IIC period on the “Quell-Hügel” (1976, 113 f.). The Weipperts re-examined Watzinger’s so-called Jewish pottery and its relationship to the architectural finds. The results indicated that the “Quell-Hügel” was continuously settled between the 12th and 7th/6th centuries (1976, 112 – ​114.117.131.137 – ​147). Subsequently, they examined the Iron Age architectural remains on the “Quell-Hügel” and their stratification, arriving at the conclusion that ­Sellin’s and Watzinger’s stratigraphic observations were true on the whole, but lacked accuracy in detail (1976,133). One problem was the lack of coordination between the photographically published pottery “and the carefully recorded architectural remains”. In addition, Sellin and Watzinger had occasionally dug through a stratum (Iron Age IIC) into deeper strata with­out realizing it. This explains the undifferentiated “Jewish”, i. e. Iron Age pottery (1976, 133), which is not homogeneous and can be “distributed to the Iron Age I and all subphases of the Iron Age II period” (1976, 137). But how do the results of the pottery analysis relate to the architecture of the “Quell-Hügel”? The photographic documentation and the for the most part only enumerating description of the objects make it often difficult to assign the finds to the photographs. In the lists and also, for example, in a preliminary report (MDOG 39, 1908, 31 fig. 13) finds are compiled which cannot have come from one layer. Instead they are a mixture of Iron Age I and Iron Age II material (1976, 137 f.). The “Quell-Hügel” was inhabited in the Iron Age I to Iron Age IIC periods. Helga and Manfred Weippert also examined the large building at the western edge of the “Quell-Hügel” which Sellin and Watzinger had compared to the Ḫilani-type (Weippert – Weippert 1976, 139 – ​145). Watzinger had relegated it from the Iron Age to the Middle Bronze Age in his article from 1926. However, Garstang had found remains of a so-called Middle Building from the Late Bronze Age IIA period under the Ḫilani and under this “Middle Building” or “Middle Palace” houses of the Middle Bronze Age IIB period (Bieberstein 1995, 17 – 19). Since Sellin and Watzinger had discovered Iron Age pottery in the “Ḫilani”, it must belong to the Iron Age (as terminus a quo). This is supported by the similarity to the Palace 6000 in Megiddo, which the Weipperts date to the 10th century (1976, 141 f.; cf. however I. Finkelstein et al. 2006 with a date in the 9th century BCE). In conclusion, Weippert and Weippert describe Jericho’s settlement history as follows (1976, 145 – ​ 147): the Middle Bronze Age IIB period saw a boom in Jericho, followed by a short-lived settlement on the “Quell-Hügel” in the Late Bronze Age IIA period (14th century), a resettlement on the “Quell-Hügel” in the Iron Age I period with­out building structures, then a village until the early 6th century (Iron Age IIC). The so-called Ḫilani existed in the Iron Age IIA period. In Iron Age II, other parts of the tell were populated as well. After the end of the village and a settlement break, the Persian settlement is detectable in the north of the tell before the settlement migrated to the plain in the Hellenistic or early Roman period. The alleged long settlement gap between the 14th and the 12th/11th or 10th centuries BCE was probably smaller than previously assumed.

3  Appreciation of Sellin and Watzinger’s excavation In the history of the archaeology of Palestine Sellin and Watzinger’s excavation was a remarkable achievement, and its execution at the height of its time. Sellin was the first German Biblical scholar to © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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associate Bible studies with archaeological excavations in Palestine. He was innovative and energetic, a “networker”, gifted in organization, fundraising and the promotion of his projects through lectures at home and abroad. In contrast to common practices, he was remarkably quick to disseminate his results by means of letters from the field, newspaper and magazine articles, and the final publication of his results immediately after the end of the excavation. Far ahead of his time was his still unfulfilled demand to integrate Palestinian archaeology into the study of theology. He sought to be up to date with the latest results in the field of Bible studies and archaeology by reading and personal contacts, for example to Flinders Petrie’s student Frederick J. Bliss. He was successful if he had capable and loyal experts at his side such as the archaeologist Watzinger and architects such as Nöldeke, Langenegger and – in Shechem – Steckeweh. But Sellin’s often imaginative hypotheses and Bible-centered interpretations proved to be a serious problem. However, Sellin and Watzinger’s final report could still be used for further research 60 years later on, due to the careful documentation, and was reprinted in 1973. Sellin’s critic Hermann Thiersch (1914, 78) described him as the “Seele der ganzen Unternehmung” in Jericho, although, besides the architects, Watzinger had carried out the “Löwenanteil” of the archaeological work. The final report was praised by George Ernest Wright as “the first excavation report of Palestinian archeological work which was of outstanding quality” (Wright 1967, 85). According to William Foxwell Albright (1961, 32 – 34), who sometimes also criticized Sellin, the Jericho excavation and the almost simultaneous excavation of George Andrew Reisner in Samaria represent the beginning of Palestinian archaeology. The later Jericho excavator Kathleen Mary Kenyon (1957, 32) judged Sellin and Watzinger’s work as follows: “The work was meticulously carried out by the standards of the day, and elaborately published.” Helga and Manfred Weippert, too, speak of “for the time an excellent and relatively well-published excavation” (Weippert – Weippert 1976, 107 f.) and Klaus Bieberstein (1995, 7. 31) calls the final report “excellent” and “for the time... exemplary”, stating that the interpretation of the settlement history of Jericho after some back and forth has partly returned to the point of view of Sellin and Watzinger.

REFERENCES Albright 1961 W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine (London 1961) Bieberstein 1995 K. Bieberstein, Josua – Jordan – Jericho. Archäo­ logie, Geschichte und Theologie der Landnahmeerzählungen Josua 1 – 6, Orbo Biblicus et Orientalis 143 (Freiburg 1995) Finkelstein et al. 2006 I. Finkelstein  – D.  Ussishkin – B. Halpern, Megiddo IV. The 1998 – ​2002 Seasons, Tel Aviv University Monograph Series 24 (Tel Aviv 2006) Hausmann 1988 U.  Hausmann, Carl Watzinger 1877 – ​1948, in: R.  Lullies  – W.  Schiering (eds.), Archäologenbildnisse. Por­träts und Kurzbiographien von klassischen Archäologen deutscher Sprache (Mainz 1988) 194 f. Keel – Uehlinger 2001 O. Keel – Ch.  Uehlinger, Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole. Neue Erkenntnisse zur Religionsgeschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen, Quaestiones Disputatae 134 5(Freiburg 2001)

Kenyon 1957 K. M. Kenyon, Digging up Jericho (London 1957) Niemann 1999 H. M. Niemann, Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger: Rostock – Megiddo Connection, Revelations from Megiddo. The Newsletter of The Megiddo Expedition 4, 1999, 1 f., (05.03.2019) Niemann 2012 H. M. Niemann, Ernst Sellin: Powerful in His Time. A Sketch of the Life and Work of an Old Testament Scholar and Pioneer in Biblical Archaeology from Mecklenburg, in: U. Palmer, Ernst Sellin – Alttestamentler und Archäologe, Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 58 (Frankfurt a. M. 2012) 131 – ​163 Niemann – Lehmann 2006 H. M. Niemann – G. Lehmann, Gottlieb Schuma­ cher, Carl Watzinger und der Beginn der Ausgrabungen in Megiddo: Rückblick und Konsequenzen nach 100 Jahren, in: U. Hübner (ed.), Palaestina Exploranda. Studien zur Erforschung Palästinas im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert anläßlich des 125jährigen Bestehens

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Ernst Sellin, Carl Watzinger and the German Excavation of Jericho, 1907  – ​​1909 des Deutschen Vereins zur Erforschung Palästinas, Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästinavereins 34 (Wiesbaden 2006) 174 – ​203 Niemann – Lehmann 2017 H. M. Niemann – G. Lehmann, Biblische Archäo­ logie an der Rostocker Theologischen Fakultät. Ein kurzer Überblick, in: H. M. Niemann (ed.), Theologie in Umbruchzeiten. Rostocker Theologen in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Zum 600. Gründungsjubiläum der Universität Rostock 2019 (Leipzig 2017) 75 – 82 Nöldeke 2003 A. Nöldeke, Altiki der Finder. Memoiren eines Ausgräbers, ed. by Elisabeth Weber-Nöldeke (Hildesheim 2003) Palmer 2012 U.  Palmer, Ernst Sellin – Alttestamentler und Archäologe, Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 58 (Frankfurt a. M. 2012) Petrie 1891 W. M. F. Petrie, Chronology of Pottery, PEQ 23, 1891, 68 Petrie 1904 W. M. F. Petrie, Methods and Aims in Archaeology (London 1904)

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Reisner et al. 1924 G. A. Reisner – C. S. Fisher – D. G. Lyon, Harvard Excavations at Samaria, 1908 – ​1910 (Cambridge, Ma 1924) Schroer 2008 S. Schroer, Die Ikonographie Palästinas / ​Israels und der Alte Orient. Eine Religionsgeschichte in Bildern. Band 2: Die Mittelbronzezeit (Fribourg 2008) Schroer 2011 S. Schroer, Die Ikonographie Palästinas / ​Israels und der Alte Orient. Eine Religionsgeschichte in Bildern. Band 3: Die Spätbronzezeit (Fribourg 2011) Sellin – Watzinger 1913 E. Sellin – C. Watzinger, Jericho. Die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen, WVDOG 22 (Leipzig 1913; reprint Osnabrück 1973) Thiersch 1914 H. Thiersch, Archäo­lo­gi­scher Jahresbericht, ZDPV 37, 1914, 60 – 93 Watzinger 1926 C. Watzinger, Zur Chronologie der Schichten von Jericho, ZDMG 80, 1926, 131 – ​136 Weippert – Weippert 1976 H. Weippert – M. Weippert, Jericho in der Eisenzeit, ZDPV 92, 1976, 105 – ​148 Wright 1967 G. E. Wright, Ernst Sellin * 26.5.1867  † 1.1.1946, ZDPV 83, 1967, 84 f.

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Gender at Qumran. Between Text and Material Culture

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Gender at Qumran. Between Text and Material Culture Katharina Galor

My first exposure to the archaeology of Qumran goes back to the year 2000 when I was invited by Jean-Baptiste Humbert to work on the plastered and stepped pools as part of the effort to publish the final report of the excavations originally conducted by Father Roland de Vaux from the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem. 1 It took another eight years before I became interested in aspects of gender and how these relate to Qumran’s material culture, a topic I assumed at the time to be separate from my earlier investigations at the site. 2 Most recently I was asked to contribute to a collection of essays on gender and material culture under the general title of objets et fabrication du genre – which appeared in a specialized journal known as Clio. Femmes, Genre, Histoire. In my article “Des femmes à Qumran? Entre texts et objets”, I took it upon myself to re-examine the complex interrelation among historical sources, manuscripts, and archaeological remains and how these in dialogue inform the socio-religious landscape of gender norms and politics in Judea and in the Dead Sea region during the Second Temple period. 3 When I accepted the invitation to contribute to this volume on the Dead Sea I was reluctant to revisit subjects I had worked on previously. However, my increased interest in and commitment to questions of gender and visual and material culture in Jewish Palestine over the last couple of years, made me realize that there is more to say on the subject. And this, despite the growing body of literature on gender and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and more generally on gender in Roman Palestine. Let me summarize what it is that we have at our disposal to examine the question of gender at Qumran, how this subject has been dealt with in different contexts – chronological and methodological – and what it is we can say with certainty, what remains obscure, and what may have been overlooked in the past, by myself and other scholars.

1   The central question of gender at Qumran The question of gender at Qumran has been a crucial one from the beginning of the site’s first major archaeological investigations in the early and mid-1950s. One could say that scholars such as Roland de Vaux and Eleazar Sukenik, who originally advanced the theory that the site was to be directly linked to the sectarian community known from the manuscripts as yahad, were ahead of their time. 4 Their suggestion, that the site was inhabited by a celibate Essene-community consisting exclusively of men, placed the issue of gender at the very center of the investigation and interpretation – with­out really addressing it. Their construction of an exclusively male community – ignoring the earliest investigations on women and gender related to Second Temple, Talmudic, and Rabbinic Judaism – was the result of multiple short-

1

Galor 2003.

2

Galor 2010.

3

Galor 2014.

4

Eleazar Sukenik was the first to associate the site and the scrolls with the Essenes in 1948, see Silberman 2000. For a synthesis of de Vaux’s report, see de Vaux 1953. For his more elaborate documentation, see de Vaux 1961. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 1 Site plan of Khirbet Qumran and its surroundings (after Humbert – Gunneweg 2000, p. XXII, plan II; courtesy École biblique et archéologique française).

cuts when analyzing literature, manuscripts, and material culture. 5 These early inquiries thus produced an appealing but problematic tale of Qumran monasticism. It was not until the 1990s that Dead Sea Scrolls experts started to focus on the role of women in the texts and as a result in the socio-religious landscape of the late Hellenistic and Early Roman period Judea, and more specifically their potential presence in the community that used or lived in the buildings at Qumran (Fig. 1). Most notable among these scholars are Hartmut Stegemann, Lawrence Schiffman, Elisha Qimron, Eileen Schuller, and Sidnie White Crawford. 6 Perhaps most noteworthy and comprehensive is Nicole Rupschus’s Frauen in Qumran, the first monograph dedicated entirely to the subject of women at Qumran, which was published 2017. 7 In this volume Rupschus reviews the entire literature on the subject of women in Judea and the Dead Sea region based on an in depth analysis of the scrolls, the contemporary literature, and to a lesser extent the archaeological data. Though women and gender more generally have thus moved into the foreground of Dead Sea Scrolls research and have achieved the prominence they deserve, archaeological data and methodologies are still frequently manipulated – usually by non-experts – to fit the frame of the textual analyses.

2   The original thesis According to de Vaux, the Essenes mentioned by Philo of Alexandria, Pliny the Elder, and above all, Flavius Josephus lived on the margins of mainstream Judaism, which was religiously and politically defined by the Jerusalem Temple and the priestly hierarchy. In his view, this community of ascetics lived in economic and social isolation from the rest of society. Accordingly, the buildings excavated on 5

For a detailed history of research on Jewish women in anti­quity, see Ilan 1995.

6

Stegemann 1998; Schiffman 1994; Qimron 1992; Schuller 1994; Schuller 1999; Schuller – Wassen 2000 and White Crawford 2003.

7

Rupschus 2017. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Gender at Qumran. Between Text and Material Culture

the Qumran plateau provided a place for sectarian activity including communal meals, gatherings, prayer, ritual bathing, subsistence agriculture and farming, and of course scribal activity. The supposedly indisputable archaeological evidence for this theory included the site’s isolation, its unique architectural character and, finally, the unusual ceramics found only at the site itself and in the caves containing the scrolls. De Vaux’s view has been largely refuted on two grounds: first, since the early 1990s the consensus of text experts – including those who assume a direct link between scrolls and building complex – no longer assumes the presence of an exclusively male community at Qumran; second, in light of the numerous contemporary sites excavated in the region the majority of archaeologists no longer view the architecture and material culture at Qumran as unique, and thus attribute to it functions that are neither sectarian nor cultic.

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a

3   Gendered architectures and artifacts Before presenting the corpus of gendered architectures and artifacts I would like to stress that archaeological remains at Qumran, as at most other sites, are gender neutral. Just as the references to women in the literature and scrolls are limited, and text experts have to extrapolate from a few existing words or lines, or for the most part use a narrative that excludes or ignores the presence b of women all together, so does the archaeologist Fig. 2 Jewelry from Qumran Tombs 1 (a) and 33 have to build his understanding of gender on a (b) (after Humbert – Gunneweg 2000, 172 very limited data set. figs. 1. 2; courtesy École biblique et archéoloBy far the most explored aspect of Qumran’s gique française). gendered material culture concerns the cemetery, separated from the main building complex by a long wall (Fig. 1). Of the approximately 1,200 burials, however, only about 40 were excavated, and the only expert an­thro­po­lo­gi­cal evaluation of the material was conducted more than 30 years after they had been exposed, using material that was highly compromised by inadequate conservation methods. 8 De Vaux’s claim that the cemetery was unique and that it only contained the burials of a male community, however, has since been established as erroneous. Of relevance are the cemetery of Khirbet Qazone excavated on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea with similar characteristics, chronological and typological as well as the scientific evaluation of the skeletal remains of the so-called Kurt and Vallois collections establishing beyond doubt that women were among those interred at the Qumran cemetery. 9 Much discussion has also evolved around the jewelry from Qumran’s Tombs 1 and 33 (Fig. 2a. b), and whether these were recently added, that is no earlier 8

On the cemetery and its implications for the interpretation of the site’s inhabitants, see Zangenberg 1999 and Zangenberg 2000.

9

For a detailed description of the Khirbet Qazone cemetery, see Politis 2006. Regarding the Kurt collection, see Röhrer-Ertl 2006. For the Vallois collection, see Guide Sheridan – Ullinger 2006. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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than 200 years ago, or whether these can be dated to the Roman-Byzantine period, a typological sound conclusion which I have supported previously. Just as the hairnet, the tunic fragments with a gamma pattern, the spindle whorls, as well as the glass and pottery unguentaria are – as I have written on in more length in my previous essays on gender and Qumran – for the most part associated with women, but not exclusively. My analyses have taken into account literary references to such objects, as well the more explicit iconographic representations of women and men.

4   Miqva’ot and women Nearly twenty years have passed since I first examined Qumran’s material culture and if it were not for this workshop I may have never considered the relationship of my two areas of investigation: stepped and plastered pools and the issue of gender (Figs. 3. 4). It is of some comfort to me that nearly all the published research on the archaeological remains of ritual pools from late Hellenistic through Byzantine times has neglected to consider the Fig. 3 Miqveh Locus 49 located in the eastern wing gender of those using these installations. To my of the main building complex at Qumran knowledge, the only scholar to have examined the (courtesy of J.-B. Humbert). question of gender and ritual immersion between the Second Temple period and the transition to the Talmudic era is Tal Ilan in a paper presented at a Jewish Studies Conference on “Talmudic Archaeology” which took place at University College London in 2009. 10 In her published article, Ilan attempts to linguistically pinpoint the historical context and precise moment in time, when female participation in the act of full ritual body immersion in an installation built for this purpose emerged and then established itself as the norm. As a foundation for her work, Nicole Ruane had already explored the question of ritual impurity and its relevance to questions of gender in light of the biblical Book of Leviticus (chapter 15). In her article on “Bathing, Status and Gender in Priestly Ritual” Ruane argues convincingly that women unlike men were not required to immerse themselves after contracting impurity, and concludes that this exclusion was a reflection of their low status. 11 By the Middle Ages, the act of ritual immersion was one predominantly associated with women, a period for which we have ample textual confirmation that these installations were used primarily by women, a tradition that has maintained itself through the present day within Orthodox Judaism. 12 The difficulty of establishing when exactly women began to participate in this ritual is related partially to the androcentric nature of the relevant literary sources, and to some extent the grammatical structure of the Hebrew language, which even if written in male language, may include women. Ilan considered these biases in language, the linguistic changes from the biblical era, through the Second Temple period, and into late anti­quity and has come to the conclusion that women began immersing themselves in miqva’ot in the period spanning the late Second Temple period through the era of the Talmud. She was regrettably unable to come up with a more precise dating. Men’s participation in this ritual, likely in re­sponse to women’s gradual inclusion, began to drastically decline. 10

Ilan 2015.

11

Ruane 2007.

12

See for instance Shatzmiller – Sansy 2002. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Fig. 4 Plans of Qumran plastered water installations (after Humbert – Gunneweg 2000, 311 fig. 23; courtesy École biblique et archéologique française).

In contrast to these still somewhat marginal literary investigations of gender and ritual purity in ancient Judaism, scholars of material culture have almost entirely ignored the question of female versus male use of ancient miqva’ot. Marianne Sawicki in her article on “Spatial Management of Gender and Labor in Greco-Roman Galilee” devotes four pages to the miqva’ot of Sepphoris, but only makes three references to women in this long discussion on the usage of these installations. 13 Ronny Reich in his Ph.D. dissertation on Miqva’ot in the Second Temple Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods published in 2013 only once considers gender in his analysis of the pool’s function. 14 In the case of two small adjacent pools he suggests that one may have been used by men and the other by women, a theory he then discards in favor of an argument that the pools were used for different levels of purification. 15 Equally tentative is Ilan’s attribution of the smaller miqveh-type to women. She uses the ones discovered at Sepphoris as an 13

Sawicki 1997.

14

Reich 2013.

15

Reich 2013, 68. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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example, whose reduced size she accounts for “not just because women are physically smaller than men, but also, because they are as a rule of a lesser social status.” 16

4   Qumran’s stepped and plastered pools Where do Qumran’s stepped and plastered pools (Fig. 3) fit into this discussion on gender, and more globally into the controversy about the community who used or lived in the architectural complex on the plateau overlooking the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea? In my detailed description and analysis of these installations published in 2003, I showed why these pools fulfilled all the Mishnaic requirements of serving full ritual body immersion, and argued that based on these literary discussions we could not exclude a multi-functionality. Despite the chronological gap between the extensive Talmudic discussions on ritual immersion in miqva’ot, that is installations specifically designed for this purpose, a few earlier sources already make references to purificatory immersions, including the apocrypha of Ben Sira and Judith, Josephus, and the Gospel according to Mark. It is interesting to note that the only Second Temple period texts that refer to women in close association with immersion come from Qumran: 4Q272 and 4Q274. In Ilan’s view, however, it remains unclear, first, whether the women mentioned as having contracted impurity through intercourse participated in the actual act of immersion, and second, whether t­ hese texts reflect the “reality of women’s lives in the Second Temple period” or only the “notions of a small and perhaps insignificant part of the population.” 17 In other words, a literary analysis of texts mentioning women in the context of ritual immersion, whether in relation to women of the yahad community or to Jewish women more broadly, suggests that women began to participate in this ritual sometime towards the late Second Temple period or shortly thereafter. Archaeologically speaking, detecting the gender of those who may have used one or the other miqveh, at Qumran or in other locations featuring stepped and plastered pools seems problematic, possibly more so than with regard to any other of the artifacts I have previously investigated in relation to Qumran and gender, such as jewelry, textile fragments, spindle whorls, and unguentaria. What we do know, however, is that it no longer seems to be valid to see these pools as indicative of the Essene or sectarian character of the Qumran building complex – the argument put forward by Roland de Vaux. We know of similar installations both from Second Temple and late Roman and Byzantine period sites. 18 Most notable in the context of Qumran studies, but also with regard to the broader material culture of the Dead Sea region are for instance the roughly contemporary stepped and plastered pools discovered at Machaerus, including one late Hellenistic or Hasmonean miqveh discovered in1981 and two Herodian period miqva’ot, one uncovered in 1968 and the other – more similar in size to the ones uncovered at Qumran – excavated in 2016. 19 To conclude: the re-evaluation of gender at Qumran does not provide new data that allow us to solve the controversy regarding the identity of the inhabitants who lived in the complex some 2000 years ago. But it draws the attention to factors too frequently overlooked. I hope my study will serve as an incentive to also reexamine other sites of the Dead Sea region, and archaeological material more broadly speaking, with increased awareness to gender sensitive research questions.

16

Ilan 2015, 95.

17

Ilan 2015, 93.

18

Ronny Reich’s comprehensive study on miqva’ot focuses on Second Temple period installations. On the more recent discoveries of Late Roman and Byzantine period miqva’ot, see Amit – Adler 2010.

19

Vörös 2017. © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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REFERENCES Amit – Adler 2010 D. Amit – Y. Adler, The Observance of Ritual Purity after 70 CE: A Reevaluation of the Evidence in Light of Recent Archaeological Discoveries, in: Z. Weiss – O. Irshai – J. Magness – S. Schwartz (eds.),‘Follow the Wise’: Studies in Jewish History and Culture in Honor of Lee I. Levine (Winona Lake 2010) 121 – ​143 Galor 2003 K. Galor, Qumran’s Plastered Pools: A New Perspective, in: J.-B. Humbert  – J.  Gunneweg (eds.), Science and Archaeology at Khirbet Qumran and ‘Ain Feshkha II (Fribourg 2003) 169 – ​198 Galor 2010 K. Galor, Gender and Qumran, in: J.  Gunneweg – A. Adriaens – J. Dik (eds.), Holistic Qumran. Trans-Disciplinary Research of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Conference held at Leiden University, April 21 – 25, 2008 (Leiden 2010) 29 – 38 Galor 2014 K. Galor, Des femmes à Qumran? Entre textes et objets, in: L. Auslander  – R.  Rogers  – M.  Zancarini-Fournel (eds.), Objets et fabrication du genre, Clio. Femmes, Genres, Histoire 40, 2014, 19 – 43 Guide Sheridan – Ullinger 2006 S. Guide Sheridan  – J. Ullinger, A Reconsideration of the Human Remains in the French Collection from Qumran, in: K. Galor – J.-B. Humbert – J. Zangenberg (eds.), The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Archaeological Interpretations and Debates. Proceedings of the Conference held at Brown University, November 17 – 19, 2002 (Boston 2006) 195 – ​212 Humbert – Gunneweg 2000 J.-B. Humbert – J. Gunneweg (eds.), Khirbet Qumran et ‘Ain Feshkha II (Fribourg 2000) Ilan 1995 T. Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (Tübingen 1995) Ilan 2015 T. Ilan, Since When Do Women Go to Miqveh? Archaeological and Rabbinic Evidence, in: M. J. Geller (ed.), The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud, Institute of Jewish Studies in Judaica 16 (Boston 2015) 83 – 96 Politis 2006 K. Politis, The Discovery and Excavation of the Khir­ bet Qazone Cemetery and Its Significance Relative to Qumran, in: K. Galor – J.-B. Humbert – J. Zangenberg (eds.), The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Archaeological Interpretations and Debates. Proceedings of the Conference held at Brown University, November 17 – 19, 2002 (Boston 2006) 213 – ​219 Qimron 1992 E. Qimron, Celibacy in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Two Kinds of Sectarians, in: J. T. Barrera  – L. Ve-

gas Montaner (eds.), The Madrid Qumran Congress. Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18 – 21 March 1991, vol. 1 (Leiden 1992) 287 – ​294 Reich 2013 R. Reich, Miqvaot (Jewish Ritual Baths) in the Second Temple Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods (Jerusalem 2013) Röhrer-Ertl 2006 O. Röhrer-Ertl, Facts and Results on Skeletal Remains from Qumran Found in the Collection Kurth – A Study in Methodology, in: K. Galor – J.-B. Humbert – J. Zangenberg (eds.), The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Archaeological Interpretations and Debates. Proceedings of the Conference held at Brown University, November 17 – 19, 2002 (Boston 2006) 181 – ​193 Ruane 2007 N. J. Ruane, Bathing, Status and Gender in Priestly Ritual, in: D. W. Rooke (ed.), A Question of Sex: Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond (Sheffield 2007) 66 – 81 Rupschus 2017 N. Rupschus, Frauen in Qumran, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II 457 (Tübingen 2017) Sawicki 1997 E. M. Sawicki, Spatial Management of Gender and Labor in Greco-Roman Galilee, in: D. R. Edwards – C. T. McCollough (eds.), Archaeology and the Galilee: Texts and Contexts in the Greco-Roman and Byzantine Periods (Atlanta 1997) 15 – 18 Schiffman 1994 L. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: Their True Meaning for Judaism and Christianity (New York 1994) 127 – ​143 Schuller 1994 E. Schuller, Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in: M. Wise – N. Golb – J. J. Collins – D. G. Pardee (eds.), Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (New York 1994) 115 – ​131 Schuller 1999 E. Schuller, Women in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in: P. Flint  – J. VanderKam (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment 2 (Leiden 1999) 117 – ​144 Schuller – Wassen 2000 E. Schuller –C. Wassen, Women: Daily Life, in: L. Schiffman – J. VanderKam (eds.), Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls 2 (New York 2000) 981 – ​984 Shatzmiller – Sansy 2002 J. Shatzmiller – D. Sansy, Les bains juifs aux XIIè et XIIIè siècles, Médiévales 43, 2002, 83 – 89

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K. Galor, Gender at Qumran. Katharina Between Galor Text and Material Culture

Silberman 2000 N. A. Silberman, Eleazer Lipa Sukenik, in: L. Schiffman – J. VanderKam (eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls 2 (New York 2000) 902 f. Stegemann 1998 H. Stegemann, The Library of Qumran. On the Essenes, Qumran, John the Baptist and Jesus (Grand Rapids 1998) De Vaux 1953 R. de Vaux, Fouilles au Khirbet Qumrân: Rapport préliminaire, Revue Biblique 60, 1953, 83 – 1​ 06 De Vaux 1961 R. de Vaux, L’archéologie et les manuscrits de la mer morte (London 1961) Vörös 2017 G. Vörös, Machaerus. A Palace-Fortress with Multiple Mikva’ot, Biblical Archaeology Review 43.4, 2017, 30 – 61

White Crawford 2003 S. White Crawford, Not According to Rule: Women, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran, in: S.  M. Paul – R. A. Kraft – L. H. Schiffman – W. W. Fields (eds.), Emannuel: Studies in the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls in Honor of Emannuel Tov (Leiden 2003) 127 – ​150 Zangenberg 1999 J. Zangenberg, The ‘Final Farewell’: A Necessary Paradigm Shift in the Interpretation of the Qumran Cemetery, Qumran Chronicle 8.3, 1999, 213 – ​218 Zangenberg 2000 J. Zangenberg, Bones of Contention. ‘New’ Bones from Qumran Help Settle Old Questions (and Raise New Ones) – Remarks on Two Recent Conferences, Qumran Chronicle 9, 2000, 51 – 76

© 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

Settlements, Climate and Vegetation at the Dead Sea

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Settlements, Climate and Vegetation at the Dead Sea from the Neolithic until the Crusader Period Frank H. Neumann – Wolfgang Zwickel

1   Introduction Climatic conditions play a pivotal role in the settlement history of Israel / ​Palestine and the Dead Sea region since climate shifts often coincide with breaks in the cultural evolution. Of particular importance are the levels of the Dead Sea, determined by precipitation and evaporation. These factors determine plant growth and agriculture. Geoscientific research has gained new insights here. Our review strongly relies on Neumann et al. (2010a) and Litt et al. (2012) but we will present hitherto unpublished settlement maps for the different historical periods and will link them for the first time to vegetation and climate fluctuations. Settlement history may be an important factor for understanding ecological changes. On the one hand, intensified settlement activity may strongly influence the landscape and the products planted in this period. On the other hand, a decrease in population can potentially be an additional indicator for climate changes. Palynology, the principal technique which will be used here to underline and discuss the interactions between humans and their environment as well as changes of the ecology, is the study of a group of organic walled microfossils commonly known as palynomorphs (pollen grains, spores, fungal remains, algal cysts). Naturally, the Dead Sea basin is an archive of Holocene sediments in an otherwise semiarid landscape with a high potential to reveal palaeoclimatic variations and vegetation dynamics. The study of fossil palynomorphs, especially pollen and spores, from different strata gives information about climate fluctuations of the past because it determines vegetation re­sponse to past environmental change. Botanical affinities of pollen can be investigated because different plant taxa produce and disperse different pollen types. Pollen grains are characterized by morphological features including apertures and surface ornamentations. Also, pollen and spores consist of sporopollenin which makes them very resistant to decay.

2   The geological setting The Dead Sea, whose lake level is currently (2019) at 433 m below sea level, has dropped by ca. 1 m per year in the last decades (cf. the maps for different water levels between -375 m and -415 m in Zwickel 2019). This fact has contributed to the formation of deep erosion channels on the shores of the Dead Sea. However, today’s lake level decline is not the result of repeated droughts, but rather of direct human intervention in the water balance of the region through diversion of water sources for irrigation and other uses and mineral extraction. In the southern basin of the Dead Sea, large evaporation ponds have been created on both the Jordanian and Israeli sides of the border. They serve for the production of minerals such as bromine or potash (further processed to fertilizers). The Dead Sea is the deepest hypersaline lake in the world (water depth 304 m) and has an extremely high salt content (about 30 %, a salinity 10 times higher than ocean water). The lake is part of the 6,000 km long African-Syrian graben system and lies within a pull apart basin (formed by tectonics). This basin was formed along the so-called “Dead Sea Transform Fault”, a geological fault system in which the © 2019, Zaphon, Münster ISBN 978-3-96327-082-6 (Buch) / ISBN 978-3-96327-083-3 (E-Book)

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Frank H. Neumann – Wolfgang Zwickel

African and the Arabian earth plates are contiguous (Ben-Avraham et al. 2005). This tectonic activity, evidenced since the Miocene, is the reason for numerous earthquakes in the region, which caused great destruction and have been evidenced both historically and archaeologically over the last 4,000 years. Geological records of seismic activity reach back even 70,000 years (Garfunkel 1981; Garfunkel – Ben-Avraham 1996). The earthquakes deformed sediments that were deposited in the Dead Sea and Lake Lisan (the predecessor of the Dead Sea during the Pleistocene, see Stein 2001). On the basis of detailed investigations of these deposits, data sets of the earthquake activities could be created (Ken-Tor et al. 2001; Migowski et al. 2004). The sediments deposited in the Holocene Dead Sea are referred to as the Ze’elim Formation (Yechieli et al. 1993). Outcrops belonging to this formation are available for study in erosion gullies created by the rapid decline in lake levels over the past decades, found along the shores of the Dead Sea (e. g. Ze’elim, ‘Ein Feshkha; Migowski et al. 2006). The sediment sequence was also proven in numerous drill cores, e. g. in the western Dead Sea near En-Gedi (Litt et al. 2012). The sediments were deposited in three different environments (Neumann et al. 2007; 2010a): 1) The fluvial (river) environment where sediments have been deposited by watercourses in wadis, often after torrential rains in winter. The grain size of the sediments ranges from pebbles to coarse sand. 2) Lake shore environment: beach ridges, up to 1 m thick, characterized by cross-bedded sands and gravel layers, can be observed both in outcrops and along the modern coast of the Dead Sea. Crusts of aragonite (a carbonate mineral) or dome-like aragonite structures occur in beach ridges where they encrust pebbles or wood. Aragonite crusts are indicators of past lake shores, they are products of evaporation. The sand layers and beach ridges including the aragonite crusts are often associated with gaps in the sedimentation due to erosion or interruptions in sedimentation. 3) Lacustrine (lake) environment: during the rainy winter, floods filling the wadis transport clayey sediments that form mas­si­ve layers. Another type of sediment consists of white and dark layers of whitish aragonite, gypsum (another evaporite) and dark grey marls, which are often only millimeters thick and can be deposited annually. A deeper understanding of sediment deposition within erosion gullies (e. g. Ze’elim, ‘Ein Feshkha) is a prerequisite for the reconstruction of sea level variations in the Dead Sea (Migowski et al. 2006).

3   Climate, water and vegetation of the Dead Sea region The relationship between climate, water and vegetation in the Dead Sea region has also become more apparent in recent years. The climate in Israel / ​Palestine is Mediterranean: cyclones transport rain during the winter, the summer is dry and hot although isolated rainfalls might occur. Topography has a strong influence on precipitation and temperature distribution. The Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea and the eastern slopes of the Judean Mountains (