The Materiality of Power: Explorations in the Social History of Ancient Israelite Magic (Forschungen Zum Alten Testament) 9783161533020, 9783161547096, 316153302X

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Forschungen zum Alten Testament Herausgegeben von Konrad Schmid (Zürich) · Mark S. Smith (New York) Hermann Spieckermann (Göttingen)

105

Brian B. Schmidt

The Materiality of Power Explorations in the Social History of Early Israelite Magic

Mohr Siebeck

Brian B. Schmidt: B.S., Th.M., D.Phil. (Oxon.); completed graduate studies at The ­Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; currently Associate Professor of Biblical Studies and Ancient West Asian Cultures in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

ISBN 978-3-16-153302-0 / eISBN 978-3-16-154709-6 ISSN 0940-4155 (Forschungen zum Alten Testament) Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen. www.mohr.de This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed on non-aging paper by Gulde-Druck in Tübingen and bound by Großbuchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Abbreviations

ix xi xiii

Chapter 1 Magic “From the Ground Up”: Image, Object, Epigraph, then Text On Defining Magic: Modernity’s Dilemma Searching for Ancient Magic Ancient Magic, Modern Constructions Magic’s Material Turn

2 5 7 10

Doing Israelite Magic “From the Ground Up”

11

Chapter 2 “May YHWH Bless You and Keep You!”: Cult and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud Scouring “Cultic” Landscapes: The Natural, Human, and Divine Kuntillet Ajrud’s Sacred Locus: Building A’s Bench Room Were There Favissae or Intentional Cult Deposits? The Evidence for a “Decorative Pithos Libation” Rite The Larger Decorated Pithos Repertoire: “From Z to A” Divining the Markings: The Decorated Sherds Deciphering Decorated Sherds as Whole Pithoi The Z Fragment or Sherd The So-Called Pithos A Courtyard Fragment A Second Immanent Ritual Setting: The South Storeroom’s Locus 8 Kuntillet Ajrud’s Other Ritual Annexes and Their Favissae The Ritual Lives of Kuntillet Ajrud’s Decorated Pithoi

16 16 17 21 24 25 26 27 28 29 32 35

The Collocation of Apotropaism: The Numinous Pithoi, Walls, and Loci 35 Transmitting the Numinous: From Drafts to Murals Pithos Decor as Scribal-Artisan Drafts The Case of the Two “Seated Figures” The Case of the Two “Overhead Captions” The Case of the Two “Inscribed Blessings” The Case of the Two “Artistic Repertoires” The Case for Scribal-Artisan Drafts

36 37 37 39 46 50 54

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Anomaly or Convention: Pithoi as Large-Area Drafting Surfaces Figural Drafts on Limestone “Ostraca” or “Flakes” Epigraphic Drafts on Limestone Slabs and Whole Jars

56 57 57

Constructing Pithos Rites: The Images and Epigraphs Gendering the Divine Gender Marking the Masculine Gender Marking the Feminine Gender Juxtaposed Bearded Ladies and Numinous Necks Sizing Up Gendered Partners “Loops and Leggings” A Cavorting Consort? Up Close and Personal: Overlapping as Scribal-Artisan Technique A Test Case: The Worshipper Procession Scene The Bes-Like Dwarfism of Worshipper M The Worshipper Scene’s Overhead Caption Overlapping and the Bes-Like Figures The Lyre Player Dancers and Musicians? Delineating Inscribed Divine Speech Making Blessings and Dedications as Captions The Responsive Graffiti Other Related Texts Convergence or Chaos: The Complex Integrated Scenes The Integrated Scenes on the Pithoi Corresponding Scenes on the Painted Plastered Walls

59 59 60 62 63 64 65 65 66 67 68 68 69 70 70 72 73 74 77 79 80 80 82

Libations and Votives: Rites for an Egyptianizing Israelite Pantheon Constructing Apotropaic Bes and Beset Bes and Beset: Form and Style Bes Iconography Journeying with Bes: The Levant and Beyond Translating Bes and Beset: From Image to Text Bes to Yahweh, Beset to Asherah The Other Gods: El, Baal, and the Elim in Wall Inscription 4.2 The Goddess Asherah as Mediatrix Asherah in First-Millennium Ancient Near Eastern Sources Asherah in the Hebrew Bible A Hybridized Desert Iconic Creole

84 84 85 87 87 89 90 90 94 96 97 100

Provisioning and Protecting: Yahwism’s Apotropaic Presence The Decorated Pithos Loci The Plastered Wall Paintings Life-Sustaining Power: The Lotus Flower The Royal Seated Figure Constructing Aspects of the Pithos Libation Rite

103 103 105 105 106 107



Contents vii

The Numinously Empowered Plastered Wall Paintings The Numinous and the Mundane: Kuntillet Ajrud More Holistically Summary

109 111 122

Chapter 3 Godspeed on the “Other Side”: Text, Tomb, Image, and Evil The Ketef Hinnom Amulets The Social Matrix of Early Judean Apotropaism Amulets Galore: The Tale of a Jerusalem Tomb Converging Nonutilitarian Artifacts The Cooccurrence of Cultic Assemblages Three Regional Site Samples of Late Iron II Amuletic Magic Ketef Hinnom’s Amulets Reassessed The Dating of the Amulets A New Reading: An “Eternal” Temple? Other Rereadings: “The Evil (One),” “The Exorciser of the Evil (One),” and the Demonic Remnants of a Wider Levantine Daimonic Summary: Amuletic Magic in Judean Religious Life

123 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 132

Khirbet el-Qom Khirbet el-Qom Tomb 2: Epigraph Meets Image Meets Object The Site: Tomb 2’s Wider Cemetery Setting Tomb 2: The Immanent Sociohistorical Context The ‘Telling” Tomb Assemblages Narrowing the Context: The Incised Human Hand Changing Views on Early Israelite Cosmological Beliefs The Text of Khirbet El-Qom’s Inscription 3 The Meaning of the Palaeographic Doppelgänger

144 144 145 147 148 151 152 156 158

135 137 140

Chapter 4 Was There (a) Pandemonium in Early Israelite Tradition? The Daimonic Dimensions of Deuteronomy 32 The Demonic in Ancient Israelite Tradition Demon or Daimon? The Haunting Question Deuteronomy 32: A Reassessment Deuteronomy 32:8–9 Summary Deuteronomy 32:43 Summary Deuteronomy 32:17 Identifying Hebrew Shedim: Cognate or Conceptual Parallels? On Deifying Daimons and “Demonizing” Deities in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

163 164 165 165 168 169 170 170 172 174

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The Shedu-Gods of Psalm 106 Deuteronoy 32:17 and Greco-Roman Egyptian Daimonia Summary Deuteronomy 32:24 A Postscript to Pandemonium: Reimagining ʾE  ̆ LŌHÎM in 1 Sam 28:13 The MT and LXX Translations of 1 Sam 28:8–14 Samuel’s Ghost and Other Daimons at Endor A Case of Prophet Deified or Ghost-Assisting Diamons? 1 Samuel 8: Narrating the Case against the Divine-Human Reconsidering the Participants in 1 Samuel 28:12–15 An Early Israelite Daimonic Pandemonium: Revenants and Other Divine Entities

180 181 182 183

On Demon Demographics in Ancient Israel

197

187 187 188 189 190 193 196

Chapter 5 Material Aspects of Early Israelite Apotropaic Magic: Integrating Image, Object, Epigraph, and Biblical Tradition Some Closing Comments: On Matters of Plausibility and Identity Beset: The Identity and Role of Bes’s Female Partner The Plausibility of Kuntillet Ajrud’s Divine Convergence The Demonization of Deities and the Deification of Daimons Beyond Demonization and Deification: Convergent, Hybrid Deities Late Iron Age Cyprus: Two Case Studies in “Bes Hybridity” Pyla: The Deity Reshef as “Bes Locally Imagined” A Bes Trio from Athienou-Malloura Making Explicit the Implicit: ‘Egyptianizing’ Samarian Hybridity and Kuntillet Ajrud’s Graffito 3.1 Kuntillet Ajrud’s Unique Cult

201 201 204 204 206 207 207 210

Magic’s Materials: Image, Text, and Artifact Discerning Asherah’s Role The Daimonic in Deuteronomy 32

219 220 221

Conclusion

222

214 216

References

225

Subject Index

237

Ancient Sources Index

251

Modern Authors Index

255



List of Figures Chapter 2

Fig. 2.1. Building A East (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.2 . Projection drawing of Pithos A (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.3. Sherd Z’s seated figure (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.4. Wall painting no. 9 seated figure (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.5. Projection drawing of Pithos B (Image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.6. Pithos B (photo) (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.7. Wall painting no. 11 (photo) (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.8. Wall painting no. 11 (in situ) (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.9. Graffito inscription 3.1 (photo) (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.10. Caption inscription 3.9 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.11. Caption inscription 3.9 (photo) (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.12. Wall Iinscription 4.1.1 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.13. Wall inscription 4.1.1 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.14. Location map of inscriptions (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel) Fig. 2.15. Location map of painted pithoi and plaster wall fragments (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

Chapter 3

Fig. 3.1. Ketef Hinnom’s location in Jerusalem (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.2. Floor plan of cave 2 (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.3. Isometric drawing of cave 2 (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.4. Distribution of finds in chamber 25 (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.5. Amulet 1 photo with superimposed letters (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.6. Amulet 1 drawing with reconstruction (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.7. Amulet 2 photo with superimposed letters (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.8. Amulet 2 drawing with reconstruction (image courtesy IAA) Fig 3.9 . Khirbet el-Qom: The earthward hand and inscription 3 from cave 2 (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.10. Close up of inscription 3 above the hand (image courtesy IAA) Fig. 3.11. Close up of inscription 3 to the right of the hand (image courtesy IAA)

18 28 38 38 40 41 41 42 44 47 47 48 48 50 51

124 130 130 131 134 134 136 136 145 146 147

Chapter 5

Fig. 5.1. The Bes-headed cippus dedicated to Resheph Shed from Palaikastro (Pyla) (image courtesy the Louvre Museum) Fig. 5.2. The Bes wall bracket from Athienou-Malloura (image courtesy AAP) Fig. 5.3. The Bes wall bracket in multiple viewpoints (image courtesy AAP)

209 211 212

Acknowledgments There are many colleagues, units within my university, as well as external organizations that not only made possible the completion of the research reflected in this volume but also its material production. I wish to thank the following people who either discussed or exchanged communiqués with me on various written portions or oral presentations of the work: Paul-Alan Beaulieu, Jeannette Biertien, James Bos, Aaron Brody, Annie Caubet, Billie Jean Collins, Derek Counts, Jörg Eggler, Israel Finkelstein, Christian Herrmann, Izaak de Hulster, Jan Joosten, Françoise Labrique, Rita Lucarelli, Jodi Magness, Amihai Mazar, Ze’ev Meshel, Nadav Na’aman, Tallay Ornan, Joachim Quack, Gay Robins, Ruediger Schmitt, Jeremy Smoak, Margreet Steiner, Brent Strawn, Randall Styers, Juan Tebes, Youri Volokhine, Gareth Wearne, Ian Young and several former students, now colleagues, who over the years participated in Michigan’s seminar on Israelite religion. At points throughout the book, I also acknowledge other individuals who at my behest freely offered of their time, assistance and recommendations on a myriad of specific topics germane to the project. Numerous supporting bodies made possible the travel needed to present my work at conferences and colloquia or to initiate and undertake various aspects of the research published here. Their assistance facilitated the presentation of my research in a number of venues: the Oriental Institute’s ARAM International Conference in Oxford, the annual meeting of the Deutschen Palästina-Vereins in Mainz, the Copenhagen International Colloquium, the College de France’s Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Intermediary Beings in Paris, the European Association for Biblical Studies meeting in Leipzig, the Society of Biblical Literature’s Annual Meetings in Chicago and San Francisco, as well as its International Conferences in Vienna and in Buenos Aires. I extend my indebtedness to the following organizations for their indispensible support in these endeavors: the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, the American Philosophical Society, the Catholic Biblical Association, the Society of Biblical Literature, the American Academy of Religion, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Likewise, various units within the University of Michigan deserve my utmost gratitude for their ongoing support of many segments of the aforementioned conference and research travel and also for underwriting various production costs of the volume. These units include the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, the Jean & Samuel Frankel

xii

Acknowledgments

Center for Judaic Studies, the Center for Middle East and North African Studies, and my home department, Near Eastern Studies. I wish to express my immense appreciation for two crucial fellowships awarded to me at earlier stages of this research. They were instrumental in providing me with the much needed release time to initiate what has ended up in this volume and, previous to that, what resulted in published exploratory articles. Michigan’s Institute for Humanities awarded the first research fellowship that was followed by another from the National Endowment for the Humanities. I also want to convey my thanks to the Program for the Study of Religion at the University of California-Berkeley where I took sabbatical leave as visiting scholar and to the University of Sydney’s Mandelbaum House where I received its scholar in residence award. These together provided me with the much sought after prospect of reinvigorating the research I had earlier begun. I thank the editorial board members of Forschungen zum Alten Testament, Konrad Schmid, Mark Smith, and Hermann Spieckerman for accepting my manuscript proposal and the series director, Henning Ziebritzki and his staff for the quality production of my manuscript. I owe Billie Jean Collins my most earnest acknowledgments in preparing the manuscript for submission to Mohr Siebeck. She has characteristically produced another fine work of impeccable design (its shortcomings in all respects are mine and mine alone). For the numerous figures included in this volume I wish to thank the following individuals, expeditions, projects, and institutions for providing permissions, images and their expert assistance: Gabriel Barkay; Michael Toumazou, Derek Counts and the Athienou Archaeological Project; Hélène Le Meaux and the Louvre Museum; Yael Barschak and the Israel Antiquities Authority; Ze’ev Meshel and the Israel Exploration Society for images from the 2012 final report of Kuntillet Ajrud; and Marilyn Lundberg, Bruce Zuckerman and the West Semitic Research Project for supplying a number of images from the Kuntillet Ajrud, Ketef Hinnom and Khirbet el-Qom archives. I dedicate this volume to my family, first to my mother Bettye Loyce Schmidt whose years are quickly coming to fullness, to the memory of my dear grandfather, Hiram Ardis Simons who I knew as Pa and whose thirty year silence grows ever louder, and to the more distant memory of my wonderful grandmother, Archie Jennings Simons, a life cut far too short, whose memory lasts only as a fading glimmer - as two hands gently a grip; Ma’s the stronger, mine the weaker…. Finally, I also wish to dedicate this volume to my daughter, Hayley, and to my son, Blake. They give good reason to keep my head held high. May they enjoy life’s magic for many years-to-come. With this volume completed I have been gratefully reminded that it takes a village, nay, a metropolis, to publish a book. November 2015 Brian B. Schmidt Ann Arbor

Abbreviations AMD ABD ARelG AIL AJA ArOr BAR BASOR BJS BSFE BZAW CdE CM DDD DemStud DJD DSD DSS EBR FAT FRLANT HBS HeBAI HO HSS HUCA IDD

IEJ JAEI

Ancient Magic and Divination Anchor Bible Dictionary. Edited by David Noel Freedman. 6 vols. New York: Doubleday, 1992 Archiv für Religionsgeschichte Ancient Israel and Its Literature American Journal of Archaeology Archív orientální Biblical Archaeology Review Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Brown Judaic Studies Bulletin de la Société Française d’Égyptologie Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Chronique d’Égypte Cuneiform Monographs Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Edited by Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst. Leiden: Brill, 1995 Demotische Studien Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Dead Sea Discoveries Dead Sea Scrolls Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception Forschungen zum Alten Testament Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments History of Biblical Studies Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel Handbuch der Orientalistik Harvard Semitic Studies Hebrew Union College Annual Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Near East. Edited by Jörg Eggler and Christoph Uehlinger. OBO Series Archaeologica. Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Israel Exploration Journal Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections

xiv JANER JBL JEA JEOL

Abbreviations

Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Egyptian Archaeology Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Gezelschap (Genootschap) Ex oriente lux JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament JSOTSSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series JSS Journal of Semitic Studies LHBOTS The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies LÄ Lexikon der Ägyptologie. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1975–92 MAARAV Maarav MMJ Metropolitan Museum Journal NEA Near Eastern Archaeology NEAEHL The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land. Edited by Ephraim Stern. 4 vols. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta; New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993 NIDB New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. Edited by Katharine Doo Sakenfeld. 5 vols. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006–2009 NINO Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis OEANE The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East. Edited by Eric M. Meyers. 5 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta ORA Orientalische Religionen in der Antike OTS Old Testament Studies PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly RB Revue biblique RBL Review of Biblical Literature RBS Resources for Biblical Study RGRW Religions in the Graeco-Roman World SAK Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur SAOC Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilizations SCS Septuagint and Cognate Studies SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament STDJ Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah TA Tel Aviv UEE UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology UF Ugarit-Forschungen VA Varia Aegyptiaca

VisRel VT WUNT ZAW ZDPV

Abbreviations xv

Visible Religion Vetus Testamentum Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins

General BCE before the common era ca. circa CE common era DA Deir Alla Dtr Deuteronomist/Deuteronomistic DtrH Deuteronomistic History HB Hebrew Bible KA Kuntillet Ajrud KH Ketef Hinnom KQ Khirbet el-Qom LBA Late Bronze Age LXX Septuagint MT Masoretic Text NB Neo-Babylonian v./vv. verse/verses vs. versus

Chapter 1 Magic “From The Ground Up”: Image, Object, Epigraph, Then Text It is most significant that in the lagoon fishing, where man can rely completely upon his knowledge and skill, magic does not exist, while in the open-sea fishing, full of danger and uncertainty, there is extensive magical ritual to secure safety and good results. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion Obviously the rituals and superstitions of baseball do not make a pitch travel faster or a batted ball locate gaps between the fielders, nor do Trobriand rituals calm the seas or bring fish. What both do, however, is give their practitioners a sense of control, and with that, confidence. And we all know how important that is. George Gmelch, Baseball Magic

What evidence do we have for the practice of magic in early Israelite society of the late Iron II period (more precisely the Iron II B–C, 900–587 BCE), what form did it take, what objects did it use and what beliefs did it embody and convey? The five case studies presented here are designed to explore these questions. Three are centered on the material world of ancient Israelite society. Two representatives from ancient Israel’s literary traditions follow. The inspiration for the ensuing investigation derives from a variety of sources and developments. Chief among them are recent precedents utilizing material-cultural evidence as a primary source in exploring, articulating, and refining the study of ancient Mediterranean and ancient Near Eastern religious and magical traditions. The latest permutations of this approach typically integrate epigraphic and other textual evidence with the archaeological data in order to generate a more nuanced, holistic reconstruction of those traditions. Encouraging results continue to emerge from the integration of material and textual data that pertain to personal, family, domestic, and state religion and magic of the southern Levant. Likewise, increasingly sophisticated and nuanced reconstructions have been advanced in the wider worlds of ancient Egypt, Cyprus, and in other Mediterranean and ancient Near Eastern regions in the forms of major syntheses and specialized studies.1 But before taking up the task of assessing the   For examples of recent interregional and intraregional syntheses as well as case studies in some instances astutely combined see Lara Weiss, Religious Practice at Deir el-Medina. Egyptolo1

2

Chapter 1

five case studies from early Israelite society presented in this volume, a working definition of magic that might guide that assessment will be proposed.

On Defining Magic: Modernity’s Dilemma Any attempt at a definition of magic is doomed to failure apart from the recognition that modernity possesses its own entanglement with magic, that the two are inseparable and that in defining magic, it ultimately becomes … again … our own as much as it describes the ancient realities that comprise the object of our study. After many years of undergoing a slow, agonizing death at the hands of both anthropologists and philosophers, first as the epitome of the primitive, then as the vestige of archaic survivals lurking in modernity’s own dark corners, magic has reappeared as the quintessential tool for analyzing the moves that modernity makes in its shadow dance with itself.2 Yet, as anyone engaged in the academic study of magic would acknowledge, the term, nay, the very concept “magic,” while perhaps self-evident at some intuitive or ephemeral level, remains an ever-elusive, sly creature of impressive adaptability and agility. And this all confess irrespective of their particular take on the ongoing debate over the usefulness or futility of the modern term magic as a cipher for investigating histories past and cultures exotic. This is magic’s own mysterious etic-emic tango. What investigators find preoccupying their energies when it comes to the various theories, methods, and ethnographies applied to magic is magic’s complex intersection and continuous tension with modern manifestations of power. As fragmented and somewhat obfuscated as magic has now become, it continues to be invoked as an etic frame for investigation. But muddying these newer waters is the growing recognition that magic remains intimately entangled in and inseparably intertwined with modernity and modernity with magic. Despite conventional claims to the contrary, namely, that magic and modernity are essentially antithetical domains, they have reemerged in recent literature as co-dependent and mutually informing. In a tour de force that served as the introductory frame to a 2003 collection of penetrating essays titled Magic and Modernity, Peter Pels constructed what he degische uitgaven 29 (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut Voor Het Nabije Oosten; Leuven: Peeters, 2015); Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012); the fourteen essays in Family and Household Religion: Towards a Synthesis of Old Testament Studies, Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Cultural Studies, ed. Rainer Albertz et al. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014) and Andrew T. Wilburn, Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain: New Texts from Ancient Cultures (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013). 2   Or more accurately “modernities” (plural!) in acknowledgment of the competing visions of modernity currently “out there.” Following Bruno Latour (We Have Never Been Modern [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993], 10), modernity refers to a real or perceived rupture in the regular passage of time, something “new” in contrast to what preceded.



Image, Object, Epigraph, Then Text 3

scribed as an alternative “perspective on the history of the anthropology on magic and witchcraft.…”3 His is a compelling investigation into the modern study of magic as a conceptual field. He makes the case for the recognition, even among earlier anthropologists such as Benedict and Malinowski, that magic is not solely modernity’s preexistent antithesis or lesser equal, but the very product of modernity as modernity searches for identity and power. Yet Pels argues, such prescient insight on the part of earlier experts has seldom if ever been accompanied by, or followed up with, theoretical reflection on the manner in which magic belongs to modernity. That magic belongs to modernity stands as an exception to the long-dominant evolutionist view of early modern and modern anthropological scholarship where magic could hardly be seen as anything other than essentially (belonging to the) “Other.” Though once widely accepted (in variant forms), this evolutionist view has since suffered a slow demise. It is a relic of the sch1olarly past as are its presumed permutations in the modern western context as well as its persistence in the nonwestern world, past and present.4 Pels then asserts that this can be overcome by analyzing two aspects of the relationship between magic and modernity: what he refers to as the supplementarity of magic and modernity (“many modern discourses position magic as their antithesis, reinventing it in the process”) and the specific forms that the magic of modernity takes (“the enchantments that are produced by practices culturally specific to modern states, economies and societies”). Modernity’s enchantment constitutes those outcomes related to modernity’s assertion of itself in the way of allure and fascination that approximate what religion and supposedly magic have offered to so-called nonmodern societies. Pels envisions modernity’s enchantment as having a dual aspect; disenchantment and reenchantment, in which firstly, modernity seeks to obliterate magic and then secondly, to replace it with its own enticements. This process Pels coins the “magicality of modernity.” That is to say, magic neither functions as modernity’s counterpoint nor does it simply continue into the modern. Rather, magic is the product of modernity. In articulating the magicality of modernity, Pels refers to a central paradox in the study of magic; the exposure of the illusion or deception of magic led in turn to the revelation of magic’s existence. While early anthropologists produced what he labels an Occidentialist discourse that negatively distinguished primitive logic   Peter Pels, “Introduction: Magic and Modernity,” in Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, ed. Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 1–38. 4   For an excellent survey of the various forms in which the early modern and modern evolutionist approaches to magic manifested themselves, see Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic & Science in the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 121–63. Styers organizes the morass of literature under the following rubrics: theories of the primitive philosopher, theories of primitive mentality, theories of psychic unity, theories of primitive ingenuity, and theories of primitive expressiveness as these bear on the questions of the definition and the scope of rationality. 3

4

Chapter 1

from a modern, Western logic, Pels notes that by exposing the supposed inferiority of the rituals of non-Western cultures, they also revealed magic’s continued existence, since anthropologists could only explain the otherness of magic by referring to analogous social and cultural traits in their own. They thereby reinvented the discourses in which Europeans addressed the occult in their own cultures. For Pels, modernity’s “enchantment” is complemented by magic’s “haunting.” Magic’s haunting refers to modernity’s thwarted attempt to eradicate magic all the while producing new forms of it that resist that selfsame eradication and are, and have been, instead marginalized along “the fault lines of European social contradictions.” Modernity relocates magic in the past, or among primitives, or on the modern Western margins; all three constituting worlds of the Other. What were the movements and communities that participated in this nuanced and subtle process? Pels identifies early anthropologists as the lead actors in the drama, and so in the nineteenth century, magic’s illusionary dimension in exotic contexts was not only revealed, but then paradoxically lauded as a stroke of genius. In different hands, magic could also be used “to conduct political and religious controversies and to upset the monopoly of certain hegemonic categories in the classification of intellectual progress.” The late nineteenth-century world of the West in which both the notions of magic’s falsification and its simultaneous exaltation as contemporary “occult” practices ironically arose, was one in which the evolutionist confidence in science ran headlong into the romantic impulse to “re-enchant” the world; “high imperialism meets high bourgeois anxiety” and “realist tradition meets gothic novel cum folklore studies and scientific metaphors.” It was an “intellectual climate in which the Orientalist anthropology of Max Müller was fused with the new literary mysteries of (Edwin) Bulwer-Lytton in modern occultism,” thereby “announcing modernist literature’s persistent displacement of reason by magic, the occult, and the irrational” and introducing a “modernized magic” now associated with the “imponderabilities of science.” Pels cites as an example of the supplementarity that exists between magic and modernity and the forms of enchantment that modern magic can take, the clash between what he describes as “the magic of monarchy” and “the dazzle of halogen,” that was brought about by the tragic accident leading to the death of the global media’s darling, Princess Diana. Her celebrity-status death exposed the British royal family’s domestic world with unrelenting scrutiny to the international press. It thereby posed a(nother) direct challenge to the long-standing taboo against publicizing the private lives of royals. Such secrecy and shrouding of royal privacy was upheld in order to maintain the magic of monarchy against the threat to its mystique brought about by the media frenzy surrounding Diana’s life. The media’s love affair with the Princess had all but exploded the border between royal public and private life. Here, modernity produced its own kinds of magic. The media possessed the power to produce an alternative form of enchantment, namely, celebrity, to that previously contrived by the monarchy, and yet, a seemingly disempowered monarchy’s mystique was, in turn,



Image, Object, Epigraph, Then Text 5

able to reestablish its insidious taboo against intrusions by its (republican-inspired?) citizenry. Monarchy too had created, and then recreated, its own magic. It is in just such revelations that magic’s existence is unequivocally authenticated. According to Pels, “the modern study of magic is largely a study in human subjectivity.” The problems investigators face in defining magic are twofold; articulating the specific histories attached to and productive of magic or any one of its cognate terms, and the fact that any general definition of magic is itself the product of Western history with its assumptions about such categories or discursive fields as magic, religion, and science. Having so concluded, Pels somewhat surprisingly, throws caution to the wind, forges ahead through his historical resumé and offers his own definition of magic. For Pels, it is one of any number of concepts that denote for a modern discourse on magic any deluded, illusory, backward, or irrational belief that nonetheless was accompanied by doubts about just how deluded, illusory, or backwards that belief might actually be. He qualifies his definition, however, in concluding that, “it is more important to study the practices and power relationships which those things that we tend to call magic, or substitute for with related terms, are caught up …” (my italics). Not only that, but the modern investigator too must examine the methods and practices she or he employs when, for example, identifying differences in the respective power relations involved in the process of anthropological translation. Searching for Ancient Magic If one may assume that “magic” per se existed in pre-, non-Greek, ancient Near Eastern societies and that it informed subsequent notions of magic in Western tradition, what did such magic look, smell, sound, taste, or feel like? What was its character and function? As one might intuit, what lies beneath the surface of the pursuit for answers to these historical/historicist-oriented questions is the often implicit, and persistent, competing yet ultimate search for origins and the use of those findings in current ethnicity constructions. Driving the pursuit of origins there lay beneath another, the one for identity, both individual and collective, and this same search is part and parcel to the great quest that has occupied modern intellectual inquiry for the past two hundred years: “who am I?” … “who are we?” In modern versions of this enterprise, there lies embedded in works on magic of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern societies a heavy dose of philological analysis aimed at primary source materials, the invocation of comparative data as a means of contextualizing texts, and more recently, the occasional and rather circumspect, application of anthropological and literary theory in order to generate heuristic parameters. While such a general orientation informs the present investigation as well, there also appears throughout these pages, due recognition of the limits of such an endeavor; no one writer fully commands all these fields and facets. Thus, like those that have gone before and those that shall

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follow, Materiality is indebted to these ancient and modern intellectual histories as it seeks the modest goal of exploring magic as manifested in a discreet cultural tradition in time and space. The present volume examines magic in ancient Israelite society of the late Iron II period. As opposed to the Late Bronze and Iron I periods at the one end and the Persian period on the other, the late Iron II historical period currently comprises one that is the least contested in scholarship (although, this too may be somewhat illusory). Nevertheless, it is by no means an exploration grounded only on the hard data we presently possess that drives it forward. In anticipation of the definition of magic employed in Materiality, some of the self-conscious assumptions or starting points that inform how magic is understood and interpreted include the following. Magic, like religion, was practiced in ancient social life and depicted in ancient literary constructions and either of those realities might potentially generate its complement. That is to say, prior practices informed, directly or indirectly, whether in part or in whole, literary images of the same or some approximation thereof. Likewise, literary productions could, and did, generate the performance of new rituals including magic. This constitutes the dynamics of magic and so the entire continuum of past ritual realities, whether practiced or imagined, discloses itself to exploration. Such prior practices and literary productions will be explored for their prospective contributions to the search for magic in early Israel of the late Iron II. Furthermore, the historical dimension of the search need not be obfuscated by the complications that characteristically accompany historical investigation any more or less so than what would obtain in the literary analysis of ancient magic (which too presumes the “historicality” of an ancient text as an artifact). Can one genuinely avoid this reality frazzled as it may be at its edges? Admittedly, the citation of a text as a fully accurate portrayal of a corresponding ancient social reality is a highly precarious undertaking. Yet, to deny the possibility that a text might reflect historical realities, however partial and fragmented, and to employ such a text for historical reconstruction hardly warrants being entirely abandoned. In fact, one might argue, and others have, that the historical embeddedness of a given primary source, that is, its date, its findspot or disposition, its functions, and its ancient concentric circles of context (whether archaeological, historical, social, or political, and so on) forces itself upon the modern reader. Although it often is claimed that the portrayal of all magic is by nature sociopolitically rendered, it is assumed herein that a given ritual in a singular instance might be neutrally/ accurately depicted. A scribe practicing his or her literate skills might record the actual ritual mechanics or procedures of a given practice. In such cases, the information one can glean from the primary source in question might provide a significant entryway into an ancient ritual that was considered by some magical, by others religious, and by still others at the immediate moment of its recording, simply the object of scribal duty.



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Ancient Magic, Modern Constructions Another assumption that informs the present treatment is the notion that modern conceptions of magic in fact have many connections with, nay their origins in, ancient constructions of the same emanating from the western reaches of the Asian continent, the southeastern coastal cultures of Europe, and the northwest region of the African continent. In other words, the dismissal of modern terms and concepts as viable avenues to building a descriptive discourse on ancient magic is unwarranted. While definitions of magic derived from emic usage ultimately remain impenetrable in character to the modern, etic-positioned researcher, one must seek to use language sufficiently familiar to us and where possible, derived from “theirs” in order to model and explicate what magic is or was. There is no way around the dilemma. So while a host of Victorian anthropologists may be criticized for a number of faulty assumptions, some were nevertheless imitating similar shortcomings or deliberate biases of the ancient writers themselves and upon whom the early modernists relied. In the case of historical accusations involving magic, a prominent tendency among scholars is to assume that the rituals of the accused are not accurately represented by the accusers and so do not offer much in the way of informing us about those rituals. While this undoubtedly is the situation in a number of cases, it hardly stands as a fait accompli that such is the case in all. Why could a rite not be accurately portrayed in its procedures, for example, but rejected on the basis of the underlying theology associated with it? Perhaps it was the right ritual, but the wrong deity presiding. The position taken here is that there are instances in which significant data can be retrieved from ancient sources in spite of their polemical or critical stance regarding the actual, ancient magical practices of others. In Making Magic, Randall Styers has explored at length the problems attendant to the modern scholarly investigation of magic. Following the lead of critics like Bruno Latour, Emily Apter, and Michael Taussig, Styers identifies what he labels as the double gesture of demythologizing and reenchantment that scholars un-selfreflectively invoke in their search for objectivity. Magic’s long legacy of being closely attached to, even equated with, the power of words by scholars serves as his example of how this may manifest itself. He identifies a paradox at the very juncture where in past treatments of magic as the power of words, magic is upheld by the magician as the means to animate the world when, according to modern scholars, words themselves are held to lack any external reality. Words merely occupy a sort of shadow world. So, scholars in their attempts to analyze magic, make the claim that in magical traditions, words and external realities are (con)fused together into one larger mythical unity; word and physical reality become a singular, undifferentiated world. This scholars debunk as the magician’s attempt to subject all external reality to the desire of the magician with the result that linguistic categories and physical realities become merged. In so doing, scholars disavow the performative power of the speech act when evaluating the magician’s words, but in their own

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critique those scholars exercise the very power of the words that they otherwise deny the magician; what Styers epitomizes as scholars “making magic” in which they also mask their own power. Ergo, not only has magic survived, it has thrived in direct proportion to its attempted suppression. As a fitting example, Pels cites the work of Gyan Prakash who has demonstrated how various sectors of society in India set out to “reform” Hinduism into a “modern” religion by separating out and highlighting certain “rational” aspects of Hindu belief and practice. As a direct outcome, newly constructed categories of superstition and folk-magic were created. From Styers’ survey of scholarly opinion spanning the modern period, what becomes clear is that there has long persisted a conceptual tension between magic and religion. Influential scholarly constructions of magic seem to continue pre- or nonacademic understandings of that concept, which in turn has led to a significant critique of that category and its scholarly validity. In response, some have attempted to construct a continuum of magic and religion understood as ideal types while others have proposed the notion of a magical worldview. These have been exposed, however, as possessing historical attachments to an uncritical ethnocentrism that has played a significant role in colonialist agendas of subjugation and efforts toward “civilizing” the non-West. Furthermore, while magic is used as a term in all modern western European languages, there is no unanimously recognized academic definition of magic nor any shared theory or theoretical language. So, magic has continued to serve as a concept “with an extremely versatile and ambivalent semantics; it is the art of the devil or the path to the gods,” yet to impose “magic as an analytic tool may direct attention away from local contexts and suppress difference resulting in distorted findings, interpretations and narratives.” As Otto and Stausberg warn, in the belief that one is discovering magic “out there,” one may, in fact, end up with just “universalizing one’s own Western categories and background assumptions.”5 Thus, the broad range of disparate phenomena usually covered by the concept – its semantic diversity, conceptual heterogeneity, ethnocentric bias, and undesirable ideological implications – would seem to point away from using the concept. Yet, even some of those who use magic as an analytic category and argue that such concepts as magic, like religion, are requisite to initiating comparative research nevertheless recognize that all categorical concepts are ethnocentric, that Western presumptions cannot be circumvented. Furthermore, magic’s undeniable connection with modernity’s self-representation combined with the repeated observation of “facts” signaled by the kinds of examples and features present in such artifacts and writings as amulets, curses, incantations, and the like that are clearly associated with one type of magic or another, tells against abandoning the concept altogether. It would only risk undermining the scholarly attempt to describe the phenomena of the concept by robbing researchers of the ability to articulate those (arti)facts and 5   Bernd-Christian Otto and Michael Stausberg, “General Introduction,” in Defining Magic: A Reader, ed. Bernd-Christian Otto and Michael Stausberg (London: Equinox, 2013), 1–13.



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their significances. In other words, one cannot stop speaking of magic when one cannot avoid encountering the abundance of evidence for its existence. However fragmented the material evidence may be at times, ancient magic’s light still shines through. Rejecting the notion of a single metacategory of magic, Otto and Stausberg propose in Defining Magic that magic can be employed as an open list of traits or features reflective of a range of phenomena that share a “family resemblance.” Yet, instead of instinctively interpreting the occurrence of a limited number of traits as evidence for a family-style concept of magic or key to “the whole of ‘MAGIC’ in all of its amorphous multiplicity,” one might split what they refer to as the extended tribal family of traits into a number of nuclear families with the result that, “instead of instances of ‘magic,’ we suggest speaking of patterns of magicity.” They offer a lengthy trait list of thirty-five items that they gleaned from academic literature with a focus on what they describe as the denotation of magic or “the signals that trigger a recognition of X as an instance of M (‘magic’/‘magical’), rather than on overarching theoretical interpretations (e.g., the psychological or social functions ascribed to ‘magic’).” In an attempt to bring order to their catalogue, they entertain distinguishing different types of magic such as white and black or homeopathic vs. contagious, but reject this approach as it falls short of providing an overall coherence to the heterogeneity of their list. They also reject alternative models owing to their inability to bring coherency due to the lack of requisite information on the one hand, and on the other, the presumption that all these features and others should be brought together into one category. The repeated lack of multiple-trait convergence in any one instance of a ritual action simply impedes the articulation of the needed control factors expressive of magic. The broader, more inclusive patterns of magicity provide some forms and conditions for structural stability and offer ways to deal with cross-culturally attested observations without imposing parameters that are too narrow on one’s prospective definition of magic. The authors cite as one example of the kind of patterns of magicity they have in view what they label “word efficacy.” Word efficacy is derived from the recurrent observation that humans tend to ascribe efficacy to the utterance of specific words in ritual sequences and that this pattern of ascription is attested cross-culturally in a multiplicity of sources, forms, and expressions. In another venue, Otto has proposed a “methodological turn” in the academic discourse on ancient magic and in particular in classical studies. He argues for the abandonment of an abstract category of magic on the one hand and on the other, for a systematic historicization of the ancient term, by which he has in mind the reconstruction of the ancient semantics, functions, and contexts of mageia. He avers: “Instead of implicitly or explicitly sustaining the idea of an ideal-type, transcultural, and ahistorical category, classical scholars should begin to perceive ‘magic’ as a historical term that pervades their sources and bears in fact, contrary to academic definition, a plethora of meanings, functions, and valuations worth

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investigating.”6 The notion of magic that Otto has in view derives in part from his consideration of the Greek magical papyri (Papyri Graecae Magicae, hereafter PGM), that he suggests actually reflect a common set of religious ideas circulating in the ancient Mediterranean, which he otherwise labels as expressive of the academic discourse on religion in spite of the use of the term mageia. Accordingly, the magoi appear as participants in “a wide spectrum of ancient ritual practitioners sharing similar ideas, partly working inside, partly outside temples, partly having official positions in established cults, partly regarding ritual relations with gods as a mere means of earning a living as a private service provider.” So, with the above remarks in mind, where might one go to explore further the realities of ancient magic, the object of the current undertaking? Magic’s Material Turn Many have embraced the position that a circumlocution like “ritual power” might serve to convey the barest bones of magic and at the same time avoid the supposed problems identified in using the sometimes etic, sometimes emic term “magic.” Nevertheless, recent attempts at assessing the materiality of magic pose promising heuristic potential in support of the viability of magic’s continued employment in religious discourse. Such an approach not only takes into account those “(arti)facts” previously invoked, but it puts into play the study of the very practices and power relationships at the heart of what makes magic magic, as Pels so cogently articulated. In accord with his “archaeology of magic,” Anthony Wilburn in Materia Magica has outlined several useful points concerning the practice of magic that he is also able to validate on the basis of a detailed analysis of artifacts expressive of ancient Mediterranean magic.7 He notes that scholars are in general agreement about the spaces that magic may occupy: the phenomenon is often marked by mechanistic gestures and speech, which sometimes compel supernatural or divine forces in order to achieve a particular personal goal. Wilburn points out that a definition of magic suitable to empirical markers or evidence that we can see, or infer, from an object must take account of the fact that magic was an actual practice that involved the use of objects like lead tablets and the spells and drawings decorating them. The mental constructions expressed in emic approaches based on ancient indigenous literary constructions of magic do not adequately engage objects nor assess their practical use in what he refers to elsewhere as his “object-centered approach”; the investigation into an object and its biography. That is to say, confronting archae6   Bernd-Christian Otto, “Towards Historicizing ‘Magic’ in Antiquity,” Numen 60 (2013): 308–47. He offers as a definition of mageia in the Greek magical papyri: “formalized ritual actions aiming at instrumentalizing transcendent beings for individual human needs,” 336. 7  See Wilburn, Materia Magica, 1–53, 254–72 where he thoroughly reviews the theoretical, methodological, and archaeological dimensions of the study of ancient Mediterranean magic much of which is largely germane to the study of southern Levantine magic.



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ological artifacts often requires far more than some ancient author writing about magic. It requires instead those “who were actively engaged in ritual practices that we can identify as magic,” coupled with a meticulous contextual analysis. This leads Wilburn to the following working definition of his materiality-based magic: 1. Magic was firmly founded in ritual actions, including spoken or written words and the manipulation of objects. These rituals typically are performed with the expectation of a particular result. 2. Magic may draw on religious traditions for both efficacy and exoticism. 3. Magic is frequently a private or personal activity, although certain practices might be undertaken in the public sphere. Wilburn’s definitional points are directly transferable and bring focus to the present endeavor, in which the material evidence for pandemonium and apotropaism – object, image, and epigraph – will be explored at the late Iron II period sites of Kuntillet Ajrud (hereafter KA), Ketef Hinnom (KH), and Khirbet el-Qom (KQ). These same religious phenomena, pandemonium and apotropaism, will be explored as given expression in the biblical traditions of Deut 32 and 1 Sam 28 where the convergence of object (their actual scroll manuscripts), image (their written-ness as portrayed visually in script), and epigraph (the semiotics of their textuality) is likewise tested.

Doing Israelite Magic “From the Ground Up” The data from these distinct, contemporary but culturally hybridized sites represent rather diverse social contexts; a multipurpose, (northern) state-sponsored, desert site in the remote south where caravan travelers frequently visited, a burial cave located within a cemetery adjacent to a Judean town, and an elite rock-cut tomb in the southwest sector of the ancient major urban center of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, they unambiguously give expression to a shared, yet variegated daimonic realm populated by both evil demons and protective supranatural entities alike as well as to a mutually counteractive magical world in Israel-Judah of the late Iron II. As the following assessment reveals, the data from these three sites KA, KH, and KQ individually and collectively provide rare glimpses into unprecedented material features expressive of various aspects of early Israelite apotropiasm. These features include images of what may represent protective deities of foreign origin that decorated both pithoi and plastered walls and that coalesced with an inscription that together conveyed YHWH’s and Asherah’s protection and provision for the living. Such security measures may have been offered by these two native deities mentioned in the epigraphs against what comprised a multitude of personified “evil” beings.

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In addition, there is suggestive evidence that ritual processes took place, including processionals and libation rituals at designated spaces, and that they may have involved decorated pithoi. Some of these rituals were designed to provide apotropaic power to the living beyond the confines of the site and were performed with the accompaniment of a variety of small vessels, chalices, and other objects, some of which were subsequently sequestered in favissae. Various funerary wall inscriptions may have provided similar blessings of divine protection for the journey to, and life then lived in, the netherworld that issued from the same native deities whose names were etched on the walls of a town’s communal burial caves. Those names were accompanied by an image of a hand also carved into the stone of one of the walls and positioned earthward highlighting the perpetual presence of divine protection in the next life. Lastly, silver-sheeted amulets deposited in an elite tomb and inscribed with similar blessings of apotropaism were most likely designed for both this life and the next and were accompanied in the grave by a variety of similar apotropaic objects and amulets with the amuletic inscriptions explicitly mentioning not only the personified evil or “the Evil (ones),” but also its/their unequivocal personified antagonist, “The Exorciser of the Evil (ones)” as YHWH. In closing, it should be underscored that the present undertaking became possible only recently owing to a range of contributing factors: the official publication of excavation results, the availability of new and improved images of epigraphs and objects based on the application of new, more-advanced imaging technologies, and the unprecedented availability of new syntheses of archaeological and textual data representative of the wider cultural and ritual traditions of the southern Levant. More to the point, the 2012 publication of the final report from KA has singularly rejuvenated the study of the site as research published in the intervening forty years had only limited access to the data. The West Semitic Research Project published the first high-resolution photographs of the KH amuletic inscriptions only a decade ago, one year shy of the quarter century following their discovery. Unlike KA and KH, KQ, the first to be excavated of the three, quickly faded from the public eye once the other two sites became household words in Levantine archaeological, historical, and biblical studies, even in spite of the crucial importance and uniqueness of its data. Furthermore, the fact that the sites of KH and KQ were both salvage projects completed under rather extraordinary circumstances well beyond typical levels affecting mid-twentieth century excavations in their respective regions, only impeded the processing and publication of finds. In these first three case studies, the inscriptional remains, iconographic repertoires, diagnostic assemblages of nonutilitarian and utilitarian objects, and architectural spaces from each of the three individually unique Israelite-Judean sites, KA, KH, and KQ, are examined. As assessed in their respective contexts, the material data from these sites intersect at crucial points and convey a compelling convergence of shared ritual practices from late Iron II Israel-Judah. Those rituals in turn give expression to magic’s apotropaic role in protecting and provisioning



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living and deceased individuals as well as communities from both natural threats and supranatural personified, demonic powers (chs. 2 and 3). These results “from the ground up” in turn provide the rationale for reexamining two additional, but somewhat dissimilar case studies; the text-critical readings of the earliest manuscript witnesses to, or the inscribed materiality of, Deut 32 and 1 Sam 28. The findings corroborate the viability and antiquity of the readings in the relevant Qumran manuscripts that intersect with those underlying the Septuagint tradition’s Hebrew Vorlage in Deut 32 and 1 Sam 28. Both of these textual traditions preserve remnants of a daimonic world in which (a) pandemonium would have all but “won the day” were it not for the apotropaic powers provided by YHWH, who at times was accompanied by the goddess Asherah. These two case studies together with the first three preserve the kinds of various demonic powers whom the apotropaic objects, epigraphs, and rituals from late Iron II Israel-Judah were designed to forestall. Yet, as occasion would require, YHWH might send demonic entities such as reshef and qeteb to mete out his chaos or punishment, whereas the divine sons, the divine messengers, anonymous gods and daimons, including protective spirits like the shedim (those that had yet to become YHWH’s rivals), as well as the Septuagint’s angeloi, served to mediate a pervasive Yahwistic apotropaism (chs. 4 and 5). The long-standing data from both the three sites and the two biblical texts examined, along with some significant modern revisions to the ancient data (e.g., the excavators’ crucial modification; the removal of an appendage – a phallus (?) – from a drawn apotropaic deity from KA), improved interpretative results (e.g., the preference for the LXX readings in 1 Sam 28 and in Deut 32 with the latter now supported by the Qumran readings over against the MT), technological advances (e.g., the superior 2004 photographic images of KH’s amuletic texts), and expanded databases (e.g., the never-before-seen data from KA’s 2012 final report) take on an unprecedented cumulative effect, namely, the profound recovery of what for so long in the field of early Israelite religion had been lost or hidden, even deemed nonexistent. Together, these compelling witnesses, including the material manuscripts of the two biblical texts examined, corroborate the survival and viability of a previously unidentified, yet extant pandemonium in preexilic Israelite magic. That supranatural world likely included some sector of “the gods,” as well as daimons of various kinds, and especially also demons, but to the likely exclusion of the dead (for a proposed distinction between daimon and demon, see chapter 3). The power vested in these demons was such that the apotropaic capabilities of two native deities, YHWH and Asherah – in convergence at times with the power of two renowned international apotropaic deities, Bes and Beset – had to be invoked in order to forestall them.

Chapter 2 “May YHWH Bless You and Keep You!”: “Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud At Kuntillet Ajrud (KA), inscriptions and drawings once dotted the landscape of both Buildings A and B. In Building A’s bench room, various incised objects and inkinscribed plaster fragments that had fallen from the walls were also recovered. All in all, the excavators recovered some fifty-five or so inscriptions from KA incised on pottery, inked on pottery and plastered walls, and in one case executed directly onto a stone doorjamb.1 Painted fragments from what once comprised elaborate murals decorating KA’s white-plastered walls were found in both buildings with the majority in Building B. Building A’s entryway and the doorways of the long, narrow storerooms on the south and west sides of the courtyard to Building A yielded unequivocal evidence of painted wall décor in which images of the divine world converged with written words of the gods creating a number of complex, multicolored, integrated wall scenes. The significances attached to the writings and the drawings on both pottery and walls as well as on KA’s various other media are obvious and significant. The numerous figural and textual decorations along with the widely dispersed diagnostics retrieved from the site call for some disentanglement in an effort to look anew at the data and to identify any prospective clues to the questions of an embedded cult and its favissae. The two decorated pithoi A and B, along with their images and epigraphs, will be assessed at length with a view to their contextualization in the differentiated sacred spaces at KA – the bench room, the courtyard, the whole of Building A, and the overall site. As elements of sacralization that intersect at various junctures with the pithoi décor, the wall murals that were once distributed throughout the site will also be considered in order to articulate better their co-constitutive relationships and mutual elucidation.

  Not to be overlooked is the fact that another twenty or more plastered wall fragments preserve unidentifiable remains of letters. 1

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Scouring “Cultic” Landscapes: The Natural, Human, and Divine The now-famous pithos A was found in the bench room of Building A, and pithos B is held by the excavators to have shared space in the bench room with pithos A at some stage in their brief history at KA. Though that may be the case, pithos B somehow ended up in Building A’s courtyard where it was actually found by the excavation team. Also recovered from that same courtyard area was a single inscribed fragment (the so-called fragment A) that the excavators have attributed to pithos A. Their locations raise two questions: why were they located in the bench room and courtyard separate from each other and from all the other pithoi that were concentrated in the storerooms? Furthermore, if their use as decorative surfaces by the artisan-scribes had been concluded, why were they not returned to their former mundane function as storage vessels and repositioned in one of the storerooms along with the many undecorated storage pithoi? Kuntillet Ajrud’s Sacred Locus: Building A’s Bench Room If, as in ancient Egypt, however, these two pithoi were imbued with ritually activating divine power generated by the very acts of inscribing divine words and drawing divine images, then perhaps there were alternative spaces at KA for their storage or installation.2 If for one reason or another, the pithoi had eventually lost their numinous power or function, then the bench room’s corner rooms, locus 13 or loci 7 and 62 would have been most fitting storage locations. According to the excavators, these corner rooms were used like favissae for storing defunct votive offerings and other obsolete cultic paraphernalia. It should be mentioned at the outset that these favissae or corner rooms were subsequently made inaccessible by later taking on window openings that were too small, too high, and attached to rooms that perhaps became too full for transferring such large pithoi into their prospective spaces.3

  See further below and Brian B. Schmidt, “Kuntillet Ajrud’s Pithoi Inscriptions and Drawings: Graffiti or Scribal-Artisan Drafts?” MAARAV 20 (2015): 53–82, for a detailed elaboration of the role and pervasiveness of apotropaism and the numinous initiated by the acts of drawing divine images and writing divine words on the analogy of similar ancient Egyptian practices and beliefs. For Egypt see now Christoffer Theis, Magie und Raum: Der magische Schutz ausgewählter Räume im alten Ägypten nebst einem Vergleich zu angrenzenden Kulturbereiche, ORA 13 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck), 2014. 3   Ze’ev Meshel and Avner Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border, ed. Ze’ev Meshel (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012), 26; e.g., “Entrance into the [bench room’s southwest] Corner-room … required one to climb onto the platform and jump from the ‘window’ about 1 m down to the floor.” On the similar blockage of select storeroom entryways using obstructing, pit-embedded, erect pithoi, see pp. 47 (locus 1) and 49 (locus 50). 2

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 17 If the pithoi sustained their numinous status they might have been kept in the bench room (locus 6) for their continued ritual use, though the courtyard findspot of pithos B may well speak against this since its location would have necessitated its prospective movement to the courtyard for some unknown reason. Evidence for the storage of jars from the southeasternmost sector of the south storeroom (locus 8) appears to offer a plausible location for the pithoi, that is assuming that the pithoi necessitated some form of eventual disposition in a favissa (more on this contingency below; see fig. 2.1 for locus 19 of the courtyard area and for the ritual loci 6 and 8 with their adjacent favissae loci 13 and 256). To date, the locations and precise nature of the function of the two decorated pithoi remains inscrutable. In what follows, these and other questions will be explored, including whether or not the final disposition and function of the two decorated pithoi, A and B, are related to each other and whether or not their having been inscribed and decorated with numinous empowering epigraphs and images as drafting surfaces relates to their subsequent disposition and prospective cultic or ritual function. Following on these questions, another pertaining to the lifespan of these pithoi arises: how did a lone fragment from pithos A become separated from the remaining fragments of the same pithos in the bench room and end up with those of pithos B in the courtyard? The above factors not only presume the movement of at least one of the two decorated pithoi, they may also belie deliberate concomitant or subsequent repositioning. As will be articulated forthwith, evidence from other similarly decorated pithoi heretofore of little or no consequence, as well as data from the site’s painted walls, may hint at a more complex ritualized world at KA – one involving multiple ritual loci as well as a ritual procession of sorts – in which several inscribed and painted, and therefore divinely empowered, pithoi played major roles. After all, and as set forth elsewhere, the KA wall murals share a co-constitutive relationship with the pithoi décor, namely, that between practice draft – the pithos décor – and its formal, publicly displayed rendition – the wall murals. Lastly, the existence of favissae at KA, whether corner rooms or parts of storerooms, would by inference presuppose the coexistence of their corresponding cult loci from which the stored cultic objects had originated. Therefore, the verification of a favissa’s existence at KA can serve as material confirmation of an on-site cultic or ritual space. Were There Favissae or Intentional Cult Deposits? On the matter of favissae, Meshel had suggested that the northeast corner room, locus 13, of the bench room served as a favissa for the vessels from the bench room, locus 6. It was filled with numerous and varied small vessels, sherds of Samaria ware, a seashell, olive and date pits, and an incised stone bowl.4 Before taking up Meshel’s proposal and its ramifications, however, the use of the term favissa must   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 28–30 and see fig. 2.36 for a photo of the fill. 4

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Fig. 2.1. Building A East (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 19 be addressed. It has, of late, become a subject of considerable discussion owing to its increasingly popular use, its appeal in labeling data from periods that precede its actual, attested historical emergence as a phenomenon and its application to a continually increasing database that does not fully meet its formal or historical use.5 In its more formalized version, a favissa should (1) comprise a pit deposit, (2) preserve signs of ritual activity, (3) be distinguished in both form and content from other pit deposits, (4) evince selectivity of objects for reburial at a particular moment in time, and (5) be located near or in a sanctuary, while (6) the deposit itself should be marked by a special location or activity, (7) by the objects selected and their treatment, (8) and by their previous cultic use, which may have formed patterns or left signs of special or repeated action (e.g., the ritual breaking or specific selection of objects).6 For present purposes, the term favissa will also be employed to refer to (9) the disposal of ritual objects that lost their cultic functionality for one reason or another (e.g., votive offerings or divine images), in order to (10) prevent their improper use or reuse and to free up space at the corresponding cult site. As such, (11) their existence is indicative of an associated ritual site of some type (though not necessarily a formal sanctuary per se), (12) from which the disposed assemblage most immediately originated.7 Articulating a clear, but abbreviated version of the more formal or traditional definition of favissa as outlined here, both avoids the unreflective use of the term and concept on the one hand and on the other any hyper-aversion against employing them. Alternate definitions of phenomena that approximate favissa, but do not meet all of the above formal criteria have been proposed. For example, the more neutral “intentional or structured, cultic or ritual deposit,” which can provide a general starting point from which to approach the data.8 These latter forms of deposit, however, may lack compelling evidence for the deliberate deterrence to the possible reuse of deposited artifacts. The term favissa will be utilized throughout not only to highlight its contested status, but also to 5   Favissa is a Latin term that frequently referred in the plural (favissae) to the underground cellars containing redeposited sacred offerings near a temple like that of the Capitolium (Jupiter Optimus Maximus) in Rome. 6   Sarah R. Martin, “‘Hellenization’ and Southern Phoenicia” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2007), 184 and now Nicole Strassburger, “Favissae in Israel/Palestine in the Late Bronze to Persian Periods,” in Yavneh 2: The “Temple Hill” Repository Pit, ed. Raz Kletter, Irit Ziffer, and Wolfgang Zwickel, OBO 36 (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming). I thank Nicole Strassburger for allowing me access to her work. 7   For a recent defense of the use of the term favissa for earlier periods in spite of its later origins (ditto: genizah as well), see Raz Kletter, “Conclusions: Repository Pit – Favissa – Genizeh,” in Yavneh 1: The Excavation of the “Temple Hill” Repository Pit and the Cult Stands, ed. Raz Kletter, Irit Ziffer, and Wolfgang Zwickel, OBO 30 (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 192–209 and “A View from the Pit,” in Hoards and Genizot as Chapters in History, ed. Ofra Guri-Rimon (Haifa, Israel: The Hecht Museum, 2013), 23–30. 8   Martin, “‘Hellenization’ and Southern Phoenicia,” 180–87.

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underscore its usefulness in characterizing the irreversible deposition of objects previously employed in the cult or in ritual. While it may allow for evidence indicative of conspicuous consumption, such as dining wares and food remains, such is not a requisite criterion for identifying a favissa since such wares and remains could be deposited as waste (in the case of organic materials or cookery) or stored for reuse (in the case of vessels) rather than for permanent and inaccessible storage.9 As previously noted, Meshel pointed out that the assemblage of vessels in the northeast corner room, locus 13, was comprised of small vessels that had accumulated over time having been retrieved from more than one level.10 This suggested to Meshel that the corner room served as a favissa for the bench room, which itself was used to house vessels and special dedicatory objects. Ayalon pointed out that concentrations of small vessels (juglets, flasks, jugs, and bowls) were found mainly in Building A’s corner rooms and in both wings of the bench room. The highest concentration was in the bench room’s northeast corner room, locus 13, where more than twenty complete vessels and fragments of some twenty-five others were found.11 These included three jars, a cooking pot, three juglets, two flasks, seven jugs, six small bowls, and a few larger bowls. Parts of two stone bowls along with their accompanying inscriptions 1.1 and 1.4, were also found in or just outside the northeast corner room. Both were inscribed on the rims of the bowls and reflective of prospective votive offerings on the part of the dedicants mentioned.12 A large uninscribed limestone bowl, a seashell originating from the Mediterranean, some date and olive pits, and a few sherds of Samaria ware were recovered from locus 13 as well. From the adjacent bench room itself, locus 6, the decorative fragments of pithos A were recovered from the east bench along with numerous white-plaster fragments bearing faint signs of painted decoration, some comprising what once was a publically displayed blessing – inscription 4.1 on the room’s western wall. Also recovered from the bench room were fragments of two lamps, some small bowls, a high-based bowl or chalice, worked-wood pieces, and bits of leather.13 Moreover, some unidentified bones as well as those of the Nile perch, a cowrie shell, and a sharpened wooden sliver were retrieved. On the nearby western lintel leading into the courtyard and on the adjacent doorjamb to locus 6, together spanning wall   Ibid., 186 cited Akko’s dining wares and animal bones from the area F deposit.   Ze’ev Meshel, “Summary,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), XXI–XXII and Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 22, 30, 66. 11   Eton Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 241– 43 and note the floor plan and photo fig. 7.30 of 17 complete vessels and pp. 252–55 fig. 7.35 and 7.36 for hand drawings and lists of the finds from locus 13. 12   Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel, and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 74–77, and note the map; see also Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 30. 13   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 28–30; Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 250–51 and fig. 7.34. 9

10

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 21 nos. 9 and 10, an inscription (4.2), a brief theophanic hymn, and the poorly preserved inscription 4.3 were once publically displayed, as indicated by the plaster wall fragments recovered from those areas. The close spatial convergence of various utilitarian and nonutilitarian objects, the wall epigraphs 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 mentioning various members of the divine world – YHWH, Baal, El, the Holy One, and the gods – along with the decorated pithos A, which was covered with images of composite beings, animals, humans, and plants coupled with blessings inscribed on its surface making mention of the gods YHWH and possibly Asherah, mutually inform each other’s function and cumulatively establish the bench room, locus 6, as a nexus for rituals of one sort or another. Moreover, locus 13, the favissa related to locus 6, confirms such a function for the bench room. Ayalon deemed this whole phenomenon as uncharacteristic of a normal site and confirms the observations of Meshel and Goren that the eastern corner rooms did not have normal entrances but rather, “windows with high sills,” with many vessels deposited inside. He also invoked Meshel’s view that these rooms were favissae or genizahs.14 Horwitz et al. opine that the combined presence of the numerous small vessels both from and adjacent to the bench room and the presence of exotic trade items like imported shells and fish bones from the varied faunal remains at KA suggest that these represent votive offerings that were received at the bench room.15 Yet, there remains the nagging problem regarding the lack of unequivocal evidence for the conventional notion of “cult” at KA. None of the standard diagnostics – altars, conventional figurines, or zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, and composite vessels – indicative of cult were found in the bench room or in locus 13.16 The Evidence for a “Decorative Pithos Libation” Rite Nevertheless, as the excavators cautiously acknowledge, some form of ritual is indicated by the bench room assemblage and by the associated favissa in the northeast   Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 271 and n. 8.   Liora Kolska Horwitz et al., “The Faunal Remains,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 333. As early as 1990, Amihai Mazar referred to KA as a site comprised of a strange sectarian group of scribes, preserving votive (commemorative?) offerings comprised of exotic content and favissae and a place where nonindigenous animal art pervades; see Amihai Mazar, The Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000–586 B.C.E, The Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 944. 16   See Rüdiger Schmitt, “Elements of Domestic Cult in Ancient Israel,” in Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 60–74 and idem, “A Typology of Iron Age Cult Places,” in Albertz et al., Family and Household Religion, 265–86, for thorough treatments of the conventional diagnostic objects that archaeologists have identified as expressive of ritual action and the presence of cult along with a corresponding typology of cult sites. For Albertz and Schmitt, the primary category of diagnostic objects is made up of (A) nonutilitarian objects indicative of cultic or ritual action, while a secondary category (B) comprised of diagnostic objects of a more utilitarian character that, especially when combined with (A) category objects, may likewise attest to cult. See also chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of their typology. 14 15

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corner room. In fact, the presence of a chalice and small vessels, the pervasive public display of inscribed divine blessings in and surrounding the bench room, not to mention the presence of various exotica such as seashells along with fresh and salt-water fish bones in a desert setting, all point in the direction of ritual action. When all of these objects and factors are considered alongside the presence of an elaborately decorated pithos with image and epigraph of an exclusively religious nature that had been installed on the bench, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that pithos A, and possibly B, served as the focal point(s) of some otherwise unattested ritual complex. To be sure, such a ritual complex may be unprecedented, but for recent researchers of the southernmost fringes of the Cis- and Transjordan, “the unexpected has become the expected” in the case of such liminal locations. No better examples of unique cult or ritual paraphernalia can be invoked than those from the sites of Horvat Qitmit, Ein Haseva, and even Khirbet al-Mudayna in Jordan.17 In fact, from the shrine at Horvat Qitmit, unambiguous, yet wholly unique, divine images as objects of cult were recovered. At Ein Haseva the excavators recovered what amounted to a fully reconstructed, intact favissa of almost seventy ceramic vessels, a stone statue, and six limestone altars. The domestic and temple rituals observed at the small town of Mudayna while sharing some similarities, evince quite different traditions from those at Tell Jawa and at a shrine only 3 km away from Mudayna (WT-13).18 Variety in diagnostics – some previously unattested – not conformity, characterizes these unique sites and their ritual complexes. With this in mind, it is proposed here that A and B, the two decorated pithoi at KA, along with other candidates to be identified shortly, served as the objects of libation rituals (ergo the small vessels), and were offered votive and dedicatory gifts (e.g., the inscribed objects such as stone bowls, basins, and jars) accompanied by incense burning (chalices) and ritual meals (i.e., the utilitarian vessels, the nearby   See now Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 67–74, 235–37, 240–41 and for the anomalous cult elements at Khirbet al-Mudayna, see P. M. Michele Daviau, “Anomalies in the Archaeological Record,” in Albertz et al., Family and Household Religion, 103–27. 18   Concerning the ongoing debate regarding Qitmit’s cultural, ethnic and/or territorial orientation (was it and its cult Edomite, nomadic Arab, or Judahite, or some convergence thereof?), see now Christoph Uehlinger, “Arad, Qitmit – Judahite Aniconism vs. Edomite Iconic Cult: Questioning the Evidence,” in Text, Artifact and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion, ed. Gary Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis, BJS 346 (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2006), 80–112 notwithstanding the familiar arguments for Edomite presence repeated in Sarah Ben Arieh, “Temple Furniture from a Favissa at ‘En Haseva,” ‘Atiqot 68 (2011): 107–75, esp. 168–72. Yifat Thareani has characterized the population in the Iron II desert fringe as one of “forced pluralism and co-existence,” created by Assyrian imperialism and exploitation afforded by the Arabian trading system in her “The Self-Destruction of Diversity: A Tale of the Last Days of Judah’s Ancient Negev Towns,” Anti­guo Oriente 12 (2014): 185–224; and see further on the multiculturalism of Edomite ethnicity and identity, Marc Beherec, Mohammad Najjar, and Thomas E. Levy, “Wadi Fidan 40 and Mortuary Archaeology in the Edom Lowlands,” in New Insights into the Iron Age Archaeology of Edom, Southern Jordan, vol. 2, ed. Thomas E. Levy, Mohammad Najjar, and Erez Ben-Yosef (Los Angeles: Cotson Institute of Archaeology Press, 2014), 666–70. 17

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 23 kitchens, and the organic remains). The diagnostics clearly validate this much. As such, the decorated pithoi, of which there were as many as seven or as few as three, might have functioned in much the same capacity as commonly attested figurines recovered from other ritual sites where they took on the role of votive objects. In this capacity, the decorated pithoi would have afforded visitors perpetual access to the numinous, apotropaic powers of provision and protection. Yet if, as proposed here and detailed in what follows, both pithoi A and B took on a profound numinous quality owing to the decoration of their surfaces with images of and inscribed blessings from YHWH and Asherah, then it is more likely that they served in a fashion similar to, but not precisely the same as, divine figurines that functioned as cult images. The decorated pithoi from KA, like the contemporary mass ә bōt at Arad, underwent a transfer of function from the more conventional cult image to an alternative, substitute object; to stones and to decorated pithoi. This transfer resulted in Arad’s mass ә bōt – and KA’s pithoi – serving “to house or embody the divine manifestation or actualize the presence of deity.”19 Conceptually and functionally speaking, the numinously empowered, decorated pithoi approximate those divine images from the multicultural or “hybridized” cults at Horvat Qitmit and Ein Haseva and from those cults in which images had their “mouths washed” (mīs pî), their forms born of and indwelt by the gods and which were produced in the pursuit “to make the divine efficaciously present in material substrates.”20 Assuming this accurately reflects the significances attributable to the transformation wrought by decorating the pithoi with divine words and images, those pithoi then took on a greater powerladen capacity as divine images while also conveying a significant degree of “hybridization” – at the time, a phenomenon growing in currency that combined international, imperial, regional, and local forms and traditions.21 As detailed in what follows, the convergence of YHWH and Asherah’s written blessings and Bes and Beset’s visualized apotropaism would have 19  See Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Will the Real Mas s    e   ̆ bôt Please Stand Up: Cases of Real and Mistakenly Identified Standing Stones in Ancient Israel,” in Beckman and Lewis, Text, Artifact and Image, 64–79 and for the recently published standing stones from Wadi Fidan, see Beherec, Najjar, and Levy, “Wadi Fidan 40 and Mortuary Archaeology,” 665–721. 20   A phrase coined by Michael B. Dick, “The Mesopotamian Cult Statue: A Sacramental Encounter with Divinity,” in Cult Image and Divine Representation in the Ancient Near East, ed. Neal H. Walls (Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 2005), 43–67, here 67. For the presence of YHWH and Asherah on pithos A in the form of Bes-like figures and on pithos B in the “formlessness” of empty-space aniconism, see Brian B. Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings from Horvat Teman or Kuntillet Ajrud: Some New Proposals,” JANER 2 (2002): 91–125. 21  See Derek B. Counts, “Master of the Lion: Representation and Hybridity in Cypriote Sanctuaries,” AJA 112 (2008): 3–27 and Catherine Grataloup, “Céramiques calcaires d’époque perse et des dernières dynasties indigènes à Thônis-Héracléion,” Égypte nilotique et méditerranéenne 5 (2012): 167–94 on the hybridization of Iron II and Persian period artistic forms of apotropaic Bes on Cyprus and in Egypt. Counts treats in detail the convergence of Iron II Bes iconography with an inscribed reference to the Canaanite deity Reshef by a foreign Phoenician author employing local expressions of materiality on the cippus from Pyla; see further chapter 5’s conclusions.

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simultaneously transmitted and enhanced the apotropaic presence and power of the divine, not only as rendered on the pithoi, but also on the mural walls. In addition to the libations performed in the decorated pithos rites, along with the votive and dedicatory offerings and associated meals, the ritual complex may have also included incense burning as suggested by the recovered chalices. As a point worth noting, the favissa explanation of Meshel and Ayalon did not highlight the fact that if the decorated pithoi A and B served as nexuses of numinous power in a ritual locus of some sort, no such decorated pithoi like pithoi A or B were actually recovered from the bench room’s corner rooms. Only small vessels and exotica were deposited there. This confirms the status of locus 13 as an adjacent favissa to locus 6. As will be set forth below in greater detail, the same favissa function may apply to the south storeroom’s locus 50 in the immediate vicinity to locus 8 and locus 256 whereas locus 8 (together with 256?) may have comprised a second decorated pithos libation ritual site. This transformation of the pithoi turned otherwise common utilitarian vessels into highly ritualized, nonutilitarian ones, now imbued with the numinous and more or less equal to a cult statue. While the transformative power of writing divine words and drawing divine images has its analogy in Egyptian religion and magic, its effect was also conceptually similar to that of the animating mouth-washing rituals in ancient Near Eastern traditions more generally. The Larger Decorated Pithos Repertoire: “From Z to A” As pointed out previously, the excavators noted that pithos A and B were found in a location separate from that of all the other pithoi. We know that they were originally designed for storage given that they were marked as such with the aleph and qof-resh incisions before firing.22 The excavators assume that pithoi A and B were in fact set up together in the bench room at one point perhaps as part of a sacred locus there.23 It is more likely that they were set up where they were found given that there are perfectly reasonable explanations for their respective findspots as well as for those other decorative pithoi fragments that will be designated C, D, and E, Building B’s Z sherd, and the courtyard’s so-called A fragment. The following assessment of the known decorated sherds provides a starting point for expanding the search for ritual at KA. When these data are viewed collectively – pithos A’s recovery from the bench room coupled with its religiously themed, decorative elements, the bench room’s complementary evidence for ritual, and the diagnostic data reflective of a ritual assemblage in locus 13 – they clearly point to a ritual function for pithos A, one well beyond its former role as a storage container. Furthermore, pithos A’s ritual function sets the precedent for similar possibilities 22   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions”; whether these markings are matters of quality or quantity is tangential to this treatise. 23   Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 205, 240, 243.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 25 regarding pithos B and those pithoi represented by fragments C, D, E, Z and the so-called A fragment. Divining the Markings: The Decorated Sherds In fact, pivotal evidence for positing additional ritual loci at KA much like that described for the bench room comes in the form of additional decorated pithos sherds C, D, and E, Building B’s decorated Z sherd, the courtyard’s decorated pithos B and the so-called inscribed A fragment. Each of these may point to still other ritual loci. The prospective remnants of three decorated pithoi represented by fragments C, D, and E were recovered from locus 8, the easternmost sector of the south storeroom. Fragments C, D, and E have rarely been mentioned in past publications and were only marginally treated in the final report. The pithos C fragment comprises a large sherd fragment with a partially legible four-line (or more?) red-ink inscription (inscription 3.16) preserved near what was one of the jar’s handles. A fourth such sherd is simply referred to in the final report as “a large part (a shoulder and body) of a jar.” It too preserves a red-ink inscription (3.17), but is illegible due to its poor condition. It too was recovered from the southeasternmost sector of the south storeroom, or locus 8, in close proximity to the pithos C fragment.24 For practical purposes, it is designated here as the pithos D fragment. A fifth pithos fragment described either as “a fragment of a jug or storage jar” or as “a potsherd” includes a drawing in red ink of a boar with no identifiable accompanying inscription. Beck designated it as the “Boar Y” sherd.25 A full-color photo of this sherd, which is designated here the pithos E fragment, vividly captures the drawing of the boar. It was found in the southeastern sector of the south storeroom on or near wall no.1 in the same area as pithos fragments C and D.26 A sixth sherd, which is referred to as fragment Z or the Z sherd by the various contributors to the final report was perhaps once part of a whole pithos. Along with the corresponding pithoi represented by the fragments C, D, and E, it may have been used for scribal-artisan drafting like pithoi A and B prerequisite to their roles as ritual loci.27 It was recovered outside Building B in the area west of the northern wing in 24   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 51–52; Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 268–69 and figs. 7.49, 7.50. See Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 74, for the inscription’s site-map location. In making the observation that “It is the only ink inscription which was uncovered at Ajrud on a jar,” are they assuming a technical distinction between jars and pithoi? See pp. 104–5 for comment and photo (fig. 5.48). 25   Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 180. 26   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 18, 52, for general map location and reference and see Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180 for comment and color photo of the boar (fig. 6.29,“Boar Y”). Ayalon (“The Pottery Assemblage,” 217) concluded that, “at least four of the pithoi were painted.” 27   Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180.

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locus 161.28 Finally, as addressed in the following section, should the evidence not confirm that the so-called fragment of pithos A found in the courtyard alongside those of pithos B, was part of the bench room’s pithos A, it may represent a seventh, previously unrecognized, decorated pithos. Deciphering Decorated Sherds as Whole Pithoi That the pithos fragments C, D, and E were recovered from the south storeroom along with many other sherds, partially preserved pottery and a variety of whole jars, speaks against these sherds as isolated practice surfaces or ostraca employed as stand-alone fragments for exercises, drafting, or graffiti following the breakage of their respective pithoi. That sherds C and D preserve letters and lines that appear to continue beyond the breakage borders of the sherds themselves also argues against their constituting isolated, individual sherds prior to their decoration. Rather, each sherd comprised a fragment of a larger, intact pithos that first served as a storage container, then, like pithoi A and B, as a writing and decorative surface.29 Once imbued with numinous power concomitant to their decoration, each of the pithoi was then set up in ritual loci. In the case of fragments C, D, and E, the most likely locus was 8, the south storeroom where visitors could access their newly acquired numinous powers. Although the boar drawn on sherd E is contained entirely within the confines of the edges of its sherd, there are traces of red ink on the borders where Beck identified similar traces of another animal that overlapped with the boar.30 This similarly suggests that the fragment was part of a larger drafted figural scene on a whole pithos. If the south storeroom’s southeasternmost sector, locus 8, served as a ritual annex to the bench room, then the location of the decorated sherds found there suggests that they represent surviving fragments of corresponding intact decorative pithoi. They were deliberately placed in that location as a ritual locus for receiving libation rites and accessing divine provision and protection as numinous nexuses just like pithoi A and B in locus 6. In sum, the two decorative sherds C and D had partially or totally illegible traces of writing on them, while the E fragment preserved a boar drawn in red. All three were found in or near locus 8, the southeasternmost sector of the south storeroom. All three fragments preserved evidence in the form of ink traces that extended beyond their breakage edges indicative of their character as fragments of larger scenes that were drawn or inscribed on intact, whole pithoi.

28   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 53, 56. Note that these authors identify the figure on the Z sherd as a woman and elsewhere even as “(a seated deity?).” For the floor plans of the area in question, locus 161, see pp. 54–55. 29   One should keep in mind that for his quantitative analysis, Ayalon had similarly assumed that each pottery sherd represented a whole pithos or jar. 30   Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 27 That such seemingly isolated fragments could represent whole intact pithoi rather than or in addition to practice ostraca, finds unequivocal confirmation in the case of the so-called A fragment; at least as it has been widely interpreted since its discovery forty years ago. It was found in the courtyard as the supposed lone fragment from pithos A, alongside the fragments of pithos B. In this case, an otherwise lone, decorated pithos fragment was presumed to have represented an intact decorated pithos. In other words, even the reconstruction of pithos A and pithos B was achieved using only a partial database of fragments; neither was preserved in its entirety.31 The Z Fragment or Sherd. The Z sherd with its seated male figure in bichrome and its presentation in the final report as a composite of smaller fragments likewise may represent what was a fully intact pithos employed as a drafting surface like pithoi A and B with their integrated scenes and accompanying epigraphic captions and graffiti. The Z pithos sherd is 22 cm in height second only to the 32 cm seated figure preserved on wall painting no. 9. Both are far larger in scale than anything else recovered from the inventory of pithoi drawings and painted figures at KA according to Beck. The Z sherd’s figure was executed using the multiple colors yellow and black. It is the only bichrome drawing on pottery at KA. Pithos Z also preserves a ladder and dot design. The decorated frame of the chair and the dot design were rendered in black. The Z sherd’s bichrome image of the seated figure with its parallels shared by the polychrome-seated figure on wall painting no. 9, represents one among several examples reflective of the drafting character of the pithoi drawings and epigraphs that ended up on the walls as finished murals (and see further below). At first glance, fragment Z’s findspot outside Building B offers little in the way of identifying any functional context, though one can safely conjecture that like the pithoi and jars more generally and prior to its being decorated, it once served as a storage container. Its find location, locus 161, is an open area in front of the north wing of Building B’s northernmost entryway less than 3 m west of the westernmost wall (W 42). Its location there might be indicative of its deliberate positioning as an additional numinous ritual locus for libations much like pithos B’s erection in the courtyard of Building A. Both would have provided ready access to the site’s visitors.32 Beck mentioned it may have belonged to a decorated pithos like A and B, 31   See ibid., 174–77 for the numerous color photographs and projection drawings that clearly illustrate that the reconstructed pithoi A and B comprise a combination of ancient fragments and modern ceramic, and note the illustration drawings in Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 250 (pithos A), 256 (pithos B). 32   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 54 for Building B’s floor plan and p. 56 for a summary of the rather enigmatic finds, including a pithos fragment with inscription 2.6, which was incised before firing “to the governor of the city,” along with a layer of brown earth, ash, and straw overlain by many sherds, white-plaster fragments, branches, fecal matter (subsequently deposited), and ash patches underlying an aeolic dust deposit.

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Fig. 2.2. Projection drawing of pithos A (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

but also entertained the possibility that it was an ostracon or study piece for one of the wall paintings.33 Yet, no elaboration on such a statement was offered, while the two clear examples of decorated pithoi from KA used for drafting, pithoi A and B, indicate that such decoration took place on large, intact pithoi that also has its analogues in contemporary Egypt. The So-Called Pithos A Courtyard Fragment. The above factors raise similar possibilities for the so-called pithos A fragment found with the remains of pithos B in Building A’s courtyard. The fragment might in fact represent a decorated fragment from another, seventh, yet-unknown, fully intact pithos, but one much like those associated with the pithoi fragments C and D and possibly E and Z. The only evidence for “joining” the pithos A fragment from the courtyard with the pithos A remains recovered from the bench room constitutes what Ayalon refers to as the characteristic “two parallel circumferential grooves that were incised before firing” in the shoulder area of the KA pithos. Yet, the incised grooves are a more general characteristic of the numerous ridge-rimmed storage pithoi, including pithoi A and B, all of which were produced near Jerusalem.34 Furthermore, the proposed alignment of the fragment with the other reconstructed parts   Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180, 197.  See Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 87, but consult Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 217–18, for illustrated drawings of reconstructed whole ridge-rimmed pithoi with two parallel circumferential grooves. For photographs of actual pithoi, like 7.8:1 and 7.8:2, see esp. figs. 3 and 4 on p. 220 in fig. 7.10a. Ayalon notes there were seven such complete pithoi and fourteen more fragments. 33 34

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 29 of pithos A as illustrated in the report’s projection drawing, while plausible, is hardly full proof that the proposed join is the end of the matter (see fig. 2.2 for the projection drawing of pithos A).35 It is quite detached spatially from the other fragments. The inscription preserved on the courtyard fragment has no direct organic connection with the inscription 3.1 from the bench room’s reconstructed pithos A.36 Even the A fragment’s partial image of the chariot horse-and-rider shares no thematic associations with images on pithos A otherwise (but note the archer on pithos B).37 In the end, Beck left open the identity of the chariot-horse painter and refrained from associating that hand with any of the other artists she had identified on pithos A.38 In essence, there is nothing that decisively joins the fragment with the other parts of pithos A. Even if the hands were deemed to be paleographically approximate, a single scribe could have produced multiple inscriptions on more than one pithos. A Second Immanent Ritual Setting: The South Storeroom’s Locus 8 Of course, if C, D, and E each once represented an intact decorated pithos it begs the question, did the south storeroom serve then as a ritual locus or as a “ favissa?” And did it do so as a complement to the bench room and/or the bench room’s northeast corner room or favissa where the numerous small vessels were deposited? The most likely scenario is one in which locus 8 served as a ritual annex to the bench room and not as a favissa. There, pithoi C, D, or E were erected as the central components in a second ritual locus as the objects of similar libation rituals designed for visitors to access divine provision and protection. The lack of evidence for obstruction of access to and reuse of the assemblage in locus 8 confirms its function as a ritual locus rather than as a favissa. Owing to the decorative elements preserved on these sherds as well as their specific findspot where the diagnostic evidence otherwise indicates that some type of ritual action took place, namely, in locus 8 and 256, it appears that pithoi A and B were not alone at KA as ritually central, decorative pithoi. When these additional decorated pithoi are viewed from within their immediate diagnostic context and appropriately assessed as material indicators of ritual, as many as seven such pithoi might have served as ritual loci (that is, if the Z sherd and the so-called pithos A fragment from the courtyard are also included). In a fashion analogous to that of the bench room’s pithos A in locus 6

  Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 87.   Although the brief text of the fragment, “I have blessed you,” does provide a plausible, but at best only partial, transition between line 1 and line 2 of pithos A’s inscription 3.1. 37   See the detailed treatment by Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 160–61 who highlights both the Assyrian and regional artistic traditions discernible in the chariot horse. 38   Ibid., 161. 35 36

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along with its adjacent favissa, locus 13, some type of ritual transpired in locus 8 of the south storeroom. The decorated pithoi represented by fragments C, D, and E all played crucial roles in that ritual. This also finds confirmation in the details surrounding the associated assemblage of artifacts in locus 8 and what may well constitute a second favissa at KA in locus 50. Locus 50 is adjacent to the ritual loci 8 and 256 where the decorated pithoi fragments C, D, and E were found and where their corresponding whole pithoi would have been installed. In the fill of the eastern part of the south storeroom, locus 8, various finds were recovered along with the fragments C, D, and E and their accompanying inscriptions and drawings. These included small vessels, a chalice, two grinding stones, five loom weights, a spatula, worked-wood pieces, and three complete pomegranates.39 In the immediately adjacent locus 50 of the same storeroom area were the richest and most diverse finds of the entire building, including the bottoms of two pithoi standing in hollowed-out holding troughs dug into the ground and all but blocking the central – but not the eastern! – entryway to the storeroom. Other finds included vessel fragments, straw, ash, wood, rope pieces, textiles, animal and fish bones, pomegranate remnants, olive and date pits, barley seeds, a wooden handle, a stone stopper, seven plugs, and a bead.40 A particularly surprising find was a drawing of a human head, goat, and lotus flower painted directly onto the unplastered surface of one of the doorjamb stones to the central entryway of the south storeroom adjacent to the western perimeter of locus 50.41 Like the bench room’s so-called favissa in locus 13, it is proposed here that locus 50 functioned in a similar capacity for the large decorated pithoi C, D, and E that had been erected in locus 8 and perhaps 256. Locus 50 is immediately adjacent to locus 256, which in turn is adjacent to locus 8. It continued much of the deposit in locus 8: a cooking pot, two bowls, perforated jar bases, a jug, mud stoppers and a lid. It likewise preserved ash, straw, organic materials, rope and textile pieces, animal and fish bones, parts and peelings of pomegranates, olive and date pits, and barley seeds. Also found in locus 50 were a wooden handle, a stone stopper, seven plugs for jars and pithoi, a bead, several incised, undecorated pithoi, along with a significant increase in the overall quantity of ceramics. Locus 256 preserved a ceramic cooking pot and two bowls, a stone bowl, a jug stopper with an imprint of cloth on its underside, and a woven textile

  Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 52.   Ibid., 51. 41   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 196 and fig 6.42 for a photo of the 6 × 13 cm doorjamb painting no. 12. It is comprised of (1) large lotus flower petals, (2) a goat or other horned animal, (3) another small animal, (4) a human head and torso carrying a long stick, (5) a larger head of some kind of beast, perhaps a lion. Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 51 and fig. 2.73 describe the same as, “a faded drawing in red and yellow of an animal in front of one or two human heads.” 39 40

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 31 fragment with blue and red threads or sha‘atnez. In addition, remnants of ash, straw, and branches were recovered much like that found in locus 50.42 The larger area encompassed by locus 50 and 256 indicates that some part of this zone to the immediate west of locus 8, and more specifically locus 50 with its marked increase in ceramic remains, comprised a favissa. Confirmation of this includes the blocked access to locus 50 from the west by the erection of two fully obstructing, pit-embedded, undecorated pithoi, while on its east, two steps transitioning into locus 256 led the excavators to conjecture that a partition might have once stood at that spot, which would have made locus 50 all but inaccessible. Moreover, unlike locus 8, locus 50 offers no evidence for decorated pithoi within its confines. If the previous proposal – that in locus 6 (and locus 8) the decorated pithos A (and possibly B) stood erect serving as a ritual locus much like a figurine would for the performance of libation rites, votive, and dedicatory offerings – then their absence from locus 50, along with its deliberate obstructed access, confirms that location’s function as a favissa, rather than as a locus for the performance of ritual. In addition to the three decorated pithoi represented by fragments C, D, and E as the objects of libation ritual, locus 8 also preserved such exotica as Nile perch bone fragments, unidentified bone fragments, and a sharpened, pointed wooden implement. From the collapse or fill in locus 8 – from the report it is not clear which descriptor best applies – two grinding stones, five loom weights, a spatula, pieces of worked wood, and three complete pomegranates were recovered.43 Locus 8 also preserves a cooking pot, a large sieve, bowls, the large stone basin with the votive or dedicatory inscription 1.2, a jug, and several pieces of fine and coarse linen. The inscribed large stone basin sat at the east entrance to the south storeroom all but blocking access to locus 8, unless of course its positioning was designed with a ritual function in view, one beyond its dedicatory placement as indicated by the rim inscription, 1.2 (“to Obadyaw, son of Adna, blessed be he by YHWH”). Perhaps it served as a receptacle of drinking water, for ritual washing, or for water used in the performance of nominal libations to the decorated pithoi erected in locus 8.44 Another object of ritual importance from locus 8 is the hard limestone ashlar block with its marks of combed dressing. It is different from any other building stone at the site. It was not set in a wall, but free standing in locus 8 under a pile of fallen artifacts. While Meshel and Goren do not mention this ashlar block in their resumé of the finds in locus 8, Nadin Reshef includes it in her analysis of the

  Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 51–52.   Ibid., 51–52; Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 268–69, figs. 7.49, 7.50. Might not whole pomegranates indicate votive offerings rather than meals since they were not consumed? 44   Nevertheless, its tilted placement above a debris level suggests it may have originated from another location possibly from a second-story collapse, see Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 52. 42 43

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thirty-three stone objects found at KA.45 Did this object serve as an altar of some type, an uninscribed stele, or a ritual stand of some sort? Perhaps unlike the other stone slabs from KA, this one did serve as a mas s  ә  bāh. One of the ceramic bowls retrieved from locus 8 is described as a “high-based bowl” or chalice, like the one also attested in the bench room’s locus 6.46 As part of larger, nondomestic pottery assemblages, such chalices served on occasion as indicators of cult and were known to function as cultic drinking vessels, offering stands, and incense burners. Surely, when viewed in the light of those diagnostic objects locus 8 shares with locus 6 – and especially the religiously themed, decorated pithoi that they have in common, as well as their comparable favissae – it must be more than coincidence that one such chalice was recovered from locus 8, while the only other such chalice at KA came from the verifiable ritual context of the bench room, locus 6.47 In the final analysis, however, the decisive diagnostic object that plays the determinative role in the presence or absence of a ritual locus at KA is the numinously empowered decorated pithos. It not only served as the object of libation rites, votive and dedicatory offerings, possibly initiating in turn the burning of incense and sacred meals, but as proposed above, it also represented a divine image as part of a (state-sponsored?) ritual complex introduced at KA in convergence with international, regional, and local ritual, iconographic, and religious traditions. In sum, with the decorated pithoi functioning like category A objects – cult images or figurines in this case – then, along with the accompanying category B objects, they point to a cultic or ritual locus.48 Kuntillet Ajrud’s Other Ritual Annexes and Their Favissae The bench room (locus 6) with its decorative pithos (A) and adjacent favissa (locus 13), and the southeasternmost sector of the south storeroom (loci 8 and 256) with   Nadin Reshef, “Stone Artifacts” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 351–57.   Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 213 and fig. 7.5; see bowls 7.3.19 and 7.3.20 on p. 212, and see p. 251, fig. 7.34 for the label “chalice” in identifying this same bowl retrieved from locus 6; also p. 210 no. 7.3.19. The bowl designated 7.3.20 on p. 210 is identical, so Ayalon pairs these as 7.5.1 and 7.5.2 on p. 212. On the chart on p. 211 he locates the similar bowl 7.3.20 from p. 210, his no. 20 in locus 8, and no. 19 in locus 6. 47   See also the limestone, four-legged bowl from locus 14a at the entrance to the bench room in Reshef, “Stone Artifacts,” 351, 354, 356 (no. 13) and cf. Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 72–75. The same goes for such prospective ritual paraphernalia as decorated lamps, small vessels, single beads, ostrich egg shells, seashells, dressed stones, bichrome ware, and decorated kraters. Two game boards, perhaps employed in divination rituals, were found at opposite ends of Building A, in locus 10, a corner room at the west end of Building A, and in locus 22, outside Building. A’s east entrance. 48   Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 73 list chalices as category B objects, i.e., well-attested, but equivocal, identifiers of cult in nondomestic contexts unless of course they are found together with category A, nonutilitarian objects. 45 46

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 33 what may well comprise its decorative pithoi (C, D, and E) and adjacent favissa (locus 50), offer compelling evidence for multiple locations at KA of ritual loci centered on the decorated pithoi. Likewise, the northeast corner of the courtyard area where pithos B was set up and found in locus 19 may point in the same direction. Locus 19 preserved the following assemblage; four storage jars, a cooking pot, and a flask, two fragments of worked wood, a palm stem, braided plant fibers, a crude pointed wooden plug wrapped in textile, another thick piece of wood painted with white plaster, three other incised, but unpainted sherds, one with a lamed (2.8), another with an aleph (2.19), and the large fragment from pithos A, which bears only the following divinely originating words: “I have blessed you.”49 Also mentioned by the various contributors to the final report are locus 19’s date pits, olive pits, and pomegranate shells,50 unidentified bone remains, two cowrie shells, bird feathers,51 and numerous linen and wool pieces.52 Assuming pithos B had taken on a similar apotropaic function as pithos A following its use as a drafting surface for divine images and epigraphs, then the diagnostic assemblage in locus 19 had been complemented in much the same manner as locus 6 and locus 8 by the inclusion of a decorative pithos that was essentially equal in function and status to a figurine serving in the capacity of a divine image. The same could apply to the so-called A fragment, assuming it represented another whole decorated pithos. Yet, locus 19 lacks a convincing candidate for a favissa as the adjacent locus 18 preserved only a minimum of finds. There is suggestive dispositional evidence for still another ritual locus at locus 102 in the southern half of the west storeroom. It is accessible from the storeroom’s central entryway and required an immediate turn to the left, rather than to the right to locus 1, which was blocked by four pit-embedded, undecorated pithoi. The deliberate obstruction of locus 1 indicates that it might have served as a favissa that in turn may have been subsequently expanded further north as available space diminished so as to include locus 10 and/or 92 at the northwest end of the west storeroom. The evidence for the dispositional character of the latter loci or the areas above them include: from a collapse, two painted-plaster fragments, a mud stopper, processed wool, textile fragments, a pomegranate shell, date and olive pits, barley seeds, numerous seed husks, three unusual pottery vessels including a unique pithos (7.9:2), a “strange” storage jar (7.13:7), and a decorated bichrome jug (7.22:4).

  Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 32–34. The wording preserves some elements of the blessing formulae attested in graffiti inscriptions 3.1 and 3.6 and Khirbet el-Qom inscription 3 (see further below). 50   Nili Liphschitz, “The Botanical Remains,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 347, 349. 51   Horwitz et al., “The Faunal Remains, 329–31. 52   Avigail Sheffer and Amalia Tidhar, “Textiles and Basketry,” in Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 290, 292, 296. 49

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Locus 10 preserved nine stone objects also from collapse, three rectangular worked stones, two bowls, a flat smoothed stone, and a flint pebble.53 Three of the four stones had rounded artificial depressions. The excavators recovered what they identified as a mas s ә bāh from the same area along with a gaming board with an incised grid (for mantic purposes?), another bowl, and a loom weight like the other eleven recovered from the west storeroom. Most tellingly, the central entryway to the west storeroom was extensively decorated with a profusion of plaster wall inscriptions and images. The poorly preserved plastered wall inscriptions 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6 were all found in or near the entrance as was the mostly illegible inscription 1.3 on a stone-bowl fragment. The wall painting no. 11, preserving a head of a human (and perhaps more?), is accompanied by the illegible inscription 4.5 serving as its caption. It was recovered in situ in the doorway to the storeroom while many other painted plaster fragments were found inside the west storeroom in locus 92.54 A somewhat more elaborate scenario may better account for various material ritual elements lacking in locus 19, a favissa, and in locus 102, namely, category A diagnostic objects indicative of a cultic or ritual locus. It involves a prospective ritual procession in which decorated pithoi were transported to and fro between locus 102 and locus 19. In this hypothetical ritualized scenario, a decorated pithos like pithos B was not only on occasion transported to and set up in the courtyard for public display and access, but it was also regularly returned to and installed in locus 102, as a more-discreet location in the west storeroom, perhaps as a factor of continued access by a different or smaller sector of the visitor clientele. Such a scenario would implicate an associated favissa located near 102 where pithos B was temporarily installed when not on display in the courtyard. As noted previously, locus 1, which is adjacent to 102, reveals clear signs of deliberate obstruction at its southern access while loci 10 and 92 may constitute subsequent stages of its expansion. This proposed ritual procession, or one like it, not only can simultaneously accommodate the lack of a favissa in the courtyard area near locus 19, which was located instead in the western storeroom in locus 1, but it can also account for the lack of a decorated pithos in the west storeroom’s locus 102, now present in pithos B’s regularized return there (which was temporarily installed in the courtyard at the time of destruction) only to be transfered back to locus 19 in the next processional rotation.

  Perhaps rituals were performed on a second floor above 102 as attested in contemporary Transjordan, for which see Daviau, “Anomalies in the Archaeological Record,” 103–27 where she assesses the evidence of cult (altars) in a contemporary second story context at the industrial site of Khirbet al-Mudayna (northern Moab). 54  See Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plans and Phases,” 46–48. 53

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 35 The Ritual Lives of Kuntillet Ajrud’s Decorated Pithoi The phases in the on-site, ritualized lifespan of pithoi A and B and their decorated pithos analogues represented by fragments C, D, E, (and possibly Z as well as the so-called A fragment) may be summarized as follows: (1) after their use as undecorated storage jars, (2) pithoi A and B were selected to serve as drafting surfaces as a preliminary step toward the painted application of sacred décor on the site’s plastered walls, (3) then as a result of, but concomitant with the decorative writing and image making on their surfaces, A and B acquired new status as numinously imbued ritual objects, (4) which, as a preplanned stage, (theo)logically led to the decorated pithoi being set up as sacred nexuses in the bench room and in the courtyard as publicly displayed, readily accessible embodiments of apotropaism’s power to provide and protect KA’s visitors,55 (5) and where they received libations, votive, and dedicatory offerings, accompanied by incense burning and sacred meals, (6) all of which was complemented by their subsequent ad hoc role as receptacles of visitors’ graffiti (e.g., 3.1); an interactive gesture of personal piety that reenhanced and redirected their immanent apotropaic powers to particular audience groups (e.g., Samarians in the case of pithos A). Concurrent to each of these ritualized developmental stages in the lifespan of pithoi A and B, (7) pithoi C, D, and E were erected in the south storeroom’s locus 8 in a parallel ritual locus complete with its own favissa, locus 50. A similar set of numinously empowering ritualizing processes and stages may have transpired with regard to those pithoi represented by the Z sherd at locus 161 and the so-called A fragment involving loci 19 and 102.

The Collocation of Apotropaism: The Numinous Pithoi, Walls, and Loci Crucial to the diagnostic repertoire of objects verifying the existence of ritual loci and their associated favissae at KA are the several decorated pithoi and the exceptional status they acquired following their use as drafting surfaces and their resultant imbuement with the numinous and with apotropaic powers providing and protecting visitors to the site. Regardless of these proposed developments, however, KA’s diagnostic repertoire otherwise substantiates the performance of some type of ritual in loci 6 (pithos A), 8 (pithoi C, D, and E), 19 (pithos B and the A fragment), and possibly loci 102 and 19 (i.e., pithos B via a processional) and 161 (pithos Z). The presence of chalices, small vessels, (jugs, juglets, flasks), small lamps, small bowls and large basins, some inscribed, some not, along with various aquatic 55   See further below and Schmidt, “Kuntillet Ajrud’s Pithoi Inscriptions and Drawings” for detailed treatments of the apotropaic and numinous dimensions of the decorated pithoi and the mural wall paintings.

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exotica and the occasional favissa, not to mention the preponderance of religiously themed drawings and epigraphs concentrated near or in these same ritual loci, validate the presence of ritual on the site and in more than one location. It was tentatively proposed above that the following rites made up the ritual complex performed at the decorated pithos loci: water libations, votive and dedicatory offerings, and possibly sacred communal meals, and incense burning. Nevertheless, the specific meanings attached to these rituals are ultimately tied to the religious significances one attributes to the decorated pithoi. If the pithoi were imbued with numinous power as a result of their use as drafting surfaces, then the act of decoration might have enhanced the relative significance attached to the decorated pithoi as ritual objects. As the very carriers and conveyers of the numinous, did they possess the ritual status of figurines in their capacity as divine images or did they maintain the “lesser” sacred status of votive objects? The fact that the two pithoi preserve both drawn images of supranatural beings and the written words of the gods suggests a religious significance well beyond the conventional, something more than that conveyed by votive gifts. What is the upshot of all this? The raison d’etre of such an unconventional form of libation ritual was aimed at sustaining and enhancing the divine provision of water from the wells nearby in anticipation that those water sources might otherwise fail adequately to supply the site or become dysfunctional in some manner. This emphasis finds confirmation in such exotica as the bones of salt-water and fresh-water fish, seashells and cowrie shells, chalices, and the preponderance of small vessels, even the prestige textiles that presumed stable working conditions for the industry’s laborers. In sum, such a libation ritual sought divine protection and provision in the face of the desert’s extreme conditions. Moreover, given the long distances required to reach the site by travelers, pilgrims, traders, and the suppliers of external provisions, should emergency measures arise, they might demand the transport of water from alternative locations of greater distance, perhaps from the same sources that the external provisions originated. The rituals were designed to address such unpredictable events.

Transmitting the Numinous: From Drafts to Murals Given what researchers have detailed regarding the various artifacts, drawings, and inscriptions that had converged in and around the bench room suggestive of its ritual associations, we turn to the similar, but not identical, detailed site histories of the two pithoi, A and B. But in order to further assess the character and function of the pithoi and their decoration in their wider context, four lines of evidence will be outlined below that together establish a compelling case for the “secondary” use of these two storage pithoi as drafting surfaces for the painting of wall murals at KA. 56  See Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 197. Much of what is proposed below

56

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 37 Pithos Decor as Scribal-Artisan Drafts What follows confirms that as drafting surfaces, the pithoi A and B (and C, D, E) passed through an intervening phase between their initial use as undecorated storage jars on the one hand, and on the other, their positioning as decorated pithoi in the bench room and storeroom(s) as material embodiments of numinous power and the objects of ongoing libation rituals performed by travelers passing through KA. In this respect, their intermittent phase between pithoi as storage jars and pithoi as loci for the numinous – that is, their use as drafting surfaces – profoundly impacts the reconstruction of their religious symbolism and function and those of the site more broadly. The Case of the Two “Seated Figures” The first line of evidence comes in the form of two renditions of a particular image, an anthropomorphic figure of elite rank seated on a high-back chair.57 One was preserved on the large “Z” sherd referred to previously and so named by the various contributors to the 2012 report. It was once part of a whole pithos that may have been used for artisan-scribal drafting like pithoi A and B.58 It was recovered outside Building B in the area west of the northern wing (see fig. 2.3 for the seated figure).59 is based on Beck’s many insightful observations and proposals as set forth in her 1982 article, which was reproduced more or less unchanged in the 2012 report (with the lone exception of Meshel’s editorial note on p. 165). Tallay Ornan and Irit Ziffer have followed up on Beck’s original observations in proposing external influences from imperial Assyrian art forms as expressions of Israelite royal emulative impulses (e.g., the hunt, the battle, and the role of semidivine protectors), see Tallay Ornan, “The Drawings from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” in To Yahweh of Teiman and His Ashera: The Inscriptions and Drawings from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (“Horvat Teman”) in Sinai, ed. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel, Ze’ev Meshel, and Tallay Ornan (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 2015), 44–68 (Hebrew) and, Irit Ziffer, “Portraits of Ancient Israelite Kings,” BAR 39.5 (2013): 41–51, 78. In what follows the present author develops many of Beck’s observations regarding the “internal” parallels between the pithos repertoires of both art and epigraph and their prospective corresponding wall mural repertoires. Various Egyptian practices and forms are also invoked in support; some of which were indicated by Beck, while others more recently have been proposed by expert Egyptologists (see further below). In the final analysis, a significant degree of cultural hybridity emerges at KA with the presence of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Phoenician, Samarian, Judean, and even Edomite influences (on which see further ch. 5). 57  See Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180–81 for the figure on the Z sherd, and pp. 189, 191–92 for the figure in the wall painting no. 9. Beck (“The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 200 nn. 14, 16, 19) mentioned a seated figure at Iron Age Ramat Rachel in stone balustrade on a painted sherd, for which see Yohanan Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rachel (Rome: Università degli studi, Centro di studi semitici, 1964), 42–43, fig. 30:1, pls. 28, 38. 58   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180. 59   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 53, 56. Note that these authors identify the Z sherd as a woman and elsewhere even as “(a seated deity?).” For the floor plans of the area in question, locus 161, see pp. 54–55.

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Fig. 2.3 (left). Sherd Z’s seated figure (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

Fig. 2.4 (below). Wall painting no. 9, seated figure (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

The other figure comprises a more elaborate plastered wall painting of a similarly seated figure found in the outer entry court to Building A.60 The Z sherd figure is 22 cm in size and the wall painting figure is 32 cm leaving both far larger in scale than anything else recovered from the inventory of pithoi drawings and wall painting figures at KA according to Beck. Moreover, both seated figures were executed using multiple colors: bichrome or yellow and black in the case of the inked seated figure on the Z sherd, and polychrome or yellow, black, and red in the case of the seated figure in wall painting designated no. 9. In fact, the “Z” sherd figure is the only surviving bichrome drawing on pottery at KA. Both also preserve a ladder and dot design as the decorated frame of the chair and in both cases the dot design was rendered in black. They both appear to preserve traces of outlining. The Z sherd figure is rendered in yellow outlining and the wall painting

  Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 189–92, and see p. 144 for its find location on the site map, locus 1. Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 16–17 provide floor plans of Building A that include what they reconstruct to be the original location of the painted seated figure no. 9 on Wall 20, the wall of the entrance court adjacent to locus 15; see figs. 2.13 and 2.15. 60

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 39 figure no. 9 shows elements of red outlining detailing the profile of the head (see fig. 2.4 for the seated figure no. 9).61 Beck seriously entertained a scenario in which the seated figure on the Z sherd served as a drafting version of the seated figure painted on the wall (wall painting no. 9), though in the end, she hesitated to embrace this conclusion. For Beck, they lacked the convincing exactitude of detail, so she outlined three other possible scenarios: the mural artists were keeping practice by drawing on pithoi with no intention to transfer their specific sketches to the walls, or the pithoi drawings were illustrative of the dedications in the inscriptions, or they were practical dedications in their own right.62 Yet, their shared characteristics outlined above along with the three other lines of evidence explored in what follows strongly endorse her initial inclination to relate directly the two figures; the one comprising a draft of the other. 63 Wall painting no. 9 is polychrome and the Z sherd is bichrome, and as already mentioned, the latter clearly stands alone as the sole exception to the ubiquitous monochrome drawings that made up the pithoi inventory of images otherwise. Moreover, the perceived lack of shared details Beck noted when comparing the two seated figures can be reasonably attributed to the difference one might expect between a mere practice piece using, in this case, recycled ceramic pithoi and its formal, finished decorative version executed on a white-plastered wall. This is in fact a recurring distinction between the pithoi decorations and the more formal renderings on the walls generally and one that Beck presumes throughout the KA artistic repertoire. That is to say, the writings and drawings on the pithoi fragments at the drafting stage clearly tend toward crudeness, while those painted on plastered wall fragments are far more polished. This applies across the board regardless of whether or not one concludes that the two repertoires share any direct connections between them.64 Thus, the first line of evidence supports a connection between the drawings and inscriptions on the two pithoi and those on the wall paintings. It illustrates the artistic practice well documented in ancient Egypt of drawing study pieces on pottery fragments or ostraca and on large surfaces like whole jars and limestone slabs in preparation for executing the same or similar depictions in a more elevated and formal style on the walls of buildings (see further below under “Anomaly or Convention,” p. 56). The Case of the Two “Overhead Captions” The second line of evidence illustrates and confirms not only the preplanned phenomenon of artisan-scribal decorative drafts rendered on pithoi and pottery in   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 180, 192, 194.   Ibid., 180–81, 196–97. 63   An alternative scenario is that the Z–sherd figure was a draft, but not the specific precursor to the figure represented by the wall painting no. 9. Rather it was drafted for another similarly seated figure designed for the walls, but one that was not recovered. 64   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 197. 61 62

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Fig. 2.5. Projection drawing of pithos B (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

preparation for painting art on walls, but it also entails the use of inscription combined together with a drawing.65 The convergence of these two media, script and symbol, in my estimation, was implemented for the specific effect of intensifying the divine empowerment and religious meaning, the numinous, conveyed in such exceptional display. The case at hand involves two distinct versions of an interpretative inscription painted and positioned at a calculated distance above the head or heads of human figures (see fig. 2.5 for the projection drawing of pithos B). The first example comprises the inscription 3.9 and the scene of the gaggle of six worshippers on pithos B from Building A’s courtyard. It should be recalled that according to the excavators, pithos B was previously situated in the bench room along with pithos A, the wall inscription 4.1.1 and a wide range of other cultic paraphernalia. Inscription 3.9 was positioned by design above the heads of the integrated worshippers scene, and as part of an overall framing technique that 65  In Egypt, preparatory drawings on ostraca could include inscriptions as well, in this case, hieroglyphs. One can find examples in William Christopher Hayes, Ostraca and Name Stones from the Tomb of Sen-Mūt, No. 71, at Thebes, Publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Egyptian Expedition 15 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1942). Recently, a set of preparatory ostraca written in cursive hieroglyphs was published by Barbara Lüscher (Die Vorlagen-Ostraka aus dem Grab des Nachtin (TT 88) [Basel: Orientverlag, 2013]), but they do not accompany drawings. I thank Professor Joachim Quack for these references.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 41 Fig. 2.6 (right). Pithos B (photo; image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

Fig. 2.7 (below). Wall painting no. 11 (photo; image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

included the positioning of inscription 3.6 to the right of the scene and 3.10 to the left – all three equidistant from the worshippers scene. Inscription 3.9 comprises a generalized blessing for all who would lay eyes on the pithos and worship at the bench room and as well as for those who would gaze upon those painted walls at the site designated to display the inscribed and painted worshippers scene in its more formally stylized and enlarged final rendition (see fig. 2.6 for a photo of pithos B’s worshippers scene and caption).66 Its approximate parallel, which is not so well known, is preserved on a wall painting from the western storeroom of Building A (Beck’s wall painting no. 11, see fig. 2.7 for a photo). It includes an image of a human head with an associated inscription in very close proximity positioned above and arching over the head and serving as its caption (inscription 4.5). In fact, the head has been described as being situated “in between” the remains of letters from the inscription in the excavation’s final report.67 Although the details of the image and caption remain opaque, it should be mentioned here that both executions of drawing-and-inscription, pithos B’s gaggle of worshippers plus inscription 3.9 and the wall painting no. 11 plus inscription 4.5, were rendered in red ink. This applies to the images and inscriptions in both cases. While the full details of the head and inscription that were inked on the plastered wall are irrecoverable, as both are only partially preserved, what is clear is that the original scene minimally included a human head with an accompanying over66   As will be demonstrated, several KA samples indicate that overlapping could be by deliberate design. 67   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 194–96, and see p. 144 for its location on the floor plan at locus 87. Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 119 list its locus as 101 while Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 40 identify its locus as 104, and note the plans on pp. 38–39. In any event, these are neighboring loci.

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Fig. 2.8. Wall painting no. 11 in situ (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

head inscription. Beck points out that besides wall painting no. 11, no other wall painting fragment with an image included any writing attached to it, although several pieces of plaster recovered from the debris without images did.68 Whether the head and inscription in either instance were executed by a single hand, an artisan-scribe, or by an artist then a scribe (or vice versa, or in tandem) is impossible to decide (partially due to the lack of overlapping in these two instances). In any case, how many hands were at work practicing on the pottery or producing the formal wall paintings is of less import than whether or not an artisan-scribe (in a succession of artist-scribes?) responsible for the final executions on pottery or wall, sought to connect an image or inscription he had rendered with those already executed on that same surface and in immediate proximity. In other words, did our artisan-scribe, by executing what would be his final element in a pithos scene, attempt to complement those that he (or someone else) had previously drawn in that same scene? In so doing, did he seek to create a coherent scene that included image-and-inscription? And was it a more formal version of such a scene that he or another or others in turn transferred to a corresponding mural scene on one of the walls at KA (and see fig. 2.8 for no. 11 in situ)? The other inscriptions rendered on the plastered walls (4.1–4.4) and published for the first time in 2012, were written in red or black ink and composed in Phoenician script and/or language.69 Phoenician otherwise does not appear at KA. This   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 196.   With the exception of inscription 4.6, which was executed in Hebrew script and language; so Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 120–21. 68 69

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 43 has suggested to several experts that Phoenician was apparently reserved exclusively for the plastered wall inscriptions as a prestige script (and/or language). So the artisan-scribes were either Phoenicians or locals emulating Phoenician practice in their formal decorative art and scribal work on the walls and doorjambs of KA.70 This in turn suggests that the badly damaged inscription 4.5 drawn above the head in red ink on the plastered wall drawing no. 11 was in all likelihood written in Phoenician script and/or language. If indeed this was the case, then the lone example of a wall painting fragment that contained both image and writing was composed in Phoenician by a Phoenician or as an act of emulation on the part of a Judean. This pair of images of a human head with an overhead inscribed caption, one on a pithos and another in a wall mural, offers a second compelling piece of evidence for the connection between the pithoi decorations as drafting pieces and their corresponding execution as polished murals on the building walls at KA. In this instance, however, one is not the precise draft of the other, but rather an approximate parallel draft. While Beck entertained the connections outlined here, she also highlighted what she viewed as a significant spatial gap between inscription and drawing in the case of pithos B’s six vertically listed names on inscription 3.10, and the images of the six worshippers positioned to the right as evidence of their conceptual distancing, and for her therefore, their disconnect.71 Furthermore, inscription 4.5 and wall painting no. 11 evince neither overlapping nor distancing, only proximity.72 She also emphasized the lack of overlapping between wall painting no. 11 and its inscription 4.5 over against what she viewed as the contrasting case of inscription 3.1, which overlaps the left-hand Bes-like figure’s headdress on pithos A.73 Yet, Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel entertained the possibility that the overlapping of the red ink inscription 3.1 with the headdress of that Bes figure on pithos A does parallel the red ink inscription 4.5 on the wall plaster that bears letters surrounding the image of the head on wall painting no.11. For them, these two examples together provoked the speculation that “there is a linkage between the inscription and the image” in the art of KA.74 The now well-known inscription preserved on pithos A from Building A’s bench room, inscription 3.1, preserves a blessing inscribed above the larger of the two Bes-like figures (the left-hand Bes or Bes L) that at one point overlaps this figure’s headdress. It encompasses an example of a graffito inspired by firsthand experience of visiting the site’s bench room. As such, 3.1 was inscribed on pithos A following   André Lemaire, “Remarques sur les inscriptions phéniciennes de Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” Semitica 55 (2013): 83–99; Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 126. 71   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,”183, and for the drawing of the worshippers, see pp. 92, 94, 148, 175; for inscription 3.6, see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 95–98; for 3.9, see ibid., pp. 98–100; for 3.10, the list of names, see ibid., pp. 100–101. 72   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 194, 196. 73   Ibid., 87–91, 119, 194–96. 74   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 119 but who in the end deferred to Beck. 70

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Fig. 2.9. Graffito inscription 3.1 (photo; image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

its installation as a locus of divine power in the bench room. It was probably not part of a preplanned design as a caption combining text and image like inscription 3.9 and pithos B’s worshippers scene or inscription 4.5 and the wall painting of the human head, each of which comprised one stage or another of a larger scene composed as a draft that was then transferred to a wall at KA as a full-color mural. Graffito 3.1 as well as 3.6 and 3.10, and their role in the ritual world at KA as graffiti, along with the question of whether an inscription’s overlap with an image at KA reflects mere spatial limitations or purposeful design, are addressed in greater detail below.75 Pithos A (Locus 6, bench room) #3.1. Overhead Graffito [overlapping the larger Bes-like figure’s headdress, see fig. 2.9] Message of [--] o o [--] m[ ]k: “Speak to Yaheli and to Yo‘asah and to […] ‘I have blessed you by YHWH of Shomron and by His Asherah.’”

75  Alternatively, inscription 3.1 might comprise a correction of another artisan-scribe’s draft by a supervising artisan-scribe in which case it would have constituted part of the predesigned draft that was in turn represented in more elaborate style in its rendition as a corresponding wall mural.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 45 Pithos B (Locus 19, courtyard) #3.6 Right hand Graffito [adjacent to the worshippers scene on a vertical axis] Message of ‘Amaryaw: “Say to my Lord, are you well? I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah. May he bless you and may He keep you, and may He be with my lord [forever].” [2012 translation] As my Lord’s utmost saying goes: “May it go well for you. I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah. May they (YHWH and His Asherah) bless you and may they keep you and may the people of my Lord be […forever].” [my translation; see further pp. 77–78 below]

Returning to Beck’s treatment of the relationship between the worshippers and the “framing” of the three inscriptions, she noted that 3.10, which comprises a corresponding list of six names on pithos B, did not provide an exact match to the number of worshippers. Yet, matters appear rather more complex on this front as the remnants of a sixth human head preserved on the pithos fragment would complete the matching total of six. Moreover, when viewed from the perspective of the wider perimeters of the scene, one can see that the six worshippers are equidistant from the name-list inscription to the left, 3.10, and from the blessing inscription to the right, 3.6, as well as from the caption blessing situated above, 3.9. This strongly suggests that the approximate distance separating at least two of the inscriptions, 3.9 and 3.10, from the integrated scene formed, by design, a partial framing device surrounding the worshippers. These inscriptions would have been fully integrated into a coherent scene when rendered on a wall of KA along with the worshippers and the large empty-space aniconism “represented” immediately above the worshippers but below inscription 3.9. Inscription 3.6, however, was not originally part of that framing device. As interpreted in the 2012 final report, the graffito character of 3.6 is indicated by its highly personalized character in referencing at least two persons, one by name, the use of the singular number and the first and second person, and the active voice of its verb of blessing, BRK.76 Graffito 3.6 was rendered on the surface of the pithos A following its location in the bench room 76   While the distinction proposed here between a graffito (e.g., 3.1 and 3.6), a draft that served as a caption (3.9), and a wall-mural inscription (4.1.1) is my own, the stimulus for the graffito component is the treatment of visitors’ graffiti and dedications in Alice Mandell, “‘I Bless You to YHWH and His Asherah’ Writing and Performativity at Kuntillet Ajrud,” MAARAV 19 (2012 [2014]): 24– 27 following Alexander J. Peden, The Graffiti of Pharaonic Egypt: Scope and Roles of Informal Writings (c. 3100–332 B.C.), Probleme der Ägyptologie 17 (Leiden: Brill, 2001) and see also Eugene Cruz-Uribe, “Graffiti (Figural),” UEE, http://escholarship.org /uc/item/7v92z43m, 2008: and H. Navratilova, “Graffiti Spaces,” in Egypt in Transition: Social and Religious Development of Egypt in the First Millennium BCE: Proceedings of an International Conference: Prague, September 1–4, 2009, ed. Ladislav Bareš, Filip Coppens, and Květa Smoláriková (Prague, Czech Institute of Egyptology, 2010), 305–32; and Peter Keegan, Graffiti in Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2014), 114–38.

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where the decorated pithos functioned as a locus for numinosity and libations. The visitor-author recognized the spatial framing that surrounded the worshippers on two sides and added graffito 3.6 as a third panel at equidistance from the scene (but for a different interpretation of 3.6, see below, “The Responsive Graffiti”).77 As a graffito, 3.1 would have been inscribed sometime following pithos A’s use as a practice sketch for the production of wall murals and perhaps its positioning in the bench room. Graffito 3.1 is an intentional expression of commemoration by a literate elite visitor to the bench room as a direct and immediate response to the divine power present and publically displayed by the inscribed blessings and painted images on the walls and on the pithoi at KA. Yet the graffito character of 3.1 does not eliminate the possibility that the resultant overlap was intentionally made by its inspired, yet knowledgeable author in order to make more explicit the association between image and text in the mind’s eye of the writer. The author of the graffito conceptually and materially connected the numinously imbued depictions of the two Bes-like figures with his textual references to YHWH and His Asherah. Both graffiti 3.6 and 3.1 were direct, personal responses by visitors of the bench room at locus 6 and also at locus 8 to the theophanic character of the pithoi’s former draft sketches now-turned-numinous-images-and-words, and to their even more impressive, approximate renderings on the corresponding wall murals at KA.78 The Case of the Two “Inscribed Blessings” A third line of evidence supporting the connection between the pithoi decorations and those on the plastered walls are the similarities shared by two corresponding inscriptions. The one is comprised of an actual blessing formula inked on pithos B, inscription 3.9. The other is a surviving inscription from a plastered wall fragment 4.1.1 that similarly declares YHWH’s blessing has been bestowed on humanity:

77   This also best accounts for the overlap of 3.6 on top of Bull R, which, according to Beck, was apparently rendered before and independently of all the other elements overlapping it, namely, the abecedaries, the blessing inscription 3.6, and worshipper Q; so Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 157, 176. 78   If one were hypothetically to entertain the view that 3.1’s overlapping with the larger of the two Bes-like figures comprised part of the artisan-scribe’s drafting sketch for a wall painting as an inadvertent overlap of the left-hand Bes-like figure and inscription 3.1 or the intentional connecting of elements to form a coherent, integrated scene, then the artisan-scribe who transformed the scene into a wall mural was graphically made aware of the coherency of the two elements. In the wall mural scene, such overlap might well have no longer been needed or desirable. The overlapping might comprise the correction or revision of the scene by a supervising artisan-scribe that was added before the scene was transferred to the walls.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 47

Fig. 2.10. Caption inscription 3.9 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

Fig. 2.11. Caption inscription 3.9 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

The Pithos B Inscription 3.9 [Caption directly above the worshippers scene, see figs. 2.10 and 2.11] (1) (2) (3)

… to YHWH of the Teman and His Asherah, whatever he asks from a man, that man will give him generously. And if he would urge, YHW will give him according to his wishes … [2012 translation]

(1) (2) (3)

… to YHWH of the Teman and His Asherah. … whatever He (YHW[H]) is asked from a man,79 He will give him generously and if he would urge, YHW will provide him … according to his desire. [my translation]

79   The verb yšʾl (< šā ʾal) here is a Niphal prefixed form, yiššāʾēl not a Qal, and see Sandra L. Gogel, A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew, RBS 23 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1998), 121–26 on the plausibility of Niphal forms in epigraphic Hebrew.

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Fig. 2.12. Wall inscription 4.1.1 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

Fig. 2.13. Wall inscription 4.1.1 (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

Plastered Wall Inscription 4.1.1. [Caption, north wing of bench room, see figs. 2.12 and 2.13] May He lengthen their days and may they be sated […] recount to YHWH of Teman and His Asherah […] because YHWH of the Teman has shown [(them(?)] favor, has bettered their day(s) … [2012 translation]

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 49 May He lengthen their days and may they be sated […] may they be provided by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah […]80 Show them favor, O’ YHWH of the Teman, … better their day(s)!81 … [my translation]

In addition to their shared focus on the general blessings and favor of YHWH, there are additional elements that these two texts, 3.9 and 4.1.1, hold in common; their references to YHWH’s localization in (the) Teman and the use of the prefixing definite article on the geographic name Teman (keeping in mind that the one on the wall has been identified as written in Phoenician script, but Judean dialect, while the pithos inscription is written in Hebrew script and Israelite dialect). Moreover, neither of these texts contain the intimate and personal elements that characterize the graffiti 3.1 and 3.6 where personal names are mentioned and close relationships between the one blessing and the one blessed is clearly conveyed (3.6), nor do either convey a blessing via the active voice of the verb BRK or the use of the first or second persons in the singular (“I” and “you”). Instead, the blessings are more generally conveyed by means of the third person and in alternating singular and plural numbers (“he” or “they” as subject, and as object, “him, “them”), making them readily applicable to any who might have read, heard, viewed, or otherwise experienced them. Finally, they both may have served as captions for their respective images. While that is clearly the case with 3.9 as proposed here, 4.1.1 is lacking what might have been an associated image owing to the severe fragmentation and fading suffered by the plaster surface.82 In closing, it must be more than mere coincidence that the inscribed fragment 4.1.1, alongside pithos A with its décor and most likely pithos B with its similar décor and inscription 3.9 were all located in the bench room at some point in their shared history. Inscription 4.1.1 was recovered from inside the bench room itself, as was pithos A. If pithos B was located in the bench room alongside pithos A before it ended up in the courtroom where it was found, then the similarity of genre, voice, referentiality (here, third person), content, morpho-syntax (the use of the definite article he- on Teman) and style shared by the two inscriptions 3.9 and 4.1.1 along with their shared spatial proximity and religious function in the bench room confirm their relationship as draft and corresponding formal composition.83 Such does not establish their direct organic association as identical draft and final 80   The third verb (ytnw) in line 1 is the plural prefixed Qal passive of nātan > yuttěnû “May they be provided.” The initial verb (yʾrk) is the singular Qal prefixed form “May He lengthen their day(s),” but could be the prefixed Niphal (yēʾārĕk) preceding its plural or singular subject with the suffix written defectively on ymm for yômām “May their day(s) be lengthened.” 81   Both verbs in line 2 of 4.1.1 are viewed here as Hiphil imperatives hêtēb (< yātab). 82  See Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 105–9. 83   Moreover, that 4.1.1 might have served as a caption to an accompanying figural wall painting cannot be dismissed given its projected very large size, see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 109–10.

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Fig. 2.14. Location map of inscriptions (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

form however, as they do not completely share the same idiom and lexicon. Yet, when considered together with the three other lines of evidence presented above, their unequivocal similarities otherwise strengthen the proposal that some, if not many, of KA’s artistic and scribal productions on pithoi were drafts transferred to the plastered walls as elements in fully integrated decorative scenes in which image and epigraph converged and from which the numinous consequently radiated. The Case of the Two “Artistic Repertoires” Also Beck noted that the artwork on the pithoi and on the walls has a number of motifs in common: lotus flowers and buds, horned animals, grazing bovines, and seated figures. On the pithoi and related sherds these are isolated motifs; on the walls the same motifs were elements in larger integrated scenes.84 Although most of the wall paintings are bi- or polychrome, those on the pithoi are all monochrome with one telling exception; the so-called Z sherd depicting the large, seated figure in black and yellow. While the wall painting no. 9, likewise depicting a large, seated figure, was rendered in black, yellow, and red, the sherd drawing and the wall painting of the seated figures both have black dots in the ladder pattern of the chair 84   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 197. Some integrated scenes are clearly evident among the pithoi drawings. Besides the two Bes-like figures which Beck tentatively refers to as Bes and Beset (p. 169), there are the cow-and-calf motif on pithos A (and partly preserved on pithos B), the worshippers scene on pithos B comprising a lone male worshipper (with phallic marker) accompanied by four or five females, and the lotus tree flanked by two ibexes (one male, one female?) positioned above (mounted on?) a lion on pithos A.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 51

Fig. 2.15. Location map of painted pithoi and plaster wall fragments (image courtesy Ze’ev Meshel)

frame (see fig. 2.14 for the location map of inscriptions).85 Beck also pointed out that the lyre player, the Bes-like figures, the boars, the horses, and other isolated animals appear only on the pithoi while the voluted palmette trees, the checkered borders, and the guilloche are preserved solely on the murals.86 These seemingly distinct artistic elements peculiar to the each of the respective media raise a crucial point concerning the significance that one ought to attach to what appear to be mutually excluding elements. Do they discredit the notion that the two larger repertoires of iconographic phenomena are connected? First it is worth reiterating what Beck had long ago pointed out concerning the wall murals. She was “able to reconstruct only miniscule portions of the original scenes,” and that the murals “must have been executed in a large scale” given the size of two of the surviving fragments, no. 9 (the seated figure 32 cm) and no. 10 (the lotus chain).87 In other words, while the original wall murals must have been much more substantial and 85   Beck also noted that the leg and hoof of a bull or cow might have been rendered on another wall painting, no. 8 recovered from L 155, outside Building B. She concluded that the leg is of the same form and length as those of the male and female bovines on the pithoi. Is this additional evidence for the transfer of decoration from pithoi to wall paintings? Is it to be related to the cow and calf scene on the two pithoi and/or to bull R on pithos B? 86   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 197 (except for painting no. 12). 87   Ibid., 196–97

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rendered “large,” the surviving wall art data that have no parallels with the pottery or pithoi sketches are too few to eliminate the connection between the drawings on the pithoi and those on the mural art.88 There may have been in the pithoi drawings many parallels to what only survives today in the miniscule evidence surviving from the wall paintings (see fig. 2.15 for the location map of the painted pithoi and plastered wall fragments). The inverse of course, applies as well. There may have been in the wall paintings many more parallels than what has survived only in the pithoi drawings. In the absence of so much that must have been originally present on the walls and the pottery, they probably held numerous motifs in common, including some or all of those listed by Beck as peculiar to one or the other. The available evidence on both fronts is quite limited vis-à-vis what must have been two very large parallel repertoires with many more shared motifs than what we currently can identify in the partial, fragmented evidence. The absence of evidence in this case stands as a non sequitur. In fact, Beck went on to conclude with regard to the pithos painters and the mural artists and whether or not they were one and the same, “there is no doubt that the iconographic background of both stems from the same horizon” with the mural art exhibiting “a higher standard of craftsmanship.”89 The same situation obtains with regard to the pithoi drawings and inscriptions. The actual inventory of images and inscriptions on pottery was much larger and more varied than what we currently have. Here the evidence from the additional decorated pithoi becomes relevant. As many as five decorated pottery fragments were treated previously: fragments C, D, E, Z (and A from the bench room). Of those, three, C, D, and E were identified as representing whole, decorated pithoi based on their shared findspot in the south storeroom, which served as a ritual annex with adjacent favissa, and on the identification of continuous text or drawing lines extending beyond the edges of the sherds themselves (and requiring more pithos surface).90 The Z sherd was previously considered an isolated ostracon when it was decorated and not a whole pithos, and a fragment identified as part of pithos A in the bench room remains enigmatic.91 Although not wishing to split hairs, it is important that the types of storage vessel in view here be delineated as accurately as possible. Were there three inscribed 88   Meshel and Goren (“Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 15) note that the gypsum white-plastered walls covered all parts of the bench room in Building A and throughout Building B and that it was designed so that the inscriptions and murals could be painted on the walls. 89   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 197. 90   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 104 and note their comment regarding inscription 3.17, “It is the only ink inscription which was uncovered from Ajrud on a jar,” (as opposed to those on pithoi?). Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 217 states: “four of the pithoi were painted after firing with drawings and inscriptions….” 91   Although the fragment recovered from the courtyard and labeled a pithos A fragment was provisionally identified above as a fragment from another decorated pithos (and not of pithos A), for lack of compelling evidence it will not be included in the statistical estimates here.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 53 pithoi and only one decorated jar or four ridged-rim pithoi in all? Ayalon’s detailed inventory of the storage-vessel typology and frequency impacts directly on what we can surmise using quantitative analysis to estimate the probability that other inscriptions and drawings were executed on pithoi and/or on jars, or for that matter, other pottery vessel types used for storage at KA.92 For the sake of expediency, Ayalon’s assumption that each sherd fragment in his inventory represents a whole vessel will be invoked as a starting point with the caveat added that a known undecorated fragment or sherd presents the possibility that the other fragments from that same whole vessel might have preserved on their surfaces more inscriptions and/or drawings.93 Five known “decorated” ridged-rim pithoi at KA can be verified, four with inscriptions (A, B, C, D), two of which also have drawings on them (A, B), and one with only a drawing (E, with the boar).94 Assuming that the two decorated, justless-than-whole samples, pithoi A and B, and the three other decorated fragments C, D, and E, represent what were once five whole, decorated ridged-rim pithoi, and comparing those to all known whole ridged-rim pithoi, which is seven, then a ratio of 5:7 represents the known decorated vs. the known total. The additional remaining samples of ridged-rim pithoi comprise fourteen sherds. If we assume that each of the fourteen sherds represents a whole ridged-rim pithos, all things being equal otherwise, then at an established ratio of 5:7 we might anticipate that another ten out of fourteen ridged-rim pithoi could have been decorated in a fashion similar to the five known cases for a grand total of fifteen out of twenty-one.95 If inscriptions and drawings had been executed on other types of storage vessels, such as the other two types of pithoi and the various types of jars, then the possibilities multiply significantly.96 With the available jar inventory added to the pithos repertoire, the five known, decorated pithos examples would represent a portion of the total aggregate of 92  Note Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 239: “Since the site was only briefly inhabited, and was almost completely excavated, with finds restored and inventoried, there is definite significance to the relative number of vessels of each type within the assemblage.” 93  See Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 239. His table 7.1 summarizes the entire pottery type frequency at Kuntillet Ajrud. He includes both complete and broken items in each type in order to estimate the total number of known whole vessels in that type while counting each fragment as representative of a single hypothetical whole jar or pithos. 94  “Decorated” is used throughout to refer to the execution of inscriptions and/or drawings in ink on an object’s surface; in the case at hand, on that of a storage vessel, following its firing. 95   Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 217 notes as a subset of the storage vessels, that twenty-six pithoi of three different types were found at KA representing some 6 percent of the total assemblage and that seven complete pithoi with ridged rim were recovered along with fourteen sherds. That leaves one whole pithoi and four sherds representing the other pithoi types at KA, the gutter-rimmed, the pithoi with “everted” rim and four handles, and some miscellaneous types. 96   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel (“The Inscriptions,” 104) comment regarding the pithos fragment D and its inscription 3.17: “It is the only ink inscription which was uncovered from Ajrud on a jar.”

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known whole pithoi (eight from all three types) and whole jars (26), for a total of 34 and a ratio of approx. 1:7. Based on the number of pithoi sherds (19) and jar sherds (156), the grand total of remaining samples of whole pithoi and other jars would hypothetically comprise 175. If we assume that each of the 175 sherds represents a whole pithos or jar following Ayalon’s precedent, then at an established ratio of 1:7 we might expect that another 25 (out of 175) combined pithoi and jars had been decorated with inscriptions and/or drawings in a fashion similar to the five known cases.97 In other words, the few pithoi and jars we do have that preserve decorative inscriptions and drawings after firing – five to be precise – may represent only a fraction of a larger storage vessel inventory that was subsequently pressed into service for purposes of drafting art and epigraph (as few as 15 and as many as 30).98 This scenario would certainly coincide with the myriad of wall-painting fragments recovered from the site, as the wall paintings were first drafted on pottery or pithoi surfaces. We may simply be missing those other pottery fragments with writing or art on them, some of which is due to their decomposition or, with time’s passage, to the fading of the ink. Keeping in mind that the site was a one-period site that was all but fully excavated with a virtually complete pottery assemblage, these few added inscribed fragments from pithoi along with the evidence from pithoi A and B constitute compelling evidence for a larger body of pithoi and jar drawings and inscriptions that might have existed at KA – or at minimum, more than just pithoi A and B – which would coincide with the potentially large repertoire of wall murals and wall inscriptions. The point to be underscored: those motifs seemingly appearing as distinct to either repertoire, whether to the pithoi or to the painted, plastered walls, do not eliminate the possibility that these motifs could have been shared by both repertoires as many more pithoi and much more painted plaster were undoubtedly decorated, but remain forever irretrievable. This caveat along with the motifs that Beck identified as common to both, further confirm the likelihood that the former constituted drafts of inscriptions and drawings in preparation for the final finished versions executed on the plastered walls as murals. The Case for Scribal-Artisan Drafts The several correspondences common to the numerous decorative motifs both on the pithoi and those on the wall painting repertories, as well as the three other corresponding lines of evidence set out here, namely, the two seated figures, the two sets of heads both with overhead caption inscriptions, and the two parallel 97   Ayalon (“The Pottery Assemblage,” 205, 217–19, 239) summarizes his quantitative analysis by noting that 50 percent of the entire pottery assemblage was storage vessels (nine types of jars: 182 jars; 26 whole and 156 sherds – 44 percent; and three types of pithoi: 26 pithoi; 8 whole, 18 sherds), while cooking pots are relatively scarce compared to other sites. 98   They served as the focus of the decorated pithos libation ritual proposed earlier. The rather large number of estimated decorated pithoi might indicate they had short lives as cult images and were frequently replaced.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 55 sets of epigraph, in each case, one on pottery, the other on painted plaster, demonstrate how the pithoi drawings and inscriptions that made up the multicharacter wall-mural scenes were designed. These were not visitor graffiti, although as we have noted, other writings and images on the pithoi probably functioned in that capacity (e.g., 3.1 and 3.6 over against 3.9 and 4.1.1).99 Rather, they comprised artisan-scribal practice pieces executed on pithoi in anticipation of their more formal versions rendered on the plastered walls of KA’s buildings. Just like the two sets of images – the seated figures and the captioned heads – the two sets of inscriptions, the one on a pithos, the other on a plastered wall – illustrate the same correspondences shared by the pithoi inscriptions and their counterparts on the painted walls at KA. Any discernible differences reflect the respective levels of style and form inherent to each. Yet, such differences constitute what one might expect when one compares sketches on pottery with their corresponding formal decorative wall compositions.100 In the final analysis, various lines of evidence strongly endorse the connection between some, if not many, of the pithoi decorations, both those drawn and written, and their analogous wall-painting decorations. Representatives of the former served as drafts or preliminary sketches in preparation for executing their more formal mural versions on the plastered walls of KA. The convergence of symbolically and religiously charged icons and epigraphs executed on the walls of KA in large tricolor display, conveyed something of the special nature of the site, and certainly the numinous nexuses situated in its bench room, possibly in its south storeroom, and even elsewhere. Yet, the same applies to the pithoi and other objects that were initially employed as scribal and artisan drafting surfaces. Once text and icon were rendered on their surfaces, rather than being discarded as redundant materials or stored among the other vessels with which they formerly shared a more utilitarian function, they were interstitially located on the site in such spaces as the bench room and possibly the south storeroom. Since they were and remained imbued with numinous power – apotropaic power to be precise – they took on new value, demanding and inviting reverence and ritual as manifestations of divine protection. In response, literate, elite visitors subsequently painted them as they stood installed upright with spontaneous graffiti as an act of personal piety and reactiviation.101 This best explains the multitude of findspots on the site, where both the   On the various permutations of graffiti, ancient and modern, see Keegan, Graffiti in Antiquity, 114–38; Cruze-Uribe, “Graffiti (Figural)”; and H. Navratilova, “Graffiti Spaces.” 100   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel (“The Inscriptions,” 134) also noted this difference between the writing and drawing on the pithoi and those on the plaster of the walls and doorjambs. The latter is more fluent and the drawings of a much higher quality. They rightly compare the wall-plaster inscriptions of KA to the Balaam text on a plastered wall from Deir Alla, for which others have suggested an earlier draft or text served as the Vorlage of the wall inscription. 101   In this capacity, KA’s pithoi and pottery epigraphs and images, as well as their corresponding wall paintings, share their affective religio-magical empowerment with other ancient writing, graffiti or otherwise, textual and figural; see now Keegan, Graffiti in Antiquity, 114–38. 99

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decorated pithoi as well as the various other gifted objects were recovered from the corner rooms in or near the bench room and possibly the south storeroom and the courtyard. It also accounts for the so-called visitors’ graffiti on the pithoi that are clearly distinct in genre and that were provoked by the pithoi’s prior acquisition of numinous power. In this scenario, graffiti such as inscriptions 3.1 and 3.6 were not part of the drafted integrated scenes made up of image and epigraph (3.9, 4.1.1) that had previously been painted on the pithoi and transferred to the walls. Yet, they constituted ancient concurrent religious interpretations of the images and epigraphs by literate, elite individual visitors to the site. Anomaly or Convention: Pithoi as Large-Area Drafting Surfaces Beck in her treatment of the KA decorative art pointed out that “such preliminary sketches are well documented in Egypt … where pottery ostraca or stone flakes were used by the artists as ‘study pieces’ for the scenes they later transferred to the walls.”102 Typically, the size of the ostracon or limestone flake was small enough to hold in one hand while painting with the other. The average size of an ostracon or limestone slab “flake” approximated 30 × 30 cm (12 × 12 in.) and the writing surface might have preserved a total of twenty or so written lines, front and back. Robins mentions ostraca that served as drafting sketches of objects that artists had been commissioned to make and others that preserve a variety of unrelated practice images such as heads, hands, and hieroglyphs. These enable us to see all the better how artisan scribes were trained through copying, drafting, and practice. 103 What Beck did not address, however, is whether or not there is precedent for the use of large jars, pithoi, or similarly large objects as drafting surfaces. On the one hand, the size of KA’s pithoi, 100 × 60 cm (40 × 24 in.), would have rendered them difficult to manipulate; seemingly making them all but unsuitable.104 On the other hand, they would have been more susceptible as (random?) targets of graffiti. Yet, as argued here, they were selected as drafting surfaces in preparation for the transfer of the drafted images and texts rendered on their surfaces to the plastered walls as painted murals. As with the case of pithoi A and B at KA, and the other pithoi represented by fragments C, D, E, Z, and the so-called “A” pithos fragment found in the courtyard, it appears that rather large ostraca or whole jars and sizeable limestone slabs or “flakes” were in fact employed in Egypt as drafting surfaces for 102   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 197. Beck noted that the seated figure on the wall painting no. 9 rendered in polychrome in red, black, and yellow and the seated figure on the Z sherd, which is rendered in bichrome, black, and yellow might have been related as finished wall mural and its practice sketch, but decided they were not related because the two figures were not “more similar,” and the colors were not “identical.” 103   Gay Robins, Proportion and Style in Ancient Egyptian Art (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 162, 177. In Robins, The Art of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 191–92, the author notes the vast majority were drawn freehand, not on a grid. 104   Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 217.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 57 drawing and writing, in some cases with such drawing and writing (hieroglyphic) combined (see p. 40 n. 65 for examples). Figural Drafts on Limestone “Ostraca” or “Flakes” One such large limestone ostracon, for which Robins provides a photo image, depicts a king’s son and a vizier before Ramesses IX and is similar to scenes of Ramesses III, one on a wall in his funerary temple at Medinet Habu and the other on a wall in his temple at Karnak (in the precinct of Mut). Robins goes on to mention that the image of Pharaoh is much larger than those of his subordinates in the paintings on the temple walls. The drawing on Robins’s ostracon stood 48.5 cm (19 in.) in height and was carefully rendered in red ink and then corrected with black.105 She concludes that this ostracon sketch may represent an initial draft of a scene or an apprentice’s practice copy of a finished scene. The examples of drawings on limestone flakes in the catalogue edited by Minault-Gout includes a handful of limestone flakes as large as 47 × 41 cm (18.5 × 16 inches), 44 × 33 cm, 38 × 27 cm, and 37 × 26 cm.106 Robins describes another limestone ostracon from the Nineteenth Dynasty measuring a height of 16.5 cm, for which she also provides a photo image. It portrays a workman kneeling in adoration before the cobra goddess Meresger, protector of the Theban necropolis. Robins labels this drawing a votive ostracon.107 Epigraphic Drafts on Limestone Slabs and Whole Jars A particularly large – perhaps the largest known – limestone slab or “flake” in the Ashmolean Museum was used to write a partial copy (or draft?) of The Story of Sinuhe from the Nineteenth Dynasty. It stands almost three feet high (88.5 cm) and one foot wide (31.5 cm) with seventy lines of text on the front and sixty lines on the back.108 Limestone flakes were apparently employed much more frequently than potsherds and, as can be seen, were sometimes quite substantial in size, so on the face of it, it could have been rather difficult to manipulate them.109 Whereas the use of a complete jar for preparatory figural sketches per se remains for the present unattested, there are a couple of well-known cases of large complete jars used for writing what are likely either school exercises or writing drafts. It appears then that in at least some cases, large defective or damaged jars that were cheaper than papyrus or other media were employed for such preliminary purposes, but what about their size and lack of portability?   Robins, The Art of Ancient Egypt, 191–92.   Anne Minault-Gout, Carnets de pierre, l’art des ostraca dans l’Égypte ancienne (Milan: Hazan, 2002), 153–57; nos. 7, 49, 56, and 57. I thank Professor Joachim Quack for this reference. 107   Robins, The Art of Ancient Egypt, 191, fig. 231. 108   John W. B. Barnes, The Ashmolean Ostracon of Sinuhe (London: Oxford University Press, 1952). 109   For 120 or more decorated limestone flakes illustrated by photo image with accompanying commentary, see Minault-Gout, Carnets de pierre, 2002. 105 106

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Spiegelberg treated a handful of such jars and proposed that they were turned upside down and rotated on a potter’s wheel or on some similar mechanism while the scribe was seated in stationary position. They also preserved old labels indicating their prior use as storage jars containing wine or oil. The drafts were written in Demotic, the inscriptions contained short narrative stories dating from the first and second centuries CE.110 Parker offers an extensive philological treatment of a jar found in 1929 in a hole in the enclosure wall at the temple in Medinet Habu that dates from 271 CE. The jar at its maximum diameter is 70 × 20 cm (= 27.5 × 8 in.) and includes a four-column Demotic text comprising a “gardener’s agreement,” a unique reciprocal contract of sorts. Parker opines that the extended text comprises “more than a mere aid to memory.” Evidence for this text’s drafting character include the absence of dates, terms of employment, signatures, witnesses, and wages over against an immense amount of detail regarding the agreement itself.111 It is as if it were a template produced for anticipated customary contractual purposes wherein the details of said contract were duplicated and the “blanks” filled in on a papyrus version or perhaps on another surface (another jar?). What becomes clear is that in the drafting (or practice) stage, the practicality of an object’s larger surface size, its affordability and resilience might have taken precedence over the relative portability or handiness of the object itself. As Spiegelberg suggested, there were ways to manipulate a large object for such purposes. Thus, rather heavy, but less portable objects such as sizeable limestone slabs and large, damaged storage jars could be preferred objects for drafting by artisan-scribes. Their larger surfaces, combined with their resilience, affordability, the ability to manipulate them, and their susceptibility to attract graffiti over against more expensive papyrus, or fully intact, functional jars, or other more costly objects, made such objects with large surfaces the occasional choice for creating drafts of texts and images.112

110   Wilhelm Spiegelberg, Demotische Texte auf Krügen, DemStud 5 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912), 12–13. I thank Professor Joachim Quack for this reference. 111   Richard A. Parker, “A Late Demotic ‘Gardening Agreement’: Medinet Habu Ostracon 4038,” JEA 26 (1941): 84–113, pls. 17–20, esp. p. 113. Two protagonists, Talames and Peftumont, are mentioned throughout. They may reflect the choice not to delete names on the template in order to avoid creating too many omissions. Theirs was an actual case used as a model, with the names retained to function like “John Doe’s.” I thank Francois Gaudard of the University of Chicago for this reference. 112   On the matter of manipulating large, decorative drafting surfaces, note that the contributors to KA’s final report proposed that pithoi A and B of the bench room were decorated with some writings and drawings while standing upright, even elevated in some instances, and with others while positioned on their sides or resting on one of the benches above floor level elevation, see Ahituv, Eshel and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 87 and Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 181.

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Constructing Pithos Rites: The Images and Epigraphs Returning to the pithoi drawings and inscriptions themselves and the interpretation of their content, first up on the inventory of images and inscriptions is the identity of Asherah or the asherah. As one of the classic conundrums in the study of ancient Israelite religion, the term, concept, or the referent, Asherah or asherah indicates that it might either variably refer to a cultic object (a sacred pole?) or to the well-attested West Semitic goddess Asherah. When the former is indeed the case, then that cult object might have lost all meaningful association with said goddess or, as some dissenters have proposed, it might have retained some remnant or echo of that association.113 Recent studies on the feminine aspects of the divine in the ancient Near East, the HB, and in the material culture from sites in the southern Levant and ancient Israel, in particular KA and KQ continue to proliferate and advance our understanding of the ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean expressions of the gendered divine.114 Gendering the Divine Yet, before a detailed exploration into the wider Asherah-asherah phenomena can be initiated, a striking new datum, or more accurately, a groundbreaking, mind-blowing revision, demands lengthy engagement. To everyone’s great surprise, Ze’ev Meshel inserted an editorial note into Pirhiya Beck’s otherwise unaltered 1982 article included in the 2012 Kuntillet Ajrud final report. In it he points out that with regard to what was formerly proposed as a “loop” (identified either as a penis or a lion/leopard-skin tail) that had been drawn between the legs of both Bes-like figures on pithos A, said loop was in fact merely soot that has since faded over time in the case of right hand Bes-like figure (hereafter Bes R [right] and Bes L [left]). The result: nothing remains between the legs of Bes R as a comparison of the 1982 and 2012 hand drawings of this integrated scene makes clear, although Bes L has retained its “loop.”115 Meshel concluded, “This fact may change the interpreta-

113   For the most recent adoption of the view that the term asherah refers to a “temple,” see now Benjamin Sass, “On Epigraphic Hebrew ʾšr and *ʾšrh, and on Biblical Asherah,” in Bible et Proche-Orient. Mélanges André Lemaire III, ed. Josette Elayi and Jean-Marie Durand, Trans­ euphratène 46 (Paris: Gabalda, 2014), 47–66, 189–90, pls. 4–5. The evidence and arguments based on immediate and remote contextual details set forth below significantly diminishes the likelihood of this interpretation at Kuntillet Ajrud. 114   See the recent volume by Julia M. Asher-Greve and Joan Goodnick Westenholz (Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources, OBO 259 [Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013]) for an exemplary treatment of ancient gendering in early Near Eastern sources. 115   See the convenient side-by-side comparison of these drawings in Hershel Shanks, “The Persisting Uncertainties of Kuntillet Ajrud,” BAR 38.6 (2012).

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tion of the whole scene,” thereby “strengthening the hypothesis of several scholars that the two figures represent a male and a female.”116 Indeed, this rather recent editorial revision of an otherwise well-known, long-recognized, and accepted datum calls for reassessing the KA phenomena regarding the execution and identity of the two Bes-like figures. In her original treatment of KA’s drawings, Beck had identified several instances of gender marking and overlapping though she offered no comprehensive synthesis or analysis of either phenomenon. The identification of these two ancient artistic techniques at KA however, serves to clarify individual components that comprise an integrated scene, and it clearly facilitates the delineation of the parameters constituting an integrated scene on the pithoi and the interrelationships among its components. From such a bottom up analysis of crucial detail, one can initiate the reconstruction of a more comprehensive accounting of the various data from KA. But the first question that must be answered is whether or not there is any evidence for a scribal-artisan practice of gender marking? The second question calling for assessment is, can one distinguish between overlapping as a technique of artistic design over against its random occurrence? Gender Marking the Masculine Beck pointed out that calf X in the cow-and-calf scene on pithos A was marked with a phallus. Accordingly, in this integrated scene comprised of more than one figure, we have a clear case of the marked masculine gender on the suckling calf that is also juxtaposed with the feminine gender of the nurturing cow.117 Likewise, in the tree-and-ibex or tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene on pithos A, Beck’s ibex F has a phallus while the hind half of the right-hand ibex G is not preserved. So while we have another clear instance of marked masculine gender, we cannot be certain that its juxtaposition with the feminine was intended. Yet, there may be comparable data for just such gendered juxtapositioning between the two ibexes or caprids in the tree-and-ibexes component preserved in a pithos drawing from seventh-century BCE Lachish, on one of the two Taanach stands (A), and as part of the headdress of the Baal statue from Hazor.118 The figure N in the worshippers 116   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 165 and Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 66. A similar soot “smudge” covers the area where one might expect a drawn phallus on Lion H in the integrated scene of the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion on pithos A, see Beck, p. 152 (fig. 6.10), and 156 (fig. 6.13). 117   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 151, and see p. 150 for a photo and modern hand drawing. By inference, can we not assume the same juxtapositioning of gender between cow-and-calf in pithos B’s poorly preserved integrated cow-and-calf scene, cow and calf L, on analogy with the cow-and-calf scene of pithos A? See Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 148–49, figs. 6.6, 6.7 and 6.7a. 118   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 156, and see p. 146 for a photo. For photos of the other examples of the tree-and-caprids motif see Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 57

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 61 scene on pithos B is marked for masculine gender concerning which Beck curiously concluded, “if so, this is the only figure on the pithoi on which the male sex organ is indicated.”119 Yet, as we just mentioned, elsewhere Beck posited the drawing of a phallus on calf X and on the left-hand ibex F in two distinct integrated scenes.120 Another possible instance of masculine gender marking is the case of lion H, which is positioned below the tree-and-ibexes scene on pithos A. As was the case with the right-hand Bes-like figure on pithos A mentioned above, lion H has soot over the area where a phallus might have been executed.121 Nevertheless, lion H’s “naturally occurring” masculine form, namely, with hairy mane, clearly delineates its gender from that of lioness C, which is positioned well above the tree-and-ibexes integrated scene on the uppermost register of pithos A. She is clearly rendered with no mane. Finally, mention should be made of what Beck labels a “spiral appendage” on the underbelly of boar B on the uppermost register of pithos A. In spite of the presence of tusks and the masculine gender marking of the other figures surveyed thus far often involving a phallus, Beck identified the spiral appendage not as a penis, but as protruding entrails. Yet, she admits that the marking of entrails is rare and the known instances often involve animals lying on their backs. A phallus might be the more viable rendering here. The six unequivocal instances of masculine gender marking attested on the pithoi figures at KA include calf X (phallus), ibex F (phallus), worshipper N (phallus), lion H (mane, phallus?), boar B (tusks, phallus?), and bull R (long horn, phallus?). This compelling inventory of masculine gender marked figures strongly favors identifying the appendage on the underbelly of boar B similarly as a phallus. This in turn leaves only two other figures at KA that are clearly marked for masculine gender otherwise, but lack a phallus, lion H and bull R. Yet lion H may preserve a phallus beneath the soot covering the relevant area.122 Mention should be made here of bull R that overlaps with the edge of the pithos B worshippers scene. The

(illus. 54), 155–56 (illus. 182a), 216–17 (illus. 223), and on the Baal statue headdress from Hazor, see Tallay Ornan, “‘Let Baal Be Enthroned’: The Date, Identification, and Function of a Bronze Statue from Hazor,” JNES 70 (2011): 253–80. The horned animals also appear in a hand drawing on p. 255 in what might be a scene comprised of juxtaposed gender, with the right-hand animal donning a phallus, but in the absence of direct autopsy, caution would be prudent. 119   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 174 and see pp.174–75 for her hand drawing and a photo. 120   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 151, 156. Did she have in view the only “human” figure with a phallus in the instance of worshipper N? 121   See the photos, fig 6.10 and fig 6.13 in Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 153, 156. 122   As was the case with the Bes-like figure R and its “phallic error,” the soot smudge on the lion of pithos A would, if it were possible, warrant a reassessment of the relevant area, see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 153, 156 for photos figs. 6.10, 6.13.

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red ink markings in the relevant area of bull R are too faded to make a clear determination of the presence or absence of a phallus.123 By way of summary then, in three different coherent, integrated scenes involving two or more figures preserved on the two pithoi (the cow-and-calf, the worshippers’ procession, and the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scenes), we have at least one member in each that is positively marked for masculine gender with a phallus: the calf X, worshipper N, and ibex F. In three other cases of isolated figures in which masculine gender is unequivocally marked by other means, one may also be marked with the phallus, boar B, while in the two remaining, lion H with his mane and bull R with his horn and the absence of teets (cf. cow X), the phallus may have once been present.124 Gender Marking the Feminine Added to the masculine marked figures are those positively marked for feminine gender. These would include the pithos A lyre player with her distinctive hairdo and skirt and breast markings or nipple circles. The right-hand Bes-like figure (or Bes R) possesses similar nipple circles (see further below). Others marked as feminine include the numerous animals and worshippers that are not marked with a phallus, such as ibex J of pithos B, mare A on the upper register of pithos A, and the female worshippers M, O, P, and Q on pithos B. Alongside these, figures that appear in some telling role should also be considered as marked for feminine gender, such as the two nurturing cows X and L. The same goes for those occurring in their natural feminine form like lioness C without a mane on pithos A and again cows X and L, who are doubly marked for gender, if one also considers cow X’s teets and their likely inferred reconstruction on cow L. It is worth mentioning here Meshel’s gendered interpretation of the two relatively large, seated figures painted on the “Z” sherd and on wall painting no. 9 once mounted on the plastered wall of Building A’s entryway (W 20, adjacent to locus 15) and prominently displayed for all to see. He identifies these two figures as women.125 He does not however offer any evidence or argument for such a view. If Meshel’s description of the seated figure as a woman is found to be viable, then 123   Beck (“The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 157) observes, “Since the drawing is badly damaged, we had some reservations concerning the attribution of several lines to this animal although its existence is beyond doubt.” There is no photo of bull R in the final report, but see the projection drawing and the two photos of the overlapping inscription 3.6 where the bull’s head and horn are visible in ibid., 92, 96–97. 124   One can reasonably assume that lion H is a member of the integrated tree-and-ibexes scene. With its downward hanging tail, the lion carries the tree that in turn confirms the tree’s representation of a deity, for which see Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 232–40. The tree-and-ibexes scene can also appear as a self-contained, integrated scene as on the headdress of the Hazor Baal statue confirming the fluidity of the lion component. 125   Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 56, 66.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 63 we may have two more examples of female gender marking at KA. In the one instance, wall painting no. 9, we would have our sole example of gender marking from the repertoire of wall paintings at the site. If, however, as Beck, and following her, Ornan and Ziffer propose, the two figures are that of a male ruler – and the supporting arguments here are compelling – then we have two additional examples of masculine gender marking.126 Gender Juxtaposed In at least three cases involving integrated scenes, the masculine is juxtaposed with the feminine in the same scene, namely, the cow-and-calf scene on pithos A, the worshippers procession on pithos B, and to be added here is the Bes L and Bes R scene on pithos A. In another instance, the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene of pithos A, we cannot be certain of juxtaposed gender owing to surface damage to the relevant area on ibex G. As mentioned previously however, there may exist confirming evidence for just such gender juxtapositioning of the two ibexes in the tree-andhorned animal motif at Hazor. In the case of a prospective isolated figure like lion H, the potentially juxtaposed figure of lioness C is not part of the same scene. Yet, one could feasibly propose that lion H and lioness C comprised juxtaposed genders of the same animal species when transferred to the wall murals where they may have served as members of the same integrated scene.127 Similarly, the left-hand ibex F (with its phallic marking) of the tree-and-ibexes scene on pithos A might have been juxtaposed with the isolated ibex J on pithos B that lacks a penis, once these images were transferred to a wall mural and placed in closer proximity or in the same integrated scene. The same applies in the case of bull R and either cow X or L.128 Though cow L on pithos B has no corresponding calf, given her identical posture to cow X in the cow-and-calf scene on pithos A, it is likely that a calf originally comprised the complementary half to the scene. Lastly, the tree of   Beck as recent as 2000 in “The Art of Palestine during the Iron Age II: Local Traditions and External Influences (10th–8th centuries BCE),” in Images as Media: Sources for the Culture History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (1st Millennium BCE), ed. Christoph Uehlinger, OBO 175 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 165–83 (= Imagery and Representation [Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2002], 217–18) viewed the seated human figure as “a ruler,” or the contemporary king of Israel. And see now Ziffer, “Portraits of Ancient Israelite Kings,” 41–51, 78; Ornan, “The Drawings from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” 44–68. The only other remaining instances of animal or human figures preserved on the painted plastered wall fragments are a small animal, a goat, and a human head on painting no. 12 and the human head on painting no. 11, but these offer no indication of gender, see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 194–96. 127   Is the unidentifiable animal D above lioness C on the uppermost register of pithos A a sow? Its preserved hind half clearly lacks a phallus. If so, it may well have been designed as the juxtaposed feminine figure to boar B (and note the boar Y sherd) when transferred to the wall murals. 128   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 157, 161 concluded that bull R and the cows L and X were rendered by the same artist. 126

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the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene on pithos A conveys a nonanthropomorphic, nontheriomorphic, coherent symbolic image of the divine feminine. The associated deity may have been a goddess of fecundity, irrespective of any anthropomorphized identity attributed to her otherwise at KA. If such were the case, then lion H’s male gender may stand in juxtaposition to the feminine represented by the tree on pithos A. KA’s artisan scribes represented gender in a consistent, pervasive, and significantly telling manner. Bearded Ladies and Numinous Necks. There remain a few more outstanding points that require response on the gendering front. Beck had addressed the possibility that both Bes figures on the pithoi wore beards, as suggested by the vertical lines beneath their noses.129 Only one and a half vertical strokes are actually present at the vertical center of the neck of Bes R (and note the six lines on Bes L that take up the entire width of its neck area). Yet, at another point in her treatment on the same page Beck states rather surprisingly, “it is questionable whether a beard is represented at all.”130 Might the one and a half lines have once indicated a decorative neck collar on Bes R? Beck does identify the similar vertical lines on the lyre player’s neck as a decorative collar.131 Given that she closely associates Bes R with the lyre player otherwise and not with Bes L, then consistent with her own proposal, the similar lines on these two should be collars not beards. Still, elsewhere in her discussion, she notes that Bes L, not Bes R, and the lyre player actually have the closer parallels in the area beneath the neck, six and four lines respectively.132 The cumulative effect of these data renders highly unlikely Beck’s proposal that the two pithoi Bes figures were both masculine (i.e., there was no female Bes, that is, no Beset). Yet, given the above verification of their respective genders on independent grounds and the observable fact that none of the three sets of vertical lines are exact parallels, the matter of Bes beards at KA calls for a reassessment. The immediate contexts, or more precisely, the respective bearers of the object or objects represented by the vertical lines provide some potential elucidation. As established previously, Bes L is clearly marked male and the two others female. The unprecedented six vertical lines on the Bes L figure are unique in that they create a “wider width” in the neck area that, unlike the four lines on the female lyre player and the one and a half lines on the female Bes R figure, appear less like a decorative collar on the male Bes L, and perhaps more like the square-cut beard characteristic of Bes figures and Bes heads attested elsewise.133 In the case of the male Bes L however, with the set of six lines resulting in a disproportionate width in the neck and in line with his other   Ibid., 165, 169–70.   Ibid., 169. 131   Ibid., 169 and see esp. p. 200, n. 8. 132   Ibid., 165. 133   Ibid., 165; Jörg Eggler, “Bes,” in IDD forthcoming, 60. I thank Jörg Eggler for providing me with access to a prepublished draft of his lengthy and detailed article. 129 130

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 65 unequivocal masculine markers, those lines may convey a square beard. Yet, in no case must Bes R or the lyre player don a beard since the fewer number of vertical lines may suggest otherwise. Those with neck collars might be indicative of the ancient Egyptian view of the neck collar, or the so-called aegis, as adornment as well as a token of distinction for officials, landed proprietors, or other subjects of the king. At the same time it carried protective functions, be it as a large neck collar placed around the throat of the dead on the day of their funeral or as a small molded feature in the form of an amulet with a woman’s head (mostly the head of Mut) or the head of a holy animal (falcon, uraeus, vulture, cat, or lion). Through the deity, which the corresponding animal represented, the collar amulet took on protective and regenerative powers in addition to its function in the domain of the death cult, and which was supposed to manifest through the animal head.134 Sizing Up Gendered Partners. Applying the prior arguments for the coherence of the Bes-like figures as two elements in a larger integrated scene, Bes L’s much larger size can be viewed as a matter of design. This is affected by the positioning of the ends of the feet of Bes R at a point higher on the horizontal plane of the scene relative to those of Bes L and positioning the head of Bes R lower on the horizontal relative to that of Bes L. The same applies to their relative vertical positioning. The Bes-like L figure is notably larger and clearly positioned front and center with Bes R to his left and to Bes L’s behind. Just as in the case of worshippers M and N, rather than the unintended outcome of restricted or limited space, the overlap (and the interlocking) of Bes L’s arm and that of Bes R was an artisan-scribe’s deliberate design. With the techniques of relative sizing and positioning combined with overlapping, the effects of distancing (of Bes R), foregrounding (of Bes L) and integration were simultaneously achieved. “Loops and Leggings.” Similarly, with the “phallic error” or “vanishing loop” between the legs of the smaller right hand Bes-like figure announced recently by Meshel, the likelihood that these two figures evince juxtaposed and complementary genders as two halves of an integrated scene seems most probable. Bes L has no nipple circles, but he does have a loop, or, in our view, a phallus between the legs, while Bes R possesses nipple circles, but clearly now no loop, and therefore no longer a penis, between her legs. In sum, Bes R is consistently marked with multiple feminine markings, while Bes L is consistently marked with multiple masculine markings and as such they are juxtaposed to one another. The presence or absence of the loop also presents ramifications for an argument set forth by Beck regarding the manner in which the legs were attached to the torsos of the two Bes-like figures. Beck had identified some telling differences and attributed their execution to differing hands. Those of Bes R join at the crotch while the legs of Bes L are shaped 134   Christian Herrmann, “Egyptian Amulets from Tell Jemmeh,” in The Smithsonian Institution Excavation at Tell Jemmeh, Israel,1970–1990, ed. David Ben-Shlomo and Gus W. Van Beek, (Washington, DC: The Smithsonian Institution, 2014), 970–76, 972.

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like an upturned U. These can now be more accurately explained in the first instance, as the result of a male figure, Bes L, having been rendered with a phallus (or the loop) between his legs and in need of more space in between to accommodate said third appendage, while in the other instance, the female figure Bes R, was in no need of additional space since she was rendered without a phallus (or loop).135 It becomes quite obvious that gender marking pervades the KA drawings and the repeated juxtaposition of complementary gender markings of various types offers the most compelling explanation for the presence or absence of the loop on each of the two figures. The presence or absence of a loop or, as we propose, a phallus, is inversely complemented by the corresponding absence or presence of nipple circles on the Bes and Beset figures. Moreover, the presence or absence of the phallus resulted in entirely different executions of the legs, torso attachment, and space between the Bes-like figures’ legs. A Cavorting Consort?. When overlapping is at work in tandem with relative sizing and vertical head and foot positioning, the convergent effect on depth of field and perspective is all the more articulated. As others have pointed out, these are conventional artistic techniques for conveying the male god or king and his female wife or consort. The male is situated front and center with the female positioned behind and to the side. Assuming these techniques were at work in the scribal-artisan’s execution of the integrated scene of Bes-like figures, then they conform to the gendering by design we also identified as applicable to several other figures on the two pithoi. This entire repertoire of artistic technique, relative sizing and positioning, overlapping, and gender marking, is closely and repeatedly paralleled in the other three integrated pithos scenes of masculine and feminine figures. In each case, the cow-and-calf, the worshippers’ procession, and the tree-and-ibexes-andlion scene, the scene was comprised of two or more figures of contrasting gender. This is evident in the anatomical or functional traits attached to the animal images and in the application of techniques like relative sizing, positioning, and overlapping. Anatomical and functional elements of gender marking and at times, relative sizing can also be identified throughout the inventory of animals preserved on the pithoi, for example, bull R vs. cows X and L, lion H vs. lioness C, and ibex F vs. ibex G (?) and/or ibex J. With such unequivocal distinctions and markings, these individual figures, like those animals of the integrated scenes, were transferred to the plastered walls as components in larger mural scenes. To be sure, some of these images may constitute figural visitors’ graffiti that were rendered on

  Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 168 and see now Eggler, “Bes,” 56 for lionine Bes figures on magical knives from the Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate periods shown en face and with a penis. Herrmann, “Egyptian Amulets from Tell Jemmeh,” 971 and fig. 24.1g comments on and illustrates an Iron Age amuletic Bes figure standing with phallus extending between the legs down to the rim of the base. 135

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 67 the pithoi after the drafting of images and epigraphs meant for the wall murals.136 Even if some were spontaneous graffiti, decorative decorum nonetheless swayed the manner in which such graffito-fauna were portrayed, since, as becomes quite clear, gender marking is pervasive throughout KA’s repertoire of animal images. As perhaps imagined by a Samarian artisan-scribe, the larger left-hand Bes-like image on pithos A was rendered “full on” as a male. He is marked for masculine gender by his larger size, his dominant “front and center” position (vis-à-vis the right-hand image), the lack of nipple circles and by the phallus (or loop) between his legs. The smaller right-hand Bes figure is marked for feminine gender by her smaller relative size, her consort position, the presence of nipple circles, and the lack of a phallus between her legs. That they comprise a couple is confirmed by their shared conventional Bes-like visual traits rehearsed previously (dwarfism, etc.), their husband-wife positioning as well as their overlapping and interlocking arms. These elements can provide only suggestive yet intriguing hints as to what their corresponding formal design might have looked like on the mural walls. Up Close and Personal: Overlapping as Scribal-Artisan Technique For decades it has been widely recognized that there are examples of indiscriminate or unintended overlap attested in the pithos drawings and inscriptions from KA. On the other hand, no one disputes the artist’s use of overlap as a technique in the case of the lyre player’s right arm crossing over her torso or the overlapping of her near leg and her far leg as she sits in profile. These constitute purposeful expressions of perspective or depth of field created by the use of overlapping.137 Yet in what for some constitutes the singular, exceptional case of the two Bes-like figures on pithos A, the overlapping of their inner arms has been explained as the unintentional result of space limitations and random placement. At KA, overlapping also occurs between two or more figures on the pithoi (e.g., the six worshippers scene on pithos B), or between a figure and an inscription (e.g., graffito 3.1, which overlaps the headdress of the left-hand Bes figure on pithos A), or between various components that comprise a single figure (see the example of the lyre player just cited). One’s view of the role of overlapping at KA directly impacts interpretations of the overlapping of the two Bes figures at the arms as well as inscription 3.1’s overlapping of the left-hand Bes figure’s headdress. In other words, were these various elements designed to make up the components of an integrated scene that included both Bes figures, inscription 3.1, and possibly the lyre player, 136   Bull R may present a possible exception if it was indeed overlapped by worshipper Q. That it was also overlapped by inscription 3.6 presents no problems since 3.6 was a last-stage written visitors’ graffito. Was bull R an old random graffito or an isolated draft? 137   See here too Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 153, 156 for the crossover of the forelegs of lion H, one leg overlapping the other, which, in addition to creating depth of field and perspective, also creates the “allusion” of locomotion.

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or were only some of these designed as elements of such a scene, while others comprised random, isolated subsequent additions to that scene (perhaps graffiti)? A Test Case: The Worshipper Procession Scene For overlapping at KA, the worshippers scene on pithos B is particularly instructive and the figures M and N will provide our major test case. Beck concluded that the overlapping of these two worshippers was due to space restrictions and so figure N’s arms were not executed in a manner suggestive of designed or deliberate contact with M. She also pointed out that the length and form of the legs on figure M suggest M’s exceptional form when compared to the other four worshippers with torsos attached. Whether M’s leg length and form are indicative of merely the figure’s height, his kneeling position, or perhaps even a handicap or crippling injury as suggested by Beck, the stick or walking cane that figure M holds in the left hand confirms the exceptional form of M’s physical integrity as Beck herself noted.138 While it might simply be the case that figure M is aged and in need of a walking cane, any analysis of figure M’s execution has to take into account the presence of the cane, M’s unusual height or size and posture, relative to the other worshippers, as well as the position and angle of the arms of figure N, which make contact or overlap with figure M. The Bes-Like Dwarfism of Worshipper M. With the crucial role of the Bes god imagery in pithos A, the theme of dwarfism takes on special importance. Its appeal in ancient Egypt as a manifestation of magic derives from the notion that should an achondroplastic child survive birth and the first few months thereafter, that dwarf was considered a manifestation of divine protection and was valued as a divine mark especially on behalf of mothers and children.139 Thus, the physical appearance of a dwarf or in the case of Bes, his dwarf imagery, visually conveyed the potency of the associated magic while the ongoing dehumanization of Bes’s dwarf imagery in the direction of the monstrous was designed to enhance the apotropaic power of the god.140 Turning to figure M on pithos B, the importance of dwarfism in the pithos A scene depicting Bes and Beset, M’s exceptional physical form, posture, and position, as well as the unequivocal theophanic nature of the worshippers scene as confirmed by the overhead inscription that conveys divine blessing, suggests that figure M is depicted as a dwarf who as a nexus of divine presence leads the group in their quest for divine intervention, and thereby enhances the likelihood that the deity will respond and in a favorable fashion. In the aniconic empty space created by the artisan scribe that separates the inscribed overhead caption 3.6 and the worshippers below, and as the content of 3.6 itself makes clear, the divine couple depicted on pithos A, Bes and Beset, appear in a theophanic event to bless the   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 173–77, 181–83.   Véronique Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 156. 140   Eggler, “Bes,” 56, 65. 138 139

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 69 worshippers, but they do so as “YHWH of the Teman and His Asherah … if he would urge, YHW will provide him according to his desire.” Given the exceptional rendering of M’s legs or posture and M’s holding of the cane, it is very likely that the figure N was designed so as to portray N assisting worshipper M (see fig. 2.5). The placement of the very ends of N’s arms (or the ends of the wrists, hands or fingers?) at precise points that intersect with the lines representing the edge of M’s shoulder and the edge of his chin is not insignificant or coincidental.141 It speaks against N’s detachment from M as well as the notion of N’s forced insertion between M and O. N’s right arm holds up M’s head by the chin, while his other hand supports his upper torso at the shoulder. This is the artist’s complement to M’s lack of physical integrity. Worshipper M is in need of worshipper N’s help. One must take note of the very important fact that the position and angle of N’s arms do not remotely parallel the arm positions of the other worshippers in their attitude of adoration signified by raised arms. Figure N’s left arm is straight and not bent at the elbow and angles downward below horizontal not upward, as it makes contact with (or grasps?) the shoulder of M. The right arm is only slightly bent at the elbow and lies more or less on the horizontal plane as it makes contact with (or grasps?) the chin of M. Neither arm is bent deeply at the elbow nor angled upwards in a position of adoration like those of the other figures in the scene. All this speaks in favor of N’s execution as M’s intended aide. The Worshipper Scene’s Overhead Caption. Beck had rehearsed a highly complicated redaction-like process in which the five or six human figures were rendered out of sequence with worshipper N inserted between M and O, and following that, Q was inserted in the space between worshipper P and bull R. The resultant scene leaves N inadvertently overlapping M and possibly Q overlapping P (with Q also overlapping bull R). While a better explanation that accounts for the overlapping among the worshippers has been outlined previously, Beck’s conclusion that the worshippers were all rendered by the same hand stands. But by analogy, the same principle can be applied to the two overlapping Bes-like figures (and possibly the lyre player) on pithos A. The notion that these were composed by multiple hands and unrelated to each other seems extreme and unnecessary. The presumed differences between the two scenes, one created by a single hand, but the other by several hands, though they both evince similar complexity, namely, instances of overlap and the resultant integrated scenes, renders such divergent explanations of analogous phenomena indeterminable.142 As outlined previously, the inscription 3.9 was painted above the worshippers scene, and positioned at a predetermined distance, not as a graffito, but as a practice draft that was transferred to a wall as an integral part of the mural portraying the worshippers and as the heading or caption to that scene.

  Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 174.   On inscription 3.1 as a graffito subsequently added to the integrated scene of the Bes figures and lyre player, see further p. 77, sub “The Responsive Graffiti.” 141 142

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The contact that the end of worshipper N’s arms makes with worshipper M’s shoulder and chin and the resultant overlapping were designed to portray worshipper N’s assistance on behalf of worshipper M while also creating perspective and depth of field. The artisan-scribe who produced the combined scene and epigraph illustrated the essential spirit of inscription 3.9’s content: the compassion in the face of the human condition, through portraying the benevolent act of worshipper N on behalf of worshipper M. One contingency remains, namely, to articulate the identity and parameters of the integrated scenes: Which images, if any, comprised parts of integrated scenes, which were isolated practice pieces, and which were subsequently added as graffiti? Overlapping and the Bes-Like Figures The repeated occurrence of integrated scenes on the pithoi and the evidence suggestive of the transfer of those integrated scenes from the pithoi as drafts to the walls as formal murals, all point to the two Bes-like figures as constituting an integrated scene, one depicting the divine couple Bes and Beset. In fact, Beck had entertained the possibility that Bes R was a Beset figure, the female counterpart of Bes.143 In light of various factors that have developed since her 1982 article, which have been touched on here along with the several additional points previously outlined, the labeling of our two figures as Bes and Beset is, by all measures, the most accurate cipher to date. The Lyre Player. Beck proposed that the lyre player and the Bes R figure together made up an integrated scene to the exclusion of Bes L. In support of this, she invoked an art-historical theme comprised of a dancing Bes and a musician. Though she acknowledged that she actually had found no such scene in the ancient art-historical repertoire in which Bes dances to the accompaniment of other musicians, she tellingly speculated that our artist was acquainted with musicians on various media and dancing Bes figures from other media and so translated them into the iconographic repertoire on pithos A. In this instance Beck allows for significant creativity, ingenuity, and originality on the part of the artisan-scribe who composed her proposed hypothetical scene made up of the lyre player-and-Bes-dancer. As she acknowledges however, she must do so in the absence of any comparable scenes in the art repertoire of the ancient Near East. Although it is not an impossible scenario by any means, when it is contrasted with her recognition that, though very rare, there are general parallels to the two overlapping Bes figures en face,144 an inconsistency arises. She rejects the latter explanation in spite of its parallels and prefers the former that lacks any parallels. Yet, not to be missed here is Beck’s conclusion that two figures from among the pithoi drawings, in this case the lyre player and the Bes figure R, could constitute an integrated scene at KA on a pithos! 143 144

  Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 169.   Ibid., 168, 173.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 71 It also goes against Beck’s propensity elsewise to view many of the figures on the pithoi as isolated drawings unrelated to their immediate context, such as the Bes L figure. According to Beck, the Bes L figure was “squeezed” into the space immediately beside the Bes R figure, but they are not to be related, while Bes R had been positioned next to the lyre player as a strategy by design.145 We shall return to this apparent inconsistency envisioned by Beck momentarily. The point we wish to highlight here is that although Bes R and the lyre player by themselves do not comprise an integrated scene, they do nonetheless represent the same feminine gender. Not only do they both possess nipple circles, Bes R now no longer has a “loop” or phallus between the legs (the tail of a lion or leopard skin according to others). Furthermore, while in some samples from the wider Mediterranean, nipple circles and transparent dresses (like that on the lyre player) may be worn by one or both sexes, at KA it is clear that these circles consistently mark feminine gendered figures. As confirmation, we cite the fact that Beck recognized the lyre player’s feminine gender based on independent evidence of her hairdo and diaphanous skirt.146 This in turn provides confirmation that the nipple circles on both the lyre player and on the Bes R figure mark their femininity. The Bes R figure likewise exhibits besides her nipple circles, independent evidence for her feminine gender, namely, the absence of a phallus and a beard, her consort position, as well as her relative size compared to the Bes L figure. Returning to the rather complicated process outlined by Beck to account for the proximity of the Bes L and the Bes R figures, it is clear that several elements shared by the Bes R figure and the lyre player are gender specific, and given the factors that confirm Bes L’s masculine gender, one would not expect him to share any feminine gendered traits with Bes R or the lyre player. With good reason then, the left-hand Bes-like figure has neither nipple circles nor the associated collar-bone markings (Beck’s “P”-shaped markings), since, as argued above on independent grounds, these are feminine gender markings and Bes L’s phallus clearly marks him as masculine. Bes L does share some nongendered traits with Bes R and the lyre player however, in that they share similar ears, dot patterning, and the outlining of limbs. In fact, both the Bes L figure and the lyre player have dot patterning outside the contour lines of their bodies, while Bes R does not. Moreover, it is the Bes L figure and the lyre player that are represented in conventional Near Eastern perspective with torsos en face while the area below the waist is in profile. Bes R on the other hand is fully en face both above and below the waist with feet turned outward in opposite directions.147 Bes is depicted positioned en face quite early on in Egypt on

  Ibid., 169, 173.   Ibid., 170 147   See ibid., 168 where she notes that both feet of Bes L point to the left while those of Bes R point in opposite directions, yet on p. 173, she assumes that both Bes figures are represented fully en face. 145 146

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objects like magical knives.148 Simply put, Bes L and Bes R comprise an integrated scene and the lyre player may have comprised a third, but only partially integrated, member of that scene (which would change once they were all fully integrated and transformed into a mural on one of the plastered walls, but see below). Bes L’s loop between his legs is his penis and he has no nipple circles, whereas the smaller consort-positioned Bes R and the female lyre player in diaphanous dress and hairdo, both possess nipple markings, but lack a penis (or loop).149 The elements shared by all three or any two merely confirm their roles as elements in a larger integrated scene. Dancers and Musicians? Although Beck pointed out that there are numerous similarities shared by the two Bes figures, she concluded that the two figures were produced by two separate artisans. In conjunction with the other lines of evidence outlined here, the similarities actually confirm the likelihood that the same scribal-artisan produced them. These include their rectangular heads, elliptical eyes, noses, ears set on corners of the head, no hands, arms akimbo, rectangular bodies, the kilt, bent knees, short thighs typical of the dwarf-like posture of Bes, dots on body, kilt and forearm, overlapping inner arms without dots, and so on.150 They are also both bald. One could even speculate that both are dancing to the lyre player’s music, but each to a different step, and not just Bes R as suggested by Beck.151 With his position in half profile from the waist down and with both feet pointing in the same direction, Bes L is poised in a distinct dance step to that of Bes R. Simply put, Bes L “moves to a different beat.” In comparative contexts, his posture while dancing often appears as if he were running with one knee lifted, while in other, less dynamic portrayals, only his lifted heel indicates the dancing movement.152 Bes L clearly presents lifted heels and in profile posture while Bes R presents lifted heels as well, both clearly in contrast to the flat heels of the sitting lyre player. Their overlapping and interlocking inner arms may indicate a particular dance and in any case, provides confirmation of their roles as dancing Bes-like figures, an attested motif in the comparative data. Mention should be made here of the oft-repeated observation that since the lyre player faces away from Bes R, their status as shared elements in a coherent scene seems unlikely. If one allows for the hypothesis that the same scribal-artisan composed Bes R and the lyre player, since they do share a number of traits, he may have produced them as individual, isolated figures with Bes L related to Bes R, since the lyre player faces away, and not as two parts to a larger three-member coherent scene. Yet one cannot discount entirely the possibility, given my own proposal, that on the walls they may have ended up as components in the same fully integrated   Eggler, “Bes,” 56.  Contra Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 166. 150   Ibid., 165–69. 151   Ibid., 173. 152   Eggler, “Bes,” 58. 148 149

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 73 scene, that is, Bes L, Bes R, and the lyre player (with the last facing towards, rather than looking away from the other two). In the final analysis, it is more likely that Bes R was part of a coherent scene along with Bes L. The two Bes figures share many detailed decorative elements, they overlap, they have opposite and juxtaposed gender markings, they complement each other in their respective husband-wife or ruler-consort positions, and they are both depicted in dancing mode with lifted heels and interlocking arms. Yet this two-member scene may have been enhanced by the addition of the lyre player, but then that element would be more coherently integrated as all three figures were transferred to the corresponding wall mural. So while on the pithos, the lyre player was independently drafted in isolation, on the wall, Bes and Beset and perhaps the lyre player were meticulously executed and incorporated, each in its appointed position into an integrated scene, It would have approximated the pithos A scene but with the lyre player positioned on the opposite side, facing Bes and Beset, all in full tricolor, more elaborate style, and in larger size. The foregoing review of evidence for drafting and overlapping can serve as guide to assessing the artisan-scribal practices at KA: (1) in a handful of cases, multiple figures and inscriptions converge through such scribal artisan techniques as overlapping and complementary gender roles as well as other shared traits to form a coherent, integrated scene – the cow-and-calf scene, the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene, the procession-of-worshippers scene, and we would add the Bes-and-Beset– lyre player scene on pithos A;153 (2) the figures in such scenes may stand at different points on the horizontal plane as an expression of depth of field and perspective; (3) predesigned overlap of images and epigraphs is evident in three instances in the worshippers scene (M and N, P, and Q); and (4) in only one other, space restrictions were a determining factor (between Q and bull R, although the bull was an isolated graffito, and was not designed as part of the integrated scene), and (5) such worshipper scenes may also include an inscribed caption in which case the respective illocutionary messages of text and figure were designed to mutually inform and complement each other and to convey a divinely endowed and convergent apotropaic driven semiotics: YHWH as Bes, through his mediatrix, or a female mediator, Asherah as Beset, will provide protection. Delineating Inscribed Divine Speech. As noted previously, four inscriptions bearing the blessings of YHWH and His Asherah were found within the confines of the bench room or in close proximity. Inscription 4.1.1 comprised a plaster wall fragment and 3.1 a caption on pithos A. Furthermore, if pithos B was indeed located in the bench room at some point as the excavators have concluded, then the two inscriptions on pithos B (3.6, 3.9) can also be tentatively located in the bench 153   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 159 also suggests an ibex-and-garland scene W on pithos A which, while only partially preserved, represents the motif of browsing stags and for our purposes, another instance of an integrated scene on the pithoi that, like the other integrated pithoi scenes, would have been transferred to the wall murals.

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room. One of these two inscriptions (3.6) may contain what has been referred to as a welfare inquiry (“are you well?”), but see below.154 Making Blessings and Dedications as Captions. As noted previously, inscription 3.9 is positioned directly above the worshippers scene on pithos B and was designed as one component in a larger integrated scene that also includes the six worshippers. I.  The Pithos B Inscription 3.9 [Caption, directly above the worshippers scene] (1) (2) (3)

… to YHWH of the Teman and His Asherah, whatever he asks from a man, that man will give him generously. And if he would urge, YHW will give him according to his wishes …” [2012 translation]

(1) … to YHWH of the Teman and His Asherah. (2) whatever He (YHW[H]) is asked from a man, He will give him generously and if he would urge, YHW will provide him (3) according to his desire [my translation]

The proverbial (impersonal) nature of the blessing and the singular third person and singular number of each verb is not the language of visitors’ graffiti. There is no first or second person speech, no personal names invoked. The idiom in the blessing formula of the inscription 3.9 of pithos B approximates that of the plastered wall fragments that make up inscription 4.1.1. Whereas the pithos B fragments were recovered from the eastern courtyard, locus 19, the painted fragments that make up inscription 4.1.1 were retrieved from the bench room’s north wing, locus 6, where they had fallen from a wall on which the inscription had once been permanently mounted.155 Like 3.9, 4.1.1 may well have served as a caption for an accompanying image, in this case a large figural wall painting, Not only is YHWH’s localization in Teman mentioned in both sets of inscriptions, but both are set in the third person, singular and/or plural. This is what one would expect of an epigraph designed for enduring wall display and for the conveyance of instructional style wisdom intended for a general viewing audience. II. Plastered Wall Inscription 4.1.1 [Caption, north wing of Building A’s bench room] May He lengthen their days and may they be sated […] recount to YHWH of Teman and His Asherah […] because YHWH of the Teman has shown [(them(?)] favor, has bettered their days…. [2012 translation]

154 155

  Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 128.   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 28, 32–33.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 75 May He lengthen their days and may they be sated […] may they be provided by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah […] Show them favor, O’ YHWH of the Teman, … better their days! … [my translation]

That the worshippers scene and inscription 3.9 comprise elements of a shared integrated scene is demonstrated both by their spatial layout and proximity as well as their complementary content or themes. The text 3.9 and the image of the worshippers’ procession converge so as to convey a specific illocutionary effect. Worshipper N’s gesture of assistance on behalf of figure M embodies and illustrates the fulfillment of the promised blessing in 3.9: YHWH will provide and provision in one’s time of need. This in turn confirms both text and image as constituent elements of a common integrated scene. In fact, one can identify all the scribal-artisan techniques we set forth in the previous analysis; overlapping (between worshippers N and M [and P and Q]), coherence between image and text; worshipper N’s portrayed assistance on behalf of figure M and the content of 3.9, and finally, the justapositioning of male and female characters. The congruence of text and image is also suggested by the positioning of the inscription at a predetermined, measured distance directly above the worshippers scene, a distance also shared by two other inscriptions bordering the worshippers scene, 3.6 and 3.10. Though the distinct linguistic and generic attributes of these other two epigraphs indicate that one or both were most likely added at a subsequent time as visitors’ graffiti, their composers respectively positioned them on either side of the scene at equidistance with 3.9 from the worshippers scene. Once they were inscribed on pithos B alongside 3.9, the three inscriptions, regardless of their compositional sequencing, avoided overlap in this instance and created a deliberate, fuller framing of the procession scene on the pithos for public display at its ritual locus.156 The immediate context of inscription 3.10 on pithos B confirms viewing 3.10, a list of six names, as corresponding to the six figures making up the worshippers scene (one of which was left incomplete). As such, it might have been designed as an element to be included in the integrated scene mounted on the wall, which was otherwise comprised of the worshippers and the overhead caption 3.9. Yet, its graffito status cannot be discounted, as one can easily invoke parallels to the writing of names as a magical, reactivating performative act, and perhaps in conjunction with the writing of the pithos abecedaries and other rudimentary writing such as the numerous yodhs. Once 3.10 was written on the pithos, whether as part of the drafted integrated worshippers scene transferred to a wall mural or as a later graffito added to pithos B at its ritual locus, it continued in its performative role serving as a votive text by making permanent the identity of the portrayed worshippers and their perpetual petitioning of the divine.

  But not on a wall mural since 3.6 and possibly 3.10 were added as graffiti.

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III.  Inscription 3.10 [pithos B: on the left margin of the worshippers scene] Šekanyaw ‘Amos  Šemaryaw ‘Eliyaw ‘Uzziyaw Mis ri (“The Egyptian”)

Another inscription that had been painted on a plastered wall (4.2) has been reconstructed from a myriad of fallen fragments found in the entryway immediately to the bench room. It is generally viewed as having been displayed above the entryway on a lintel overhead and connecting walls 9 and 10. Although badly fragmented, it may comprise a theophany of El set in the third person as well as an oracle mentioning both El and Baal.157 IV.  Inscription 4.2 [Locus 14a: west side of vestibule to bench room] 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

---] a second time [----------] in earthquake. And when El shines forth in the [heights---]HW[------]r the mountains will melt, the hills will crush [------] earth. The Holy One over the gods [-------] prepare [to] bless Baal on the day of war [------] to the name of El on the day of wa[r…

Inscription 4.3 is the sole ink inscription discovered in situ. It was found on the surface of a doorjamb from Building A’s vestibule immediately adjacent to the bench room. It publically displayed what was a seven line text (or more) just outside the bench room. V.  Inscription 4.3 [Locus 14a W 29: north doorjamb of vestibule to bench room] 7. [……] Cain destroyed a field and lofty mo[untains …

The cumulative semiotic effect of all these highly evocative writings and images has important implications for ascertaining the nature of the religious practices and beliefs attested at the site and especially those seemingly associated with the bench room. For example, the seated figure treated previously in wall painting no. 9 was most likely a male ruler who holds an upright lotus flower to his nose and located 157  See Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 110–14. Inscription 4.2 also mentions “the gods,” “Baal,” “(the) Holy One,” and “YHWH,” though alternative readings have been proposed for the first three by André Lemaire (“Remarques sur les inscriptions phéniciennes de Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” Semitica 55 [2013]: 83–99); note that only two letters are legible in reading YHWH (…y]hw[h…) in line 2. Given the Phoenician and Samarian presence or influence at KA, El and Baal’s mention would be expected.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 77 in locus 15 on wall 20 offering the widest public display in the outer, east entrance court to Building A.158 This might signal a deliberate attempt to underscore the state-sponsorship of the site while also conveying something of the “enduring life of the king” as represented by the upright, open lotus flower held to the nose. One can add to these the many isolated drawings, inscriptions, letters, and abecedaries on both pithoi and other objects recovered from the interior of Building A. In the case of the very large stone basin from the south storeroom that contains an engraved blessing to one Obadyaw, one might have another example of a votive-type object. VI.  Inscription 1.2 [stone basin, locus 8, east entry, south storeroom] To Obadyaw, son of Adna, blessed be he by YHW

The Responsive Graffiti.159 Although inscription 3.6 and possibly 3.10 are most likely graffiti, they both could possibly comprise elements designed to be included in the same integrated scene alongside 3.9 and the worshippers. VII.  Inscription 3.6 [pithos B: on right margin of the worshippers scene] This in turn might suggest that 3.6 positioned to the right of the worshippers scene, constitutes a blessing mentioning the ruler (“my lord”) who held control over the site. Since it is set in the singular first and second and third persons and mentions an individual personal name like pithos A’s inscription 3.1, one could feasibly postulate a blessing or votive dedicated by one Amaryaw in line 2 to the site’s patron who is referred to as “lord” in line 1 (cf. too line 10). As such, it would have been suitable for public display like 3.9.160 Yet this seems more speculative than a graffito in which one traveler on departure left a communiqué for his superior yet to arrive. As an alternative to the graffito interpretation, it is proposed here that 3.6 may have served as part of the original design of the integrated worshippers scene that ended up on a plastered wall. As such, it publically displayed a general blessing for the benefit of the site’s visitors to the site and not one exclusively aimed at Amar­yaw’s superior. To begin with, rather than viewing 3.6 as a “welfare inquiry,” which has little, if any, compelling support, it may simply comprise another more 158  For wall painting no. 9 see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 189–92 and for its find spot, Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 19: “a large image (30 × 25 cm) of a seated figurine (a female deity?),” located on wall 20, “so that everyone entering the building would have seen it.” Figure 2.13 (p. 17), an isometric plan of Building A, pinpoints the exact position of the mounted seated figure. For floor plans of the KA structures locating the inscriptions, see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 74 and the wall paintings, see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 144. 159   Inscription 3.8 positioned to the right of 3.6 may likewise comprise a visitor’s graffito, though its content contains only two identifiable words, “Shomron” and “barley(s).” 160   This may be the same ruler depicted as the seated figure on wall painting no. 9 and the corresponding seated figure on the “Z” sherd.

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general blessing designed for visitors to the site, but one couched in individualizing language with the construction hšlm ʾt rendered “May it go well for you” (see KAI 50 wšlm ’t “And may you be well”) in which hšlm is the Hiphil infinitive absolute (hašlēm). The initial phraseology ʾmr ʾmryw ʾmr lʾdn[y] in lines 1–2 may convey an opening rubric, “(lit.) the saying among His sayings, (as) spoken by my Lord …,” that is, “(As) my Lord’s utmost saying goes …,” with the term, “Lord” referring here to YHWH.161 In 3.6 lines 7–9, the first two verbal forms (ybrk and wšmrk) may be plural with northern consonantal writing lacking the final -û or these are singular verbs with a preceding (antecedent) compound subject (“may they [YHWH and His Asherah] bless you and may they keep you…,” see Gen 3:8, Exod 18:5, etc.). Only the second has the object suffix (-k) directly attached, so the two may also function as a hendiadys, “May they bless (by) guarding you….” The third verbal form (wyhy) is singular. The collective ʿm “people” in ʿam ʾădōnî is its subject: “may the people of my Lord be [… forever].” Message of Amaryaw, “Say to my lord; are you well? I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah. May He bless you and may He keep you and may He be with my lord [forever …].” [2012 translation] As my Lord’s utmost saying goes: “May it go well for you. I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah. May they (YHWH and Asherah) bless you and may they keep you and may the people of my Lord be [… forever].” [my translation]

VIII  Inscription 3.1 [pithos A: overlapping the headdress of Bes figure L] The personal nature of the blessing in 3.1, composed as it is in the singular and in first and second person and mentioning as it does two individuals by name, suggests that this inscription was not part of the design of the integrated scene as a caption that was comprised of the two Bes figures (and perhaps the lyre player?), which in turn was to be transferred to the plaster walls of the site as a blessing for general consumption. Rather, this inscription is most likely an individual visitor’s graffito inscribed on pithos A at some point subsequent to the use of the pithos as a drafting surface and following the set up of pithos A in its cultic locus as the central item in that decorated pithos libation ritual. Inscription 3.1 constitutes a worshipper’s inspired, spontaneous response to the overwhelming numinosity of the bench room’s pithos cult and to the site’s numinous quality more generally. Yet, the compositional relationship between text and image here, 3.1, and the Bes 161   The rubric itself may or may not have been transferred to a wall mural as part of the longer blessing inscription and corresponding integrated mural scene of worshippers and 3.9 (and possibly 3.10). It may simply have served to inform the artisan-scribe assigned to its transfer of the blessing character of the following words.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 79 figures, contrasts with that of inscription 3.9 and the worshippers procession on pithos B.162 In the former, text and image overlap, and the images are identified as those of deities, while in the latter, divine images are not visible, but the complementary worshippers are depicted as gesturing to their deities as is apropos of a scene comprised of adoration and empty space aniconism. Message of [--] o o [--] m[ ]k: “Speak to Yaheli and to Yo‘asah and to […] ‘I have blessed you by YHWH of Shomron and by His Asherah.’”

Other Related Texts. IX.  Inscription 4.6.3 1. …]rʿt[… 2. ]m[

“… evil …”

The fact that another plastered wall inscription, 4.6.3, line 1 preserves the term RʿT < RʿH “evil,” indicates that evil, and, by inference, the more important matter of its abeyance, were apparently matters of public display and discourse at KA. When viewed from within the larger setting of the various inscriptions and images at KA conveying the contrary themes of divine presence, blessing, aid, and protection, the presence of evil in KA’s media underscores the importance of and need for apotropaic remedies and measures at the site. Although there survives little context on the fragment otherwise, Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel viewed this fragment along with eight others 4.6.1–2, and 4.6.4–9 and thirty more even-smaller pieces, as comprising one larger, plastered wall inscription. These were all recovered in the courtyard of Building A at the foot of the stairs near the entryway to the western storeroom. In fact, the numerous fragments that make up the inscription clusters designated 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6 were found in three neighboring loci near the western storeroom. The excavators hold that all three sets of inscriptions were originally written on the doorposts of the western storeroom’s entrance.163 The discovery of inscription 4.3 in situ at more than a meter above floor level on the northern doorjamb of the bench room’s western entryway and at the opposite end of the courtyard provides an incontrovertible precedent for the location, public display, and function of the similar doorjamb inscriptions like 4.4, 4.5, and 4.6.164 The point of all this: the “evil” mentioned in 4.6.3 was part of a much larger inscription mounted on one of the walls at KA and was therefore 162  On inscription 3.9, see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 98–100 and for 4.1.1, pp. 105–6. 163   For 4.6.3 see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 120, and for the floor plan with loci, see p. 74 and comments on p. 117. 164   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 22, 24 (for a photo) and for comments, see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 115.

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designed for public display. All indications are that its content undoubtedly served as a topic of immense importance and concern for those who planned and completed the site’s wall decorations. The same concern with evil takes prominent place in the silver amulets recovered from an elite tomb at Ketef Hinnom, Jerusalem, where both “The Evil” and “The Exorciser of the Evil” are mentioned in these two amuletic inscriptions. In these amulets, the Evil is both present evil as suggested by the mention of YHWH’s title, the Exorcist, and future evil, even beyond death, as indicated by the mortuary context of the amulets and the evidence for ongoing cult or ritual in the tomb chamber. Convergence or Chaos: The Complex Integrated Scenes In addition to the various convergent lines of evidence cited thus far in support of the predesigned character of the four or more surviving integrated scenes on the pithoi and their function as preliminary drafts, their shared proximate orientation and layout on the pithoi – two on pithos A and the one on pithos B – likewise indicates a predesigned decorative repertoire. Rather than aligning the scenes relative to the double horizontal lines on each jar in exactly the same manner, the artisan-scribes positioned the scenes at the same vertical height at 30 cm below the pithos rim. The projection drawings of both pithoi keenly illustrate this.165 Had they aligned the scenes along the horizontal lines, it would have resulted in varying vertical positions, as the lowest line on pithos B is noticeably higher than its analogue on pithos A. All three scenes are at the same vertical height relative to the shoulder-level handles on the two jars. That position served not only as the largest surface area, it provided the overall best visibility when, according to the excavators, the pithoi were set up on the benches within the bench room for what is proposed here to be not only decorative drafting for eventual viewing as numinous nexuses on the walls, but also their positioning as cultic objects. All this suggests some additional preplanning for the main scenes on the pithoi; the Bes-and-Besetlyre player and the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scenes on pithos A, as well as the six worshippers on pithos B (and one cannot eliminate the possibility that pithos B had a fourth integrated major scene on its reverse, but surviving fragments are mute). The Integrated Scenes on the Pithoi Beck’s “stratigraphy” of authorship looms large over the decorative process of the two pithoi. Regarding pithos A, Beck reconstructed a scenario that designated the inscription 3.1 that overlapped the headdress of the right-hand Bes figure as the third in a sequence of three successive decorative layers: the right-hand Bes and lyre player were rendered first, then the left-hand Bes and finally the overlapping inscription 3.1. According to Beck, each element in the scene represents a distinct 165

  Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 147 and 148, figs. 6.5 and 6.6.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 81 layer completed by a different artisan or scribe.166 Similarly, she proposed that the worshippers in the procession of pithos B were added in a rather complex sequence that ended with N being inserted between M and O, and then figure Q was lastly placed in the final position and overlapped bull R to the right. Yet, in this case Beck concluded, “these figures were undoubtedly drawn by the same painter and belong to a coherent scene even though they stand at distinct levels.”167 So in spite of the complicated, multilayered “redaction” of the worshippers scene similar to that on pithos A, Beck concluded it was the work of a single artist. In her treatment of the drawings on pithos B, Beck also identified distancing as an indicator of disassociation of two items. In the case of the inked six names of inscription 3.10 far to the left of the six worshippers, the two cannot be related owing to the wide spatial gap between the vertical list of names and the worshippers scene with its closest figure M.168 Yet the space between 3.10 and figure M on the left vertical margin approximates the space between worshipper Q and inscription 3.6 on the opposite vertical margin, both of which in turn approximate the distance between the worshippers’ heads and the inscription 3.9 above them. For the linguistic and functional reasons already outlined, 3.6 and possibly 3.10, comprise graffiti that were added to the pithos subsequent to the worshippers scene, while 3.9 constitutes an original preplanned caption inscribed above, but at the same time as, the worshippers were drawn. When 3.6 and possibly 3.10 were added to the pithos following its transformation into a cultic object, the graffito author(s) apparently respected the space between the scene and 3.9 and positioned 3.6 and on the vertical margins at equidistance. This created what we see today as a three-sided framing of the worshippers scene. What might have evoked such respect for spatial integrity on the part of a graffiti writer? Perhaps recognizing that the prior drawings and inscriptions on the pithoi were numinously empowered, the graffito writer avoided impeding upon their material expressions/numinous spaces with potentially intrusive writing in order to preserve the expressed empty-space aniconism. Another telling example of the problems associated with conjecturing multiple artisan scribal hands in the absence of compelling support (and here as it pertains to the question of multiple artistic hands that rendered the two Bes figures) is Beck’s nuanced treatment of the two ibexes in the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene on the reverse of pithos A. Beck concludes that the same artist drew these and all the animals on the pithoi, yet she concedes that the two ibexes in the tree-and-ibexes scene are not identical either in form or position and have various details distinguishing one from the other. Unlike the case of the Bes-like figures on pithos A, 166  See Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 182 where she proposes a painter B, another untitled painter and elsewhere an anonymous scribe. She based these three hands largely on the relative width of brush strokes, but the difference is hardly discernible in the case of the two Bes figures, while a thick brush stroke would have made difficult the rendering of an epigraph like 3.1. 167   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 176. 168   Ibid., 183–84, but see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 94–95, 100.

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she does not invoke here arguments employed elsewhere however, in order to posit multiple artisan scribal hands. Furthermore, on the matter of spatial distancing, where its opposite, overlapping, is attested, Beck does not acknowledge the viability of the implied inverse argument, that is, close proximity between two items (and all the more so with overlapping) conveys purposeful association, if not convergence. Instead of postulating purposeful design, she dismisses overlapping in all instances as the result of spatial limitations in the two major scenes; the Bes figures on pithos A and the worshippers on pithos B. For Beck distancing between images held meaning, while overlapping did not.169 Yet Beck did note similar comparative phenomena expressive of the direct relationship between inscriptions and the drawings they accompany, but then she disqualified them since they were from other periods.170 She also contrasted wall painting no. 11 and its inscription 4.5 found just outside the western storeroom of Building A (locus 101) in relation to inscription 3.1 and its overlap with the Bes L figure on pithos A.171 The former image and inscription do not overlap, while the latter do. In the view advocated here, this observable difference is best accounted for by identifying 3.1 as a visitor’s graffito. It was not part of the preplanned drafting repertoire. As previously noted, she highlighted the significant distance between inscription and drawing in the case of pithos B’s six names in inscription 3.10 and the six worshippers.172 Beck viewed neither as closely corresponding to inscription 4.5 on wall painting no. 11 as the last neither constitutes a case of overlapping nor distancing, but proximity.173 Yet, Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel speculated regarding the overlap between the inscription 3.1 and the headdress of the Bes L figure on pithos A, and the inscription 4.5, which was painted in red ink on wall plaster and bears letters surrounding an image of the head no. 11, that “there is a linkage between the inscription and the image,” referring to Beck’s treatment of pithos A’s drawings and inscriptions.174 Corresponding Scenes on the Painted Plastered Walls When one applies the above points to the scene of the two Bes-like figures L and R and the inscription 3.1 above the left-hand Bes figure on pithos A, the results are telling: (1) we have a coherent scene involving multiple images; here, two figures   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 155–56, 161, 164. This approach creates further problems when applied to the case of the worshippers, especially with M and N, and it certainly does not apply in the case of the lyre player who in holding the lyre and sitting in a chair in profile creates perspective with the overlapping of arm and torso. 170   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 184. 171   Ibid., 119, 194–96 and see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 87–91 and Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 16. 172   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 92–94, 100–101, 148, 175. 173   Ibid., 194, 196 for other examples. 174   Ibid., 87, 119. 169

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 83 (and perhaps a third in the lyre player) and at one level or another, an inscription, (2) the two figures stand at different levels on the horizontal plane, (3) overlapping as in the case of the intertwined arms of Bes L and R, was employed by design, rather than by space limitations, and (4) the two figures that overlap are two members of the scene itself. In the worshippers scene on pithos B, these points clearly emerge with the figures M and N (and P and possibly Q) and as we would propose, Bes L and R on pithos A. None of these involve a figure from a coherent scene overlapping with an isolated figural graffito on its margin like figure Q and bull R on pithos B.175 With this in mind, the implications that Beck drew from her notion of the “stratigraphy” of the two Bes-like figures and the overlapping inscription 3.1 on pithos A require qualification. I fully endorse her astute observation that one can ascertain the relative sequence in which the two Bes-like figures and inscription 3.1 were composed; the right-hand Bes figure was inked first, followed by the overlapping left-hand figure and then the overhead inscription was added and overlapped the left-hand figure’s headdress. Like any integrated artistic scene comprised of multiple images and epigraphs however, they would have been rendered sequentially, and in short time by the same hand. So in light of the above points it seems very unlikely that (1) space limitations dictated the execution of the two Bes-like figures and the inscription as three unrelated or isolated practice drawings or graffiti since they exhibit all of the same four characteristics as the other three integrated scenes, and it also seems unlikely that (2) overlapping here was due to space restrictions, that (3) by implication, they necessitated a significant time gap between each composition, and that (4) multiple authors were necessarily involved at each stage. In light of the scribal-artisan practices of gender marking and overlapping evident throughout, Beck’s four conclusions are far more than what the stratigraphic layering of the three images alone could possibly signify and are not the most likely conclusions one could draw from these data. In fact, the nonoverlapping nature of the contact between Bes L and the garland and the cow may have been by design and symbolic of Bes’s ability to convey his power to the animal and plant worlds. The oft-repeated view that pithoi drawings and epigraphs from KA singularly comprise random, isolated, spontaneous figural and inscribed graffiti or, at most, isolated practice pieces with no association with the decorative art of the wall murals is simply inaccurate. The comparison   Ibid., 173 makes mention of the overlap of Bes L’s right foot with the front left foot of the cow X in this regard as well as the overlap of Bes L’s shoulder with the garland near ibex W as support for her notion that Bes L was a later addition, but in point of fact, and in the absence of additional support for her interpretation here, overlapping in these two instances can at most point to the space limitations present when Bes L was drawn, but which may have immediately succeeded the drawing of Bes R as part of the same integrated scene. Upon reviewing the photo images in the final report of the drawings, clear cases of overlapping between Bes L and the cow and the ibex are impossible to confirm, although lines “in contact” (i.e., not overlapping lines) are evident; see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 88, 150 (with the cow), 89, 168 (with the ibex), 166, 167 (with both). 175

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of the evidence from the pithoi decorations and those on the walls indicates that the pithoi decorations constitute predesigned, scribal-artisan practice drafts that were transferred to the site’s plastered walls as painted murals in formal style. The resultant wall decor together with the establishment of interstitial ritual loci in the bench room and in the south storeroom and possibly elsewhere, that focused on the decorated pithoi following their use as drafting surfaces, transformed KA’s cultural space into, “an architecture of the numinous.”

Libations and Votives: Rites for an Egyptianizing Israelite Pantheon At this point, the treatment has come full circle to the question of the identity of the two Bes-like figures on pithos A. While it is quite clear that gender was frequently marked in the art-historical repertoire at KA, in what follows, some relevant aspects of a biographical nature will be reviewed regarding the Egyptian apotropaic deity Bes. These will further be complemented with an assessment of data from KA pertinent to a more complete identity of the two Bes-like figures. Assuming for the sake of argument that our interpretation of the two figures is thus far correct, that is, that they do indeed represent Bes and Beset images, would this be what one might expect for the region and timeframe in view? As noted previously, several points indeed favor the convergence of a local god and his consort and mediatrix with an Egyptian apotropaic deity and his “wife” or partner. First, Egyptian cultural influence permeated the southern Levant and evidence for Egyptian magic is pervasive. Secondly, the first millennium increasingly took on the attributes of conflict and crisis with the movement of empires crisscrossing the Levant, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, Anatolia, and Persia. Evidence for Egyptian historical influence on KA includes: (1) the geographic proximity of Sinai and Egypt; (2) the long-term interaction between Sinai and Egypt; (3) the evidence for Egyptian economic and cultural impact on the southern Levant, like the ubiquity of locally produced Egyptian-style amulets as well as Egyptian-made amulets; (4) the Egyptian personal name Mis ri, The Egyptian, in inscription 3.10; (5) Egyptian influence on KA’s art repertoire more generally;176 and (6) the Bes-like figures in particular. Constructing Apotropaic Bes and Beset Beck surveyed a wide range of evidence establishing the dissemination of Egyptian Bes throughout the southern Levant and his representation in mixed human and animal form as well as his role as protective genus or demon or lesser deity. But 176   For which see Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” and Gabriel Barkay and MiYoung Im, “Egyptian Influence on the Painted Human Figures from Kuntillet Ajrud,” TA 28 (2001): 288–300.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 85 would such a hybrid creature of mixed human and animal form become the focus or object or recipient of cult or ritual in late Iron Age Israel? The Mesopotamian, specifically the Babylonian, evidence demonstrates that such hybrid beings of lesser rank did become at times the foci of cult in the first millennium while in other instances they were placed at the entrance to buildings to function as apotropaic figures with the power to ward off evil.177 There is evidence for the same or similar phenomena in Egyptian religion from the first millennium in which the daimons could receive cult. (These phenomena are discussed in detail in chapter 3.) In fact, Bes seems eventually to acquire cult in Egypt, at least in the domestic sphere, as guardian of the home in matters of life and death.178 Assuming he did attain the status of a god for which cult became appropriate, it would have facilitated his convergence with a local high god. In the ancient Persian context, Bes had converged with the god Mithra, no doubt as people experienced profound resonance with the protective powers of the Bes image as a counterfoil to their own local deities.179 Bes and Beset: Form and Style The next question then is, would protective deities like Bes and Beset be expected, suitable, or conventional candidates with which to represent a West Semitic deity like YHWH and his consort Asherah in the early first millennium? Here of course, I have in view the overlap of the graffito 3.1 and Bes L that as proposed here together identify the Bes images as YHWH of Shomron and Asherah of Shomron. Do we have parallel examples of West Semitic deities portrayed in visual form or textually equated with a foreign, especially Egyptian, deity or, more precisely, protective demon that had become the focus of cult? Here, the northern localization of YHWH of Shomron and His Asherah is meshed with Egypt’s protective demon par excellence and his female partner or counterpart, most likely under Phoenician stimulus. In Egypt, Bes primarily functioned as an apotropaic deity, especially for women and mothers during childbirth (and at the mythological level at the rebirth 177   Tallay Ornan, “In the Likeness of Man, Reflections on the Anthropocentric Perception of the Divine in Mesopotamian Art,” in What Is a God, Anthropomorphic and Non-Anthropomorphic Aspects of Deity in Ancient Mesopotamia, ed. Barbara Nevling Porter, The Casco Bay Assyriological Institute Transactions 2 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 93–151, here 131, citing F. A. M. Wiggermann, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts, CM 1 (Groningen: Styx, 1992), 58–62 and Anthony Green, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religious Iconography,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson, 4 volumes (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1995), 3:1848– 49. On p. 134, Ornan also mentions the burial of apotropaic clay figurines in the corners of rooms below thresholds and elsewhere in buildings and cites Anthony Green, “Beneficent Spirits and Malevolent Demons: The Iconography of Good and Evil in Ancient Assyria and Babylonia,” Visible Religion 3 (1984): 82 and Wiggermann, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits, 60, 63–64, 94, 146–48. 178   Rita Lucarelli, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic and Greco-Roman Periods in Egypt,” JANER 11 (2011): 109–25. 179   Kamyar Abdi, “Bes in the Achaemenid Empire,” ArOr 29 (1999): 111–40, citing Veronica Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes in Cyprus and the Levant,” Levant 7 (1975): 77–103.

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of the deceased). He possessed solar and revitalizing powers and was characterized as the tutelary deity of the night, protecting people while they slept. Bes defended them fiercely against evil or hostile forces and in particular those of a serpentine form. Bes’s role as musician and dancer may be related to the expulsion of such demonic forces and to initiating the divine presence and not merely to making merry and celebrating. 180 In the second-millennium art repertoire, Bes is typically depicted on magical knives en face, with bandy legs and feet turned out, bent arms and hands resting between the waist and thigh level, often holding serpents. According to Eggler, he donned lion-mane-like hair with lion ears and tail between the legs with the penis sometimes indicated. While the face was human, his arms and legs were thin and the torso frequently reveals the ribcage covered by a ventral mane. He was a sleek superhuman lion-man. His form changed significantly following the Eighteenth Dynasty. He transformed into a corpulent dwarf with bloated abdomen, swollen buttocks, and muscular limbs. He possessed a protruding tongue and thick lips. He remained lionine in orientation and otherwise nude. In the late second millennium, Bes took on a feathered headdress, a skirt covering his nudity, along with bird wings all possibly under eastern influence. In the early first millennium, Bes’s dwarfishness was sustained but was complemented by accentuating various facial features; furrowed brow, eyebrows, flaring nostrils, moustache, beard, enlarged menacing teeth, all dehumanizing his appearance and simultaneously enhancing his apotropaic powers. By the Persian period, Bes transformed again into a soft, sinuous type wearing an animal skin over his shoulders as his image and efficacy spread throughout the Persian Empire.

180   See now the exhaustive treatment by Eggler “Bes,” 55–72, on which much of what follows is heavily dependent, and which also includes a massive bibliography, catalogue and inventory of 810 Bes objects; and note the older syntheses by Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes”; James F. Romano, “The Bes-Image in Pharaonic Egypt” (PhD diss., New York University, 1989); idem, “Notes on the Historiography and History of the Bes-Image in Ancient Egypt,” Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology 9 (1998): 89–105; Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece; and Abdi, “Bes in the Achaemenid Empire”; idem, “An Egyptian Cippus of Horus in the Iran National Museum, Tehran,” JNES 61 (2002): 203–10, and the Levantine Bes amuletic repertoire in Christian Herr­mann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel: Mit einem Ausblick auf ihre Rezeption durch das Alte Testament, OBO 138 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 1994); idem, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel II, OBO 184 (Freiburg, Schweiz: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2002); idem, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel III, OBO 24 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2006); idem, “Weitere ägyptische Amulette aus Palaestina/Israel,” ZDPV 123.2 (2007): 93–132, Taf. 6–12; idem, “Egyptian Amulets from Tell Jemmeh”; and Dimitri Meeks, “Le nom du dieu Bès et ses implications mythologiques,” in The Intellectual Heritage of Egypt: Studies Presented to László Kákosy, ed. Ulrich Luft (Budapest: La chaire d’Egyptologie, 1992), 423–36.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 87 Bes Iconography Of more than eight hundred Bes-related object types, 41 percent are amulets, 19 percent seals, 9 percent coins, and 5 percent figurines. Most amulets come from Israel/Palestine and dominate the entirety of the total object types during the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate periods with the squatting Bes in akimbo pose. Israel/Palestine also leads in Bes figurines and coins of the fifth–fourth centuries BCE. Bes heads appear on two-thirds of the attested object types, but mainly on amulets and their molds. A crouching Bes and a pick-a-back Bes (riding piggyback) first appeared in the Iron Age alongside the squatting Bes in akimbo pose, while a horned Bes first emerged in Phoenicia. Ancient Israel remained a stable region for Bes iconography throughout the first half of the first millennium while stamped seals flooded Punic and other sites in the western Mediterranean. In sum, about 70 percent of the object types depict Bes either in squatting akimbo pose or represent him only by his head and so in neither case is he in active interaction with other beings. His dwarfish form and frightening face are the major carriers of meaning. Likewise two-thirds of the amulet repertoire portrays him in squatting akimbo pose in the absence of an extended iconographic context. This draws focus to the visual potency embodied in the physical appearance of Bes as a dwarf. As previously noted, Bes and dwarfs otherwise appealed to the Egyptians as manifestations of magic because the chances for survival of an achondroplastic child at birth during the first few months of infancy was remote. Any dwarf who survived was therefore considered a sign, or manifestation, of divine protection, especially for mother and newborn child, and valued as a divine mark. Bes’s protection was extended to women in general and the production of objects representing only his head reveals that he became a prominent symbol of apotropaic power. Following Bes in squatting akimbo pose and as a head only, his representation as musician or dancer is third in frequency as a form of protective magic and not merely celebration. He was an evil-averting dancing god. His powers were applied to the afterlife as well with one-third of the object types from the New Kingdom coming from tombs. In the Iron Age Levant (ninth–eighth centuries), Bes took on various expressions of the master-of-animals motif owing to local and adaptive influences. His mastery over powerful animals as given expression in his handling of snakes, point to his ability to avert danger or evil. The master-of-animals had its antecedents in the earlier Middle Kingdom Egyptian motif of Bes fighting a rampant lion, but reemerged in the first millennium in a new form to appeal to the contemporary Levantine world and his new more-eastern admirers. These new emergent motifs nevertheless preserved his traditional function as a protective or apotropaic deity. Journeying with Bes: The Levant and Beyond Like many other intermediary, protective beings, Bes was not lord of a major temple or a main recipient of a public cult. Nevertheless, he was very popular not only in the

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common peoples’ faith but also in the higher echelons of Egyptian society, including the Egyptian royalty. He is attested as early as the Old Kingdom and by the New Kingdom, he gained increasing favor in the whole of the Mediterranean, only to disappear slowly during Roman rule. As noted already, the most typical characteristic of the Bes figure is the grotesque face with beard, wide nose, blown up cheeks, stuck-out tongue, and wide ears. Often, he was represented naked, with either a long or short penis, rarely with a short, fur apron. The feather crown later became his distinguishing trademark.181 Bes was often rendered on vessels, limestone ostraca, and painted on walls of buildings and tombs as a means to convey his apotropaic powers. Many of these have their echoes at KA. Furthermore, the crouching “double” Bes is attested on Iron Age II amulets in ancient Israel, and may provide a context for the coupling (duplication?) of Bes and Beset on pithos A as a deliberate attempt to multiply or enhance magically, the protective powers of Bes.182 Together with Hathor he was present during birth, where he also had creative powers. With knives and protective signs he would watch over the newborn child and as a protective god he adorned bedroom furniture. In the myths about Hathor, Bes also became a musician and dancer.183 The frequent combination with wedjat eyes and with the baboon underlines his solar characteristics.184 Herrmann has thoroughly documented the different variants of Bes and their distribution on amulets in ancient Israel.185 At KA, Bes and Beset appear as the foci of ritual on pithoi, and as proposed here, they were converged with two major local deities, YHWH and Asherah of Shomron. Asherah-Beset seems to have functioned in the capacity of mediatrix delivering the blessings of protection and provision. If, as Wilson and others have proposed, Bes was a widely disseminated apotropaic deity in Phoenicia, and Phoenician cultural influence was prevalent and emulated at KA, having been brought there by northern Israelites (the politically dominant), and assisted by Phoenicians themselves (the prestige culture), those in power might well have chosen to portray the apotropaic powers of YHWH and Asherah in a form both familiar to the Phoenician world and, as a gesture to neighbors further south, emulative of Egyptian form and style. KA may preserve an unprecedented convergence of YHWH and Asherah with Bes and Beset, or more precisely with YHWH of Shomron (and not YHWH of Teman) if the graffito 3.1 on pithos is taken fully into account. Moreover, this Sinai site was relatively proximate to northeastern Egypt and had long been within the

  Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, 316.   Eggler, “Bes,” 58, 61, 65–66. 183   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, cat. nos. 424, 425. 184   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel II, cat. no. 493; Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, cat. nos. 338, 339, 463, 355. 185   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, cat. nos. 317, 318; 2006: cat. nos. 109–44. Add now Herrmann, “Egyptian Amulets from Tell Jemmeh.” 181

182

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 89 orbit of Egyptian exchange and influence as these relate to the noticeable rise in apotropaism during the first millennium and as the Egyptian-based amuletic inventory in the southern Levant collected by Herrmann clearly indicates. Bes imagery and magic then had one of two likely channels of entry that may have been in play in Samaria’s selection of Bes as its preferred deity and image to converge with YHWH and Asherah in the apotropaic design of KA: either through a Phoenician filter to Samaria or another, more direct route from Egypt to the northern Sinai or, more likely, given the evidence at KA for both cultural influences, some combination thereof. Translating Bes and Beset: From Image to Text The consistent and frequently attested technique of marking gender at KA clearly confirms that both the imaged figures and the inscribed referents comprise a male and a female. Secondly, the repeated mention of YHWH and Asherah in the inscriptions both on the pithoi and then on the walls at KA makes them the only viable candidates for identification with these two images. At KA, no other deities occur as frequently in the inscriptions and no other female deity is ever mentioned, and when Asherah is mentioned, she is coupled exclusively with YHWH. A third factor is the compelling analogy provided by the integrated worshippers scene on pithos B. I propose that inscription 3.9 was positioned directly above the worshippers scene on pithos B as the scene’s rubric, caption, or credo. As such, the entire integrated scene was transferred to one of the walls as a mural painting. The worshippers gesture toward the heavens as an act of adoration. Yet, the space above the worshippers is large and empty save for the positioning of caption 3.9 at its upper margin. I have proposed elsewhere that the scene is expressive of empty-space aniconism such that any observer of the scene, having read or heard the caption 3.9 read aloud, would mentally and/or perceptually “fill in the gap,” with locally conventional images of YHWH and Asherah who are inscribed in the caption 3.9.186 What constituted the locally conventional? The answer: YHWH and Asherah as Bes and Beset as portrayed on pithos A and on a corresponding nearby wall mural. In fact, the worshippers scene’s caption 3.9 set in the third person, makes mention of “YHWH of the Teman and His Asherah,” and describes YHWH as the source of humankind’s blessing. Furthermore, the spirit of the caption of 3.9 is dramatically illustrated in that scene by figure M’s assistance on behalf of the debilitated figure N. So while the worshippers scene does not portray YHWH and Asherah in concrete form, the empty-space aniconism was designed to provoke the observer to imagine the divine couple mentioned in the display inscription 3.9, and the scene or image of closest proximity depicting the two supranatural beings was painted 186

 See Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 91–125.

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on pithos A. The same scene was displayed on at least one of the walls while also having been drawn on the pithoi and erected in the bench room for further public display. YHWH and Asherah’s mention in the caption 3.9, coupled with the empty-space aniconism of the worshippers-in-adoration scene, underscores the central role the divine couple played at KA, since this scene too was transferred to a wall somewhere at KA for all to observe. Perhaps the worshippers scene with its empty-space aniconism was positioned on a wall juxtaposed to the formal version of the integrated wall scene depicting the iconic theophany of Bes and Beset first drafted on pithos A. In sum, the Bes and Beset figures represent YHWH and Asherah respectively. Bes to YHWH, Beset to Asherah Another factor in identifying the Bes and Beset figures with YHWH and Asherah is the overlap of the graffito inscription 3.1 with the headdress of the larger Bes L figure on pithos A. This inscription specifically conveys the blessing of YHWH as mediated by his consort-wife, Asherah. The graffito character of 3.1 makes the association no less meaningful or accurate as it constitutes the most ancient and proximate, probably elite interpretation of the two figures. Although it is not an “official” identification, or one produced by the original state-sponsored scribal-artisan as a caption, it is authentic and immediately contemporary.187 That in Egypt such religious graffiti were often produced by lector priests and other skilled ritualists of varying statuses, cautions against dismissing such graffiti prematurely as random, spontaneous, uninformed, or “popular” and therefore of little or no consequence.188 The Other Gods: El, Baal, and the Elim in Wall Inscription 4.2 Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel all but flatten the divine landscape at KA and leave only one deity standing: YHWH. Their treatment of inscription 4.2 illustrates this most clearly.189 Inscription 4.2 (of which six lines are retrievable) was recovered from Building A’s western entryway to the bench room and reconstructed from two fallen plaster fragments perhaps originally mounted on a doorjamb. It was written in Phoenician script and in black ink. There is not much of the line-width missing in 4.2, thus we have most of the original inscription. It contains an inscribed theophany, “El shines forth (… on the heights?).” The theophany is embedded within a larger doom oracle that mentions “a day of war,” earthquakes, melting mountains,

187   I am indebted to Brent Strawn and Joel Lemon for highlighting this point in their new article, “Once More, YHWH and Company at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” MAARAV 20 (2015): 83–120. 188  On lector priests as literate, elite graffiti writers, see Peden, The Graffiti of Pharaonic Egypt and now Roger Forshaw, The Role of the Lector in Ancient Egyptian Society, Egyptology 5 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2014). 189   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 155.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 91 and crushing hills.190 For Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, the “gods,” of inscription 4.2 line 4, are enemy gods that the Holy One, who they identify with YHWH, will destroy. Their prospective destruction of course, presumes their assumed existence on the part of the ancient writer and if one should suggest that the gods here, though in a theophany, actually represent their corresponding idols and not the gods themselves, then again the ancient Near Eastern notion that gods and their images were far more inseparable than separable as two halves of the larger whole comes into play. In any event, the authors go on to suggest that Baal in line 5 might even be an epithet for YHWH (“[The] Lord”) and El in v. 6 is YHWH’s older, alternate name.191 Furthermore, Asherah at KA is a sacred object not a goddess.192 Lemaire and Na’aman have both offered alternative epigraphic readings at 4.2, line 4 for the “gods” (ʾlm) and for the “Holy One” (qdš), ostensibly eliminating them from the KA epigraphic corpus altogether.193 In my reading of the photographs, all the letters of both forms qdš and ʾlm are readily identified, though the repeated šin in qdš > q[š]dš is also present. That Baal and El in 4.2 are more likely personal divine names and not epithets (“Lord” and “God”) finds support from several quarters. The two terms appear in synonymous parallel lines (5–6) in the doom oracle section of 4.2 and at some distance from the questionable reading of … y]hw[h … in line 2 by Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel.194 Neither is prefixed by the definite article. Both Baal and El as deities are attested in contemporary Northwest Semitic inscriptions of the first millennium; El at Deir Alla and in Ammonite inscriptions, Baal in Phoenician texts. If there is a dominant Phoenician and Samarian material cultural sociopolitical reflex at KA, such would presuppose the presence of a polytheistic religious environment as confirmed by the mention of

190   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 110–14 and see the discussion on p. 133; Lemaire, “Remarques sur les inscriptions phéniciennes.” The notion that 4.2 is a theophany is similar to what I proposed for the Bes and Beset scene on pithos A. It was an inscribed and portrayed theophany involving YHWH and Asherah as Bes-like figures; see Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings.” What needs to be added to that proposal is the transfer of both such scenes to the walls of the site for public display. 191   They translate the other occurrence of ʿl in 4.2 line 2 as “God”; see the discussion in Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 133. 192   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 130–32. They do acknowledge on p. 133 that “the theophany described in inscription 4.2 which is written in Hebrew, but in a Phoenician script, can be understood as syncretistic.” Yet, they go on to propose the El might be the common noun “god” or a paired name with YHWH, whose name they questionably read in line 2 of the inscription, and Baal might be “lord” or “master.” 193   Lemaire “Remarques sur les inscriptions phéniciennes,” 90–92. For 4.2, line 4 he reads wšdš for q[š]dš (not “Holy One”) and for ʾlm in line 4, he reads ʾtm/n (not “gods”). He also offers an alternative reading for “Baal” bʿl in 4.4.1, line 2 as pʿl and views asherah as a cultic object at KA; see p. 84; Nadav Na’aman (“The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud through the Lens of Historical Research,” UF 43 [2011]: 309) reads dsds and ʿbn respectively for the Holy One and the gods. 194   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 114, 132–33.

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“the gods” in line 4. The same goes for the repeated but independent reference to Baal in 4.4.1. In fact, the presumed antecedent of the two supposed epithets is far less certain than the readings El and Baal. The reading for YHWH … y]hw[h …, and in actual fact …]hw[…, in this text presents the least likely one among the gods mentioned in 4.2. If there is no antecedent to which the epithets refer back, then El and Baal are stand-alone divine names and in parallelism, the father and his son. Nonetheless, Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel give prominence to YHWH’s role in the theophany and doom oracle of 4.2 and identify the Holy One of line 4 as YHWH owing to the latter’s supposed prior mention in line 2. Yet, as alluded to already, the line where they have reconstructed the only occurrence of YHWH in the inscription line 2 is sorely damaged to the extent that only two medial letter forms of the four are, even by their own reckoning, legible: “… y]hw[h-]….” Moreover, the immediately preceding context is missing. In other words, this particular theophany may have nothing to do with the deity YHWH since the lone reading they propose has only half the letters present, a medial he and a waw. What is unequivocally clear, however, is El’s central role in the text. El is mentioned at the outset in line 2, and preceding the supposed reading of y]hw[h later in the same line of the theophany (“when El shone forth on the heights”) and then again in line 6 in parallel with Baal in line 5 as part of the doom oracle.195 In the first instance, El in line 2 has no possible antecedent preserved in the text and, as mentioned above, the second instance of El is in line 6 where Baal is paralleled by El who is the second member of a poetic couplet of son and father. On balance, to give preference to a partially reconstructed divine name (…]hw[…), of which half the letters or more are missing, over the multiple occurrences of three or four other gods and groups of deities in the same text; El, Baal, the Holy One, and the gods, is methodologically problematic. Even the related biblical historiographic traditions looking back on the period of 800 BCE presumes a polytheistic, monolatrous, and aniconic worldview for both the northern and southern kingdoms and therefore, for the artisan-scribes who were commissioned by the dominant northern power at the time to compose the KA epigraphs. This is especially apropos assuming the artisans were Phoenicians, Samarians, or Judeans under northern rule. The accounts of the reigns of King Joash of Israel and Amaziah of Judah make mention of the iconic and polytheistic cults comprised of indigenous gods and those of neighboring peoples along with their images within both royal cults. Joash of Israel “did evil” similar to that of Jeroboam, while Amaziah adopted and worshiped southern, Edomite gods (2 Kgs 13:11, 14: 4; 2 Chr 25:14–16, 20, 27). So, short of a Hezekian-type character, or better, a Josianic type, historically overturning these or similar practices at the time of KA’s viability, one would not 195   Lemaire, “Remarques sur les inscriptions phéniciennes,” 91 agrees with Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel on the readings in 4.2, lines 5–6 where Baal and El appear but he translates them as divine names, not as epithets of YHWH. Na’aman, “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” 310 prefers honorifics of YHWH for bʿl and ʾl.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 93 expect a monotheistic or an aniconic impulse in either of the royal cults. Moreover, notwithstanding marginalized elite groups who may have embraced such positions, they did not have state-empowered oversight of the cult at KA. The north held that power. Thus, the plastered wall inscription more likely reflects an orientation toward the divine world in which, at the least, El, Baal, and the “gods” are members of a local or regional pantheon (and an otherwise unidentified “Holy One,” but perhaps this is an epithet of El); all of which may have been depicted in full iconic array alongside YHWH and A/asherah on the walls of KA. The question then arises, does the theophany in 4.2 preserve part of an ancient Phoenician reflex of an older Canaanite tradition like that echoed in Deut 32:8–9? From a Phoenician perspective, had the ancient god (El) Elyon delegated to the surrounding nations their patron deities or Elim? For example, had Baal been assigned to Phoenicia, one YHWH to Samaria, and another YHWH of the desert to Judah? Lemaire, having recently reassessed the Phoenician inscriptions at KA based on the 2012 final report, concluded that the handful of texts that were written in Phoenician script were also reflective of Phoenician language (and not Hebrew language as proposed by Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel)196 and that they were composed by Phoenicians at KA. In the lone case where YHWH of Teman is clearly mentioned in one of these Phoenician texts from the wall plaster inscriptions authored by a Phoenician, namely, inscription 4.1.1, lines 1–2, Lemaire points out that Phoenicians would not have hesitated to invoke local deities like YHWH of Teman as the Phoenician text from Saqqara independently illustrates. It mentions, “Baal of Zaphon and all the gods of Tahpanhes” (KAI 50:3).197 It might also be added that Phoenicians and obviously northerners would not have hesitated to recognize the local goddess Asherah within the context of a servant state far to the south (not to eliminate entirely Astarte’s hypothetical mention in a lost text from KA). Needless to say, if Asherah is present at KA as the goddess, then we have a case of mutually informing data, the deities El, Baal, and the Elim or gods in 4.2, and the goddess Asherah alongside YHWH in 3.1, 3.6, 3.9, and 4.1.1, together clearly favor the presence of some form of West Semitic polytheistic tradition. This in turn only confirms that Phoenicians (Baal and El) and/or Samarians (El, Baal, and YHWH of Shomron and His Asherah) controlled the site with Judeans involved in some limited capacity (El and YHWH of [the] Teman and His Asherah).198 Monotheism is hardly in view at KA and it is surely doubtful that a Judean monolatry would have been given pronounced expression at the time within the context of the northern political domination   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 122–26.   Lemaire, “Remarques sur les inscriptions phéniciennes,” 9 and n. 29. On p. 93, he also offers an alternative reading to ]YHW[ in 4.4.2, line 2 where he reads instead … ]YW.W. 198   Note also that the general synonym for the common use of bʿl, ʾdn designating “lord,” or “master,” appears on two occasions in the KA inscriptions; 3.6: lines 3, 9–10, “Say to my lord …,” and “may He be with my lord […]”; Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 95–97. This may further lessen the likelihood that bʿl was used in such a generic fashion or as an epithet. 196 197

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of the south, which in turn was complemented by the cultural prestige of Phoenician religion. This is all echoed from within the relevant biblical texts confirming, while polemicizing against, the prevalence of polytheism in all three traditions. The Goddess Asherah as Mediatrix The term Asherah or asherah appears in the blessing inscriptions preserved on the two pithoi recovered from the site: on pithos A in inscription 3.1, “YHWH of Shomron and his A/asherah,” and on pithos B in inscriptions 3.6 and 3.9, as well as in another inscribed on a plastered wall fragment (4.1.1; 2X), “YHWH of Teman and his A/asherah” (and see below for a more detailed treatment). Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel propose that where the prayers and blessings in the KA inscriptions have a singular active verb, such requires a singular subject (YHWH) and therefore the asherah is not fully incorporated into the blessings and prayers as a co-performer alongside YHWH. This in turn is taken to mean that the asherah is not the goddess. By their own reckoning, this is not altogether accurate.199 In those instances where YHWH and his asherah are qualified by the prefixing lamed and the governing verb is active or passive, they both give expression to its causal or instrumental roles in blessing. -  The Pithos Inscriptions: Captions and Graffiti200 I have blessed you by YHWH of Shomron and by His Asherah … 3.1 I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah … 3.6a May He bless you and He keep you and may the people of my Lord be … 3.6b […] by YHWH of the Teman and by His Asherah … 3.9a Whatever He (YHW[H]) is asked from a man, He will give him generously   3.9b … and if he would urge, YHW will provide him according to his desire. 3.9c

-  The Painted Plastered Wall Inscriptions “May he lengthen their days and may they be sated …” “May they be provided for by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah” “Show them favor, O’ YHWH of Teman … better their days! …

4.1.1

-  A Stone Basin “ … blessed be he by YHW.”

1.2

So, those instances where YHWH and Asherah are syntactically parallel and convey (instrumental) agency must be assessed alongside those passages with greater syntactic ambiguity in order to clarify one way or the other whether Asherah is an independent divine being, a consort, or a mediatrix. The artisan-scribes of both the 199 200

  Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 132 and pp.127–28.   For supporting details, see p. 72, “Making Blessings and Dedications as Captions.”

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 95 pithos and the wall inscriptions at KA could and did make fine distinctions and were aware of a genuine distinction between YHWH on the one hand, and on the other, YHWH and His Asherah.201 Yet, had a sufficient number of inscriptions been recovered, perhaps Asherah would have been mentioned alone or independently as the subject of blessings. This surely comes close to the significances attributed to Asherah at Khirbet el-Qom in text 2.3:3 where her role is synonymously paralleled to that of YHWH, suggesting their similar, if not equal, roles (see further below). Yet, admittedly there are simply too little data that are too enigmatic to make hard and fast or sweeping conclusions. In some contexts, the well-attested consonantal spelling of Phoenician allows for a verb to be interpreted as a plural absent the final waw > -û, as a mater. This is the case with the Saqqara papyrus letter (KAI 50:3): “I have blessed you by Baal of Zaphon and by all the gods of Tahpanhes, may they (yp ʿlk) make for you peace.”202 So, in 3.6, which for Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel is composed in Hebrew script, Israelite dialect, ybrk wyšmrk wyhy ʿm ʾdn …, “May He bless you and may He keep you and may He be with my lord …,” one might read with consonantal ortho­ graphy or with singular verbs and compound subjects, “May they (YHWH and Asherah) bless you and may they keep you and may the people of my Lord be … [forever].”203 One must keep in mind that this construction immediately follows the phrase, “I have blessed you by YHWH of Teman and by His Asherah …,” which indicates that the antecedent to the singular verbs ybrk and wyšmrk is most likely the compound subject YHWH and Asherah, or, alternatively, the verbal forms are unmarked plurals. In the plastered wall inscription 4.1.1 line 1, two verbal forms occur that are marked for the plural (final –u): wyśbʿw [ … ] wytnw. Yet, in another plastered wall inscription, 4.2 line 3, the text reads, “the mountains will melt, the hills will crush …,” with a “paragogic” nun on both verbs wymsn and wydkn and both verbs lack the plural ending waw (-û) before the nun. Now 4.1.1 and 4.2 are written in Phoenician script, unlike 3.6, which is supposedly in Hebrew script, Israelite dialect, so their respective orthographies may well be distinct. The mention of Asherah in these inscriptions is the major impetus underlying so much of the interest on the part of historians and biblical experts in the KA discoveries. The most pressing question for investigators is whether asherah refers to the goddess Asherah so widely attested in the ancient Near East or is asherah here merely a reference to an object of some sort like a “sacred” pole or something between these two poles? If the former, it is the earliest attestation of the goddess Asherah in ancient Israel, of her status as the wife, consort, or mediatrix of YHWH, and of her local manifestations alongside that of YHWH in an Is  Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 127.  Ibid., 127 and H. Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanaeische und Aramäische Inschriften (Weisbaden: Harrassowitz, 1971), 12, 67 no. 50. 203   On the form wbrk, the kaf is the final consonant of the tri-radical base, so wbrk lacks the object suffix, unlike the next verbal form. The two verbs work in tandem as a hendiadys. 201 202

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raelite-Judean religious context.204 If the latter is correct, that asherah is a sacred object of some sort, the question arises, was there any ancient perception that the object and the goddess Asherah were connected, or had that connection faded from memory altogether? Merlo’s comment here is apropos: “the distinction between a goddess and her cult object is a modern understanding that does not correspond to the ancient perception of religion.”205 As for the supposed lack of evidence for Asherah in first-millennium Phoenician sources, if Astarte, not Asherah, had risen to prominence alongside Baal in various Phoenician religious centers of the first millennium, would we even expect to find the mention of Asherah in elitist Phoenician inscriptions? Would we not expect Astarte instead to dominate the first-millennium BCE Phoenician epigraphic corpus? If she were Baal’s consort there would be little concern for (or an immense taboo against?) elevating Asherah to the extent that her name would appear in elite writing having to do with religion or matters of state. Astarte apparently was the main goddess worshipped both in the homeland at such prominent cult centers as Tyre, Byblos, Sidon, in other cities, and in the upper Galilee, as well as in the wider Phoenician and Punic world including Cyprus, Italy, and Spain (Tanit?).206 Asherah in First-Millennium Ancient Near Eastern Sources. Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel understand Asherah’s absence in the first-millennium Phoenician record as indicative of her absence throughout the contemporary Levantine world. This explains their expressed opinion that “one finds it difficult to accept that the goddess Asherah had vanished from all other lands except Israel.”207 Yet, whatever developments took place in first-millennium Phoenicia, we can reasonably conclude they were inter-Phoenician ones and not representative of the wider Levantine orbit since there is positive evidence for Asherah’s active role in other first-millennium ancient Near Eastern sources. Asherah is attested in Babylonian, Old South Arabian, and biblical or predominately Judean texts.208 As Ashratu, Asherah is mentioned in some first-millennium Babylonian ritual texts as is her temple, bīt ašrātu, located   Asherah references at KA provide some of the earliest evidence for the localized cults and manifestations of YHWH and His Asherah from both Samaria and Teman; see Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings” and Jeremy M. Hutton, “Local Manifestations of Yahweh and Worship in the Interstices: A Note on Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” JANER 10 (2010): 177–210. 205   Paolo Merlo, “Asherah,” EBR 2:978, following Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 32. 206  See Merlo’s survey of textual evidence for Astarte (“Astarte, Ashtoreth,” EBR 2:1099–1101) and note Izak Cornelius’s detailed treatment of Astarte iconography in IDD, http://www.religionswissenschaft.uzh.ch/idd/prepublications/e_idd_astarte.pdf (2008). 207   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 131 and see n. 28. 208  See Merlo, “Asherah,” EBR 2:976–80 and his entry on Asherah in IDD, http://www.religionswissenschaft.uzh.ch/idd/prepublications/e_idd_asherah.pdf, 2010. In his rejection of my 2002 proposal on p. 4 of his IDD entry, he could not take into account Meshel’s editorial note in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 165 that the right-hand Bes figure no longer possesses a “loop” between the legs. As proposed above, the evidence is unequivocal now for gendered marking on Bes and Beset of pithos A. 204

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 97 in Babylon. She also appears in some late first-millennium Babylonian ritual texts alongside other deities.209 As a goddess, Asherah appears also as Athirat in Arabian religious traditions from the mid-first millennium onwards.210 In these instances she has a temple and receives offerings, and, owing to the fact that she appears in separate instances alongside two different, local, lunar gods, Wadd or ʿAmm, some experts have proposed that she may have served as consort to these regional gods.211 If, as widely advocated, one can date at least some of the Asherah references in the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH) to a late eighth-century Judean context (and especially so in 2 Kings), then we have a representative number of cross-cultural references to the goddess Asherah in a wide range of first-millennium sources representative of southern Levantine, Mesopotamian, and Arabian traditions.212 Asherah in the Hebrew Bible. The point to be underscored here is that passages such as 1 Kgs 15:13, 1 Kgs 18:19, 2 Kgs 21:7, and 23:4–6 when viewed together, presuppose the existence of the cult of the same goddess Asherah in Judah beginning with King Asa’s mother Ma‘acah and continuing down at least to, if not later than, Josiah’s removal of Asherah from the temple.213 In 1 Kgs 15:13, King Asa deposed his mother as queen because she had made an “abominable thing” (mipleset) for Asherah. Asa cut it down (krt) and burned it (śrp), so the “abominable thing” must have been a concrete wooden object as it was made, cut down, and burned, which if Asherah here was merely an object and not also the goddess, would create a rather awkward, nonsensical construction. Ma‘acah would have made an object for another object and Asa would have destroyed only the one object, the mipleset, but not the other, the asherah. The author of 2 Kgs 21:7 condemned Manasseh’s placement of the “sculptured image (pesel) of (the) Asherah that he had made” in the temple. If Asherah here was the symbol then again we are left with a nonsensical construction concerning the placement of an image of another image in the temple, as pesel and asherah are distinct types or forms of images. In 2 Kgs 23:4–6, Josiah had his temple personnel bring out from the temple all the vessels (hakkēlîm) that had been made for (the) Baal, for (the) Asherah, and for all the Host of Heaven and he burned (śrp) them and carried (nśʾ) the ashes to Bet-El. Assuming we can with confidence identify Baal here as the cult statue of the deity (what would be the point otherwise?) and the Host of Heaven his divine 209   Steve A. Wiggins, A Reassessment of Asherah: With Further Considerations of the Goddess (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2007), 151–71; Merlo, “Asherah,” 976. 210  See Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 131, and n. 28 on p. 137, where they distinguish between Asherah’s supposed absence throughout the Levant and her appearance in south Arabian inscriptions, by dismissing the latter as “on the fringe of the Semitic world.” 211   Wiggins, A Reassessment of Asherah, 175–86; Merlo, “Asherah,” 976. 212   Wiggins, A Reassessment of Asherah, 175–86; Merlo, “Asherah,” 976. 213   Asherah may also appear under the epithet “Queen of Heaven” mentioned in Jer 7:18 and 44:17–19, but other candidates are equally plausible, namely, Ishtar, Astarte, or Anat. In Judg 3:7, the plural form Asheroth parallels the Baalim, indicating the author’s recognition of her divine status expressed perhaps in terms of various localized cults dedicated to her.

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entourage (ditto), then (the) Asherah here is likewise a cult statue of the goddess. Though her concrete form or image is referred to in vv. 6–7, which is burned (śrp) and the ashes of which were scattered on the peoples’ graves, these references together, (the) Asherah, the goddess (v. 4) and (the) asherah, her cultic image (vv. 6–7), encompass the two aspects of divinity, the immaterial and material. These passages in Kings clearly refer to the goddess Asherah, her attachment to YHWH and to the official cult in Jerusalem.214 Other passages, such as 1 Kgs 18:19, likewise attest to Asherah’s status as goddess, but associate her with Baal instead of YHWH. Here, Elijah confronts the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah on mount Carmel. The parallel terms Baal and Asherah obviously refer to the god and goddess. Asherah’s association with Baal here and in similar contexts most likely reflects a Deuteronomistic polemic designed to discredit Asherah since, as highlighted above, we would have expected the prophets of Baal and Astarte to show up for this contest, that is, based on the available first millennium extrabiblical sources.215 While all the details might not be historically accurate, with some rhetorically constructed and polemically designed, the author clearly understood Asherah here to be the goddess. This in turn hints at some historical memory of Asherah’s divinity having informed the author’s composition. Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel’s argument that Asherah is nowhere depicted as a fully independent entity in Hebrew inscriptions is, in actuality, generally consonant with what we know to be her expressed relationship with a male counterpart throughout the broader ancient Near Eastern world. That hardly justifies however, eliminating her altogether from the historical landscape. While clearly identifiable as a divine being, a goddess, she is at the same time subordinated or attached to her male counterpart, the dominant deity. This applies whether one has in view Athirat as the consort of Ugaritic El, or Amorite Amurru and his spouse Ashratu, or Athirat as she is mentioned alongside a male patron god such as Wadd or ʿAmm (both lunar gods) from one of the south Arabian kingdoms. Yet, apparently in other references in Arabian texts, Athirat has her own substantial cult, even perhaps a temple dedicated to her, complete with installed priests.216 Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel refer to Asherah at Ugarit as a “mother goddess” based on the phrase qnyt ʾilm in support of their thesis that she is not so portrayed in the HB or in Hebrew inscriptions but as dependent or attached to YHWH and most likely then, only 214   The view that by the time of the Chronicler, Asherah had morphed into plural forms both masculine and feminine that were expressive of either the loss of her memory (so Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000], 61–63), or of the Chronicler’s purposeful suppression of her (so C. Frevel, “Die Elimination der Göttin aus dem Weltbild des Chronisten,” ZAW 103 [1991]: 263–71), while of obvious import, has little or no bearing on the Iron II period, which is the focus of the present treatment on KA. 215  See Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh, 74. 216  See Wiggins, A Reassessment of Asherah, 220.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 99 a cult object.217 Merlo and others have made a compelling case that Asherah is portrayed in a dependent or mediatorial role throughout her attested history in the Levant, but as an identifiable goddess. Merlo points out the Ugaritic phrase qnyt ʾilm should be more accurately translated “creatrix of the gods” and as such, she is neither to be equated with some universal notion of mother goddess nor is she an independent fertility goddess, but instead Asherah as Athiratu at Ugarit is portrayed as the subordinate or the consort partner or the paredra of her male counterpart El. It is worth restating here as well that the distinction between a goddess and her cult object or image is a modern understanding that does not correspond to ancient religious conceptions.218 While Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel concluded that those responsible for the inscriptions in Hebrew language and script “were believers in YHWH only, and included no other gods in their worship (despite the appearance of the term ʾšrh), it is surely doubtful that the same can be said of those who left the inscriptions and murals in ink on the plastered walls, whose dialect was Judahite, even if the script was Phoenician.”219 If one grants, based on the pottery repertoire and suggestive linguistic peculiarities evident in the inscriptions, that Phoenicians, Judeans, and Samarians were all at the site, and if as we have argued above, the pithoi drawings and inscriptions are drafting pieces for what ultimately ended up being transferred to and executed on the plastered walls, then scholarly attempts to make distinctions regarding the religious ideas of these various groups as expressed through the artifacts and isolated orthographic peculiarities begin to appear rather artificial, if not forced. After all, if the northern Israelite capital controlled the site, it would have been its royal religious ideology that dominated the publically displayed wall décor and should that dominant influence have allowed for some ecumenism to enter the art and epigraphs, it would not have been to the exclusion of that northern religious dominance. Discernible deviations from that ideology may, however, have been given expression in the graffiti that is identifiable in such cases as graffito 3.6, on pithos B, but then this text has a general parallel in one of the wall mural inscriptions 4.1.1 in that both make mention of a southern Yahwistic tradition in which Asherah was highly regarded: “YHWH of Teman and His Asherah.…”   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 131. Merlo, “Asherah,” IDD, 3; see also idem, “Asherah,” EBR 2:978–79. Rainer Albertz, “Personal Piety,” in Religious Diversity in Ancent Israel and Judah, ed. Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 135–46, esp. p. 141, concluded that based on Inscription 3 from Khirbet el-Qom, Asherah was a mediatrix between YHWH and the individual, “Blessed was Uriyahu by YHWH. He has rescued him from his enemies by His Asherah” (his translation). 219   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 133. On p. 131, these authors appeal to the occurrence of the feminine and masculine plural forms of asherah in the HB as evidence that there was a loss of knowledge of the goddess, but such a “loss of knowledge,” if indeed that is the case, appears to have constituted a much later process as indicated in the late work of the Chronicler, and clearly not in the handful of earlier traditions underlying the passages in 1–2 Kings. 217

218 

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From another perspective, the hand responsible for the graffito 3.1 on pithos A may well have been of a type similar to that of an Egyptian lector priest. In this case, under the auspices of his northern overlord and during what may have constituted his official inspection of the drafts prior to their transfer to the walls as murals, he added a correction or an explicit addition to the integrated scene comprising the two Bes-like figures (and the lyre player?). Such a priest or scribe deliberately overlapped the scene with the following inscription, “Message of … ‘Speak to Yaheli and to Yo‘asah and to … [ … ] by YHWH of Shomron and by His Asherah,’” of which much of the middle section is missing.220 The overwrite in this instance comprised a supervisory maneuver instructing the artisan-scribe assigned to transfer this drafting to the walls that inscription 3.1 was the caption to be included in the mural and positioned above the integrated scene centered on the two Bes-like figures. For that formal execution on the plastered and painted walls as public display, the hired Phoenician artisan-scribe would have rendered the elements in Phoenician prestige script and art forms. A more top-down alternative scenario would have entailed a Judean artisan-scribe who transferred the décor from draft to mural as required by his northern overlords who preferred the prestigious Phoenician style and script. A Hybridized Desert Iconic Creole Assuming the data from KA indicate that both YHWH and the goddess Asherah were represented in iconographic form as Bes and Beset at KA, it hardly warrants the sweeping conclusion of Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel that “the accepted view of Yahwistic religion and cult as un-iconographic would be shattered.”221 Rather, such an iconic scene produced by those artisan-scribes under the auspices of the northern state would constitute the kind of traditional rival eventually targeted by those advocating one of the varieties of aniconism, or their developmental predecessors, in the HB. As proposed here, the overlapping of the graffito 3.1 – perhaps incised by an inspecting priest – with its mention of “YHWH of Shomron and His Asherah” and the Bes and Beset figures on pithos A provides an ancient reliable expression of the convergence of these two local gods with internationally renowned apotropaic deities. As for the possible subtleties at KA vis-à-vis interstitial worship involving distinctions of sacred space, personal experience, and divine manifestation (to which we would add variant iconisms and aniconisms), it is quite clear that there 220   See above for the proposal that the fragment exclusively containing the phrase “I have blessed you (pl.),” which is generally assumed to have been joined to pithos A and preserving a brief section of 3.1, might represent another, otherwise unknown pithos, based on its discovery in the courtyard with the pithos B fragments rather than in the bench room with the other pithos A fragments. 221   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 129.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 101 were multiple localized and regionalized religious traditions at the site; an Israelite one (e.g., YHWH of Shomron, Asherah, and El), a Judean one (e.g., YHWH of Teman, Asherah, and El), and likely a prestige Phoenician one (Baal, El, and the Elim). If the proposal that inscription 4.2 comprises a fragment of a more ancient Phoenician version of the Canaanite tradition underlying Deut 32:8–9 has any validity, then the Phoenician prestige tradition was given primary position alongside the local YHWH traditions convalesced in the bench room ritual locus.222 In a 2002 essay,223 I argued that KA might indicate that the Iron Age official Judean cult was not aniconic, which various biblical tradents from later periods likewise endorse in their disparagement of so many kings north and south for erecting various undetailed cult images of YHWH, Asherah, as well as those of other gods, whether members of a Yahwistic pantheon or those recruited from among foreign deities. I proposed that the origins of aniconism must be reconsidered. I advocated a reevaluation of the time, circumstances, and social location under which aniconism historically emerged, and not that it had never developed in Israelite religion. In an earlier article from 1995, I made the case for a virtually perpetual iconic official cult in preexilic Israel in which the biblical prohibitions against making images were in their early contexts aimed specifically at outlawing the making of “illicit” versions of an image of YHWH – that is, nonauthorized forms of a YHWH cult image.224 They were reread and reread quite differently over time. As for what that early temple image of YHWH may have looked like, I suggested that such a form may have constituted a Mischwesen of sorts, but otherwise it remained intrapriestly secret knowledge to which the Dtr tradition was not privy or, if it had partial knowledge, it too refrained from articulating that information other than its condemning what it viewed as misinformed alternatives or rivals. To be sure, such YHWH temple iconism was complemented by various forms of aniconism following and in response to the temple’s demise and the capture and destruction of YHWH’s cult image by the Babylonians. It was eventually superseded by an official aniconic cult, but my proposal here does not stand or fall on the basis of the KA data alone, nor does it deny Israelite aniconism.225 It only dates the emergence of aniconism to the exilic period or beyond. The above findings have forced me to update and revise my earlier published views regarding the drawings of the two Bes figures and the lyre player. The arguments in favor of viewing some of the drawings on either pithos as isolated practice sketches, such as the lyre player, makes good sense of the observable phenomena. The lyre player’s facing away from the two Bes-like figures, in spite of other elements shared by it and one or the other or both of the Bes-like figures, confirms its  See Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 91–125 and Hutton, “Local Manifestations of Yahweh,” 177–201 and the following treatment of Deut 32. 223   Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 91–125. 224   Schmidt, “The Aniconic Tradition,” 75–105. 225  See Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings” and “The Aniconic Tradition.” 222

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individual isolated rendering. As pointed out above, this applies not only to the lyre player on pithos A, but also to a few other figures that I had included in my more inclusively integrated scenes in 2002. Nevertheless, the recognition of numerous, isolated figures scattered across the two jars as study pieces, does not obfuscate the observations and arguments validating the coherent scenes on the jars comprising two or more figures. No one disputes the presence of coherent or unified scenes in the case of the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene on pithos A and the six-worshippers scene on pithos B. In these two cases, we have clear exceptions to the quasirandomness that characterizes the positioning of isolated renderings of individual figures and epigraphs on the jars. The same applies in the case of the cow-and-calf scene and as proposed here, the scene of the two Bes figures on pithos A. Be that as it may, when these integrated scenes and together with isolated figures were all transferred to the plastered walls, they were likely integrated into still more inclusive, larger scenes in the murals. So, for example, the lyre player may have been repositioned on a wall to the opposite side of the two Bes-like figures and facing them as part of a larger scene of two renown apotropaic deities, Bes and Beset dancing to the music of their accompanying lyre player as an act of numinous apotropaic empowerment. If one assumes for the sake of argument that the Bes and Beset figures are YHWH of Shomron and His Asherah, then one could feasibly perceive them from the contemporary Judean perspective as a relatively short-lived, northern “abomination” or cultic intrusion that was forced upon the subjected Judeans. This may comprise one of the levels of meaning attached to the pithos cult dedicated to YHWH of Shomron and His Asherah in the bench room. Here, both the contemporary biblical traditions regarding northern (and southern) apostate kings and Sargon’s references to his carrying away the gods of Samaria coincide to confirm that images of the divine were commonplace at least in the north, and by implication, the south, during the late Iron II period (unless of course, we are to presume that such northern and southern monarchs as Ahab and Ahaz endorsed aniconic YHWH cults!).226 In the end, the broader implications of the KA material that YHWH and Asherah could be and were visually represented, very much depends on who sponsored the pithoi religious scenes and how representative of northern Israelite and/or especially Judean society they were. The biblical image prohibitions were precisely directed against such practices and beliefs as exemplified at KA.

  On the Sargon evidence confirming his capture of royal-sponsored, anthropomorphic cult images of gods in eighth-century Samaria and the unlikelihood that such descriptions merely exemplify a literary topos of imperial conquest, see Bob Becking, “Assyrian Evidence for Iconic Polytheism in Ancient Israel?,” in The Image and the Book, ed. Karel van der Toorn (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 157–71. For a prospective Babylonian inspiration toward a nonanthropomorphic form of divine image in exilic Judah, see Tallay Ornan, The Triumph of the Symbol: Pictorial Representation of Deities in Mesopotamia and the Biblical Image Ban, OBO 213 (Fribourg: Academic Press; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 168–82. 226

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 103 The biblical bans often polemicize against such northern practices and the south’s similar propensities in following the north’s lead.227

Provisioning and Protecting: Yahwism’s Apotropaic Presence As pointed out above, Beck had proposed that the Bes R figure or, as preferred here, Beset, was portrayed in the throes of dancing. Eggler has made the astute observation that the dancing and music-making Bes is the third-most important phenotype in contemporary Egypt after the squatting Bes in the akimbo pose and then the Bes head. He outlines various processes as general trends that can be identified in the art-historical data pertaining to the god Bes from New Kingdom and Third Intermediate period Egypt and the Iron Age Levant that are pertinent to the treatment here. What becomes clear from his comprehensive treatment is that the forms and functions of Bes underwent a variety of transformations in both Egypt and in the Levant. The most widely attested and ancient phenotype of Bes was a dwarfish Bes in squatting akimbo pose that was related to his protective force on behalf of women and newborns. This was supplemented by the visual reduction of his image from a dwarfish figure to only his head. This second-most important phenotype indicated that Bes had been transformed into a god available to all for his general protective powers in which case he could appear even on chariots and horses far removed from his original context. The Decorated Pithos Loci These in turn were complemented by further changes with the dancing and music-making Bes that both generalized accessibility to his available powers even more and transformed Bes from a rather static deity into a more dynamic one. His posture while dancing often appears as if he were running with one knee lifted, while in other, less-dynamic portrayals, only his lifted heel indicates the dancing movement.228 Consonant with this are the lifted heels of both Bes L and Bes R (and in contrast to the flat heels of the sitting lyre player). Like the first two phenotypes that were designed to avert evil and provide protection, dancing Bes “is primarily related to the repulsion of demonic forces and less to celebration and merry-mak  Gilmour has proposed the earliest appearance of YHWH and Asherah in a triadic pictorial design incised on a jug from Jerusalem’s Iron II Ophel; see Garth Gilmour, “An Iron Age II Pictorial Inscription from Jerusalem Illustrating Yahweh and Asherah,” PEQ 141.2 (2009): 87–103. As set forth here and in variant form in my “The Aniconic Tradition in Early Israel” and “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” the phenomena from Kuntillet Ajrud comprise equally early, stratigraphically datable, unambiguous textual references to, and pictorial representations of, YHWH of Shomron and His Asherah. 228   Eggler, “Bes,” 58. 227

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ing.”229 Bes as master-of-animals not only continued an older Egyptian tradition, but it was a phenotype already popular in the Levant and in the east. In the Iron Age Levant, Bes as master-of-animals was (re)introduced as the aprotropaic nature of Bes took on more current and local mutations. As such, Bes was transformed from a more static figure to one more dynamic and animal controlling, yet Bes remained a protective deity and apotropaic symbol throughout the Levant.230 As for the role of figural and textual décor, Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel conclude that the abecedaries and missives on the pithoi do not seem to be of a religious or magical significance. They view them rather as strictly scribal exercises.231 Beck, following Naveh, entertained the likelihood that these writings and the blessings, including even the abecedaries, might have had apotropaic associations.232 Much recent work on the phraseology and function of similar blessing formulae in Northwest Semitic inscriptions overwhelmingly confirms such a magical function and character of the Kuntillet Ajrud blessings, which also have their parallels with Egyptian writing.233 With respect to the similarities with Egyptian parallels, Beck concludes that it “seems only natural that the caravaneers and other wayfarers … would have asked the inhabitants … to dedicate inscriptions (and perhaps even drawings) in order to secure the protection of their gods on their perilous journey.”234 That the pithoi inscriptions have linguistic and conceptual analogues in texts composed on the walls of KA also speaks against the notion that the pithoi inscriptions constitute mere scribal exercises and lack larger, more intricately planned religious or magical functions. For example, the inscription 3.9 of pithos B presents similar linguistic and generic aspects as those of the wall plaster inscription 4.1.1. Both are rendered in the third person, not the first or second person, and both are proverbial and injunctive in character. As 4.1.1 and its context establish, this is the language of nondiscriminatory, inclusive, or generalizing religious benediction and public display at KA. Thus, its parallel 3.9 was clearly designed to be both more than a mere scribal exercise in script competence and other than a spontaneous graffito of little or no relevance as so often described. This point finds additional confirmation in the thesis set forth at the outset that the pithoi inscriptions, like the   Ibid., 65.   Ibid., 66. 231   Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 134. 232   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,”183; and see Joseph Naveh, “Old Hebrew Inscriptions in a Burial Cave,” IEJ 13 (1963): 74–92; idem, “Graffiti and Dedications,” BASOR 235 (1979): 27–30. 233  See Gabriel Barkay et al., “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation,” BASOR 334 (2004): 41–71; Jeremy D. Smoak, “Prayers of Petition in the Psalms and West Semitic Inscribed Amulets: Efficacious Words in Metal and Prayers for Protection in Biblical Literature,” JSOT 36 (2011): 81–84; and see my article, “Kuntillet Ajrud’s Pithoi Inscriptions and Drawings.” 234   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 183. 229 230

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 105 pithoi figures, were either elements of integrated scenes or they comprised isolated epigraphs. They in turn were more fully integrated with each other in order to form even larger scenes when transferred to the plastered walls resulting in the spread of the numinous throughout the site. The Plastered Wall Paintings Whether the images and epigraphs were executed on pithos A and B as individual pieces or as one element within a larger integrated scene comprised of multiple figures and epigraphs, their formal mural counterparts would have been inscribed and illustrated on the walls at various points within the confines of Buildings A and B. Of significant relevance in this regard is the abundant evidence for much of Building B and major parts of Building A as once having been covered with white-gypsum plaster. This plaster constituted the underlying surface for the painting of images and texts on the walls at KA. The images and texts that were transferred from the pithoi and pottery were displayed on the white-plastered walls as elements in much larger, more elaborate, but nonetheless comparable integrated scenes. Both the repeated presence of integrated religiously oriented scenes on the pithoi and the incontrovertible evidence cited in support of the transfer of such scenes from the pithoi to the painted walls, confirms such a religiously inspired, decorative production process for KA’s walls. Not to be overlooked here is the evidence from the decorative wall paintings itself. The clustering of white-gypsum plaster on the walls and floors of the eastern end of the Building A along with that of Building B (especially the north wing) and otherwise on the eastern facing wall of the western end of the courtyard comprise another convergent factor to be considered.235 Like the inscriptions on the walls, the gypsum and their paintings undoubtedly conveyed multiple functions – aesthetic, practical, exotic – but were also polysemous, self-identifying, empowering, and apotropaic. Life-Sustaining Power: The Lotus Flower With this in view, one of the major tropes painted on the walls was the lotus flower. It shows up on both pottery and on the wall paintings. The ibex-and-garland drawn on pithos A and adjacent to (and overlapping) Bes L includes three nonidentical lotus flowers.236 According to Beck, the tree of the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene on pithos A is a lotus tree with flowers attached to each stem and at varying stages of blossom.237 Of special note in this regard is the wall painting of the seated figure no. 9, which we have already treated in detail. The figure is holding the lotus flower   Meshel and Goren “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 16, fig. 2.12 illustrates the locations of wall plaster overall; see fig. 2.15 (p. 18) for the eastern half of Building A and especially the entryway and bench room. 236   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 159 and see fig. 6.a on p. 147. 237   Ibid., 153–55. 235

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to the nose. According to Beck this motif is clearly of Egyptian inspiration.238 It should be recalled that its size, 32 cm at its height, suggested to the excavators that it was part of a mural that was by far the largest at KA.239 The lotus flower or its bud also appears in other murals, as a chain of lotus flowers coupled with a guilloche border design on painting no. 10, and on another wall painting, no. 12, it shows up alongside the human head and the goat.240 Given that the lotus flower at KA is portrayed at various stages of blossom in its several instantiations, Beck proposed that its “alternation represents birth and maturity, and by repeating itself, conveys the concept of continuity.”241 Beck also made a compelling case for a particularly close association of the lotus tree of the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion scene on pithos A and what she described as the Phoenician version of the sacred tree; they share the capital with volutes and the combination of lotus flower and bud.242 The iconography of the lotus flower figures prominently on the sarcophagus of Ahiram. There the flower appears three times, once on the side wall, in the hand of the king who sits enthroned before a procession of votaries, and twice on the sarcophagus lid, held by Ahiram himself and his son Ithobaal. The latter lifts the upright flower to his face as though to inhale its fragrance, whereas the lotus held by Ahiram in the processional scene droops distinctly. As the lotus’s vital, life-giving powers are embodied in the living flower, the wilted plant likely signifies that the king is dying or deceased. In Egyptian tomb depictions, the deceased and his family members sniff the lotus flower in a gesture aimed at ensuring the symbolic rebirth of his soul in the afterlife. On the Byblian sarcophagus lid, Ithobaal’s lotus-smelling gesture embodied the same meaning as that of the ritual dedicant of the sarcophagus. Such symbolic actions were not only meant to affirm the continuity and legitimacy across generations within a dynastic royal line, both living and dead, but within the context of mortuary rites to ensure the safe passage of his father’s soul to the netherworld. 243 The Royal Seated Figure While woefully fragmented overall, examples from the murals like the large polychrome royal seated figure sniffing a lotus flower (no. 9), when compared to its measly draft on a sherd (Z), illustrates just how elaborate the wall décor must have been. The lotus flower motif is another example of how the resultant décor imbued 238   Ibid., 189–92 and see Ornan “The Drawings from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud” and Ziffer, “Portraits of Ancient Israelite Kings” for additional parallels. 239   Ibid., 192. 240   Ibid., 192–94, for the former, and for the latter, p. 196, fig. 6.42. 241   Ibid., 155 following Irene Winter, “Carved Ivory Furniture Panels from Nimrud,” MMAJ 2 (1976): 45 n. 67. 242   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 155. 243   Glenn Markoe, Phoenicians, Peoples of the Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 137–38 where Egyptian sources are cited.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 107 KA with the numinous power of the divine, a power capable of providing protection and safe passage to all who ventured a visit as well as a power made possible by the royal oversight of Kuntillet Ajrud. The images and epigraphs conveyed a clear and promising message, one that was fully and ultimately endorsed by the royally sponsored administration from the north controlling the site of Kuntillet Ajrud: May YHWH and His Asherah in their roles as Bes and Beset, protect you on your journey with the same magical potency as Egypt’s apotropaic deities par excellence!

The various lines of evidence presented here have heretofore not been adequately articulated owing to the lack of access to primary data. With the release of the excavation’s final report and the immediate expert response to the published data contained therein, the present treatment has attempted to turn the course of that four decades of stasis toward a dynamic, performative driven portrait of an ancient Israelite religiously inspired ritualized environment. There clearly emerges an overt religious dimension in KA’s architectural design, diagnostic inventory, and spatial layout involving a symbiosis of Samarian royal sponsorship and Judean quotidian construction that privileged Phoenician and Egyptian religious artistic repertoires in convergence with more local Yahwistic epigraphic traditions. What also becomes evident is a rather developed sacral spatial topography designed both for the peculiar terrain of the desert as well as for a constructed, human architectonics superimposed on that terrain. The result was a multipurpose, externally provisioned site, purposely situated within reach of a rare desert water supply and an ancient road network serving as part of the Arabian trade system of long-distance, frontier, and marginal travel, and where textiles were produced, and interregional multidirectional trade transpired. Constructing Aspects of the Pithos Libation Rite Some of the phases, developments, and performances pertaining to the on-site ritualized life of the two pithoi A and B and their pithos analogues represented by the decorated fragments C, D, E, Z and the so-called pithos A courtyard fragment are outlined as follows: A. The Pithos Libation Rite’s Developmental Phases 1. Their initial use as storage jars. 2. Their selection as drafting surfaces (occasionally while lying on their sides?) for the production of complex, religiously integrated scenes, as a prior step to transferring those scenes and selected other elements of the sacred décor drafted on their surfaces to the site’s plastered walls. 3. Their simultaneously acquired status as numinously imbued objects directly resulting from the drafting of decorative writings and images of divine speech and divine portraiture on their surfaces.

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4. Their immediate transport to multiple locations on the site each as the focus of a cult locus: pithoi A in the bench room and the growth of its associated favissa in the adjacent northeast corner room; pithos B in the courtyard; pithoi C, D, and E in locus 8 of the south storeroom and note its favissa in loci 256 and 50; and pithos Z in the open area outside Building B. These comprised similar sacred loci to those of pithos A and B, but as their extensions, the pithoi C, D, E, and Z conveyed the numinous apotropaic power of the decorated pithos cult beyond the bench room.244 5. Their role as receptacles for votive offerings, libations, and visitors’ graffiti while installed at their sacred locations in direct response to their publicly displayed numinous powers, with the graffiti inscribed as an interactive gesture of personal piety that further enhanced the pithoi’s immanent powers of protection and provision and that confirmed or reinterpreted their religious orientation by redirecting those powers to selective subsets of visitors such as the dominant northerners. These protective powers would accompany the traveler on his/her journey on an ad hoc basis following the performance of libation rituals before departing from the site. [An alternative scenario here entails identifying at least one supposed graffito, 3.1, as a supervisor’s correction or addition to a draft during the drafting phase that resulted in pithos A’s function as an interstitial ritual locus in the bench room. It was earmarked as such with “YHWH of Shomron” for northern visitors to the site and once its integrated scenes were transferred to the walls, those same, more-elaborate scenes publically displayed a northern version of Yahwistic religion. When set alongside the other wall murals making mention of “YHWH of Teman,” the multiple, localized YHWH traditions conveyed in tandem the numinous powers to protect and provide that were transmitted to visitors both during their stay and following their departure.] 6. Assuming graffito 3.1 was instead rendered following pithos A’s location in the bench room by the ad hoc ritualized response of some anonymous visitor, the pithos and the bench room were transformed impromptu into an interstitial locus for northerners – “… I have blessed you by YHWH of Shomron and by His Asherah” – while other on-site ritual loci maintained a southern orientation for ritualizing empowerment derived from “YHWH of Teman and His Asherah.”

244   It should be recalled that the so-called pithos A fragment found with pithos B in the courtyard might represent a fragment from another pithos besides A, and therefore a seventh known decorated pithos. If it is from pithos A, it might infer a procession of sorts, that is, the ritualized movement of A and B back and forth between the courtyard and the bench room.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 109 B. Conveying the Numinous: The Empowered Figural and Inscribed Décor Stage two had profound implications for highlighting the role of KA’s wall paintings. They converged text and image in a symbol-saturated infusion of the site with YHWH’s and Asherah’s numinous powers as public display in accompaniment with the pithos cult. These highlighted the southern-oriented or Temanite religious ritual tradition (see inscriptions 3.6, 3.9, and 4.1.1 where YHWH of Teman is mentioned). Yet pithos A took on its own new function at some point during stage three. One of the several visitors’ graffiti that was added to the pithoi A and B, graffito 3.1, identified the Bes and Beset figures on pithos A as “YHWH … and His Asherah.” Inscription 3.1 also localizes YHWH as “of Shomron,” giving expression to a uniquely northern-oriented or Samarian ritual complex at KA.245 For some travelers to the site, this offered a complementary interstitial religious locus to that where the numinous power of, “YHWH of Teman,” was inscribed and manifest, firstly on one of the walls in the bench room as inscription 4.1 confirms, and on pithos B in the courtyard as the caption epigraph 3.9 demonstrates (and see the graffito 3.6 added subsequently). The Numinously Empowered Plastered Wall Paintings Several lines of evidence and argument have converged to establish the likelihood of the site’s special numinous status. The most explicit evidence confirming a religious dimension to the site, namely, the inscriptions and drawings on pithoi and painted plastered walls and doorjambs, has been explored in detail. The religious content, the ritual function of the pithoi décor, and the public display character of the murals more than validate the all-encompassing numinous nature of the site. The most direct indication of this is their mention of YHWH and His Asherah (4.1), El, Baal, the Holy One, and the gods (4.2, and cf. Baal in 4.4), the mention of “evil” (4.6.3), and the dedicatory, theophanic, and hymnic forms of their “epigraphed” utterances. Second in support are the several converging lines of evidence from the bench room that have been reviewed, including the wall epigraphs in or adjacent to that room with their explicitly religious content (4.1, 4.2, 4.3), the “pithos cult,” the other evidence for ritual, as well as the adjacent favissa. The imbuement of ritual space with the numinous was achieved by the setting up of the various pithoi across the site following their service, at least in some instances, as drafting surfaces. As a cultic locus, pithos A made visual the numinous in two genders. This entailed its 245   Textual graffiti added to pithos A by travelers and worshippers following its establishment in the bench room include 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, and on pithos B, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8 and the abecedaries 3.11–14. As noted previously, inscription 3.10 could have been designed as part of the preplanned integrated scene or applied as a visitor’s graffito. Other graffiti include various vertical strokes, the yod marking (3.15) and other seemingly random marks, all of which gave expression to the belief that the writing and drawing of divine speech and image was magical and imbued an object or surface with the numinous.

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divine images and animal symbols comprising its three integrated religious scenes; the Bes-Beset scene, the cow-and-calf scene, and the sacred lotus tree-and-ibexesand-lion scene. Alongside the pithoi, the wall paintings likewise made immanently visual the numinous in a multiplicity of forms. The royal seated figure sniffing the upright lotus flower (no. 9) was once mounted as public display on Building A’s entryway wall. One who entered the area would fully encounter this wall display prior to entering Building A or its bench room. This royal signature underlying the wall murals and pithos cult provided the needed legitimation of the ritual and religious dimensions of the numinous at KA; divine protection would be assured by the northern crown. Similarly, the setting up of pithos B in the courtyard as a complementary ritual locus with its drafted texts (3.9, 3.10), its drafted images of human worshippers, and its responsive graffiti (3.6, 3.8), further confirms the centrality of apotropaism at KA and extended its scope beyond the bench room. It also serves as an example of what the other decorated pithoi conveyed that were set up in ritual annexes across the site; C, D, and E in locus 8, Z near Building B, and the “A” fragment in the courtyard alongside pithos B. Collectively these “pithoi cult” loci with their texts and images located throughout the site conveyed the pervasive immanence of the numinous and made accessible the divinely empowered blessings of protection and fecundity or provision. The abundance of deposit items in the site’s two “ favissae” or deposits, locus 13 and locus 50, as well as in the west storeroom’s locus 92, locus 10, and locus 94, any one of which might have entailed a third such intentional cult deposit, confirm that the ancient visitors to the site interpreted the art, writings, architecture, objects, and spaces from within at least these areas as genuinely sacred and empowered with the numinous, and not in any way as simply profane. Spreading the net more widely and sinking it ever more deeply, pithos B with its décor of epigraph (caption 3.9 and graffiti 3.6 and 3.10) and image (the worshippers scene) was set up in the courtyard. As such, it and pithos A mutually confirm the religious character of their similar, yet complementary divinely empowering décor and religious scenes – one a theophany (pithos A), the other, an adoration scene, the concomitant human response (pithos B).246 Pithos B’s locus in the courtyard along with those of pithoi C, D, and E in locus 8 and pithos Z just outside Building B, cumulatively verify that the power of the numinous pervaded the site well beyond the confines of the bench room. The evidence from the west storeroom is highly suggestive in this same regard as indicated by its intriguing assemblage of objects and the three plastered wall paintings from the doorposts adjacent to its entryway, 4.4–4.6. While all three inscriptions are badly damaged, when viewed alongside the similar wall inscriptions from the bench room (4.1–4.3), the clear and unequivocal numinous quality of their language becomes obvious; 4.4 mentions, “Baal,” 4.6 may mention “heaven,” while a

  For a detailed discussion of the prospective complementarity shared by the scene of the Beslike figures and the worshippers scene, see also Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings.” 246

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 111 second fragment of 4.6 (4.6.3) preserves the term “evil.”247 Added to these factors, the four lines of evidence confirming the drafting character of a significant portion of the pithoi décor validates their corresponding formal, mural renditions that were painted on the walls. Employing the techniques of overlapping and gender marking in order to create the integrated scenes and their epigraphic captions on the walls as high-register murals, the artisan-scribes expanded and intensified the power of the numinous beyond the boundaries of the bench room, courtyard, favissae, and ultimately on to the walls throughout the site. As proposed and illustrated above, the scribal artisans drafted on pithoi and sherds numerous texts and images that were transferred in the same or similar form, but also enhanced, as whole integrated scenes onto the plastered walls of KA’s buildings. Several of the additional isolated elements drafted on the pithoi were combined and then transferred to the walls in order to increase the number and complexity of the integrated scenes that had been drafted in more basic form on the pithoi. In the final analysis, there is no justification for isolating the writings from the drawings on the pithoi, let alone the pithoi décor and the wall décor from each other, whether one has in mind image, text, or both.248 Instead, the two sets of images and texts on pithoi and walls constitute two distinct stages in a much larger interconnected process, the production of religious décor for wall display. Both sets of décor, those on the pithoi and those on the walls, including the epigraphs and the images of both sets, comprised scribal-artisan executions designed to convey magical power. The figures and inscriptions, whether rendered as individual items or in convergence with other figures as coherent integrated scenes, embodied the apotropaism of not only the décor – the pithoi, the walls, and the bench room where the pithoi were set up as the focus of cult – but ultimately the entire site. Once the decorated pithoi were set up in the bench room and the final versions of the integrated scenes on KA’s walls for public conveyance were completed, travelers passing through could invoke the power of the numinous that permeated the site for their own protection, provision, and safe passage beyond the confines of KA. The Numinous and the Mundane: Kuntillet Ajrud More Holistically The site evinces multiple phases of construction that undoubtedly correspond to various largely undetectable modes of use and occupation. The epigraphic and figural evidence from both the plastered walls and from the pithoi come from 247   Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 117 and see Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 44–46. 248   This is not to discount the likelihood that, as argued previously, some of the pithoi writings and drawings were added to the pithoi as visitors’ graffiti following the use of the pithoi as drafting surfaces and, following that, their concomitant location in the bench room, courtyard, near Building B, the south storeroom’s cultic annex, and possibly elsewhere on the site as divinely imbued objects conveying apotropaic power.

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the site’s final phase, as does the evidence for weaving, bench construction, royal sponsorship, and its external provisioning. Various lines of evidence from the site present the possibility that what was perhaps originally a Judean site was at some subsequent stage dominated by a northern Israelite element. Whether this was due to the northern monarchy’s expansion into Judah or indicative of a northern refugee population’s incursions into the area is bound up with the presently irresolvable problem of dating the last phase of the site to a pre- or post-722 BCE horizon. Irrespective of this precise dating conundrum, the above factors collectively signal a transition of the site from what constituted a way station or perhaps a frontier fortress of a sort(?) to a more diverse functionality. The site continued in its capacity as a service and provision for travelers249 while adding textile production, temporary sanctuary, and individual opportunities to participate in rituals comprising a range of localized and more regionally wide religious and magical, more specifically apotropaic, traditions.250 Whether the site’s occupation was ever permanent or just semipermanent remains an open question given the absence of local pottery types, the lack of hard evidence for pilgrimages, commercial activity, and a self-sustaining community. Yet, the evidence for external provisioning, the presumed (northern) state sponsorship, a significant textile production and the adjacent water sources may support either of these occupational options. Perhaps locals living off-site commuted between the nearby water source and the site itself as laborers in a state administrated, on-site production of textiles in return for water access and provisioning. Whether (state sponsored?) professional ritual specialists such as prophets, priests, or diviners, or perhaps some local version thereof, inhabited this unequivocally liminal site likewise remains an open question as the data, yet again, are simply lacking.251 Yet, the above-mentioned factors, along with the overt investment in religious paraphernalia possessing prestige   Horwitz et al., “The Faunal Remains,” 331–33 comment on the shell remains that were indigenous to the Red Sea, those from the Mediterranean Sea, and the perch fish bones from the Nile as indicators of the trading distances represented by the faunal data and in the case of those fish bones near the kitchen locus 51as reflective of the local diet. In the case of the seashells, given their findspots, they may indicate some type of votive offerings. 250   The evidence for textile production is abundant, but its connection with an Asherah cult at KA is tied up with the question of Asherah’s status and possible function there and with the nature of the rituals at KA as clear evidence for “cult.” In the more traditional mode of cult involving sacrifice and incense burning, KA lacks demonstrable data as might be attested, for example, at Horvat Qitmit; although chalices (and possibly a bāmāh and mass ә bōt?) were found in the deposits, altars and figurines were not. It has been demonstrated throughout this investigation that there is a plethora of data reflecting planned rituals of an apotropaic nature at the site. 251   Others have pointed out that the sha‘atnez fabric remnants might represent a trade item possibly produced on-site, rather than serving as an indicator of the on-site presence of priests – at least those portrayed in biblical traditions. Moreover, while music and dancing are important religious themes at KA, as highlighted here and indicated by the Bes figures and the lyre player, and are reflective of an apotropaic aspect of ritual, unequivocal evidence for some type of manticism per se is lacking (but note the game boards, astragals, and rattles). 249

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 113 status, such as the large stone basin and the high register of the wall mural art, might suggest itinerate visits to the site by those assigned to administrate it.252 Any skepticism regarding the identification of a religious function to the space is unwarranted in spite of the lack of evidence for medium-to-large sacrifice per se and the corresponding, conventional cult data (e.g., altars and figurines), while ignoring the clear presence of other, previously attested, but demonstrable forms of cult and ritual.253 In fact, one might argue that given the extreme conditions and remoteness of the site, one would not expect large animal sacrifices, but other forms of more modest and compatible offerings. Horwitz explains the lack of mediumto large-sized animals as due to the inability of the desert environment to support anything more than a modest flock of sheep or goat, hence too, the external provisioning.254 Yet, Hellwing does note the presence of large cattle bones that were found near the eastern kitchen; these were not apparently reexamined for the final report.255 One wonders if any of the evidence for ash at KA points to the burning of at least smaller animal offerings. While there are no marks on the faunal remains indicative of butchery or burning, there is ample data establishing other forms of ritual as outlined previously, such as libation rituals, votive offerings, possible incense burning, and sacred meals. The notion that all the vessels in the favissae can be explained as related to meals makes little sense of the floor plan and layout of the site. While meals in all likelihood took place in the courtyard area near the west and east kitchens, why deposit such vessels in the rather narrow bench room, which was at some distance from the kitchens at the far end of the building and surely an impractical space for meals. The aquatic species present at the site (seashells and fish bones) point to the offering of exotica, and while their loci are not restricted to the bench room, they are repeatedly found near where I have proposed multiple pithos libation rituals were positioned on the site and where there are indications of convergent ritual assemblages as well. For example, the cowrie shells were known to serve elsewhere as currency, adornment, and/or amulets as at Horvat Qitmit.256 In fact, Zevit’s proposal that the bench-shaped installations at the north end of the courtyard were related to the worship of two deities wherein the benches served as pedestals for a cult im252   The idea that KA was a pilgrim’s site or stop-over is plausible, but the evidence is at best suggestive. The east–west orientation of the hilltop and architectural layout of the site along with the southern theophanic language of inscription 4.2 is likewise intriguing. The evidence for a solar cult cannot be entirely discounted. 253  See Louise A. Hitchcock, “Cult Corners in the Aegean and the Levant,” in Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, ed. Assaf Yasur-Landau, Jennie R. Ebeling, and Laura B. Mazow, CHANE 50 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 321–46; Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion. 254   Horwitz et al., “The Faunal Remains,” 336. 255   Ibid., 340, appendix A, and note the asterisk and see the map on p. 329. 256  So Horwitz et al., “The Faunal Remains,” 334 citing Pirhiya Beck, Horvat Qitmit: An Edomite Shrine in the Biblical Negev (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 1995), figs. 3.16–17, 19–20.

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age found in the northwest corner room is intriguing.257 Were these related to KA’s worked stones or Meshel’s proposed mass әbōt? Also to be noted here is the proximity of pithos B and the “A” fragment that, along with other convergent elements of the assemblage, strongly suggest some type of ritual locus in the courtyard. While the bent-axis entrances from Mesopotamia served symbolically, functionally, and spatially to hide the image of the deity from the mundane world,258 the bent-axis entrance at KA also resembles the gate at Aharoni’s fortress near Kadesh Barnea.259 Important in this regard are two inscribed stone bowls in the northeast corner room adjacent to the bench room. The pithos A fragments were found on the eastern bench in the north wing of the bench room, which obviously points to the function of the bench as a decorated pithos display niche, or perhaps a display niche where participants placed their (votive and other?) offerings.260 Likewise, to suggest that the three plaster inscriptions are not related to the bench room seems a big stretch given what the bench room otherwise indicates regarding its ritual (if not “cultic”) associations. These include the favissa, the religiously oriented, decorated pithos A set up on the bench, the inscribed blessings on bowls, the exotic seashells and fish bones, the bent-axis floor plan, and, more tellingly, the replication of this type of ritual site arrangement in the south storeroom with its decorated pithoi, adjacent favissa, fish bones, the massive inscribed basin, and nearby kitchen. The same goes for the west storeroom area where plaster inscriptions adorned the entrance, where another inscribed bowl was found nearby, and where bone fragments, game boards, and two corner rooms in the north perhaps comprise an accompanying favissa. The three plaster inscriptions recovered from the eastern entryway along with the bench room area of Building A comprise a convergent factor alongside several others that indicate the function of the bench room and the crucial role of religious paraphernalia at KA. Inscription 4.1, which contains a generalized blessing, was mounted in the north wing of the bench room on the eastern face of its western wall (W 10) above the bench (W 26) from which it had partly fallen. The excavators proposed that inscription 4.2 that was found in the center of the western entryway with its pronounced theophanic imagery was once mounted on the eastern 257   Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel; A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (Continuum: New York, 2001), 379 and n. 45. Meshel (Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 43–44) ever so briefly mentions these two installations. For the bench located in the northwest courtyard, locus 73, he mentioned only “a stone-built plastered bench abuts the wall” (wall 16), and for the similar bench located in the northeast courtyard, locus 81, he repeated much the same, “the stone-built plastered bench abutting it” (wall 16). On the building plan on p. 16, fig. 2.12, these are numbered 165/197 and 155/197 respectively. 258   Clifford M. Mccormick, Palace and Temple: A Study of Architectural and Verbal Icons, BZAW 313 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002), 76–77. 259  So Ze’ev Meshel, “The ‘Aharoni Fortress’ Near Quseima and the ‘Israelite Fortresses’ in the Negev,” BASOR 294 (1994): 42–47. 260   Meshel (Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 26–28) suggests an offering niche.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 115 face of the western lintel spanning W 9 and W 10 above the opening leading to the courtyard. A few other painted plaster fragments were also retrieved here. The poorly preserved 4.3 was recovered from the white plaster of the northern doorjamb above the bench W 29. It preserves a possible mention of “Cain” and is the only one found in situ at 1.20 m height above the floor.261 When the contents and specific locations of these three inscriptions are considered alongside the other lines of evidence indicative of the bench room’s function, it is surely difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the influential ritual aspect attached to the functionality of the bench room. It served as the transition from the mundane world as one entered Building A to the sacral world within the confines of Building A and apparently most centrally the courtyard. Taken together, these inscriptions form part of the ritual procedures and preparations for progressing through the various chambers and rooms within the A compound that involved, minimally, visiting and performing rites of one sort or another all as part of the preparation for entering the courtyard or other rooms further west but off the courtyard. Said rituals perhaps included gift or votive giving, prayer, song, purification and, given the adjacent favissa, most likely libations either at, on, or near the decorated pithos A that had been set up there on the eastern bench in the north wing. Given ancient literacy competencies, it is doubtful all participants were expected to read the inscriptions on the pithos or on the plaster wall inscriptions, but rather the semiotics of image, text, and space were conveyed via multivalent oral, written, and imagined media. The same applies in the case of the other plaster wall inscriptions 4.4–6. Inscriptions 4.4 and 4.5 were found in the entryway to the west storeroom and in locus 104 just beyond the entrance respectively.262 Inscription 4.4 once was attached to the lintel above the west storeroom central entrance, 4.5 was mounted on the doorjamb leading into the west storeroom. Inscription 4.6, which is made up of several fragments, was recovered from the foot of the stairs near the west storeroom in locus 101. Unfortunately, the inscriptions on these fragments are mostly lost to us and only a few, though telling, fragments have legible readings (see above). Yet, when considered alongside the variety of other data recovered from the west storeroom and its adjacent rooms, loci 10 and 92, again, a similar pattern emerges. Archaeologically speaking, one can detect a deliberate spatial clustering of material cultural, epigraphic, and art-historical artifacts in the immediate vicinity of Building A’s bench room, the south storeroom, the courtyard, and possibly the west storeroom and outside Building B, that evinces unequivocal religious symbolism

  For the find location of these inscriptions, see the map on p. 74 and Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 22, 28. For treatments of the texts, see Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 105–17. 262   Meshel and Goren, “Architecture, Plan and Phases,” 46–47; Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 119–20. 261

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and function; specifically the theophanic confirmation of the divine guarantee of apotropaism’s presence. William Schniedewind has proposed the view that soldier-scribes produced the inscriptions at KA as school texts as part of their scribal education there where they lived on site and that KA was a fortress that served as a caravanserai.263 He acknowledges that it was a state-sponsored site controlled by the north and proposes that it was inhabited by half a dozen soldier-scribes and that the inscriptions on the pithoi comprise scribal-school exercises and that it is emphatically not a religious site that included a temple, sanctuary, shrine or cultic objects. As has been here argued throughout, KA is not a religious site per se, if that entails the site having been constructed for the exclusive purpose of situating on site a regional shrine of one sort or another dedicated to a specific cult with oversight provided by a formal priesthood or other class of ritual specialists and that all other aspects of the site served that purpose to the exclusion of several of its more obvious other functions. Such a scenario, or one approximating it, simply does not adequately account for the diverse material evidence from the site that verifies matters were far more complicated. One part of the evidence establishes its function as a caravanserai, way station, or trading post (note its proximity to known trade routes, its structures, nearby water sources, external provisioning, lack of evidence for permanent habitation, and the diversity that embodied its visitors; Samarians, Judeans, perhaps Phoenicians and Egyptians, even Edomites? among others). Another part of the evidence points to the on-site production of textiles (note not only the textiles, but the numerous [eleven plus?] looms). Still another part suggests its possible use as a sanctuary for temporary, ad hoc refuge or, less likely, a fortress (note the ethnicizing boundaries and territorial borders as well as the mixed people groups both on site and in the wider area, but note too the lack of direct evidence for any military presence). In any case, evidence is lacking for presiding priests. Nevertheless, included in its overall (re)design by the northern polity and within its confines is unequivocal evidence for a ritual locus or two as well as its pervasive numinous character, which together assured that its spaces were imbued with apotropaic power and that travelers could depart the site with the accompaniment of that same divine protection. The evidence here includes the drawings and inscriptions on the two pithoi, their bench room and “store”room locations and the associated favissae, drawings, and inscriptions on the plastered walls and, finally, the overall complementarity of these two décor repertoires that together represented a still-larger repertoire of art and epigraph. Moreover, when these two bodies of data are interpreted with their incrementally immediate contexts given priority, the congruity of detail together with the integrated character of their comprehensive design becomes self evident. 263   William Schniedewind, “Understanding Scribal Education in Ancient Israel: A View from Kuntillet Ajrud,” MAARAV 21 (2016): 53–81. I thank Professor Schniedewind for allowing me access to his prepublication draft.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 117 In sum, these religious, magical, and apotropaic aspects were part of KA’s design and were both concomitant to, and purposed to enhance, its other, more-obvious, practical functions at a remote and liminal constructed site in the northern Sinai. As noted previously, Egyptian exemplars where belief in the numinous and royal ideology converge warn vociferously against the erroneous separation of the religious and nonreligious at KA; they were not mutually exclusive of one another. One might even posit that its designed numinous nature was rather more conventional of such multipurpose sites in liminal or marginal zones where various territorial and ethnic boundaries were blurred and diverse populations converged. Such divine protective powers were made accessible to visitors and workers who lived offsite (assuming textile production was carried out on site by workers who commuted to the site short distances from off-site habitations) by means of the public display of state-sponsored religious iconography on the walls of the site and by means of the installation of the decorated pithoi at ritual loci within its confines. These were services provided by the Northern Kingdom that had taken possession of the site and exercised jurisdiction over it when KA’s writings were produced. To return to the proposal that the epigraphs at KA comprise scribal-school exercises, a genuinely holistic contextual approach that takes into account not only the inscriptions, but also the iconography and architectural spaces, can better identify the raison d’ être for the entirety of the epigraphic corpus. When viewed from the perspective of KA’s overall architectural and decorative design, the epigraphs, like the images, more likely function in the capacity of magical or apotropaic writing. This includes the inscriptions from KA previously examined in detail, 1.2, 3.1, 3.6, 3.9, 3.10, 4.1.1, and 4.6.3, all of which contain religious content that was intended for or on public display and conveying apotropaic power. Apotropaism similarly explains the amuletic and cave-wall inscriptions found in the mortuary contexts at KH and KQ. These three sets of epigraphs serve mutually to elucidate each other, as they constitute the most immediate, shared sociohistorical, cultural, and ritual contexts with which to interpret each individual inscription or corpus of inscriptions. These contexts and their inscriptions and images and spaces in turn serve in the same capacity for interpreting KA’s other epigraphs and epigraphic phenomena. These include the repetition and duplication given expression in the multiple abecedaries and miscellaneous lists in close proximity to each other (e.g., 3.11, 3.7, 3.12, 3.13, 3.8, 3.14), the inscribed listing of the worshippers’ names accompanying the worshippers scene (3.10), and the repetition of single letters like the yods (e.g., 3.4, 3.5). All of these were apotropaically inspired. Moreover, rather than 3.6 comprising a practiced epistolary extract made up of an address and greeting, it more likely served either as a graffito in which one traveler on departure left a communiqué for his superior yet to arrive, or as proposed previously, it served as part of the original design of the integrated worshippers scene that ended up on a plastered wall and publically displaying a general blessing for the benefit of visitors to the site. The wider material context of KA would certainly support such an interpretation. The same magical and apotropaic context

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adequately accounts for the brief literary text 4.2 that describes a theophany. It serves as an apotropaic response to the theomachy and earthquake imagery also mentioned in the text that is at the same time, expressive of pandemonium’s prevalence in the inscriptions and iconography from all three sites. In sum, the writing down and the repetition of abecedaries, individual letters, whole words, personal and divine names, as well as their successive reduction by letter omission, were all known magical writing practices aimed at enhancing the numinous power of the medium or object as well as the content of what was written. These writing practices are well attested as Mediterranean forms of magical writing and several instances of such writing are identified in the long-standing, otherwise-enigmatic readings in Khirbet el-Qom inscription 3 in chapter 3. At KA, visitors to the site inscribed their personal graffiti on the already-decorated pithoi that had been installed in their respective ritual loci. Each visitor wrote graffiti at her/his own initiative and with whatever level of literacy each possessed. The writings themselves indicate that those graffito writers may have included anyone from advanced elite writers to beginners: from itinerant, literate priests or apparatchiks to the marginally literate caravan driver.264 In any case, the proposal of an underlying scribal curriculum is not without merit, although any appeal to Mesopotamian scribal education as a guiding analogy must be applied with much caution and qualification for the differences between the two scribal worlds are significant in terms of size and scale, bureaucratic sophistication, technical epigraphic proficiencies, material resources, economic support systems, historical developments and events peculiar to each, as well as literary production rates. There’s also the need to identify avenues of mechanism, transference or influence in proposing such comparisons. Yet, one can nevertheless postulate that behind the texts produced at KA in ca. 800 BCE, stood a scribal curriculum in progress, one radiating from the orbit of the Northern Kingdom.265 Those treatments that propose an exclusive, nonreligiously themed origin for the images and art from KA do so at the risk of missing the obvious, detailed contex264   The poorly preserved inscription 3.8: šmrn [.] śʿrm…, perhaps refers to a visitor’s votive offering of barley to the (gods of?) Samaria (i.e., YHWH and Asherah) who are mentioned also in the comparable graffito 3.1 on pithos A (“YHWH of Samaria and his Asherah…”). As 3.8 was located between the two abecedaries (or composed first with the abecedaries added adjacent to it), the purposed effect was to enhance apotropaism’s power by writing’s multiplication or extension. Space to the right of the inscription 3.8 where additional letters might be preserved appears to be modern ceramic, part of the excavation team’s reconstruction of the pithos, so the original area to the right of 3.8 was not recovered; see the report’s photographs of 3.8 in Ahituv, Eshel and Meshel, “The Inscriptions,” 97–98, fig. 5.39, 102, fig. 5.45 and 5.46. 265   For some of the historical factors directly bearing on Israel’s early production of literature, see now Brian B. Schmidt, “Memorializing Conflict: Toward An Iron Age ‘Shadow’ History Of Israel’s Earliest Literature,” in Contextualizing Israel’s Sacred Writing: Ancient Literacy, Orality, and Literary Production, ed. Brian B. Schmidt, AIL 22 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015), 103–32.

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 119 tual clues from the KA drawings and inscriptions themselves and their immediate material environments. This applies whether one proposes a school practice-text model to KA’s inscriptional corpus or one gives priority to foreign parallels over KA’s own artistic, inscriptional and material contexts. As demonstrated in the course of this investigation, KA’s own data clearly point to a dominant religiously centered, convergent artistic and epigraphic repertoire in which YHWH and Asherah are ubiquitous as purveyors of apotropaism. They are represented in image and invoked in writing as part of the constructed design of the site both on the walls and at its ritual loci. They are also invoked in several graffiti from the site and on a large ceremonial stone basin installed in one of those ritual loci. Their powers simply pervade the site. Thus, one cannot afford to overlook the interpretive indicators provided by the immediate contexts of the images and inscriptions as they often evince complementary, convergent and hybridized religious elements in the integrated scenes. For example, in the gaggle of human figures identified herein as participants in a worshippers scene, the immediate context surrounding the six figures includes three different inscriptions positioned on both sides and overhead; all three at equidistance from the center of the scene. Moreover, the six human figures clearly comprise an integrated scene; they all face in the same direction while each is looking upward and the majority is motioning upward with the hands. The fact that they were positioned by design on multiple horizontal planes created the impression of depth of field and perspective. As set forth previously, the three inscriptions were not positioned haphazardly, but placed deliberately around the scene in order to frame it and to draw visual focus to the figures while also providing crucial interpretive information in their contents regarding the worshippers. Inscription 3.9 above the figures served as its caption and makes mention of YHWH and His Asherah while conveying the blessing of YHWH. The content thus indicates that the figures immediately below comprise participants in a religiously themed scene in which they are depicted as directly responding to the caption’s blessing overhead and expressing their reverence for YHWH and Asherah. As argued previously, not only are the deities referenced in writing but they are also represented by the artisan-scribe’s “depiction” of them in his employment of empty-space aniconism. All this finds its unequivocal ancient, yet contemporary interpretive confirmation in inscription 3.6, which was added on the vertical right margin of the scene either as part of the original integrated scene or as a contemporary graffito after pithos B had been installed in its ritual locus (whether that was locus 6, 8, 19, or 102). Inscription 3.6 similarly describes YHWH and His Asherah as the providers of protection and provision. In the case of the inscription 3.10 positioned on the left-hand margin, the six individuals depicted in the scene are given names in writing either as an ad hoc act of piety and numinous enhancement, or as part of the original scene. Like 3.6, it too may have been written by a contemporary graffito writer following the installation of the decorated pithos as a cult image, or

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it served as part of the original integrated scene and was therefore also transferred to the walls. In any event, the content details and immediate context indicate that all three inscriptions have direct, intricate connections with the scene of the six supplicants; the mention of the deities toward whom the worshippers gesture, the empty-space aniconism expressing their veiled presence and the listing of the six names of the worshippers.266 A king or royal themes are not mentioned or depicted in this scene. Nevertheless, six names are listed in the adjacent, framing inscriptions that correspond to the six supplicants (3.10) and the names of two deities are mentioned in two of those inscriptions not once, but twice, and YHWH at least three times (3.6, 3.9). Moreover, the inscribed theme of divine or human protection and provision is given explicit illustration in the compassionate help provided by one worshipper for another (i.e., figure M who assists the debilitated figure N). Furthermore, the argument that what are here viewed as the three major integrated scenes on the pithoi (the worshippers, the Bes-like figures with lyre player, and the tree-and-ibexes-and-lion) were all located in their present positions near the top half of the two pithoi because that was the largest surface area on the ridged rim pithoi proves unsatisfactory. If mere surface area rather than predesigned positioning for public display dictated their location on the pithoi, then as mere practice sketches, the pithoi should have been laid on their sides and the scenes drawn along their vertical axes, which were 30+ cm longer, yet still encompassing the widest girth on the top half of the pithoi. It seems more likely that their present positions were instead preplanned to provide the best display or viewing positions of the scenes following the installation of the decorated pithoi as ritual or cultic images at their respective ritual loci. Methodologically speaking, the immediate contexts of such data cannot be dismissed in favor of culturally, sociohistorically, and contextually more-distant, isolated, and less-compelling analogues (not to mention one must convincingly demonstrate the mechanisms by which more remote information was transmitted to KA and how it might have superseded the more immediate contexts originating from KA). Such data should be more appropriately integrated with the internal iconographic and inscriptional data from KA that, as argued here throughout, clearly indicate the presence of overt religious themes. After all, it was a northern state-sponsored, multifunctional, remote site in the late Iron II period of the eastern Mediterranean where religious themes had converged with royal ideology. These were hardly mutually exclusive in Iron Age southern Levantine traditions (cf. the inscriptional and iconographic data on the Phoenician Ahiram sarcophagus). More to the point at hand, attention to the contextual details from KA’s database has iden  An examination of the fully reconstructed, ridged-rim pithos form in Beck, “Drawings and Decorative Designs,”145 (fig. 6.2), 147 (figs. 6.4, 6.4a) and Ayalon, “The Pottery Assemblage,” 217, 250 (fig. 7.34 pithos A), 278 (fig.7.38 pithos B) clearly indicates that the largest surface area was situated on the vertical plane of the pithos with a length of 100+ cm vs. the 70 cm on its horizontal. 266

“Cult” and Favissae at Kuntillet Ajrud 121 tified and confirmed the central role of apotropaism in the site’s design. This apotropaic-oriented interpretation of KA’s drawings, inscriptions, spaces, pithoi, wall murals, and settings offers the most comprehensive and satisfying accounting of the varied data from the site’s excavations. Furthermore, these data provide compelling arguments for the pervasive role of a northern, state-sponsored, internationally hybridized, but predominantly Egyptianizing apotropaic magic at the site of KA. While KA would also presume a developing scribal curriculum as the backdrop to the writings preserved on the pithoi and walls, that curriculum did not comprise the raison d’ être for the production of its inscriptions; the apotropaic powers of YHWH and His Asherah did. In the larger scheme of things, an intrinsic connection between religion and textiles at KA or at Deir Alla is not assumed here, although some connection between weaving and Asherah seems highly suggestive (was she the patron goddess of some specialized textile production?). Religion and textiles appear together in what are two attested examples of otherwise seemingly unique configurations of human constructed sites.267 Yet, neither KA nor Deir Alla for that matter were designed with a primarily religious function in mind, that is, if one has in view a site with a major temple or sanctuary.268 Cult per se was not the raison d’ être for either site. Rather, both were multipurpose sites with religion serving perhaps as a conventional(?) component in liminal, remote, but economically crucial, state-maintained regional trade-related sites (the one Samarian, the other Aramean); so much so that the elites in control infused an apotropaic component into their design. They did so in order to enhance the use of the routes and such caravanserai and to maintain their economic viability while also conveying the state’s backing. While both included on-site ritual loci, what brought visitors to KA were the regional trading routes and the nearby water sources as well as the assurance of state-sponsored, divine protection while passing through. Ultimately, economic opportunity drove people to such sites much as it does today in the case of London’s Heathrow airport where people arrive, depart, connect on their way elsewhere in order to conduct business 267   Kadesh Barnea in no way negates the role of religion at sites in the region or its occasional association with textiles. It is a different human construction with extensive evidence for its function as a fortress (unlike KA). It is not one, however, that lacks evidence of a religious nature. For example, two small altars were found in the Iron II fortress; see Avivit Gera, “The Small Finds,” Excavations at Kadesh Barnea (Tell el-Qudeirat) 1976–1982, ed. Rudolph Cohen and Hannah Bernick-Greenberg (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008), 211–35 and Eveline van der Steen, Jeannette Boertien, and Noor Mulder-Hymans, eds., Exploring the Narrative: Jerusalem and Jordan in the Bronze and Iron Ages, LHBOTS 583 (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 133–58. 268   Schmidt, “Memorializing Conflict,” 113–20 and Jeanette Boertien, Unraveling the Fabric, and her more recent “Public or Domestic? Temple: Text and Textile Production at Khirbet Al-Mudayna in Moab,” in Exploring the Narrative: Jerusalem and Jordan in the Bronze and Iron Ages, ed. Eveline van der Steen, Jeannette Boertien, and Noor Mulder-Hymans. The Library of HBOTS 583 (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 133–58.

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or pleasure elsewhere. While at the airport, individuals might visit the airport’s chapel – praying for continued safe travel and expressing gratitude for the safe travel just completed. Yet Heathrow was not designed as a temple or a sanctuary expressing its primary function, nor do people take pilgrimages to the airport to perform rituals at the chapel per se and then depart on foot.  Summary The state-sponsored, scribal artisans of Kuntillet Ajrud used techniques of gender marking and overlapping in their production of several integrated scenes in the religiously themed epigraphs and images recovered there. Those scenes, including the two now-famous Bes-like figures, were first drafted on pithoi surfaces and transferred to the building walls where they publicly conveyed, by their very design, the presence of YHWH and Asherah’s apotropaic power pervading the entire site in the form of Bes and Beset. Those same pithoi that served as drafting surfaces, by the very act of writing divine speech and drawing divine form on them, were “magically” imbued with the numinous. The decorated pithoi were therefore installed at various ritual loci on site in order to provide direct access for a range of visitors seeking to take with them that same apotropaic power as they departed and resumed their journeys. Not only did the decorated pithoi amass libations in this capacity, but as each represented a distinct version of the YHWH cult that included YHWH and Asherah traditions from both northern and southern orientations and depictions of theophany complemented by the human response of adoration depicted as empty-space aniconism; an artistic manner of expressing the presence of an open-air sanctuary as the setting for the worshippers scene. They also accrued responsive graffiti. In one case, a literate graffito was written over one of the Bes-like figures ostensibly affirming the distinctly Egyptianizing Samarian convergence of YHWH and Asherah with Bes and Beset as uniquely constructed hybridized and singularly enhanced source(s) of divine protection and provision.

Chapter 3 Godspeed on the “Other Side”: Text, Tomb, Image, and Evil The Ketef Hinnom Amulets The 2004 BASOR publication of the inscribed silver plaque amulets from Jerusalem’s Ketef Hinnom has not only reinvigorated interest in the relationship of the amulets’ content to the Priestly Blessing of Numbers chapter 6,1 but for those who follow matters magical, the new edition has also facilitated the amulets’ association with the wider world of apotropaic practices and beliefs. This latter development is, to a large extent, the outgrowth of the BASOR edition’s two new proposed readings of the term “evil” (Hebrew rāʿāh), one on each amulet. The Social Matrix of Early Judean Apotropaism Much of the more-recent work on the amulets from KH (fig. 3.1) has focused on the various lexical and semantic parallels to the inscriptions as attested in prayers and petitions preserved in cognate inscriptions.2 Yet relatively little has been proposed in the way of their functional associations with the much-larger, contemporary corpus of Iron Age amulets from the southern Levant or on the contributions that their ritual, sociohistorical, or archaeological contexts might offer toward their interpretation. Furthermore, there is an acute need to revisit some of the recent readings that have been proposed for the KH amuletic inscriptions. Lastly, the answers to these questions provide a further stimulus to readdress the matter of the 1   Barkay et al., “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” 41–71. For an earlier crucial study of these amulets in which their relation to the priestly blessing of Num 6 is impartially assessed, see Ada Yardeni, “Remarks on the Priestly Blessing on Two Ancient Amulets from Jerusalem,” VT 41 (1991): 176–85. See also Brian B. Schmidt, “The Social Matrix of Early Judean Magic and Divination: From ‘Top Down’ or ‘Bottom Up’?,” in Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman, ed. Billie Jean Collins and Piotr Michalowski (Atlanta: Lockwood, 2013), 279–94. 2   Angelika Berlejung, “Der gesegnete Mensch: Text und Kontext von Num 6,22–27 und den Sil beramuletten von Ketef Hinnom,” in Mensch und König: Studien zur Anthropologie des Alten Testaments, ed. Angelika Berlejung and Raik Heckl, HBS 53 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2008), 37–62, here 54; Jeremy D. Smoak, “Amuletic Inscriptions and the Background of Yahweh as Guardian and Protector in Psalm 12,” VT 60 (2010): 421–32; idem, “Prayers of Petition,” 81–84.

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Fig. 3.1. Ketef Hinnom’s location in Jerusalem (image courtesy IAA)

amulets’ authorship and the role played by priests in early Judean amuletic magic more generally. Amulets Galore: The Tale of a Jerusalem Tomb While it has long been held that magic and divination in late Iron Age and early Persian period Israel-Judah are only scarcely attested in the wider social and material cultural worlds outside the Hebrew Bible, those worlds are slowly but surely changing, and their relevant data ever increasing.3 There is now clear, compelling evidence – both quantitatively and qualitatively speaking – to the contrary. Consider for example, the evidence we have for amulets, their contexts and their functions in early Israelite and Judean societies. With the exception of the two KH silver amulets that comprise the focus of the present study and that have received all but the entirety of investigative attention, the more than twelve thousand amulets from the same general time period and regional geographic orientation in question have had little or no impact on treatments of the KH amulets or on the question of their supposed composition by a representative from the priestly sector of Judean society as portrayed in biblical traditions.4 3   See, as an example of such a conventional assessment, Gideon Bohak, Ancient Jewish Magic: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 1, 72. 4   Barkay et. al., “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” 46–47 mention the possibility that as many as three scribal hands were at work on the two amulets from KH. On the current state of



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This has persisted as the generally accepted state of things for the past three and a half decades in spite of the three volumes that Christian Herrmann has catalogued thus far of Late Bronze to Iron Age amulets from the myriad of archaeological sites in the southern Levant. As the amuletic repertoire continues to increase with each archaeological excavation season, a major portion of that database testifies to a significant early Judean and Israelite amuletic tradition. Herrmann offers as an estimate of the region’s approximate total for just the seal amulets some ten thousand plus. He has catalogued another two thousand or more representing a wide range of other types of amulets. Those most prominent include wedjat-eye amulets (numbering 530 plus), followed by Pataeke amulets (250) and then Bes amulets (170). He also makes note of another eighty or so examples of the feline-headed figurine amulets that dominate in the south. Most tellingly, his overall calculations indicate that the amuletic repertoire reached its peak in the Iron II and that Iron IIB was its high mark, the time period in which most experts would place the KH amulets.5 Converging Nonutilitarian Artifacts While one must acknowledge the limits and pitfalls of interpreting artifacts religiously, and there are many, the following exploratory effort on amulets, which utilizes recent research in the archaeology of family and household religion in the southern Levant, demonstrates that such an undertaking can be highly productive.6 The justifications for the approach taken here as well as the accompanying qualifications are several. In many cases, the amulets previously catalogued by Herrmann, “reappear” if you will, within a cluster of otherwise seemingly miscellaneous items. This convergence of artifacts, however, is not haphazard but in fact constitutes what archaeologists might conventionally label an archaeological, and possibly culaffairs regarding priests and Levites, see Mark A. Leuchter and Jeremy M. Hutton, eds., Levites and Priests in Biblical History and Tradition, AIL 9 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011). 5   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, 70–71; idem, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel II, III; idem, “Amulett,” Das wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet, http:// www.bibelwissenschaft.de/wibilex/das-bibellexikon/lexikon/sachwort/anzeigen/details/amulett/ ch/e5bc540102d7a902ca1a1893bde03efe/; idem, Amulettführer durch die Welt der ägyptischen Amulette aus Israel/Palästina (Gachnang: Evangelisches Pfarramt Gachnang, 2012). 6   In addition to Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, see also the essays in Assaf Yasur-Landau, Jennie R. Ebeling, and Laura B. Mazow, Household Archaeology in Ancient Israel and Beyond, CHANE 50 (Leiden: Brill, 2011); Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton, eds., Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah (London: T&T Clark, 2010); as well as the essays in, and especially that of Stanley K. Stowers, “Theorizing the Religion of Ancient Households and Families,” in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, ed. John Bodel and Saul M. Olyan (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 5–19. From the Egyptian side, see now Weiss, Religious Practice at Deir el-Medina, esp. ch. 1 (pp. 1–31) on the many methodological and definitional issues at stake. Drawing on role identity and structuration theories, Weiss underscores the variety of roles and actions of individuals owing to the constellation of situational contexts despite the decorum of broader social structures.

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tic assemblage. What is particularly telling are those instances when an amulet converges with a number of other artifacts that are classified by archaeologists as nonutilitarian objects. The decisive factor in identifying the function of these objects is that they unequivocally manifest a ritual function of one sort or another when they independently appear elsewhere in clear cultic environments such as temples, shrines, and sanctuaries. When these same objects converge with other distinctly nonutilitarian, religious artifacts including amulets, collectively they constitute a distinct cultic assemblage.7 The typical regional cultic assemblage might include nonutilitarian items such as censor cups, kernos rings, miniature altars and shrines, decorated stands, human and animal figurines, and fenestrated and decorated stands, all of which are attested in other clearly cultic contexts, along with amulets, seals, and rattles. These diagnostic objects are not only individually, but all the more so when found conjointly, indicative of a ritual or cultic function and context. Albertz and Schmitt categorize such an assemblage as their type A assemblage.8 Another category of assemblage comprises artifacts that have both utilitarian and nonutilitarian uses and include other types of stands, such as simple pot stands; luxury, imported, and miniature vessels; objects of personal adornment such as cosmetic items (spoons, containers, alabastrons); incense bowls; ladles; chalices; goblets; lamps; game pieces such as astragals; and collectibles (various shells; corals; fossils; ostrich eggs; worked, semiprecious stones; beads; pendants). Nevertheless, these might have cultic functions especially when they have converged with items from the standard type A assemblage. Albertz and Schmitt categorize such assemblages as type B.9 The Cooccurrence of Cultic Assemblages In sum, the designation of a locus as cultic or reflective of ritual rises in probability with the increase in the number of convergent diagnostic items that have independent verification of their cultic function(s) in other highly secure ritualized contexts such as a temple. Yet, as has been reiterated by others, there remain several cautionary guidelines that should be heeded in the process of ascertaining an assemblage’s meanings.10 Added confirmation presents itself when such resultant assemblages also cooccur in numerous archaeological contexts, domestic, mortuary, or otherwise, across multiple regional and socioeconomic boundaries of the southern Levant. Just as in the case with individual diagnostic items, when these cultic   See the detailed discussions in Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 21–56 and Michael D. Press, “A Problem of Definition: ‘Cultic’ and ‘Domestic’ Contexts in Philistia.” in Yasur-Landau et al., Household Archaeology, 361–89. 8  See Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 59–72 for a detailed analysis of each of these diagnostic items and their religious significances. 9  Ibid., 59. 10   See ibid., 59–60 for eight qualifications that Albertz and Schmitt outline in undertaking such an approach. 7



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assemblages – as assemblages – appear independently in obvious cultic settings such as temples, shrines, and sanctuaries, they provide the basis or verification for their analogous cultic function in new or unexpected environments.11 Where such cooccurrences appear in domestic and tomb assemblages that also include amulets, we have our clearest material testimony for the expressed belief and/or practice of an amuletic form of apotropaic magic. Three Regional Site Samples of Late Iron II Amuletic Magic A resumé of sample assemblages from three sites illustrates the above points. These sites represent not only a wide geographic distribution within the late Iron II period, but they also reflect various human environments, domestic and mortuary. At Beersheba in the Iron IIC levels, Locus 844 (Str III) preserved an unprecedented domestic cult assemblage apparently situated on what was the second story of a house that had collapsed. The assemblage consisted of a bronze Egyptian goddess figurine, a bronze bull figurine, a bronze Seth-animal head, a bronze double-crown amulet, faience beads and bowl, a glass Phoenician-style head, two stone cylinder seals (one clearly Neo-Assyrian), and two ostrich eggs. Another assemblage found 5 m northeast (Str II) in Room 859 preserved a faience animal or sphinx figurine seated on a pedestal, a bone amulet, a bone spout fragment, and a jug.12 At Megiddo, the so-called Iron IIB cult corner of Locus 2081 (Str VA–IVB) preserved an assemblage of two horned altars, three stands, a large censer jar, other jars, juglets, chalices, a bowl, a slab, mortar, rubbing stone, and an axe head whereas the room 2081 itself included two limestone altars, three stands, two chalices, one lamp, twenty-five bowls, twenty-eight jugs, seven jars, two basalt vessels all indicative of a larger domestic cult that also included thirty or more astragals in a bowl, six game pieces, six stamp seals, two amulets as well as beads, pendants, and metal objects.13 At Lachish, the Iron II tomb 1002, a collapsed structure, contained in the burial remains six hundred vessels through thirteen layers spanning Iron IIB (layers 11–13) to IIC (layers 1–5).14 As Albertz and Schmitt have pointed out, there is the rather unique appearance of four zoomorphic vessels.15 The human figurines include four Judean pillar figurines, two horse-and-rider figurines, four animal figurines, four examples of model furniture, four rattles, thirty-four seals, and fifteen amulets along with a handful of weapons-related objects: one knife, one blade, and (two) armor scales. Lachish tomb 106 (a triple-chambered bench tomb with two recess chambers) contained Iron IIC pottery in abundance (670–580 BCE) and the overall finds suggest a wealthy family. The tomb may contain as many as twen  Ibid., 74–219, esp. pp. 174–75, and pp. 220–24.   Ibid., 80–84, 502, 518. 13   Ibid., 134–37, 501, 530. 14   Ibid., 444, 446–48. 15   Ibid., 446. 11 12

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ty-five burials if the skull count is an accurate index.16 Human figurines include one horse-and-rider figurine and three Judean pillar figurines. There is one animal figurine and one zoomorphic vessel, one example of model furniture, one rattle, twenty-five seals, and four amulets (two Lotus and Mut, one sow, and one Isis with Horus). Again, weapons-related objects included eight arrowheads and five knives. The Iron Age II tombs at Lachish preserve a variety of amulets alongside a range of anthropomorphic figurines, both Judean pillar figurines and horse-and-rider figurines, animal figurines, zoomorphic vessels, and rattles. All of these with the exception of the rattles are also attested as typical, figurative ritual objects of late Iron II Israelite-Judean domestic cultic assemblages like the ones just surveyed. This suggests that burial assemblages may constitute a subset of domestic assemblages in some meaningful, yet to be fully comprehended, way. The precise nature of the cultic activities reflected in such assemblages has long been the subject of much discussion. Yet, given their context and the nature of the associated artifacts, there can be little doubt that they possessed genuine cultic or ritual significance that most likely entailed aspects of both divination and magic comprising, as they do, game pieces for casting of lots, astragals for purposes of divination, amulets, seals, axe heads for apotropaic measures, and possibly figurines for necromantic rituals.17 As for those reoccurring rattles, not only are they unique to the tomb assemblages, but when viewed from the perspective of their cooccurrence with amulets, seals, figurines, and various weapons placed in mortuary contexts, they too can be reasonably interpreted as expressive of the deceased’s need for apotropaic protection.18 These archaeological constructs provide a reliable index that for our purposes underscores the apotropaic function of amulets in what can be clearly identified as Israelite or Judean domestic and tomb cultic- or ritually related assemblages. Ketef Hinnom’s Amulets Reassessed Having verified in cultic assemblages from late Iron II Israel-Judah, the widespread phenomenon of “amuletic” apotropaic magic, the two KH amulets can now be assessed within their prospective cultic or ritual contexts. In a number of recent treatments, the author of the amuletic inscriptions has been identified as a priestly scribe belonging specifically to the Jerusalem priesthood.19 Comparative evidence for priestly language has been cited in support of priest’s roles in the control of   Ibid., 449.   Ibid., 462. 18   Ibid., 454. 19   See, e.g., most recently Jeremy D. Smoak, “May YHWH Bless You and Keep You from Evil: The Rhetorical Argument of Ketef Hinnom Amulet I and the Form of the Prayers for Deliverance in the Psalms,” JANER 12 (2012): 202–36, esp. pp. 216–17, and Nadav Na’aman, “A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” IEJ 61 (2011): 192. 16 17



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magical and incantatory language in order to suggest the same for our scribe.20 All this more or less fits with the conventional date of the amulets in the late preexilic period when the first temple still stood.21 The Dating of the Amulets Gabriel Barkay, the excavator, notes that both amulets were found among deposits inside a bone repository that included other artifacts in burial chamber 25 of cave 24 (figs. 3.2 and 3.3). This type of burial chamber is well attested from the Iron Age, so it clearly dates typologically to the preexilic period. The customary practice was to remove deposits from burial shelves and consign those successive deposits to a chamber’s repository. After several generations, the deposits would build up and later deposits would be made either on top of the earlier deposits or closer toward the entrance of the repository. Periodically, as the entrance to the chamber would become clogged, deposits were shoved to the back and flattened out. KH amulet #1 was found in square D in the middle of the repository only 7 cm above the floor while the average deposit depth was 65 cm suggesting KH #1 was an earlier deposit (fig. 3.4). KH #2 was recovered from square A in the innermost portion of the repository and likewise from the lower level of the deposits. These dispositions suggest a relatively early date for the amulets and not a Hellenistic or postexilic date. Yet, Na’aman has raised some legitimate questions regarding the dating of the amulets and their inscriptions based on KH’s archaeological, paleographic, and orthographic considerations. Moreover, in reiterating an earlier thesis by Berlejung regarding their metallic material composition, he dates their production to the Persian instead of the late preexilic period. He also proposed that the amulets contain in their language a direct, explicit appeal to the hoped-for rebuilt temple (but see further below).22 Whether the KH amulets are to be dated precisely to the late preexilic or to the postexilic periods is difficult to decide given the severe limitations of our available 20   Smoak invokes the Egyptian lector-priest as his prime example, yet many curses and blessings occurring on ancient graffiti frequently in tombs or in tomb complexes, including those of private individuals, were composed by scribes of varying levels and branches of the administrative hierarchy in Egypt according to Katarina Nordh (Aspects of Ancient Egyptian Curses and Blessings: Conceptual Background and Transmission, Boreas 26 [Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1996], 10–14, 182–86, 209–10) and see now Forshaw, The Role of the Lector. For further on these points, see below on the Khirbet el-Qom tomb inscription 3. 21  See Barkay et al., “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” 43–44 for the archaeological dating of the amulets to the late preexilic period. 22   As for the limitations associated with dating the amulets on the basis of the archaeology or on paleographic grounds, see Na’aman, “A New Appraisal,” 186–87. Barkay et al., “The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” 44–52 directly addressed the proposal by Johannes Renz, Die alt-hebräischen Inschriften, vol. 1:1 of Handbuch der althebräischen Epigraphik (Darmstadt: Wissenschaft-liche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), 44–56 for a Hellenistic date of the amulets and outlined several points against such a late date.

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Fig. 3.2. Floor plan of cave 24 (image courtesy IAA)

Fig. 3.3. Isometric drawing of cave 24 (image courtesy IAA)



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Fig. 3.4. Distribution of finds in chamber 25 (image courtesy IAA)

data. The various factors involved are several and complex. Therefore, more precise dates can play only a tentative role in any treatment of the KH amulets in the foreseeable future. As matters presently stand, the archaeological and paleographic data remain indecisive. Yet, for others their orthographic characteristics23 or the broad content downloaded from 170.140.26.180 Thu, 22(inscription) Oct 2015 00:21:08 UTCcontempoparallels inThis material composition (metal) andondesign with All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions rary amulets suggest a postexilic date.24 Ahituv, however, has recently responded in detail to the Persian period proposal of Berlejung from 2008 and the 2011 proposal of Na’aman. Regarding the lack of precious metal amulets in the Levant during the late Iron II in contrast to their appearance in the Persian period, Ahituv has cited Egyptian and western Phoenician analogues from the late Iron II and the abundance of metal in the Levant otherwise during this time period.25 He then proposed that the amulets were written by two people as the letters of the second amuletic inscription are much more elegant than those of the first. Furthermore, 23   See F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp et al., eds., Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 266, 268–69, 273. 24   Angelika Berlejung, “Ein Programm fürs Leben: Theologisches Wort und anthropologischer Ort der Silberamulette von Ketef Hinnom,” ZAW 120 (2008): 204–30, idem, “Der gesegnete Mensch,” 37–62; Na’aman, “A New Appraisal,” 188. 25  See Shmuel Ahituv, “A Rejoinder to Nadav Na’aman’s ‘A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,’” IEJ 62 (2012): 223–32 who also upholds Barkay’s preliminary report on the Ketef Hinnom amulets as exemplary in refraining from commenting on the speculation that the amulets might have been moved from their original locations; so Na’aman, “A New Appraisal,” 186, contra Gabriel Barkay, “The Priestly Benediction on Silver Plaques from Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem,” TA 19 (1992): 139–51.

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the relatively poor quality of script was due to the manner of their design; they were not to be read, but were permanently sealed in order to protect the bearers, “perhaps after death.”26 Thus, the writers were not so concerned about their legibility. Turning more directly to their paleographic analysis, Ahituv notes that while proposed dates by paleographers range from the end of the seventh to the end of the sixth centuries, no one has proposed the Persian period on paleographic grounds. Similarly, the plene orthography and in particular the use of medial matres lectionis in the amuletic inscriptions has its secure late Iron II parallels, which Ahituv reviews at some length. Furthermore, if one takes into consideration the large number of amulets that Herrmann has catalogued for the entirety of the Iron Age and the fact that numerous examples of such amulets have been recovered from Israelite and Judean tombs, then the amulets more likely presume a formidable demonic host that was thought to exist in the worlds of the living and the dead in the late Iron II period. It is just such a world that underlies the apotropaism identified at KA. The same can be said with regard to the late eighth-century KQ tomb inscription 3 along with its accompanying incised human hand (fig. 3.11 on p. 147 below). By direct inference, these give expression to the same demonic world in its epigraph and image as a preexilic expression of apotropaic magic (see further below). A New Reading: An “Eternal” Temple? Na’aman buttresses his view of the postexilic dating and social context of the KH amulets by proposing a new reading in a damaged portion of amulet #1 (fig. 3.5). At the end of line 7 and the beginning of line 8, he reconstructs bêtô, “his house” as a reference to YHWH’s restored temple. But others, including the contributors to the BASOR edition, left the space blank – and within brackets – where Na’aman proposes the first two letters of a four-letter word. This leaves only the final two letters actually represented in the text, a taw followed by a -he. Na’aman views the -he as the transitional, archaic third masculine pronominal suffix, which he explains as what one might expect in a late-sixth century Hebrew inscription based on the orthographic developments recognized by many grammarians of early epigraphic Hebrew. Together with the following word ʿlm (> ʿōlām), he offers the reconstructed phrase: bêtô ʿōlām … “in his (that is, YHWH’s) everlasting house …” – an entirely exceptional reference to the temple and its eternity in such an early magical context, yet thought provoking to say the least. Ahituv acknowledged that Na’aman has proposed an important theological innovation, “the temple as savior,” a concept not attested in the HB. Yet, following a survey of the biblical texts pertaining to the temple in the restoration 26   Ahituv, “A Rejoinder to Nadav Na’aman,” 224 and see his earlier, more expansive comments in Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008), 49–55, esp. 50.



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period, Ahituv raised an important question: “Is such a temple support for the notion of a temple … ‘For redemption is in it?’” Ahituv demonstrates the unlikelihood that such a modest temple would inspire such a reading.27 An examination of the photos and drawings leads me to propose a different reading, one that has both greater paleographic merit and much more contextual support in amulet #1 (fig. 3.6). The supposed form of the taw here is very unlike its sole other occurrence in the amulets, as a comparison of the letter forms in the script charts provided in the BASOR edition clearly illustrate. The traces might represent a poorly or faintly rendered waw. This would leave us with the sequence of two letters waw-he, not taw-he. If such a reading stands, then one might suggest another still for the immediately preceding damaged section at the end of line 7 and beginning of line 8. In what approximates an empty space for two letters, I suggest a yod-he sequence. This would render the full, four-letter sequence yod-hewaw-he; the divine name. When followed by ʿlm, the two-word phrase would read yhwh ʿlm or YHWH ʿōlām. It should be noted, YHWH occurs several times in the two silver amulets and four times in this amulet, though the mention of the temple never occurs. The text and translation of amulet #1 follows, and is based for the most part on the BASOR 2004 edition: KH #1 1. yhw . . . 2.  . . . 3.  gd[l šmr] 4.  hbryt w 5.  [h]h sd lʾhb 6.  w] wšmry [ms -] 7.  [wtw yh-] 8.  wh ʿlm .[.] 9.  [h] brkh mkl [p] 10. h  wmhrʿ 11. ky bw gʾl 12. h ky yhwh 13. [m]šybnw [w] 14. s wr ybr 15. k yhwh [w 16. y]šmrk [y] 17. ʾr yhwh 18. pn[yw] 1 …]YHW … 3the grea[t … who keeps] 4the covenant and 5[G]raciousness toward those who love [him] and 6those who keep [his commandments 7… [YH-] 8 WH the Eternal […] 9[the?] blessing from any 10[sna]re and from the Evil. 11For   Ahituv, “A Rejoinder to Nadav Na’aman,” 230.

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Fig. 3.5. Amulet 1 photo with superimposed letters (image courtesy IAA)

Fig. 3.6. Amulet 1 drawing with reconstruction (image courtesy IAA)



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by Him is deliverance. 12For YHWH 13is our restorer [and] 14rock. May YHWH bles[s] 15(you) and 16[may He] keep you. 17[May] YHWH make 18[His face] shine … In such a construction, the term ʿlm might function (1) adverbially in post position following the divine name as it does in a handful of biblical passages at the end of a sentence, for example, “those who keep the laws of YHWH forever” (wšhmry [ms-] (7) [wtw yh-] (8) wh ʿlm …), or (2) as a predicate adjective, “YHWH is forever” or perhaps, but least likely in my view, (3) as an attributive adjective, since here one might expect the definite article prefixed to ʿlm, “YHWH The Everlasting” (yhwh hʿlm) or if one prefers, “The Everlasting Lord” (but cf. ʾēl ʿōlām, “El Everlasting,” or perhaps more accurately – without the article – “an everlasting god,” in Gen 21:33 and note the context). The amulet’s immediately preceding context is just too damaged to extract further information regarding the precise syntactic rendering, yet any one of the preceding three options may be viable having, as each does, some contextual support. Other Rereadings: “The Evil (One),” “The Exorciser of the Evil (One),” and the Demonic Simply put, the two new readings in the amulets proposed in the BASOR 2004 edition mentioning evil (Heb. rāʿāh) present provocative, new prospects for reassessing early Judean religion and magic. These inscribed amulets may preserve some of our earliest, explicit written documentation of the world of the demonic in late Iron II Judean religion. Not only does evil occur twice in the amulets, once in each text, but YHWH is depicted as having taken on a special role vis-à-vis that ever-present evil as suggested by his titulary in KH amulet #2:4–5 (figs. 3.7 and 3.8). With minor changes, the text and translation of BASOR 2004 follows: KH #2

1. h/w brk h 2. [ʾ] lyhw[h] 3. hʿzr w 4. hgʿr b 5. [r]ʿ ybrk 6. yhwh y 7. šmrk 8. yʾr yh 9. [w]h pnyw 10. [ʾl]yk wy 11. śm lk š 12. [l]m

1 [For PN, (the son/daughter of) xxxx]1h/hu. May he/sh[e]2 be blessed by YHWH, the Warrior and 4the Exorciser of 5[the E]vil: May YHWH bless (you) 6and keep you. 7May YHWH make 6his face shine 7upon you and 8grant you p[ea]ce.

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Fig. 3.7. Amulet 2 photo with superimposed letters (image courtesy IAA)

Fig. 3.8. Amulet 2 drawing with reconstruction (image courtesy IAA)



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Remnants of a Wider Levantine Daimonic Recent work on the Ugaritic rituals and incantations, the Deir Alla inscriptions and drawings, and the reauthenticated Arslan Tash inscribed amulets have invigorated research on the demonic worlds of the early pre-Hellenistic Levant. From the neighboring first-millennium West Semitic context, the reference to the shaddayin in the Balaam Inscription from Deir Alla, Jordan (ancient Ammon?), and the red and black paint-on-plaster sphinx-like figure near the top border of the Balaam Inscription are both highly suggestive of a localized contemporary daimonic world populated by among others, the shaddai-beings. The two “reauthenticated” inscribed incantation amulets from Arslan Tash (ancient Hadatu) from ancient northwestern Syria, which depict and make mention of the Flyers and the Stranglers, confirm a daimonic world in northern Levantine tradition of the late Iron Age.28 Both amuletic texts are set in a contest against the sons of the gods, the holy ones, and against such deities as Ashur, Baal, Hawran and his wives, and perhaps Shamash. An antecedent and overlapping daimonic world was already well established in the wider Levantine region at the end of the second millennium as the Ugaritic incantations demonstrate.29 As one example, a goddess, or better, “demoness,” Ḫ     aniqātu as ḫ nqt is mentioned at Ugarit in the incantation text, KTU 1.39:18. This same female malevolent “Strangler” demoness is mentioned in the Arslan Tash amulets. Lewis has noted that the spell spoken against Haniqātu/h nqt at Arslan Tash, “the house I enter, you must not enter,” bt ʾbʾ bl tbʾn has its verbatim reflex in Ugaritic, bt ʾubʾu ʾal tbʾl in KTU 1.169:18.30 Not only preserved in those texts is a Canaanite divine council comprised of multiple suprahuman beings, but they also preserve a number of daimons and beings of various kinds, including the deceased. Moreover, Ugarit’s multiple deities, daimons, and dead have their descendant continuity with the first-millennium Levant as we can see from the incantation amulets from Arslan Tash and the art and inscriptions from Deir Alla. It is this wider world of Levantine demons of the first millennium that serves as the immediate sociohistorical context against which our treatments of the drawings and inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud, the inscribed amulets from Jerusalem’s Ketef Hinnom, the cave inscriptions from Khirbet el-Qom and our chosen biblical test cases, Deut 32:17 and 1 Sam 28 must be read. 28   For the defense of their authenticity and for what has become the standard collation of the texts, see Dennis Pardee, “Les documents d’Arslan Tash: authentiques ou faux?” Syria 75 (1998): 15–54 and note Angelika Berlejung, “There Is Nothing Better Than More! Text and Image on Amulet 1 from Arslan Tash,” JNSL 36 (2010): 1–42. 29  For daimons or demons at Ugarit, see Johannes de Moor, “Demons in Canaan,” JEOL 27 (1980): 106–19; Johannes de Moor and Klaas Spronk, “More on Demons in Ugarit,” UF 16 (1984): 237–50; Klaas Spronk, “The Incantations,” in Handbook of Ugaritic Studies, ed. W. G. E. Watson and Nicholas Wyatt, HO I.39 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 270–89. 30   Lewis, “ʿAthtartu’s Incantations,” 227 n. 112.

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As for the rendering of Ketef Hinnom’s hgʿr brʿ as “The Exorciser of the Evil (One)” (KH #2:4–5), Lewis recently proposed such a meaning for the triradical base gāʿar in Ugaritic that has been typically interpreted in the more mild sense of rebuke. Following a review of references in cognate contexts at Qumran and in Hellenistic Aramaic where gāʿar is employed as a technical term in incantations and in references like Nah 1:4 in the HB (“YHWH exorcises Yam and He (Yam) dries up …”), he as well as Jan Joosten, have proposed a translation “to exorcise, hex.” 31 The decisive factor is the immediate context that demands more intensively performative language where YHWH’s anger and its effective result are self-evident. This meaning of gāʿar was suggested previously by André Caquot, where in certain contexts the term takes on a more specialized meaning, “to exorcise.” Based on these later instances, Joosten and Lewis proposed a similar meaning for gāʿar in the later Qumran texts and in the earlier Ugaritic text KTU 1.2.4:28: bšm tgʿrm ʿt trt, “By name, ‘Athtartu hexed (Yammu).…”32 The translation of evil in KH amulet 2:4–5 with the definite article, “the Exorciser of the Evil,” hgʿr b[r]ʿ, also finds its confirmation in amulet #1:10 where the definite article is in fact prefixed to the term for evil, “the blessing from every snare and from the Evil (wmhrʿ), for by Him is deliverance.…” In their concluding remarks, the authors of the 2004 edition similarly rendered the two occurrences of evil in the KH amulets with the definite article and translated the construction as all “Evil.” The definite article marking the object of exorcising (gāʿar) indicates personified Evil, “The Evil (One)” just as the object of the verb in the above examples is a spuranatural being (e.g., Yam). That the amulets were recovered from a Jerusalem tomb assemblage indicates that they were probably designed with the complementary roles of warding off evil both in daily life and in the afterlife. The apotropaic protection is reinforced by the well-attested phraseology of YHWH’s blessing and guarding.33 The implications for Iron II belief and practice are obvious and telling.   Theodore J. Lewis, “ʿAthtartu’s Incantations and the Use of Divine Names as Weapons,” JNES 70 (2011): 207–27, esp. 207–17; idem, “The Identity and Function of Ugaritic Shaʿtiqatu: A Divinely Made Apotropaic Figure,” JANER 14 (2014): 1–28; and now Jan Joosten, “The Verb GʿR ‘to Exorcise’ in Qumran Aramaic and Beyond,” Dead Sea Discoveries 21 (2014): 347–55. 32  See André Caquot, “gaʿar,” TDOT 3:52 and see also Joseph Naveh and Saul Shaked, Amulets and Magic Bowls: Aramaic Incantations of Late Antiquity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University; Leiden: Brill, 1985), 82–84 and especially Joseph Naveh, “A Recently Discovered Palestinian Jewish Aramaic Amulet,” in Arameans, Aramaic and the Aramaic Literary Tradition, ed. Michael Sokoloff (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1983), 81–88 contra Ahituv, Echoes From the Past, 54 who noted, “The meaning of ‘drive out, away,’ is secondary and unattested in the Bible,” but where he also continues “GʿR is used with people or nature but not with abstracts. Therefore ‘the evil’ mentioned here is not an abstract evil but a specific ‘entity’ like that mentioned in Zech 3:2 (supra).” The object of exorcism in Zech 3:2 is haśśātān, “The Adversary,” but Ahituv neither clarifies whether the referent is a human or supranatural being nor does he consider its relation to the referent in 1 Chr 21:1 where an anarthrous śātān, “an adversary” or Satan is mentioned. 33   In addition to the two occurrences in the KH amulets, the same phraseology indicative of divine protection involving the couplet brk and šmr is attested at KA and note the Ekron Inscription: tbrkh.wt šm[r]h, “May she (a goddess) bless him, and guar[d] him.…” 31



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Contrary to more conventional assessments of the Iron II religious traditions of Israel-Judah characterized by a supposed silence regarding the world of the demonic in the HB, these new readings in the KH amulets when viewed alongside Herr­mann’s massive regional amuletic repertoire spanning the whole of the Iron Age and the evidence for apotropaism at KA and at KQ, together point to a rather widespread fear of demons and, perhaps by inference, a concomitant recourse to angels.34 While one might legitimately ask how early, extensive, and pervasive, one need only recall Israel and Judah’s use of a significant portion of more than twelve thousand amulets in a variety of Iron Age contexts and settings. In the case of the silver amulets from KH and the numerous other amulets recovered from the tombs of several other Iron II Israelite-Judean sites, one now has unequivocal documentation for the belief in demonic powers and that such demons inhabited the worlds of both the living and the dead. In light of the evidence put forward above for apotropaic magic’s currency in mortuary ritual, the late eighth-century BCE inscription etched on the bedrock of a multichambered tomb found at Khirbet el-Qom becomes particularly relevant: “Uriyahu, the notable has written it. Blessed be Uriyahu by YHWH, Now from his enemies, by His Asherah deliver him! by Oniyahu … and by His Asherah […… by His Ash]erah … ”35 As outlined in greater detail in the next section, this blessing is best viewed as an enduring wish and not merely as a memorial to Uriyahu’s life. This can be established first by the mortuary context of the KQ inscription itself and then confirmed by the associated find spot of the two KH amulets. The blessing manifests the concern for his protection not only in his lifetime, but also during burial and in his travel beyond to the netherworld. Rather noteworthy is the focus on YHWH’s deliverance of Uriyahu from his enemies through Asherah’s intervention. Whether enemies generally are in view or those intent on desecrating his grave, grave robbers, and/or malevolent demons, all or any of the preceding constitute feasible candidates. The apotropaic character of the inscription is corroborated by the downward-directed   See now Archie T. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1–4 in Early Jewish Literature, WUNT 2, Reihe 198 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005); but cf. Judit M. Blair, De-Demonising the Old Testament: An Investigation of Azazel, Lilith, Deber, Qeteb and Reshef in the Hebrew Bible, FAT 2.37 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). Note the important comments in Becking’s review of Blair in JSS 57 (2012): 415–17 and see Edward Lipiński, Resheph: A Syro-Canaanite Deity, OLA 181 (Leuven: Peeters, 2009) and Maciej M. Münnich, The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). 35  See Dobbs-Allsopp et al., eds., Hebrew Inscriptions, 408–14. 34

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incision of the hand depicted very closely to the inscription. If one accepts Schroer’s proposal, the “magical” hand motif might very well comprise the representation of an apotropaic curse against any threat that may occur.36 The downward directed hand might alternatively signify continued divine assistance as the deceased descends for the journey through the netherworld to one’s final resting place. Abundant testimony exists in the HB of human encounters with a variety of terrifying sentient beings alongside related expressions that hint at the fear of such demons and ghosts – merely recall the ʾōbōt and yidd әʿōnîm, the bәnê (hā)ʾelōhîm, the nәphîlîm, the gibbōrîm, Deber, Lilith, Qeteb, Reshef, Azazel, the Satan, Leviathan, and Helal ben Shachar to name but a few. Now from the ground up there is more, namely, the extensive use of amulets in ancient Israelite society for protective measures in both domestic settings and in mortuary contexts. Who else but demons and ghosts would be in view as the deceased made their journeys to the netherworld? More to the point, the Ketef Hinnom amulets’ mention of “The Evil (One)” and YHWH as “The Exorciser of the Evil (One)” certainly aligns with what we know otherwise of amuletic and exorcistic language and function in the wider ancient Near East including the Levant, and such references raise the likelihood of a rather conventional fear of demons. This is especially so given the wider contemporary amuletic repertoire’s cooccurrence with figurines, seals and rattles, and other apotropaic measures in both domestic and in mortuary contexts. In sum, neither Iron II Israelite nor Judean society was a culture of disenchantment. To the contrary, one can detect in the epigraphic sources, in such material cultural data as amulets and their related cultic assemblages, and the biblical texts, a viable daimonic world. Yet, for some biblical writers (but not all!), the demonic was the object of suppression or rhetorical disenchantment in the corresponding imagined or idealized world of the biblical text. This only highlights the underlying social reality of the demonic, and by implication, the angelic, in the wider sociohistorical reality beyond and outside the text. The HB does not offer an accurate index of the relative lack or abundance of demons and angels in the actual socioreligious world of Iron II Israel-Judah. Rather, if the amuletic repertoire, and the evidence from KA, KH, and KQ indicate anything, the demonic may well have been ubiquitous in society, but suppressed by certain biblical writers – and never entirely absent in those traditions either as the following treatment of Deut 32 indicates. Summary: Amuletic Magic in Judean Religious Life All this begs the question of the more immediate sociohistorical context in which the KH amulets were but a part. I have suggested that amuletic magic was widely distributed in Israel and Judah of the Iron II period as representatively illustrated by the convergence of amulets with other nonutilitarian, religious artifacts and   Silvia Schroer, “Zur Deutung der Hand unter der Grabinschrift von Chirbet el Qôm,” UF 15 (1983): 191–99. 36



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the cooccurrence of their cultic assemblages across regional and socioeconomic boundaries in both domestic and mortuary contexts. When we explore amuletic magic closer to KH itself or in the immediate proximity of Jerusalem’s environs, we find again a potentially rich amuletic environment. Yet to my knowledge these data, like the amuletic evidence more broadly, have not been given their proper due in treatments of the KH amulets. Again, Herrmann has gathered in his catalogue a number of intriguing amulets from Iron II Jerusalem. There is a feline-headed full-body amulet from the Ophel of Iron IIB,37 a grotesque male-headed glass amulet at Ketef Hinnom itself from the Persian period,38 and one (or possibly two?) wedjat-eye amulet(s) from Ketef Hinnom of the Iron IIC.39 Another datum that Herrmann identifies as an amulet fragment and that was found at Ketef Hinnom comprises part of a ceramic neck collar. The neck collar has close parallels with amulets depicting a female head with double-crowned headdress and identified as the Egyptian goddess Sakhmet or Bastet.40 One can also add to Herrmann’s corpus of Iron II Jerusalem amulets, those recovered in the 1995 excavations at the city of David. All three are wedjat-eye amulets. Two of the amulets have been dated to the Iron IIC and the third as late as the Persian period. As Cahill adeptly demonstrates, all three have their analogues in similar wedjat-eye amulets recovered from sites all over Israel-Judah and while our three from Jerusalem’s city of David were not found in tomb contexts per se, several of their analogues were in fact recovered from Iron Age mortuary environments.41 Gabriel Barkay has recently indicated that the wedjat-eye amulet from KH was found in the same tomb complex as the two silver amulets, that is, chamber #25, and that they are all part of the same (cultic?) assemblage that in all likelihood belonged to a wealthy family.42 The wedjat-eye amulet from Ketef Hinnom is made of white composite with traces of light-blue glaze. There are also traces of silver on the pupil that recall the silver sheeting of the two inscribed amulets from the same site. The convergence of these amulets in the same immediate tomb context invites   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, 153, no. 71 and Bildtafel 8, Phototafel VII [black and white]. 38   Ibid., 810, no. 1342 Bildtafel 79 [no photo]; Gabriel Barkay, Ketef Hinnom: A Treasure Facing Jerusalem’s Walls (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1986), 5. 39   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, 761–62, nos. 1208, 1209, and see Bildtafel 72, and for no. 1208 only, Phototafel LXV [black and white]; Barkay, Ketef Hinnom, 28, 105. In a personal communication, Barkay informs me that there was only one such wedjat-eye amulet. 40   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel I, 223, no. 180; see Bildtafel 15 for a fully reconstructed drawing. Barkay opined that this one might better go with the feline heads; Barkay, Ketef Hinnom, 7. 41   Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel III, nos. 317, 318, 325 [with color photos]; Jane M. Cahill, “‘Horus Eye’ Amulets,” in Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985, vol. 4: Various Reports, ed. Donald T. Ariel and Ariel De Groot, QEDEM 35 (Jerusalem: Keterpress, 1996), 291–97. 42   Personal communication. 37

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intriguing possibilities with regard to their individual and collective function and meanings, as well as their underlying socioreligious world. Did a Jerusalem priest compose and deposit these in the tomb as part of a funerary rite as has been recently proposed? Or was it family members of their own accord or had they dispassionately offered it in response to a prior request on the part of the deceased? The apotropaic function of the wedjat-eye amulet (against the evil eye) only underscores the mention of “The Evil (One)” and YHWH as “The Exorciser of the Evil (One)” in the two accompanying KH silver amulets. With regard to mortuary magic in particular, it is most likely that these three amulets were used beyond a role in daily life to invoke also conjointly apotropaic powers of protection while the deceased was not only resting in the grave but, subsequently, as the dead began the journey to their netherworld destination. If, as many scholars have, we are to posit here a Jerusalem temple priest as the author of the inscriptions on the silver amulets, then we are presented with a very different priest than conventionally portrayed in the biblical traditions or in their reception history. Ours is one who accessed a much wider range of rituals, objects, and associated beliefs to ward off evil. Whereas it is often assumed that priestly circles were reticent to extend YHWH’s protective power to the netherworld realm (does YHWH ever appear in the netherworld in the HB?), this Jerusalem priest was eager to do just that, whether directly (e.g., by producing and depositing the silver amulets in the tomb) and/or via the intervention of other intermediary(?) powers that made up his particular Yahwistic religious tradition (e.g., by depositing the wedjat-eye amulet to ward off the demonic being associated with the evil eye).43 If one considers again the amuletic repertoire reflective of the wider regional distribution of apotropaic magic and then one situates the Ketef Hinnom silver plaque amulets within the corresponding social reality of diffuse amuletic magic, one can very plausibly speak of an elite, scribal, priestly sector that produced not only a large amuletic repertoire, but also one of an impressively diverse character – from mass-produced commodity type “Egyptianizing” amulets to luxury-level-style amulets comprised of silver-painted wedjat-eye amulets and to still others more elaborately made of silver sheeting complete with priestly appropriated inscriptions of ancient blessings and curses. The same ritual specialist(s) or priest(s) who authored the KH silver amulets would have been well positioned and capable also of producing such amulets as those attested at Lachish or Megiddo or Beersheba and   In agreement with Stowers, “Theorizing Ancient Household Religions,” 5–19 and Weiss, “Religious Practices in Ancient Egypt,” 1–31, the evidence from KA, KH, and KQ, along with the amuletic data, favors some significant convergence and continuity between what is traditionally viewed as “popular religion” over against “official religion.” The priesthood did not advocate across a unified front a disenchanted world in their writings over against popular Yahwistic traditions. Rather, internal religious pluralism characterized segments within the priestly sector itself, contra Hermann Spieckermann, “‘YHWH Bless You and Keep You’: The Relation of History of Israelite Religion and Old Testament Theology Reconsidered,” SJOT 23 (2009): 165–82. 43



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elsewhere. Likewise, such a priestly scribe might have composed a biblical psalm like Ps 91 as an “amulet psalm” in which conjuration complemented prayer and visualization helped to strengthen trust.44 In sum, one would have to conclude that a ritualist’s religious proclivities such as the one envisioned here were much more inclusive or diverse – Yahwistically speaking – than biblically portrayed or previously assumed. Finally, what is one to make of the occurrence of an abbreviated form of the same blessing formula, “may YHWH bless you and keep you,” preserved in the silver KH amulets, that is also found in the KA inscriptions from 800 BCE? If the latter precedes the priestly writer’s chapter 6 of the book of Numbers by some two centuries, does this not suggest alternative processes of transmission or dissemination? To be sure, the scribe at KA might have come from official priestly circles, that is, if the evidence from there indeed suggests a state-sponsored construction project and if the two inscribed pithoi there were, as proposed above, part of the religious paraphernalia in the bench room and elsewhere, that constituted KA’s decorated pithos libation cult designed to provide provision and protection for the site’s visitors.45 Yet, should this blessing rubric have originated as a literate expression, does that require us to embrace a top-down notion of diffusion from, say, temple and palace to general public in the form of display, or from priests to the regional population? The general similarities shared by the blessings preserved at KA, KH, and KQ and that of Num 6 few dispute, but the underlying processes that explain those interrelationships are another matter altogether. One might imagine a very different world in which an ancient blessing formula like ours had, for the previous centuries, widespread apotropaic associations throughout the rural countryside, the village, and the town among the clans and tribes. Having appeared in a variety of magical and divinatory media and situations, it then eventually made its way to the elite sector of society as a “popularized relic” of sorts. Was it then adapted and adopted by the priestly scribal hand responsible for the corresponding portion in Numbers chapter 6? Perhaps the KH blessing was an ancient apotropaic formula that originated in older family, clan, and/or domestic religious traditions, and specifically from within the family’s or clan’s daily life inclusive of the mortuary cult (and note the second person singular forms “you” throughout). Over time, it spread in its usage, application, and popularity to the point that a later priesthood constructed within an emerging, urbanizing form of centralized government, coopted the blessing and employed it not only in its own traditional daily life and mortuary 44  So Christian Herrmann, “Weitere ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel,” ZDPV 123 (2007): 93–132 contra Spieckermann, “Relation of History of Israelite Religion,” 175–76. 45  See Brian A. Mastin, “Who Built and Who Used the Buildings at Kuntillet ʿAjrud?,” in On Stone and Scroll: Essays in Honour of Graham Ivor Davies, ed. James K. Aitkin, Katharine J. Dell, and Brian A. Mastin, BZAW 420 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 69–85 and now Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 65–69.

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ritual, but also in a collective sense as the preferred rubric for a new communal or national consecration ritual as reflected in Num 6.

Khirbet el-Qom Khirbet el-Qom Tomb 2: Epigraph Meets Image Meets Object The Hebrew inscriptions preserved on the walls of the various tombs from KQ were the first to be recovered in the modern period – the late 1960s – that recorded a prospective reference to YHWH and his asherah or to the divine couple YHWH and His Asherah. The historical role played by the KQ inscriptions in this regard was shortly overshadowed by the KA epigraphic discoveries of the mid-1970s.46 As a result, this point is rarely given notice in the ongoing research that addresses the documentation, identity, and character of a goddess Asherah. The proposal that inscription 3 from tomb 2 (see figs. 3.9–3.11) reads A/asherah was first set forth by André Lemaire in 1977. He interpreted the term then as a stylized pole, an asherah, but not the goddess Asherah.47 To be sure, the inscriptional references to A/asherah continue to be debated but in chapter 2 the case for Asherah the goddess or mediatrix was detailed and it included a number of supporting arguments along with some new data.48 As the longest and potentially most informative of the tomb inscriptions from KQ that preserves Israel’s early religious traditions, tomb 2’s inscription 3 constitutes the primary focus of the following investigation. In order to explore the significances of inscription 3 and its accompanying enigmatic incised human hand, it is essential that its multiple sociohistorical contexts are reviewed and assessed as these provide telling clues to its function, its audience, and the immediate context within which to interpret the text.

46   As the site’s former chief salvage excavator, Dever treats the history of excavation of the site and its environs, the discovery of the caves and associated inscriptions, as well as the related material cultural and epigraphic data recovered from what constituted, in the late 1960s, recent robberies of the caves in William G. Dever, “Archaeology and the Ancient Israelite Cult: How the Kh. El-Qôm and Kuntillet ‘Ajrud ‘Asherah’ Texts Have Changed the Picture,” Eretz-Israel 26 (1999): 8*–15* and see now his brief update in The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: Where Archaeology and the Bible Intersect (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 284–86 and see n. 46 for his fuller bibliography on the site. As reviewed in chapter 2, if the goddess Asherah is preserved in the writings from KQ and/or KA, then the related question of her status arises; was she YHWH’s equal, the Great Mother Goddess, a mediatrix, or his hypostatis? 47   André Lemaire, “Les inscriptions de Khirbet el-Qôm et l’asherah de YHWH,” RB 84 (1977): 595–608. Dever (“Archaeology and the Ancient Israelite Cult,” 10*) points out that he had read A/asherah in his original notes on the inscription but suppressed that reading in his final manuscript. 48   See most recently Sass, “On Epigraphic Hebrew ʾšr and *ʾšrh.”



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Fig 3.9 . Khirbet el-Qom: The earthward hand and inscription 3 from cave 2 (image courtesy IAA)

The Site: Tomb 2’s Wider Cemetery Setting Tomb 2 was part of a larger Iron Age cemetery on the southern slopes below the village of KQ half way between the village and the wadi below. KQ is an important town as indicated by the Iron Age two-entryway gate and an offset-inset cyclopean wall above the cemetery along with the rock-hewn cistern (8 m+ deep) and rock-hewn cellar that were exposed at the site.49 Large quantities of tenth- to seventh-century BCE pottery were recovered from the site and from the tombs, as was a royal lamelekh jar handle of the two-winged type that was stamped with the word ziph. The site’s strategic location in the foothills of the Judean hill country on the edge of the Shephelah – the buffer zone with ancient Philistia – suggests its importance as well. KQ was situated just off the two main wadis – Wadi Lachish and Wadi Qubeibeh – that formed the approach roads to Hebron and other hill

49   What follows is a summary of Dever’s descriptions of Tomb 2 as detailed in several publications spanning some forty years. He supplemented his 1969–70 treatment with hand drawings of the floor and sectional plans of the tomb and the original location of inscription 3 on the east pillar between the lateral chambers 1 and 2. William G. Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material from the Area of Khirbet El-Qôm,” HUCA 40–41 (1969–70): 139–204, here 146–50 and fig. 5 (hand drawings of tomb 2); see also his general summary entries, “Khirbet el-Qom,” in NEAEHL 4:1233–35; “Qom, Khirbet El-,” OEANE 4:391–92, and, “Qom, Khirbet El,” NIDB 4:700.

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Fig. 3.10. Close up of inscription 3 above the hand (image courtesy IAA)

sites. With Lachish only six and a half miles northwest, KQ may have served as an inner wadi fortress settlement protecting the city of Lachish.50 Early on, it was identified with biblical Saphir (Micah 1:11), but is widely recognized today as biblical Makkedah (Josh 10).

  Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 189; NEAEHL 4:1233–34.

50



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Fig. 3.11. Close up of inscription 3 to the right of the hand (image courtesy IAA)

Tomb 2: The Immanent Sociohistorical Context Tomb 2 exemplified what Dever described as a “butterfly-shaped” tomb consisting of a central chamber with four lateral chambers. Each of the lateral chambers comprises a shelf-like niche about waist high. The entryway is comprised of three steps outside the shaft and two inside that descend into the central chamber. A repository was cut into the floor in a corner of the central chamber and to the left and right of the doorway two semicircular lamp niches were set in the wall below the doorway of chamber 2. Faunal remains were found in all of the lateral chambers as well as a number of pottery sherds dating from the eighth to seventh centuries BCE.51 There were several graffiti on the walls of tomb 2. Two crisscross patterns of scratches were etched on the south wall of chamber 4 near the entrance. Between 51   Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 149: “The very slight debris in Tomb II indicated that the villagers had found it well-sealed. They reported bones in all the lateral chambers and a fair number of pieces of pottery, particularly in the repository. We found nothing but some bone fragments and a few 8th–7th cent. B.C. sherds. Some with fresh breaks,” and see Elizabeth

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each pair of lateral chambers a pillar was set off. On the west, the pillar transitioned with a bench below it. Graffiti of various kinds were carved on all three sides of the pillar between chambers 3 and 4 and part of the north wall of chamber 3. On the east and west walls of the main chamber of the tomb were two side chambers; on the east, 1 and 2, and on the west, 3 and 4. On the east, the pillar was flush with the central chamber’s wall. Between the entrances to side chambers 1 and 2, the six lines of writing that comprise inscription 3 were incised on the east wall’s pillar.52 A recess in the east pillar revealed where robbers had removed inscription 3. As Dever notes, the lateral dimensions and the smoothly dressed sides of the inscription perfectly fit the recess. The “Telling” Tomb Assemblages Dever reported in his 1969–70 publication that in addition to the familiar Iron II ceramic forms, the several bench tombs at KQ dating from the eighth to seventh centuries produced an array of intriguing objects. Most notable were a number of inscribed pottery vessels such as a decanter reading “belonging to Yah mol,” a bowl reading “El” and a group of inscribed shekel weights. The tombs also produced “beads of every sort; amulets in faience, especially pendants of the Egyptian god Bes and ‘Eye-of-Horus’ or wedjat plaques; pillar-base ‘Astarte’ figurines; zoomorphic vessels and horse-and-rider figurines; clay ‘rattles’; bronze bowls, arrowheads, knives and bangles; alabaster vessels; cosmetic pallettes; and various other ivory, bone, and stone implements.” At the time of his excavations, Dever could conclude that the whole range of eighth- and seventh-century material culture was observable at KQ and in greater variety than seen in major excavations in the area.53 In his 2012 publication, he repeated these points in summary fashion with a focus on what he referred to as those “grave goods “ that were “obviously cultic; Bes, Eye-of-Horus, and other good-luck amulets; miniatures of one kind or another.” He then speculated that, “These were surely deposited in the belief that the dead somehow continued to exist after death and could even be blessed by the actions of the living” and that “they accord well with what we know of almost all ancient societies.”54 In fact, as noted above, Dever highlights in his treatments the recovery of various amuletic and apotropaic objects from the KQ tombs including Bes and “Eye-of-Horus” amulets.55 As verified independently in the wider diagnostic repBloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), 241–42. 52  See Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 147–48 for hand drawn illustrations of Tomb 2’s floor plan. 53   Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 188. 54   Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People, 286. 55   See his original report, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 188, and again The Lives of Ordinary People, 286.



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ertoires, these nonutilitarian objects had as their primary function apotropaism. In the mortuary context, they were designed to provide protection to the deceased perhaps from haunting ghosts and malevolent demons while the deceased were in the grave and/or during various stages of their rites of passage from death to the netherworld.56 As further support, his larger assemblage list of what had been retrieved from the tombs approximates that identified by Albertz and Schmitt as typical of the type IV assemblages found throughout the wider region in domestic, public, and mortuary contexts. Objects such as the pillar-base female figurines, the horse-and-rider figurines, the zoomorphic vessels, and the kernoi strongly suggest the presence of some kind of mortuary-related cultic ritual ranging from care and feeding of the dead, to the commemoration of the dead, or even to the interrogation of the dead.57 Wearing the Bes and “Eye-of-Horus” amulets on one’s body or having them placed in one’s burial (and on one’s body) conveyed the concern for apotropaic empowerment and the perpetual invocation and petition of deities for that purpose. This becomes all the more important since the attempt on the part of the dead while in the netherworld to petition the gods was futile remains otherwise unattested, suggesting that it was not an option for the dead to do so. Similarly, the two classes of figurines, the male and the female minimally speaking, point to their use as votive objects or media for perpetual petitions and empowerment that were accompanied by libations using the accompanying containers designed for that specialized function, the zoomorphic vessels, and the kernoi. Albertz and Schmitt categorize these items as their class A, nonutilitarian objects that represent clear indices of archaeological assemblages designed for specifically cultic functions.58 As outlined previously, at KQ these were complemented by other burial items, such as rattles; beads; luxury pottery such as alabaster vessels; cosmetic pallettes; Cypriot wares; weapons-related objects (arrowheads, knives); bangles; and various other ivory, bone, and stone implements, which, like beads and pendants, have been classified as collectibles. These latter objects Albertz and Schmitt classify as class B, typically utilitarian objects that could convey either profane or religious significance; their specificity of context being determinative. When coupled with class A objects as they are at KQ, they served in all likelihood in a similar capacity to that of the accompanying class A objects, namely, as expressions of ritual. As such, their tomb contexts at KQ unequivocally point to their role in mortuary ritual of one type or another.59 In his 2005 publication, Dever discussed the small kernos vessels as evidence for libation rituals and he included a photo of a kernos from KQ. Similarly, he interpreted the inscribed “El” bowl from KQ as indicative of the magical powers associated   Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 71.   Ibid., 429–73; and Schmitt, “A Typology of Iron Age Cult Places,” 265–86, esp. 272. 58   Alberts and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 60–72. 59  Ibid., 57–59. 56 57

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with its use as a ritual offering bowl.60 If one can assume that items retrieved from the tomb or tombs of KQ and described by Dever in his 1969–70 publication are representative of a typical tomb assemblage at KQ, then these data along with the eighth- to seventh-century pottery and faunal remains found in KQ’s tombs provide compelling evidence for a range of mortuary rituals in sites designed for the burial of the deceased.61 A bathtub coffin identified as originating from KQ further confirms the tombs’ use for burial, that is, if one can confidently assume that the coffin indeed had been retrieved from KQ’s cemetery.62 Other data mentioned by Dever likewise point to rituals expressive of care for or the commemoration of the dead, or possibly the practice of necromancy as suggested by the rattles, astragals at KH, and the figurines. The combination of what Albertz and Schmitt have identified as type A and B assemblage items at KQ, both of which are well attested in the wider regional domestic and tomb inventories (e.g., at nearby Lachish as noted previously), establish these ritual attachments to the KQ tombs along these lines. Not only are care and commemoration, and possibly necromancy, indicated by the functional elements of the assemblages described by Dever, but they now find verification in the comprehensive comparanda more recently analyzed by Albertz and Schmitt. 63 As the latter point out, the participating deity or deities in such rituals of the domestic and mortuary contexts were not indicated by permanent representations or installations as substantiated by the portability of the ritual paraphernalia. Rather, they were evoked by ritual acts.64 Permanent installations indicative of cult foci tended to be reserved for larger and/or more public sacred spaces such as neighborhood, palace, and regional shrines, as well as supraregional and state sanctuaries where the enduring presence of the deity was likewise materially established. As Albertz and Schmitt have observed, tomb assemblage components mimic those of domestic cult assemblages indicative of ritual performance – as in life, so in death – with the lone exception of the presence or absence of rattles. Rattles are rare in domestic contexts while common in tomb contexts. As such, they have been interpreted as possessing an apotropaic purpose of one type or another. They may have served as a means to ward off unwanted ghosts and spirits that might erroneously respond to a necromantic inquiry.65 60   William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. 2005), 123–24, 128 and for the kernos as a type A class object, see Alberts and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 69–70. 61   Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 149, 188 and see Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 241–42. 62  See Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 223 for KQ as the coffin’s location of origin. 63  See Alberts and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 469–71 for the interrogation of the dead. 64  Ibid., 469; Schmitt, “A Typology of Iron Age Cult Places,” 278. 65   Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 73, 454, 469 note the unique occurrence of rattles in burials, their infrequency or rarity in domestic contexts, as well as their likely



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Narrowing the Context: The Incised Human Hand Inscription 3 is situated in close proximity to and immediately above an enigmatic “deeply incised” image of a human hand (fig. 3.9).66 Inscription 3, however, is “not deeply incised or for the most part carefully formed.”67 As Dever pointed out, line 3 is difficult to read and several letters are “deeply overwritten.” This occurs with “all misfortune” in line 3 in the case of the word that is read by a number of scholars as “Asherah” or “asherah” with its prefixing lamed preposition and its prospective third person masculine singular possessive suffix “his.”68 The first three lines are written above the drawing of the deeply incised, downward-facing hand. The fourth line is written in smaller script to the left of the top of the hand and the fifth and sixth lines are positioned below the drawing and off to the left of the hand. Dever described the human hand as having been carefully carved. Spatially, the short fourth line fits perfectly to its immediate left. Given that, according to Dever, the tomb lacks any evidence of having been opened in antiquity, that the pottery in the tomb dates to the eighth or seventh century BCE, and that the faunal evidence indicates the tomb’s actual use as a human burial site (as does the associated coffin mentioned above: and not primarily as a site of refuge), it is safe to assume that the inscribed hand was part of the original interior design of the tomb. It is not at all clear, however, which hand, the right or left, is represented, or which way said hand is turned – away from the surface or toward it. The rough carving of the fingers could accommodate either hand though many have favored a right hand with palm facing away from the surface of the stone (rather than the left hand facing toward the stone).

function as apotropaic devices designed to frighten away would-be supranatural attackers. They also highlight the role that inscriptions may play in the context of cult in identifying the names of those who were recipients of ritual or their devotees; ibid., 466–69. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 46–48, 83–85. 66   The description, “deeply incised” is that of Dever, “Archaeology and the Ancient Israelite Cult,” 8* and is adopted most recently by André Lemaire, “Khirbet el-Qôm and Hebrew and Aramaic Epigraphy,” in Confronting the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever, ed. Seymour Gitin, J. Edward Wright, and J. P. Dessel (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. 2006), 231. For a photo of the hand, see Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 200 and NEAEHL 4:1234; for his hand drawing, see “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 158, but cf. the more recent hand drawings by André Lemaire in Dever, Did God Have a Wife, 133, and by P. Kyle McCarter in Dever, The Lives of Ordinary People, 286, and see Ziony Zevit, “The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,” BASOR 255 (1984): 39–47, esp. 45 for another photo. Jody Washburn (PhD candidate, UCLA) has kindly provided me with digital photographs of inscription 3 that she produced in the summer of 2014 at the Israel Museum. The ones included in this treatment were provided by the West Semitic Research Project courtesy the IAA. 67  So Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 162. 68   Dever (“Archaeology and the Ancient Israelite Cult,” 10*) made the conjecture that the overwriting pointed to an erasure; someone in antiquity attempted to efface the reading of A/asherah as it increasingly presented a theological problem in the eighth century BCE.

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In attempting to account for the incised hand in tomb 2, several experts have noted that carved hands on stelae are often directed upward in a gesture of praise or petition as in the case of the now well-known LBA Canaanite stele from Hazor.69 Another proposal views the hand as symbolic of a curse that would for some interpreters align with what they view as the supposed euphemistic use of the language of blessing, here bārak and ʾāšar (with the latter replacing the reading “to Asherah”) conveying curses in the inscription. Puech suggested, however, that the hand’s upside-down position points to its analogous function and position to an amulet worn around the neck and, therefore, it could signify blessing after all. At first glance, Puech’s proposal may seem like a stretch.70 Yet, it finds support in the actual form of amulets shaped like a human hand or arm and hand and that apparently hung from the neck, or from elsewhere on the body such as the wrist, as indicated by a hole pierced in the wrist of a hand-shaped amulet for the purpose of suspension.71 More recently, in 2005, Dever similarly proposed that the hand was designed as a “good luck” sign “to ward off the ‘evil eye.’” He concluded that the blessing text and the human hand were “probably done by the same person,” and that the hand “can only have something to do with a wish for good fortune from ‘the hand of YHWH.’” Support for this, he noted, comes in the form of the frequent phrase “the hand of YHWH” in blessing contexts from the HB. He went on to state, “authors wrote about the ‘hand of blessing’; but in the countryside, people drew it without any hesitation.” He speculated that this was coincident with the aniconic tradition: one “could not portray YHWH himself, but picturing his hand was acceptable.”72 Changing Views on Early Israelite Cosmological Beliefs Before final comments can be offered on such a proposed apotropaic interpretation, the prospective associations of the hand with death or mortuary ritual and belief call for further exploration since these constitute its most obvious context within the immediate environment of a tomb. As others have noted, in biblical Hebrew, the term yad, “hand” is somewhat curiously used on occasion to refer to a monument or memorial in a “handful” of instances (1 Sam 15:12; 2 Sam 18:18; 1 Chr 18:3; Isa 56:5). In Isa 56:5, the word clearly indicates a memorial of sorts with 69   Yigael Yadin, Hazor (Jerusalem: Magness, 1958), 89, pl. 1.2 and see Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 52. 70   Emile Puech, “Palestinian Funerary Inscriptions,”ABD 5:12. For comprehensive treatments of the symbolism of the hand, see Schroer, “Zur Deutung der Hand,” 199 and for Egypt, see Hartwig Altenmüller, “Hand.” LÄ 2:938–43. 71   Carol Andrews, Amulets from Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 69–73, esp. 70. Andrews also notes that objects shaped like human body parts in burial contexts could act as substitutes in the other world (p. 69). 72   Dever, Did God Have a Wife?, 132–33, and see similar comments in The Lives of Ordinary People, 286. He also cites the visible divine hand in the much later Dura Europa synagogue wall painting of the third century and the hand of Fatuma.



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mortuary undertones unequivocally attached. Though I know of no direct parallels to a downward-oriented, isolated hand openly displayed in a mortuary context, its downward orientation in KQ tomb 2 might signify the human loss of power or even death as cessation. Yet, in contrast to the upward or “heavenward”-positioned human hand expressive of praise and petition, the earthward hand may have concomitantly signified the loss of the deceased’s (here, Uriyahu’s) ability to petition or praise YHWH from the other side of the grave. The crucial point would be in that case: at death and thereafter, human initiated praise or petition of YHWH ceased.73 It was all the more crucial then, that with death and the attendant cessation of human petitioning of the divine, and in advance of the inevitable, the living could still find themselves consoled by the continuance of the protective powers of YHWH and His Asherah beyond the grave just as they had in this life. Yet following death, they would experience those divine powers of protection and provision entirely independent of human initiated petition and praise. As was the case at KH and in the numerous mortuary contexts assessed by Albertz and Schmitt, the continuance of such apotropaic powers in the afterlife are positively indicated by the depositional assemblages comprised of such apotropaic objects as Bes amulets, the Eye-of-Horus or wedjat amulets, and rattles that accompanied the newly interred body in burial contexts. These served to ward off and counteract demonic threats. The same is also positively expressed in writing by the mortuary inscriptions from KQ. These points confirm that some of the other inscriptions and graffiti similarly and unequivocally relate to mortuary concerns. Inscription 2 from tomb 1 reads: “(Belonging) to Uphai, son of Netanyahu, this (tomb) chamber,” and a graffito from a private collection thought to come from KQ preserves, “Blessed be your stone-cutter, May he rest here (in) old age.” Together all of the above factors indicate that tomb 2’s wall blessing inscription 3 likewise pertains to mortuary concerns and not to concerns of a living individual taking refuge in the cave. Parker had viewed KQ and specifically cave 2 as a hideaway for refugees at the time of the production of inscription 3 and the image of the hand. For him, a refugee composed the inscription, if not also the hand. He also commented that, “Once dead and buried, a Judean was beyond the reach of his enemies, for good or ill. Even a wish for or statement of the blessedness of the dead would be unique.” 74 Yet, such a sweeping dismissal does not adequately take into account the archaeological evidence retrieved from the cave or recent developments in the study of death and   This adds a more somber note to the reality of death, but one nonetheless accompanied by the divine blessing of provision and protection postmortem, perhaps spanning the entire itinerary of the netherworld journey from the grave to one’s final resting place. In some genuine sense, the ongoing apotropaic powers might well imply that YHWH himself or his intermediaries (and see 1 Sam 28:13 further below) would descend to Sheol, but independent of, and in no way as a response to, the dead’s personal petitions or praise originating from there. 74   Simon B. Parker, “Graves, Caves, and Refugees: An Essay in Microhistory,” JSOT 27 (2003): 259–88, here 280. 73

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afterlife beliefs and practices of preexilic Judean religion indicated by the materialcultural, epigraphic, and biblical data. To begin with, Dever specifically highlighted the fact that the tomb had remained undisturbed and sealed until recent times and human bone fragments were found in all the lateral chambers of tomb 2. He also mentioned that the villagers reported the presence of bones in tomb 2 in their own prior exploration of the cemetery.75 The recent BASOR republication of the KH amulets also calls into question any denial in a belief in the divine world’s participation or involvement in early Israel’s conceptualization of the afterlife and participation in the netherworld. Several additional points overturn such denial: (1) The unequivocal use of these two amulets in a functional capacity relating to mortuary rituals similar to that attested for a significant number of amulets recovered from the southern Levant and from Israel more specifically, including the Bes and Eye-of-Horus amulets from KQ. (2) The accompanying cultic assemblages attested in tomb contexts indicative of their use in magical mortuary rituals. (3) The concomitant references to “The Evil (One)” and YHWH as “The Exorciser of the Evil (One)” in the KH amulets suggesting suprahuman forms of evil. (4) These references in turn demonstrate that the inscribed amulets were designed to ward off supernatural enemies, such as restless ghosts and menacing demons, as the deceased journeyed in the transitional phase of their after lives from the grave to the netherworld or Sheol (and perhaps beyond arrival there). (5) The high probability that such amuletic practices and beliefs were in continuity with, if not straightforward extensions of, beliefs and practices employed by the living to invoke apotropaic forces as a counter measure against similar enemies, human or divine. (6) Most of the above-mentioned beliefs were shared with the other cultures of the ancient Near East. One only needs to add to the above the massive repertoire of magical amulets from the contemporary southern Levant, mentioned above, that Christian Herrmann has collected, and much of which is Egyptian in orientation in one respect or the other, despite its local production in many cases. These have been recovered from, among other contexts, both domestic and mortuary settings. They were designed to provide apotropaic power to the individual in everyday life or beyond the grave, but more likely both. As such, they represent an overwhelming testimony to beliefs and practices aimed at securing protection, not only in this life against human and demonic enemies but also in the next, against suprahuman forms of evil. In the final analysis, when considered alongside the faunal remains, the undisturbed character of the tombs, and the eighth-to-seventh-century ceramics a postmortem   Dever, “Iron Age Epigraphic Material,” 149.

75



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apotropaic function of the earthward hand and inscription 3 in all likelihood comprised their raison d’ être.76 If this reconstruction has merit, then it may also suggest that the downward-turned hand may have had additional resonances in the mortuary context. In addition to giving expression to the reality of death as humanity’s ultimate destiny and its silent inhabiting of the netherworld, perhaps the hand also evoked images of the divine hand. As such, it not only conveyed for humanity new realities presented by death, but via the same downward orientation of the hand, it may well have represented the divine hand in giving expression to the belief that YHWH’s protection would accompany the interred as the dead descended downward. Perhaps too, YHWH’s power to protect, as expressed in the form of the earthward hand, tarried there.77 The question arises at this juncture; whence was YHWH protecting the dead precisely? Several inscriptions from the southern Levant relating to mortuary rites and beliefs underscore the concern to secure divine blessing of one sort or another in anticipation of the inevitability of death and its prospects. As the treatment above illustrates, this is clearly the case with the KH amuletic inscriptions recovered from tomb chamber 25 in Jerusalem’s Hinnom Valley. As more precisely indicated by their immediate archaeological context within the tombs, these two amulets and their texts served to convey the divine blessing of protection from demons and/ or haunting ghosts to the wearer not only in this life, but also in some genuinely meaningful sense in the life to come. The amuletic inscriptions specifically preserve references to “The Evil (One)” and, to YHWH as “The Exorciser of the Evil (One).” Similarly in Egypt the dead were provided such apotropaic powers from the gods in order to stave off the attacks of menacing demons, haunting ghosts, or the like.

  See also Lemaire, “Khirbet el-Qôm and Hebrew and Aramaic Epigraphy,” 231, 233.  See Puech, “Palestinian Funerary Inscriptions,” and note Schroer’s summary of the wider northwest Semitic corpus of relevant grave inscriptions in “Zur Deutung der Hand,” 191–99, esp. 199; for Egypt, see Altenmüller, “Hand,” LÄ:938–43; Claude Sourdive, La main dans l’Egypte pharaonique, recherches de morphologie structurale sur les objets égyptiens comportant une main (Berne: Lang, 1984); idem, “La main dans le objets égyptiens. Approche archéologique d’une structure symbolique,” BSFE 97 (1983): 30–52; Jorge R. Ogdon, “Studies in Ancient Egyptian Magical Thought I: The Hand and the Seal,” Discussions in Egyptology 1 (1985): 27–34; J. de Chanteloup. “Amulettes représentant la main dans l’Egypte ancienne,” VA 2 (1986), 7–22; Nicole Genaille, “La main dans l’Egypte pharaonique,” CdE 66 (1991): 148–55; Jan Bergman, “Darstellungen und Vorstellungen von Götterhänden im Alten Ägypten,” in La Main de Dieu - Die Hand Gottes, ed. René Kieffer and Jan Bergman (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 1–18; Siegfried Mittmann, “Das Symbol der Hand in der altorientischen Ikonographie,” in ibid., 19–48; Also note the Ugaritic phrase pth yd mlk, “opening of the king’s hand,” in KTU 1.102:17–18, which may be a reference to the entrance/entering into the royal mausoleum; see Gregorio del Olmo Lete, Canaanite Religion according to the Liturgical Texts of Ugarit, 2nd ed. (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2014), 188–89 and n. 5. I owe Robert Smith, Edmund Meltzer, and Jacobus van Dijk each a note of gratitude for several of the above references. 76 77

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The Text of Khirbet el-Qom Inscription 3 (figs. 3.9–3.11) Likewise, for several good reasons, inscription 3 is typically interpreted as an epitaph and although a few interpreters have proposed otherwise, they have done so with no regard for the faunal remains and burial assemblages present in the tombs as noted by Dever. The two elements, the written blessing and the depicted iconic hand, provide another intriguing example of the convergence of epigraph and image in a rather unique context, in this case on one of the walls of a bench tomb located in the town cemetery.78 The Text 1. ʿryhw hʿšr ktbh 2. brk ʿryhw lyhwh 3. wmsry  h ʾl ʾšrth hwšʿ lh 4. lʾnyhw ——————— 5. 6.



wlʾšrth […]ʾ[-]rth

A Translation 1. Uriyahu, the notable has written it. 2. Blessed be Uriyahu by YHWH, 3. Now from his enemies by His Asherah, deliver him! 4. by Oniyahu 5. . . . and by His Asherah 6. [. . . . . . by His Ash]erah . . . Select Comments Line 2: brk. It was not possible to identify on any photographs, older ones or newer, Zevit’s proposed reading of a final -t on brk.79 Line 3. It was possible to identify a much-longer reading in line 3 with several letter forms repeated. As others have observed the deeper more, well-wrought letter in each identifiable case of such doubling seems to represent the original. The more 78   The debate over the employment of word dividers in KQ inscription 3 remains on ongoing one. There are markings that could serve as such, but they are inconsistent and easily confused or fused with what have been identified as original, additional stray markings on the surface or even striations. See on the matter, Hadley, The Cult of Asherah, 86–87 and Zevit, Religions of Ancient Israel, 360 n. 9. 79  Cf. Zevit, The Religions of Israel, 360 n.10.



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regularized spacing between those deeper letters would seem to confirm that they were the originals. The same letter form when more lightly incised and at times only partially preserved and more variably positioned, comprises the second rendering of said letter. The letters in caps below are the repeated or “second letter”: WwMms rRyYhH l(L?)ʾ(ʾ?)šrth hwšʿ lh It appears that every letter in the construction ms ryh, save the s ade, was repeated. The significance of such doubling is taken up more fully in the section below on the paleographic Doppelgänger. Line 3: ms ryhw. Narrowing the focus to each proposed word or construction in line 3, the secondarily incised, more faint waw [W] prefixed to ms ryh actually precedes the original waw while the second, more faint mem [M] is well below and similarly to right of and preceding the original mem. The original mem’s deeper and longer tail is clear but what is left of its head is so deeply overwritten by another illegible letter (a second s ade?), it resulted in a semicircular hole (or pop out). 80 Line 3: lʾšrth. In the construction lʾšrth, I could make out only a (possible?) second lamed [L] and a second aleph [ʾ]. This may be indicative of a second graffito writer’s self-correction. Continuing on with his doubling of letters that began with the construction ms ryh, he initially continued doubling the following letters by adding a second lamed above the original aleph, then inserting a second faint aleph following the first. Here he stopped reduplicating letters. Did he belatedly realize that he had begun a new word and so ceased the doubling of letters? Was it merely coincidence that the term he avoided doubling in its entirety was A/asherah, the goddess or sacred object? An alternate reading might obtain with the letter forms that follow those of ms ryh beginning with the lamed-aleph sequence on lʾšrth. In my reading, the original occurring aleph possesses a long upper horizontal tail that has been read as a second lamed by scholars but that lamed is not self-evident. The lamed’s upward tail is far shorter than that of the original lamed and fades from the surface in the process. A second aleph immediately follows the first, along with a possible second resh or taw positioned after the original resh, but this letter is not so clear and in any case, the šin is not doubled. Line 3: hwšʿ. Some have taken the verbal form hwšʿ as the imperative based on Khirbet Beit Lei 3:1: “deliver, O YHWH,” hwšʿ [y]hwh. Such a reading has been invoked in support of the view that one living refugee was responsible for the KQ graffito while another was its intended recipient; one who was praying for deliverance from his present human antagonists. Yet, the imperative could equally convey at the moment of burial, an exhortation with ongoing effect to refer to YHWH’s apotropaic protection throughout the entire course of one’s journey to  See Gogel, A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew, 157–58 and n. 182 on the complexities of the pronominal suffix -yh. 80

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the netherworld from the moment of death until arrival in the netherworld and even beyond one’s arrival there. Now Ahituv has recently underscored what he views as deciding evidence for asherah’s status as an object and not a deity in this text and at Kuntillet Ajrud, namely, the appearance of the singular verb hwšʿ in exclusive agreement with a masculine singular noun functioning as the subject.81 He assumes that if YHWH and Asherah constituted a viable, anthropomorphized divine couple, then as a compound subject they would require a plural verbal form, which for this period would in turn require a final mater lectionis waw marking the plural verbal ending on hwšʿ > hwšʿw. For Ahituv the form present in the text must therefore comprise a verbal form in agreement with the number and gender of its subject noun both in person, here singular, and in gender, masculine. Ahituv, consistent with his line of argument, selects YHWH as that subject and eliminates Asherah from any prospective status as a goddess and identifies asherah instead as an inanimate object, “a divine symbol dependent on YHWH, and not an independent persona and not a consort of YHWH, but a sacred object” (35). He goes on to make the added point that the mention of sacred cultic objects together with a deity when conferring a blessing or oath is well known; see Amos 8:14. Yet, he fails to mention that the form in epigraphic Hebrew could equally represent the infinitive absolute substituting for a finite verb such as an imperative, and that as an uninflected form, it is both atemporal and apersonal (see also Exod 20:8).82 The Meaning of the Paleographic Doppelgänger As has been repeatedly pointed out since Dever’s initial treatment, KQ inscription 3 evinces the phenomenon of doubling of isolated letters where the second rendering of a letter is incised in more faint form while also repeating several others out of sequence but in the same line. When this is coupled with the crude preparation of the surface that left both horizontal ridges and vertical striations, the identification of several letters has remained highly conjectural. To add to the confusion, various explanations have been offered to account for the phenomenon of doubling individual letters and the repetition of whole words clearly evident in inscription 3. The phenomenon has been described as “ghost writing,” “overwriting,” scribal practice exercises, script refinement, spontaneous visitors’ graffiti, or religious or personal erasure at least in the case of the term asherah and perhaps also of the personal name as a form of curse. What is clearer than ever is that various ritual contexts across time and in the Mediterranean evince numerous examples of the use of such doubling, repetition   Shmuel Ahituv, “Notes on the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud Inscriptions,” in “See, I will bring a scroll recounting what befell me” (Ps. 40:8): Epigraphy and Daily Life from the Bible to the Talmud ed. Esther Eshel and Yigal Levin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 29–38, esp. 34–35, and see Ahituv, Echoes from the Past, 221. 82  See Gogel, A Grammar of Epigraphic Hebrew, 143–45. 81



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or reiteration of written phrases, words and letters designed to enhance – even to guarantee – the cooperation or response of the divine. The repetition of a deity’s name, whether the letter shapes or the phonetic sounds or both was known to evoke a deity’s response. Henk Versnel has persuasively proposed that whether such performative enunciations emerged as foreign relics, corruptions of normal indigenous terms, or were meaningless all along, while evincing in every respect multiformity from the outset, is less important than their revealing the practitioner’s propensity to “create the abnormal.”83 Yet, he asks the question, what is the meaning of the meaningless? That is, why would an ancient practitioner employ characters that, while reminding one of letters, do not themselves function as letters? Such are semantically vacant – semantic holes – apart from the specific contexts in which they occur and in this respect they verge on or converge with the voces magicae, the Ephesia grammata or charactères so often cited in discussions of the poetics of magic or those exploring “the creative metaphor of magic,” à la Bronislaw Malinowski (The Language of Magic and Gardening [London, 1966], 238). For Versnel, besides demonstrating that the practitioner possesses superior command of esoteric words and, therefore, secret knowledge, he proposes that the employment of lexically nonsemantic forms replace the normal by the abnormal, give access to the transcendent or create a world of Otherness and alienation which in his view, is where creation takes place and ambiguity and paradox reigns. He concludes that the magical formula, as an expression or performative act, is a creative act that elevates the “exceptional.”84 In the light of the other lines of evidence set forth in this treatise indicative of writing as expressive of performative or magical, specifically apotropaic, ritual, the repetition of the original epitaph, or specific parts thereof, is best seen as a performance aimed at (re)activating or enhancing the apotropaic powers of the original written words of protective blessing on behalf of the deceased. While earlier interpreters touched on magical writing as a possible explanation for the doubling of letters, words, and phrases, for the most part they did so only in passing and citing only much later analogies.85 Yet, the role of magic – unencumbered by outmoded notions associated with the magic vs. religion, the emic vs. etic, and the coercion vs. petition polarizing paradigms – is on the verge of taking on the status of key constituent in what are increasingly recognized among historians as the coexisting, multiple layers of an internal religious pluralism that characterized 83   Henk Versnel, “The Poetics of the Magical Charm: An Essay in the Power of Words,” in Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, ed. Paul Mirecki and Marvin Meyer, RGRW 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 105–56, esp. 112–14, 140–47, and idem, “Ritual Dynamics: The Contribution of Analogy, Simile and Free Association” in Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. E. Stavrianopoulou, Kernos 16 (Liège: Centre international d’etude de la religion grecque antique, 2006), 317–27. 84   Versnel, “The Poetics of the Magical Charm,” 105–56, esp. 112–14, 140–47, and idem, “Ritual Dynamics,” 317–27. 85   Zevit, “The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,” 44.

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early Israelite religion.86 Moreover, if accessing divine power was viewed by the ancients as inherent in the writing of words to compose spells, blessings, and curses, and if written repetition like oral reiteration could confer or reconfer divine power to an expression and simultaneously transform it into divine action, then the significance to be attached to the repetition of words, letters and phrases in inscription 3 demands further exploration. As outlined previously, an examination of the text utilizing the photos provided to me by Jody Washburn indicates that the doubling of individual letters clearly clusters around a single point in the inscription, the beginning of line 3. In the construction that is often translated “Now from his enemies,” wms ryh, there are obvious doublings of the waw, mem, resh, yod, and the he in succession. Only the s ade does not evince compelling evidence of its having been doubled.87 Those doubled include the prefixing mem-nun preposition, “from,” one of the three letters of the triradical base s ade-resh-resh, the auxiliary yod and the final -he of the third person possessive suffix. Furthermore it seems that severe space limitations resulted at times in forcing the doubling letter between, above or below the original letters or its superimposition onto one or more other letters. Zevit noted that the second of the doubled letters in KQ 3 was typically written either incompletely or inscribed very lightly.88 The second example of such a phrase also relates to line 3. It ultimately impacts what comprises the text’s first occurrence of the construction lʾšrth “to his A/asherah” that immediately follows the construction, “Now from his enemies,” and entails the two stand-alone repetitions in lines 5 and 6 of the entire construction lʾšrth, “to his A/asherah.” All in all, these constitute two variations on what Versnel identifies as the formal techniques of cumulation, repetition, and trigemination evident in the doubling of individual letters of select words like ms ryh, and in the threefold wholesale repetition of a single word, for example, Asherah. Yet, like many before me, I could find no evidence for the doubling of the s ade of -s ry- “enemies” (< s rr) in line 3, though the heavy damage at this point might be due in part to overwriting the s ade in an attempt to double it. In the construction “Now from his enemies” only four of the five letters of ms ry-h > ms ryh, and only two of the three letters of the base form “enemy” s ry were doubled ry.

  Hutton, “Local Manifestations of Yahweh,” 177–210; Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion; the essays in Albertz et al., Family and Household Religion; and now Christoph Uehlinger, “Distinctive or Diverse? Conceptualizing Ancient Israelite Religion in Its Southern Levantine Setting,” HeBAI 4 (2015): 1–24. Note also the reviews of Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion by Raz Kletter, RBL 4 (2014): 1–7; Theodore J. Lewis, NEA 77 (2014): 134–36; and Seth Sanders, JANER 14 (2014): 217–27. 87   The space where the sade is reconstructed by those who have had access to the stone itself, or to reliable hand copies or photos thereof is generally recognized as poorly preserved and badly damaged, so one cannot entirely eliminate its possible doubling. 88   Zevit, ”The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,” 44. 86



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Assuming for the sake of argument that such an omission in what otherwise constitutes an unequivocal case of doubling letters was deliberate, might it exemplify some application of analogy frequently attested in so-called magical writing? Was a letter intentionally omitted in the phrase “from his enemies” in its second rendering as an efficacious means of reducing the enemies’ power? As Versnel notes, when repeating a word and the length of the word is decreased by the deletion of a letter, this comprises an enhancing apotropaic “analogon for the desired decline” of an undesirable, whether an illness or, as in the case here, Uriyahu’s demonic enemies. Such technique is known from examples of magical writing in the wider ancient Mediterranean and can involve the ongoing repetition of a phrase or word accompanied by its progressive deletion of letters until nothing remains.89 The apotropaic writing attached to ms ryh in line 3 brings into greater relief the repetition in lines 5 and 6 where the construction lʾšrth from line 3 is twice duplicated as a whole construct rather than each of its individual letters as separate components. It suggests another apotropaic principle that was operating, one that was designed to enhance the role of A/asherah in Uriyahu’s deliverance from harm. The writer or a repeat visitor or visitors sought to reactivate or empower A/asherah in protecting the deceased from harm. In the final analysis, it is difficult to concede that mere coincidence or random graffiti can account for what both constructions in line 3 undergo with the doubling of select letters of a single construction in the first instance, “now from his enemies,” wms ryh, and in the second, the wholesale, intact, two-fold repetition in lines 5 and 6 of the construction lʾšrth, “to his A/asherah.” The doubling of the individual letters lamed and aleph in the construction lʾšrth of line 3 presents more complexities. Although Zevit concluded that the entire sequence of letters was doubled, in my examination of available photos, I could only confidently identify the doubling of the lamed and aleph. If my assessment is accurate, the writer apparently began to double all the letters of lʾšrth in order to enhance A/asherah’s power – rather than diminish it as in the case of Uriyahu’s enemies – but realizing the needed space was unavailable in line 3, he ceased after forming the second rendition of each of the first two characters. Perhaps it was the same hand that turned at that point instead to the far lower left where there was more than adequate space to repeat the entire construction, not once, but twice, in line 5 and again in line 6. Zevit proposed that in the form lʾšrth “by his A/asherah” of line 3, the lamed, the aleph, the resh, the taw, and the he were all randomly repeated (rather than in succession as one word), that is, with the exception of the šin, which was not repeated. While I could at best only identify a reduplicated lamed and aleph on lʾšrth, if Zevit were correct, then a similar phenomenon might be at work in the wholesale repetition of the letter forms in lʾšrth, “to His Asherah.”

  Versnel, “The Poetics of the Magical Charm,” 130–31.

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Yet, the decreasing empowerment principle that may well apply in the case of the deleted letters in the term referencing Uriyahu’s “enemies,” ms ryh, would hardly apply in the case of A/asherah in line 3. But if all the letters including the šin had been originally doubled, then the ancient writer sought to enhance Asherah’s apotropaic power by the magical technique of doubling each of the letters comprising the construction in line 3. With this and his two wholesale repetitions of lʾšrth in lines 5 and 6, he not only left the construction visibly in quadruplicate on the stone, he enhanced A/asherah’s apotropaic power three-fold while also severely diminishing the strength of Uriyahu’s enemies. What is clear from 1) the details of the text, 2) the phenomenon of duplicating key words and repeating or reducing crucial letters, 3) the magical imbuement of the incised earthward directed human-like hand, and 4) the numinously empowered abundant artifacts and graffiti from the tomb context, is the following: Inscription 3 comprises a postmortem, apotropaically empowered, inscribed blessing insuring that Uriyahu would be safeguarded by YHWH’s hand through Asherah’s supranatural effective mediation on his behalf while the power of his underworld enemies would be simultaneously and ritually diminished as Uriyahu descended into the netherworld on what would otherwise constitute the treacherous journey to one’s final resting place.

Chapter 4 Was There (a) Pandemonium in Early Israelite Tradition? The Daimonic Dimensions of Deuteronomy 32 The Demonic in Ancient Israelite Tradition The articulation of a demonic world in any one of the religious traditions of the ancient Near East directly bears on the questions of how the ancients imagined – and managed – the powers of good and evil as they were expressed in personified form and fashion; how these influenced human existence, human nature, and human destiny; and finally, how these impacted similar articulations within the so-called descendent Western traditions and beyond. What follows is an attempt to answer the question, was there an early Israelite pandemonium? This question is explored in part as a direct response to recent critiques once again casting doubt upon, and as a result, reopening the age-old question of whether or not a demonic world had been conceptualized in preexilic Israel and Judah.1 In early treatments, the data of the HB were the sole gateway to that past, but that is ever changing. Material cultural and comparative data increase with each new archaeological field season as the attestations to “the Evil,” and “The Exorciser of the Evil” in the seventh-century BCE Ketef Hinnom amulets readily exemplify. The textual data from the HB will be assessed against its wider ancient Near Eastern sociohistorical backdrop using a crucial passage from the book of Deuteronomy, namely, chapter 32 and, as a postscript, 1 Sam 28. In contextualizing the analysis here, a brief précis on demons from representative sectors of the wider ancient Near East will be offered. In addition, an ever-so-short resumé of what we currently know about constructs of the demonic in the late Iron II period Levan1   See the recent analysis of Isabel Cranz, “Priests, Pollutions and the Demonic: Evaluating Impurity in the Hebrew Bible in Light of Assyro-Babylonian Texts,” JANER 14 (2014): 68–86 who demonstrates that, like the priestly legislation, cuneiform sources similarly make no mention of demons when concerned with pollution and temple maintenance. Those that concern the individual’s relationship to one’s personal god do deal with demons and pollution, but the priestly laws do not address these latter concerns. Thus, the absence of the demonic in priestly legislation cannot be explained as a (theo)logical outgrowth of a supposed underlying monotheism informing the laws, as is often presumed. This reopens the possibility that the demonic may have played a role in the priestly traditions, or we would add, in Israelite society otherwise. Cranz identifies Azazel as an example that presents sufficient autonomy to be considered a demon as the recipient of pollution, but not its cause.

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tine societies will be outlined that is based on contemporary epigraphic, archeological, and art-historical data from the neighboring regions and from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Demon or Daimon? The Haunting Question Before delving into all that however, the matter of definition must be addressed: how will the terms demon and the demonic be employed here? It appears that the Greek daimon could refer to various levels of deity, intermediary beings, even ghosts of the dead, and in every case these were considered, in some meaningful sense, supranatural beings that acted for good or for evil. The Greek daimon, despite any shortcomings as a heuristic construct, has in fact served researchers reliably in such a capacity. Admittedly, the use and meaning of the term has never been static or stable, but its versatility has proven time and time again to serve as a concept to which qualifications, nuances, and revisions could readily be attached. For practical purposes, daimon will serve in what follows as the way of entry into the world of ancient demons. As a provisional working definition for the purposes at hand, the pre- or non-Christian, nondualistic use of the Greek term daimon will be invoked to refer to “any kind of supranatural intermediary being.” This definition may be deemed rather artificial in that it explicitly distinguishes between some levels of god and daimons that were clearly not so clear-cut in its ancient contexts, but for the sake of clarification on crucial fronts, I will sacrifice the prospective accuracy on some in order to enhance the benefits to be gained on others. Conversely, I will invoke the unqualified, modern derivative “demon” only when I aim to quote others or to refer to those inimical beings of a performative orientation to do harm, loaded as the term has become over many centuries with predominantly if not exclusively negative (gloss here: “evil”) connotations.2 Ugarit’s multiple deities, daimons, demons, and dead have their descendant continuity with the first-millennium Levant, which can be seen in the incantation amulets from Arslan Tash, the amulets from Ketef Hinnom, the art and inscriptions from Deir Alla and Kuntillet Ajrud, and, as we aim to test, also in the HB. A source like Deut 32 provides an exemplary test case, not as a new datum obviously, but as a long-known, well-worked, biblical tradition that calls for reevaluation in light of these new and related discoveries and developments.

  See the nuanced exploration into definitional possibilities for daimon and demon in Anders K. Petersen, “The Notion of Demon: Open Questions to a Diffuse Concept,” in Die Dämonen: Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt, ed. Armin Lange, Hermann Lichtenberger, and K. F. D. Roemheld (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 23–41. 2



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Deuteronomy 32: A Reassessment With these prospects in mind, one might realistically insist that it is not so much a consensus that we ought to aim for or aspire to when it comes to Iron Age Israel’s religious history. Rather, it is a clearer articulation of the discernible positions for which we should strive, and perhaps even an attempt to sustain a constructive dialogue amongst and between the various positions on Israel’s religions that hold court among current researchers. The result may be surprising; one may not only identify as well as strengthen the various lines of support for each of the models at play, but collaboratively one might even bring greater clarity to the “relative probability” among the central options. This in turn brings to the foreground the question of method and the concomitant issue of outcomes. The interface of artifact, epigraph, and HB manuscript while proven time and again to be productive, by no means offers us an assured set of results. Each investigative instance presents an array of contingencies, prior decisions, and intrafield issues whether one has in mind a particular structure or object, a new epigraph, a biblical passage, or any convergent constellation thereof: that is as it is. Deuteronomy 32 presents just such a classic example of the convergence of such data. Deuteronomy 32:8–9 As the history of research on vv. 8–9 demonstrates, a sea change has transpired with regard to the preferred or more ancient reading of this passage.3 Among others, two factors in particular stand out; (1) the recovery, publication, and refinement of the Ugaritic texts written in alphabetic cuneiform on clay tablets. These preserve myths and rituals that give precedent expression to a divine world made up of multiple, yet variably ranked deities or, better yet, suprahuman beings that in turn provides the immediate background to the concepts preserved in v. 8, and (2) the coupling of this with the eventual, but slow (… hesitant? … resistant?) scholarly assimilation and accommodation to the tsunami-like impact on biblical textual criticism that the Deuteronomy papyrus manuscript readings of chapter 32 from Khirbet Qumran have produced. Ugaritic texts like KTU 1.4:VI:46 where the seventy sons of El and Athirat are mentioned have provided a compelling ancient Near Eastern literary and conceptual background to what was previously construed as the enigmatic or seemingly troublesome content of these verses as preserved in v. 8 of the Septuagint, namely, the reading “divine sons.” The Ugaritic texts preserve a documented Canaanite 3   See the recent translations in the RSV, NRSV, NASB, and CEB, and, of course, the highly anticipated new NETS Septuagint translation (hereafter LXX-NETS). Note also the comments to the same effect on v. 8 by B. Levinson in the Tanakh translation of the 2014 edition of the Jewish Study Bible and Jan Joosten, “Deutéronome 32,8–9 et les commencements de la religion d’Israël,” in Le monothéisme biblique. Évolution, contextes et perspectives, ed. E. Bons and Th. Legrand (Paris: Cerf, 2011), 91–108.

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divine council comprised of a pantheon of gods – whether one has in view the broadest or narrowest sense of the term “god” (ʾēlîm) – originally situated within a Late Bronze Age (hereafter LB) West Semitic conventional henotheistic religious context. It is against such a background that the author of Deut 32 sets El and YHWH’s historically developing associations as father and son, or senior and junior. The relevant translations of vv. 8–9 are offered here: LXX-NETS When the Most High (ho hyphistos) was apportioning nations, as he scattered Adam’s sons, he fixed boundaries of nations according to the number of divine sons (huiōn theoû), and his people Iakob became the Lord’s portion, Israel a measured part of his inheritance. Qumran When the Most High (ʿElyon) divided up the nations – when He separated the sons of man, He fixed the boundaries of the peoples based on the number of the sons of gods/God (bәnê ʾe ̆lōhîm) Surely, the Lord’s (YHWH’s) portion is his people; Jacob his allotted inheritance. MT When the Most High (ʿElyon) divided up the nations – when He separated the sons of man, He fixed the boundaries of the peoples based on the number of the sons of Israel. Surely, the Lord’s (YHWH’s) portion is His people; Jacob his allotted inheritance. Several later Septuagint (hereafter LXX) Greek witnesses read “the angels of God” (angelōn theoû). But this rendering is likely a second-stage translation, perhaps a deliberate theological revision of what might have comprised the more ancient Greek reading huiōn theoû of its Hebrew Vorlage reconstructed here as bәnê ʾēlîm or bәnê ʾe l̆ ōhîm, “the sons of gods or the sons of God.” This reading is preserved in the papyrus fragments Fouad 848 and 106c of the second to first centuries BCE. The Qumran text 4QDeutq has spaces for additional letters following the aleph and lamed of ʾēl > bn ʾl[ym], vocalized bәnê ʾēlîm “sons of gods.” The Qumran fragment 4QDeutj preserves a potential variant on the LXX’s Vorlage bәnê ʾe ̆lōhîm, which could be translated as the “sons of gods,” or “sons of God.” The latter could actually coincide with the Hebrew Vorlage underlying the earliest papyrus fragments, the



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“sons of God.”4 The MT, however, reads bәnê yiśrāʾēl, “the sons of Israel,” which includes a later “correction” of “gods,” or “God” to “Israel” while alluding to the seventy families who went into and came out of Egypt. The Qumran text and LXX’s Vorlage likely represent the more ancient reading that was emended to “Israel” in order to remove what appeared to be the worship of multiple gods (see too Ps 82:1), a theme that the nonpoetic portions of Deuteronomy wholly reject. A secondary LXX revision was the replacement of “sons” in the Greek to “angels,” which resulted in lowering the status of the other suprahuman beings mentioned in the earliest versions of the tradition.5 So it seems that the earliest LXX translations accessed a distinct reading in their Vorlage or they slightly altered it in translating “gods” as “God.” The data from Qumran have contributed immensely to the rather profound reversal of what formerly constituted a scholarly consensus on the minor role that the LXX could play in recovering ancient readings and otherwise undetected religious concepts from the HB. The 2010 comment from an SBL panel on this front by Melvin Peters, the translator of the Septuagint Deuteronomy for the new NETS version sums up the present state of affairs: “the Leningrad Codex readings are subsequent to (my emphasis) those reflected by the Hebrew Vorlage of Greek Deuteronomy.”6 I shall return to this point momentarily precisely because the ancient Hebrew texts from Qumran all agree with the Septuagint (LXX) against the Masoretic Hebrew (MT) on the reading in v. 8 of “gods,” or “God,” over against “Israel.” Furthermore, Ugaritic texts have provided a more coherent conceptual backdrop as well as linguistic parallels in support of the LXX and Qumran readings “the sons of “God” or “… gods,” in Deut 32:8. Scholars have found in the Ugaritic mythology, references to the Canaanite head of the pantheon, El who, like the God of the Bible, is also referred to as El Elyon, “El Most High.” Furthermore, as noted above, El fathered seventy sons (KTU 1.4:VI:46) thereby establishing the number   See the edition of the Qumran fragment by J. A. Duncan in Qumran Cave 4, IX: Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Kings, ed. Eugene Ulrich et al., DJD 14 (Oxford: Clarendon; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 90 and Sidnie White Crawford, Jan Joosten, and Eugene Ulrich, “Sample Editions of the Oxford Hebrew Bible: Deuteronomy 32:1–9, 1 Kings 11:1–8, and Jeremiah 27:1–10 (34 G),” VT 58 (2008): 352–66. For an evaluation of the complicated LXX evidence, see John W. Wevers, Notes on the Greek Text of Deuteronomy, SCS 39 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), 513. 5  See Paul Sanders, The Provenance of Deuteronomy 32, OTS 37 (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 156 and now see Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 248–49. A reading bәnê ʾēl or (consonantal) bn ʿl is not attested at Qumran. First, 4QDeutq has spaces for additional letters following the aleph and lamed of ʾēl > bn ʾl[ym], vocalized bәnê ʾēlîm. Second, 4QDeutj clearly reads bn ʿlwhym or bәnê ʾĕlō(w)hîm. 6   Melvin K. H. Peters, “Translating a Translation: Some Final Reflections on the Production of the New English Translation of Deuteronomy,” in Translation Is Required: The Septuagint in Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Robert J. V. Hiebert, SCS 56 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 119–34. 4

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of the “sons of El” (Ugaritic, bn ʾil). This constitutes the discovery of an unmistakable linguistic analogue with, and one antecedent to, the Hebrew text underlying the Qumran and LXX readings, “according to the number of the sons of God (or gods).” That number comprised seventy divine beings. The point here, and one now widely recognized by experts: (El) Elyon in Deut 32:8 delegated the peoples of the earth each to one of the heavenly beings who already existed from the time of creation (cf. Job 38:7). But another point worth highlighting in this passage as reflected in the Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX and at Qumran is that YHWH was once possibly one of those younger members of a Canaanite-Israelite pantheon under the aegis of his elder El, that is, one of the “sons of gods,” or he was a rogue god, an outsider as suggested by vv. 9ff. When textual criticism meets comparative method and materials in the study of Israelite religion as with the case of Deut 32, the result confirms a rather conventional henotheistic ancient West Semitic cultural world in those earliest traditions underlying this text, though at the same time, a world clearly exotic to modern interpreters, if not “outright” otherworldly. Summary These developments constitute an interpretation independent of and prior to the HB’s reception history, but upon which all subsequent interpretation and commentary are necessarily based or from which they “monotheistically” deviate.7 As such, an historical-critical approach stands as a viable engagement with the primary data, both artifact and epigraph; in this instance the Ugaritic tablets, the LXX manuscripts, and the Qumran scrolls as well as the MT and its later permutations as a final-form, curated artifact turned modern diplomatic text. The conventional henotheistic concepts contained in the LXX and Qumran manuscripts of Deut 32:8–9 find added support in the manuscript witnesses to v. 43 where it appears that an entire crucial half verse is lacking in the MT over against the longer LXX and Qumran.

7   Mark S. Smith (“What Is a Scriptural Text in the Second Temple Period?,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls at 60, ed. Lawrence L. Schiffman and Shani Tzoref, STDJ 89 [Leiden: Brill, 2010], 271–98, here 278 [= God in Translation, FAT 27 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 139–43, 195– 212]) suggests that Deut 32, like Ps 82:1, 6, rejects the very polytheism he identifies as providing the background informing the poem; but see further below at 32:17 at 32:43 and see Jan Joosten, “A Note on the Text of Deuteronomy xxxii 8,” VT 57 (2007): 548–55, who concludes: “The effect of reading Bull El in verse 8 is that of throwing the polytheistic conception of the passage into sharp relief. The point of departure for the author of the song is the polytheistic worldview commonly held in the ancient Levant. He does not reject this view, but uses it as a foil to develop his own revolutionary theology,” and, “‘YHWH is neither the high god who initiated the whole arrangement, nor one of the ‘sons of Bull El,’ [his translation proposal] who received his inheritance with the other members of the pantheon. He is a rogue god, operating in the desert, outside the regular orbit of divine intervention. From here, he goes on to lead his people into the arable land, thus encroaching upon the domain of his better-known peers” (p. 554).



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Deuteronomy 32:438 LXX-NETS Be glad, O skies, with him, and let all the sons of God (huoi theoû)9 do obeisance to him. Be glad, O nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God (angeloi theoû) prevail for him. For he will avenge the blood of his sons And take revenge and repay the enemies with a sentence, And he will repay those who hate, And the Lord shall cleanse the land of his people. Qumran Be glad, O skies with Him, And let all the sons of El (or God?) do obeisance to Him, For He will avenge the blood of his sons, And He will repay those who hate And He will cleanse the land of His people. MT Acclaim, O nations, His people! for He will avenge the blood of his servants, wreak vengeance and repay his foes, and He will cleanse His land, His people. Tov notes that the “sons of God” occur only in the LXX and Qumran manuscripts of Deuteronomy at 32:8 and 43 and nowhere else in the MT. He goes on to add, “this colon (mentioning ‘the sons of God’) was probably deleted in 𝕸+ in an act of theological censorship when the phrase ‘sons of God’ was considered an unwanted polytheistic depiction of the world of the divine.”10 Again, I quote Peters on his assessment of the Septuagint of Deuteronomy, this time on v. 43 from his introductory comments “To the Reader” introducing the NETS translation of Deuteronomion:   Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 249–50 has illustrated in layout format how the readings of MT, the reconstructed Hebrew Vorlage of the Septuagint (following the NETS-LXX) and 4QDeutq align. He added in his new third edition a notation of gothic 𝕸 followed by the plus sign (+) to represent the MT combined with the Targum, Syriac Peshitta, and Vulgate (see ibid., xix). 9   Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 250, “sons of God,” whereas Peters, NETS, translates, “divine sons.” 10   Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, 250. 8

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In 32:43, the Greek is twice as long as the extant Hebrew text – eight lines to four hemistiches. The longer text is not merely an elaboration of the Hebrew but adds significant details including a reference to, “all the angels of God,” which, given the generally conservative attitude of DeutTr, are best explained as text-based. A text from Qumran representing in part the source text of the LXX is extant.11

Peters’s reference to “a text from Qumran” is 4QDeutq on v. 43 treated by Tov as detailed above.12 It confirms the antiquity of the LXX translation of its Hebrew Vorlage and in that light we should repeat Peters’s own assessment of the relative value of the LXX manuscripts on Deuteronomy over against those of the MT, namely, that the Leningrad Codex readings are subsequent to those reflected by the Hebrew Vorlage of Greek Deuteronomy.13 Summary In this same lengthy poem and at some distance from one another, we thus have two pericopes forming an inclusio that underscore the crucial role that the Canaanite-Israelite divine council plays in confirming El’s appointment of YHWH as the patron god of Israel. YHWH, in turn, by vindicating his people, not only upholds his power and honor, but elicits the council’s praise and continued loyalty. As the Qumran and LXX readings of v. 43 highlight, “the sons of El” must demonstrate their submission and “the angels of El” must do YHWH’s bidding. All of this as preserved in the Septuagint and Qumran scroll fragments finds its literary, conceptual, theological, and perhaps “genetic”(?) parallels in the Ugaritic texts. But these two passages from Deut 32 are not the end of the matter. There is still another passage from the same text that essentially confirms and then expands on all that that has been surveyed thus far and which also constitutes the central focus of the present analysis, v. 17. Deuteronomy 32:17 LXX-NETS They sacrificed to demons (daimoniois) and not to God, to gods they did not know. New, recent ones have come, whom their fathers did not know.

11   Melvin K. H. Peters, “Deuteronomion: To the Reader,” in A New English Translation of the Septuagint: And the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title, ed. Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 145. 12   See too the discussion in Wevers, Notes to the Greek Text, 533–35. 13   See too the detailed treatment by Alexander Rofé, “The End of the Song of Moses (Deuteronomy 32:43),” in Liebe und Gebot: Studien zum Deuteronomium, ed. Reinhard G. Kratz and Hermann Spieckermann, FRLANT 190 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 164–72.



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My Translation (MT) They sacrificed to the Shedu-gods, not (to) Eloah, to gods of which they had no knowledge – new ones (gods) only recently on the scene, (ones) about which your ancestors had never heard. Here the LXX and MT are in essential agreement on the reading of the verse, which is of no little consequence. Yet, many have claimed that daimons like the Akkadian šēdû (hereafter shedu) were not recipients of sacrifice in Mesopotamian tradition and so alternative explanations to shedu have been offered for the Hebrew term šēdîm (hereafter shedim). Others have constructed a complementary parallelism here with the result that the shedim are not equated with the ʾe l̆ ōhîm of the next half verse, but rather they represent demons set alongside the gods. Such a solution, however, does not adequately resolve the matter of the shedim having received sacrifices. The term Eloah in v. 17 has also become a crucial datum in recent interpretations of Deut 32 with regard to the presence of polytheism, henotheism, or monotheism in the poem. Smith, in support of his proposed monotheistic reading of 32:8–9, translates lōʾ ʾe l̆ ōah as “no god,” alongside similar references in v. 21, v. 39, and also v. 12 and v. 31, all of which for Smith “express divinity in more exclusive terms.” The term Eloah appears only twice in Deuteronomy, here in v. 17 and in v. 15. In the latter, Eloah is clearly singular, in the absolute state, and lacking a definite article where it is paralleled by a divine epithet in the construct state, “(the) Rock (s ûr) of his salvation.” Thus, as it does forty-one times in the poetic sections of Job often alongside El and Shaddai, Hebrew Eloah serves here as a divine name: “He forsook Eloah who made him, and spurned the ‘Rock’ of his salvation.”14 Returning to v. 17, the translation of lōʾ ʾe l̆ ōah as “no gods,” unlike “not Eloah” simply does not accurately render Hebrew ʾe l̆ ōah in context. The LXX translator rendered his Hebrew Vorlage as a divine name (or appellative), “not (to) God,” and not as a generic noun “god.” In vv. 15 and 17 of the MT, it is neither a title nor a common noun but a divine name. In v. 15, “he forsook Eloah,” and in v. 17, “they sacrificed to the Shedu-gods, not (to) Eloah.” The parallel use of Eloah as the divine name in v. 17 in the phrase lōʾ ʾe l̆ ōah and in v. 15, as well as in Job, finds confirmation in the reading ʾēl in v. 21 as the divine 14   Smith, “What Is a Scriptural Text,” 279 also invokes Job 1:6 and 2:1 to underscore the lowly status of the other members of the divine council: “they are so powerless … that for the composer, they do not truly constitute gods like Yahweh. They are … minor divinities, actually angels, but hardly gods….” Yet, one of those beings in Job titled “the Satan” (haś-śātān) in fact displays a formidable level of divine power in his straightforward confrontation with and challenge to YHWH’s power and wisdom. On Eloah, see Dennis Pardee, “Eloah,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons, ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and P. W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 285–88 who favors an appellative function in Deut 32:15 and 17, but notes its frequent use as a divine name in Job.

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name El. In v. 21 the term ʾēl in the singular is used in a similar construction, “they made me jealous with what is not El” or, “not God” (bә -lōʾ ʾēl).” Here El refers to the deity in a prepositional phrase (bә -) that can be translated as such or as a verbless clause. That it does not serve as an implicit denial of the rival gods’ existence is confirmed by its contrastive parallel from later in the verse: “with what is no people,” (bә -lōʾ ʿām). This hardly comprises a denial of the people’s existence since that would wreak havoc with the text, as the “no people” were the very instrument by which the deity aimed to make Israel jealous. Thus, “El” in v. 21 is not the generic “god” of some supposed “no god” construction, at least not in the sense of denying the rival gods’ existence. Furthermore, if nonexistence were in view here, it would create a direct contradiction with v. 17, for if the deities overseeing other nations are denied existence in v. 17 after having already had that existence affirmed in v. 8, then the resultant apostasy of the people and the reaction of YHWH have no (theo)logical basis (no people, no competing gods, no reason for YHWH’s reaction). Again, the text becomes nonsensical. The phrases in v. 39 (“there is no god who compares”), v. 12 (“no foreign god was with Him”) and v. 31 (“their Rock is not like our Rock”), all reflect the language of (hierarchical) incomparability and presume the existence of other gods over against El and/or YHWH. It is their power or status that is found wanting, not their existence. One cannot read vv. 8–9, 17, 21, 43 in their most ancient “reconstructable” textual contexts – the LXX and Qumran manuscripts of Deut 32 – through a monotheistic lens. Identifying Hebrew Shedim: Cognate or Conceptual Parallels? The mention of the shedim in v. 17 has generated a wide array of interpretations: devils, demons, gods, or even none of the above, “false gods.” This is, firstly, because interpreters have differed on the significance of the terms Eloah, which we have shown to be the divine name “Eloah,” and ʾe l̆ ōhîm “gods,” two terms in close proximity; secondly because of the supposed cognate to Hebrew shedim, Akkadian shedu, namely, the Mesopotamian shedu protective spirits (or daimons) who the texts and art indicate were often portrayed in the form of hybrid bulls as protectors of temples and palaces.15 Finally, the wholesale adoption of the Hebrew shedim as key to later Jewish speculation (often in Aramaic) about the demonic has also been an influential factor in interpreting v. 17. But this, however, is subsequent reception history, not contemporary or immediately relevant primary evidence. Many would reject the association of Hebrew shedim and the Akkadian shedu owing to the fact that the shedim in v. 17 are portrayed as gods who receive cult whereas the Akkadian shedu were mere protective spirits who did not, and so the latter hardly fit as a conceptual 15  Akkadian shedu refers to the male counterpart to the lamassu or protective demoness. For matters of lexicography, cf. Paul V. Manowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 138–40 (his attribution, “a diabolical entity,” notwithstanding), and for the Mesopotamian textual and iconographic data, see now the extensive treatment by Nils C. Ritter, “Human Headed Winged Bull (‘Aladlammu’),” IDD, http://www.religionswissenschaft. uzh.ch/idd/prepublications/e_idd_human_headed_winged_bull.pdf, 2010.



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or functional cognate to the shedim. The Akkadian shedu simply did not hold the status of deity nor receive cult. Others have noted that the Aramaic(?) reflex of Hebrew shedim may appear in an analogous context in the late Iron II Deir Alla plaster-cast inscription as the shaddayin. Like the shedim in Deut 32:17, these divine beings are found paralleled by the term for “gods” or ʾilāhin (ʾilhn) at Deir Alla, a direct cognate to Hebrew ʾe l̆ ōhîm, “gods.” For some, this also indicates that the former were the latter, that is, the shaddayin were gods. Yet, others have proposed that Hebrew shedim is derivative of a triradical base š-d-d that would suggest the Akkadian shedu as its cognate, whereas the shaddayin from Deir Alla is an Aramaic term derivative of a triradical base š-d-y.16 Nonetheless, Hackett proposed some rather complex linguistic developments with a resultant connection between Hebrew shedim and Deir Alla šdyn.17 Hackett ingeniously argued that the –y- on šdyn is the equivalent to the letter yod in Hebrew shedim (actually shedi[y]m), and the –y- in the latter case was originally a consonant of the triradical base it shared with shaddayin. (< š-d-y). This –y- was later reinterpreted as a mater lectionis; a consonant used to indicate a vowel letter in the Hebrew masculine plural ending. Hackett repeated the point that Akkadian shedu was exclusively a protective spirit and not a deity, and not a recipient of sacrifices; therefore it makes a poor fit for the polemical context of Deut 32:17. Lastly, Deut 32:17 and Ps 106:37–38 are usually understood as referring to a foreign, yet local (“Canaanite”) origin for the biblical shedim cult that in turn severely weakens a Mesopotamian connection via Akkadian shedu. While intriguing, the proposal concerning the yod is highly exceptional, requiring a rather convoluted explanation of the yod’s mistaken identity, the need for textual emendation and revocalization, and an appeal to equivocal support like child sacrifice at Deir Alla. Therefore alternative explanations may provide more compelling solutions. While previous commentators have noted the shared cognate etymologies of Hebrew shedim and Akkadian shedu, the problem of the latter’s lowly status as protective spirit in Mesopotamia has presented an insurmountable obstacle to an otherwise compelling resolution. The Akkadian shedu were not deified and did not receive cult as the shedim do in v. 17. Yet, what has not been considered in previous 16   See e.g., Baruch A. Levine, Numbers 21–36, AB (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 243, 249, 252, 268; Deir Alla Combo. I. The parallelism shared by the š-d-y-n and the ʿilāhin at Deir Alla is highly suggestive of the divine status of both elements but beyond that, the lack of unfettered additional evidence from Deir Alla limits what we can say regarding the š-d-y-n. If both were marked for divinity (e.g., approximating a signifier like the divine determinative in Akkadian) and both received cult at Deir Alla, matters might be otherwise (see further below in “The Deification of Mesopotamian Guardian Demons”). The š-d-y-n’s lexical connection with Hebrew shedim and Akkadian shedu remains to be resolved satisfactorily, but some of the functional parallels shared by all three seem obvious. 17   Jo Ann Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ‘Allā (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 85– 89, esp. 88.

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treatments is evidence for the deification of other protective spirits and their unprecedented receipt of cult both in Mesopotamia and in Egypt. But before such data are reviewed, the function of Akkadian shedu in Mesopotamia needs be clarified. The shedu fulfilled the roles of both protector spirit and demon; that is to say it performed both good and evil acts. The term was frequently qualified by the adjectival elements, “good” (dumqu) and “bad” (lemnu) – although the apparently evil acts could be interpreted in some instances as the violent response to chaos required to maintain order and to fulfill the decree of the gods. The shedim in Deut 32:17 are not explicitly adjectively qualified as good spirits or bad demons per se. Rather, their indictment is centered on their constituting a direct challenge to the narrator’s version of Yahwism in that they had become the recipients of sacrifice instead of Eloah. In any case, their modern interpretation as foreign, specifically Canaanite, gods is inaccurate and hardly warrants eliminating their lexical and phenomenological analogy with Akkadian shedu. That they are described in v. 17 as “new” (h a ̆dāšîm), previously “not known” (lōʾ y ə dāʿûm) and ones the forefathers “had not previously feared” (lōʾ ś əʿārûm), does not lead to the requisite conclusion that these are attested foreign gods with whom Israel had no previous relations and that were transferred “laterally” from Canaan to Israel (which however could plausibly be the significance of not having relationally or religiously “known” them). The descriptor “Canaanite” appears in proximity to shedim only in Ps 106:38, but what is frequently overlooked is the fact that there it exclusively refers to the form of the image that was employed to represent the shedim in the child sacrifice cult. Only the forms of the images, not the shedu-beings themselves, are described as Canaanite in origin. A more compelling explanation of these disparate details attached to the shedim in 32:17 is outlined below. On Deifying Daimons and “Demonizing” Deities in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. In order to account for the developments that led to the portrayal of the people sacrificing to the shedim in v. 17, the parameters of context for exploring Deut 32 must be considered anew. Recent research on ancient Near Eastern demonological studies has revised and advanced our knowledge of the ancients’ view of their divine world and how it interacted with their own. We offer below a brief and highly selective survey of the daimonic worlds in the wider ancient Near East. These phenomena as articulated in contemporary scholarship not only significantly inform the proposal offered here for the shedim of Deut 32:17, but they clarify various other aspects of early Israelite daimonology that will be detailed in what follows. As ancient Egyptian tradition would have it, the world was inhabited by a wide assortment of sentient beings. Besides deities and humans, various beings are mentioned in the sources, such as deceased humans as well as a range of other supranatural beings that modern experts typically refer to as demons.18 These latter   My main sources here include the recent works on Egyptian demons by Dmitri Meeks, “Demons,” OEANE:375–78; Bernd Schipper, “Angels or Demons?,” in Angels: The Concept of 18



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intermediary beings served to link the human world and that of the divine. Yet, whereas the deities (ntr), humans (rmt), and deceased humans (mwt or 3ḫ ) each were assigned a single-category term, the other supranatural beings commonly described as demons by modern experts were not attributed a generic lemma by the Egyptians themselves. Rather, a specific name and physical attributes were ascribed to the various groups and individuals not included in the previous three categories. While the demonic world was created by the gods, and demons regularly acted at the behest of the gods, demons could cause chaos independently of and without orders from the gods. The apparent degree of (semi?)autonomy here is intriguing. Yet, they were identified more by what they did than what they were and their exercise of power within distinct spatial domains served as a major taxonomic principle underlying the Egyptian organization and articulation of the demonic world creating two major kinds of demon. On the one hand, wandering demons had no attachment to a particular place or locality and wreaked havoc in the form of disease and misfortune on the human world thereby giving expression to their basic malevolent behavior. On the other hand, guardian demons were bound to specific liminal and sacred spaces such as temples and netherworld gateways and protected those spaces from pollution and unwarranted intrusion. As such, their function was benevolent although as protectors their behavior might require hostile action against threatening intruders. Thus, the ancient Egyptian concept of the daimonic hardly shares in every respect that of our own modern wholly negative view of the demonic owing to the respectively distinct patchwork of cultural heritages informing the latter. By the New Kingdom period, the guardian demons could even be elevated to the level of deity and receive cult. The daimons Tutu, Apathes, and the x3ty.w or

Celestial Beings, ed. Friedrich V. Reiterer, Tobias Nicklas, and Karin Schoepflin (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 1–19); Kasia Szpakowska, “Demons in Ancient Egypt,” Religion Compass 3/5 (2009): 799–805; Panagiotis Kousoulis, “The Demonic Lore of Ancient Egyptian: Questions on Definition,” in Ancient Egyptian Demonology: Studies on the Boundaries between the Demonic and the Divine in Egyptian Magic, ed. Panagiotis Kousoulis (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), IX–XXI; idem, “Egyptian Demonology within the Phylogenetic and Polymorphic Environment of the Late Period and Ptolemaic Egypt,” JAEI 5.4 (2013): 20–21; Rita Lucarelli, “Demons: Benevolent and Malevolent,” UEE, http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1r72q9vv, 2010, 1–10; idem, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic,” 109–25; idem, “Towards a Comparative Approach to Demonology in Antiquity: The Case of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia,” ARelG 14 (2013): 11–25; Joachim Quack, “The So-Called Pantheos on Polimorphic Deities in Late Egyptian Religion,” Egyptus e Pannonia 3 (2006), 175–86; and idem, “Dämonen und andere höhere Wesen in der Magie als Feinde und Helfer,” in Ägyptische Magie und ihre Umwelt, ed. Andrea Jördens, Philippika 80 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015), 101–18. I am grateful to Prof. Quack for providing access to this last article. See too Youri Volokhine, “Du côté des ‘Bès’ infernaux,” in Entre dieux et hommes: anges, demons et autres. Colloque interdisciplinaire organize par la chaire ‘Milieux bibliques,’ ed. Thomas Römer (Paris: College de France, forthcoming).

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guardian demons became gods and received cult in Late–period Egypt.19 Prior to this time, evidence is lacking for demons having received cult like the gods. Among other outcomes evident in the written and pictorial, two in particular present themselves as relevant to our treatment of Deut 32. In addition to daimons becoming deities, deities could be “demonized,” like the deity Seth.20 One explanation for these processes suggests that emergent issues centered on ethnicity were telling factors in contemporary developments vis-à-vis the demonic world. The increase in the demonic world and its role in daily life may be related to the increase in the numbers and power of foreigners entering Egypt. The analogous multiculturalism and syncretism that accompanied this increase finds expression in the resultant demonization of the foreigner in first-millennium Egypt. Concomitantly, Egyptian priests introduced novel forms of polymorphism that gained prevalence in the iconography and in the transformative roles of gods and intermediary beings in the contemporary ritual discourse on cult and magic.21 Similar underlying social processes may relate to the late deification of Mesopotamian Mischwesen or demons and genii, part animal and part human hybrids. Beaulieu has provided a detailed treatment of the composite guardian demons, the Urdimmu and the Urmahlullu, both of whom appear with the determinative for god at Uruk of the Neo-Babylonian period (hereafter NB). 22 He notes that Wiggermann made the rather precise iconographic identification based on correlations between their descriptions in ritual texts and pictorial representations of them in the ancient art repertoire. Representations of the Urdimmu appear earlier on monumental reliefs from Assurbanipal’s North Palace at Nineveh. Sennacherib decorated the gateways of the Assur temple with representations of guardian demons including the Urdimmu and various apotropaic rituals required their fashioning and burial beneath thresholds to activate their protective powers. The Urdimmu tellingly appear on a seal impression on a text from the Eanna archive at NB Uruk thereby converging the iconographic and epigraphic evidence for their presence. Beaulieu points out that with only one exception the word is prefixed by the divine determinative. In fact, Urdimmu shows up in personal names Urdimmu-ilua, “the divine Urdimmu is my personal god,” and Ina-silli-Urdimmu, “Under the pro19  See Lucarelli, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic,” 123–24. Apparently, some difference of opinion remains regarding whether or not these intermediary beings possessed a discernible ontology. Lucarelli posits that they did in “Demons (Benevolent and Malevolent),” 1–2; idem, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic,” 109–25, whereas Kousoulis denies such most recently in “Egyptian Demonology,” 20–21. 20  See Lucarelli, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic,” 116–19 and note below my treatment of 32:24. 21   Lucarelli, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic,” 116–19 and Kousoulis, “Egyptian Demonology,” 21. 22   The summary here is based on the treatment of Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Pantheon of Uruk during the Neo-Babylonian Period, CM 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 355–68 and cf. the comments by Tallay Ornan, Triumph of the Symbol, 131–32 and idem, “In the Likeness of Man,” 96–97.



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tection of divine Urdimmu.” These suggest that the Urdimmu might have served as patron deity of temple doorkeepers and as protectors of the newborn preventing them from contracting disease or harm in birth. The Urdimmu at Uruk also received offerings of salt, barley, oil, and sacrificial animals alongside the known gods like Nusku though perhaps less frequently and on only more special occasions. The Urdimmu were allocated garments alongside those received by other deities in clothing ceremonies at the Eanna temple. This also indicates that the Urdimmu were represented on sculpture in the round, not in relief, as the latter would hardly justify the provision of garments to them. The quantity of garments has suggested to Beaulieu that the statues in the round were large, not miniature figurines designed for burial beneath gate thresholds. Lastly, like the cash boxes of door guardian deities recovered from Hadatu (or Arslan Tash) in Syria, the Urdimmu may have been stationed at temple gateways holding such boxes in their hands. Though it has been proposed that such income was dedicated to the cult of the divine Urdimmu, it seems more likely to Beaulieu that they were cash boxes for regular collection of temple income. A plot of land was apparently donated to the cult of the divine Urdimmu. In sum, the Urdimmu could be attributed the status of a god via the divine determinative and treated as a god by receiving cult. The divine Urdimmu were also invoked as intercessors, a position usually occupied by a deity. They likewise received prayer with its correlate in contemporary glyptic art representing a worshipper with raised hands expressing prayer to a Mischwesen or composite demon. Whereas the Urdimmu has been described as a dog-man, the Urmahlullu was a lion-centaur with a full body of a lion and the torso and head of a human crowned with a horned tiara who possessed a similar form and function as a protective demon. The Urmahlullu were positioned at temple gates and took on concrete shape in the form of a full-sized statue that received offerings, including sacrificial animals. In texts, they were similarly preceded by the divine determinative. Ornan has noted how what she refers to as the “hybrids” Urdimmu and Urmahlullu relate to developments in the art-historical evidence for fantastic creatures of the first millennium. Such fantastic hybrids and animals are strongly linked to personified deities since they were considered rivals defeated by a personified deity in the remote mythological past, following which these creatures became that victorious deity’s servants and emblems. Ornan highlights the fact that the human elements combined with the nonhuman features of these hybrids and, in particular, the human-like stance of the urdimmu may indicate that a human conceptual model governed their fashioning. In addition, their placement as protective hybrids at gateways hints at their mythological past, when they were among the defeated foes of Marduk, and implies that they might have been perceived as deified emanations of the god who had defeated them.23   Ornan, “In the Likeness of Man,” 97. On the development of what were originally “demons” who fought for Tiamat against Marduk in the mythic past (cf. Enuma elish) that included 23

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Ornan goes on to explain that the symbolization process illustrated here by the role of the Urdimmu and the Urmahlullu accords well with ancient Mesopotamian cultic tradition in which a lesser divinity, an animated object, or a former divine rival were substituted for an anthropomorphic deity and, in the process, would receive his or her deification. She points out that this process that she labels “divine symbolization” became particularly intense in first-millennium Babylonia, when hybrid creatures, animals, or demons that had appeared formerly as divine attributes became divine symbols and recipients of cult. While other suprahuman beings, such as Lamashtu, are, like the Urdimmu and the Urmahlullu, written with the dingir determinative, they are not venerated and do not receive offerings. The fact that the Urdimmu are regularly served food like the gods is a crucial distinguishing criterion. This is not the case for the demonic-like beings such as Lamashtu or the utukku who are given stale bread and inedible food in order to encourage them to depart from the land of the civilized and seek more agreeable worlds. The Urdimmu and Urmahlullu were composite benevolent beings comprised of a human upper body and a canine or leonine lower body including a curled tail and who, at times, donned a horned tiara and carried a staff crowned with a lunar-shaped symbol. That the Urdimmu and Urmahlullu were both called “ilu” and could receive offerings like the gods clearly set them apart as newly elevated deities of the first millennium. Their combined deification and receipt of cult along with their role as guardians providing protection to their patrons and namesakes may highlight a late Babylonian concern for apotropaism in the face of increased presence and power of foreigners.24 Yet, such treatment of these suprahuman beings represents exceptional circumstances, which significantly distinguishes them from the modern category of “demon.” The contextual details of Deut 32:17 indicate that the shedim are not only new (h ădāšîm, v. 17c) to both our author and his audience, but are “gods” (ʾe ̆lōhîm, v. 17b), who also were not previously known as such, yet who now receive sacrifices (zābah , v. 17a). If the Akkadian shedu represent an analogous phenomenon, Urdimmu, but once conquered, were pressed into service by Marduk as agents for “good,” see F. A. M. Wiggermann, “Mischwesen A,” RLA 8:225–29 and Stephan Maul, “Der Sieg über die Mächte des Bösen: Götterkampf, Triumphrituale und Torarchitektur in Assyrien,” in Gegenwelten zu den Kulturen Griechenlands und Roms in der Antike, ed. Tonio Hölscher (Munich: Saur, 2000), 19–46. I thank Nils Heessel for the latter reference. 24  See Beaulieu, The Pantheon of Uruk, 356–58. On Mesopotamian demons, see now Karen Sonik, “Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Divine: A Taxonomy of Zwischenwesen,” ARelG 14 (2013): 103–16 and Lorenzo Verderame, “‘Their Divinity Is Different, Their Nature Is Distinct!’: Nature, Origin and Features of Demons in Akkadian Literature,” ARelG 14 (2013): 117– 27. Ver­derame (118–19) notes that the author or editor of the poem of Erra highlights both the distinct origin (ilittu) and the divine nature (ilūtu) of the Seven or Sibitti and in n. 7 points out that they had a temple at Khorsabad. On the iconography of some prominent first- millennium BCE Mesopotamian daimons, see Constance H. Gane, “Composite Beings in Neo-Babylonian Art” (PhD diss., Berkeley: University of California, 2012).



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then they were formerly mere “benevolent intermediary beings,” that is, in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian sense of a daimon, or “a protective guardian spirit,” who were not previously recognized as gods in earlier ancestral traditions (v. 17d). Yet, the comparative data from the mid-first millennium indeed document various intermediary beings who were apparently elevated to the status of deity and received sacrifice in the cult. The Urdimmu and Urmahlullu of Mesopotamia and Apathes, Tutu, Bes, and the x3ty.w or guardian demons of Egypt all eventually became gods and received cult.25 We propose that the Hebrew shedim, like their Mesopotamian and Egyptian conceptual reflexes, were elevated to the status of “deified protective guardian daimons,” who received sacrifices as both v. 17 and Ps 106:37 unequivocally indicate. On analogy with the deification of Egyptian and Mesopotamian daimons, the elevation of the shedim to divine status as objects of cult might represent a relatively late historical development in Israel’s religious traditions.26 The foreign increase in power, presence, and influence throughout the wider region may have led not only to an acceleration in attributing chaos and calamity to the daimonic world, but also to the proliferation of protective daimons. These processes served simultaneously as a means of demonizing foreigners and of deifying and empowering indigenous protective daimons as countermeasures or coping mechanisms. The Shedu-gods of v. 17, that is, the former benevolent intermediary beings, are “new” in the sense that they had only recently been vertically elevated as protective spirits from within the ancient Israelite divine community, and not laterally or syncretistically transferred in from Canaanite religion. They were deified and given new status as Israelite benevolent deities and offered sacrifices in competing forms of Yahwistic religion and cult. As such, they apparently posed a significant threat to the author’s own view of Yahwism. Yet, the term shedim or Shedu-gods, itself does not convey any inherent semantic notion of usurpation (cf. the root š-d-d). Rather, the wider context of v. 17 conveys the challenge they pose by the author’s opposition to them. As a class of lower suprahuman beings, they probably long fulfilled a positive role, just as the Akkadian cognate shedu signified a “protective guardian spirit.” Their 25   For the Egyptian side of each of these comparisons, see Lucarelli, “Demonology during the Late Pharaonic,” 109–25. For the status of Bes as an “apotropaic deity” rather than a daimon, see Lucarelli, “The So-Called Vignette of Spell 182 of the Book of the Dead,” in Herausgehen am Tage: Gesammelte Schriften zum altägyptischen Totenbuch, ed. Rita Lucarelli, Marcus MüllerRoth, and Annik Wüthrich, Studien zum Altägyptischen Totenbuch 17 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012), 79–91 esp. 89 and review of Ancient Egyptian Demonology, by Panagiotis Kousoulis, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 8 (2013): 99–105, esp. 102, n. 1, where she cites as support Bes’s worship as protector of the household and his fixed iconography. See also Youri Volokhine, “Du côté des ‘Bès’ infernaux.” 26   Manowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew, 139 notes that no such sacrifices are offered to the shedu protective spirits in Mesopotamia, but our analysis indicates that just such a process transpired in the case of similar Mesopotamian protective spirits like the Urdimmu.

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negative assessment is undoubtedly the direct outgrowth of some rival sector of Israelite society having elevated them to the status of deity and as v. 17aβ indicates, the people worshipped them instead of Eloah. The indictment entirely centers on the threat they pose in replacing Eloah as gods deserving of worship. The Shedu-Gods of Psalm 106. The appearance of the shedim (= LXX 105:37 daimonia) in Ps 106:37 clearly confirms their role in Deut 32:17 as recipients of sacrifice. Their recipient role is indicated by the lamed preposition laššēdîm, “to the Shedu-gods.” While they are often imprecisely translated by the English “demons,” the LXX’s “daimones” would be far more accurate. Here they have taken on the status of full deities as in Deut 32:17 where they also receive sacrifices, although in Ps 106 the sacrifices are more specific: 36 and they worshipped their (the nations’) images, and they became a snare (mōqe š̆ ) for them; 37 and they sacrificed (zābah ) their sons and their daughters to the Shedu-gods; 38 and they shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters whom they sacrificed to the images of Canaan Psalm 106:36–38 and v. 37 in particular, are enigmatic in every sense of the term for in this instance the sacrifices comprise “the sons and daughters” of the Israelites. The shedim are also paralleled by and equated with the “images” (ʿas̆ a bbê > ʿas̆ a bbîm) of Canaan in v. 38. The unqualified use of the verb zābah “sacrifice” with “the sons and daughters” serving as accusative objects, complemented by the act of “shedding innocent blood” (šāpak dām nāqī), along with the resultant blood pollution (hānap) of the land, and the people’s becoming unclean (tāmē ʾ), which characterizes them as prostituting themselves (zānāh), cumulatively and unequivocally document from the psalmist’s perspective a particularly egregious cultic act on the part of the people. The context of child sacrifice in Ps 106 involving the Shedu-gods has prompted experts to invoke the Deir Alla inscriptions at two points: the association of Hebrew shedim and Aramaic shaddayin at Deir Alla as well as the association of both with supposed cults of child sacrifice in their respective traditions. But as mentioned above, this thesis relies on several questionable points including (1) highly convoluted linguistic arguments for connecting Hebrew shedim and Deir Alla š-d-y-n, in place of the rather straightforward connection of Hebrew shedim and Akkadian shedu both phenomenologically and linguistically; (2) that the heavily damaged Deir Alla plaster texts clearly refer to child sacrifice, (3) with the shaddayin as cult patrons; (4), that Ps 106 reflects a reliable historical cultic practice in this lone reference to the shedim as patrons of child sacrifice (5) when the overwhelming evidence points to any one of a handful of other known deities who served as that patron elsewhere in the HB, namely, Baal, or YHWH, or “The Molekh” (hammōlek); but (6) not



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the shedim save the lone instance here in Ps 106 (= LXX Ps 105). Add to these the proposal outlined here that the Hebrew shedim constituted a West Semitic cultural reflex of, or functional parallel to, the Mesopotamian phenomenon of protective spirits epitomized in the Akkadian shedu, then the Hebrew shedim could plausibly be portrayed as receiving sacrifice precisely because they had been elevated from the status of protective spirits within a highly diversified Yahwistic religious context and similarly deified and offered sacrifice as the Shedu-gods along the same lines as the several protective spirits in contemporary Mesopotamia and Egypt that we reviewed. In any case, Ps 106 makes explicit both sides of the intended conceptual “coin” conveyed by the metonymic language used to refer to the divine. The Shedu-gods mentioned in v. 37b, are also invoked vis-à-vis their concrete form in v. 38c, namely, their “Canaanite images” (