Introduction to Biblical Archaeology

Introduction to Biblical Archaeology 1: Archaeological History and Method

by Joel Ng (2003)

Archaeological theories and finds seem to have an astonishing lag between claims being made, scholarly acceptance, and actually entering the public consciousness. In some cases, the public may even hear about a theory only after most scholars have already rejected it. Many people still think that W.F. Albright's "conquest hypothesis" of the Israelite invasion of Canaan, for example, still holds today. My hope is that this may in some way help to bring people up to speed on contemporary developments in archaeology, and if possible, make what seems like a hopelessly dry topic come to life. If you are a Christian fundamentalist or Evangelical, reading this may help you to get a better understanding of what archaeology can and cannot prove, and how a much more sophisticated approach to the biblical past is both better, and necessary.

Before we start, I recommend obtaining J.C.H. Laughlin's handy reference, Archaeology and the Bible, 2000, New York: Routledge, and follow the references cited therein for further reading. Notes here are kept to an absolute minimum and this intro roughly follows Laughlin (2000). Many of the details and problems with methods in archaeology cannot be dealt with in an introduction such as this. It also presumes a fair degree of understanding of the major outline of the Bible stories. If you are unfamiliar with the events recorded in the Bible, you can follow by reading (or obtaining summaries of) Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 2 Maccabees (in the Apocrypha) later in the series. The best collated source of information is at Peter Kirby's site, Early Jewish Writings.

What exactly is Biblical Archaeology?

This might seem like an unnecessary question, but in fact, nobody can quite agree on what it should be. Archaeology is the study of the life and culture of the past. Biblical archaeology, then, would be the study of the life and culture of the peoples mentioned in the Bible. There is a current debate about doing away with the term "biblical archaeology" because it is a hindrance to the study of the past on its own terms. Replacements such as "Near Eastern Archaeology" (Eurocentric in its own right), "Syro-Palestinian Archaeology" (cumbersome), have been suggested. However, it is undeniable that historically, the study of Palestine as it relates to the biblical narrative was the main motivating force for the development of archaeology in Palestine, so I have retained the term.

Archaeology concerns itself with finding and then developing theories to account for the artifacts buried under deep layers of sediments. Why are they there? What can they tell us about the people who used these things? When did inventions arise (and how did they spread)? How did it change their ways of living? We now know, for example, just how sophisticated Philistines actually are—a group of larger "Sea Peoples" who share a common past with the later Greek civilisation. We can also tell how early or late the Israelite practice of not eating pork came about by studying when pigs arrived in the region, and when pig bones (with evidence of human consumption) disappeared. The archaeologist taps into a whole new world altogether, by asking the right questions.

However, a word of caution here. Archaeology is an interpretive field. Norman Gottwald recently wrote that "[t]hose who naively assume that 'the hard facts' of archaeology are more easily and definitively demonstrated than the obscurities of biblical texts will necessarily be disappointed by the 'subjective' element in archaeological interpretation." Much of what is discovered must be interpreted, translated, dated, and discussions of origins are subjective. While archaeology has shown that the Bible is not inerrant and reflects the theological disposition of its authors, archaeology remains tentative and must be open to new evidence. It says nothing about the theology or ultimate questions of the Bible, though it does help to illuminate the lives of those who wrote it.

What about History?

A brief detour before I begin (it is unfortunately long, but it deserves to be dealt with at length here for reasons that will become apparent later in the series): Archaeology differs from history in that, strictly, it does not create narratives of the past. The act of writing history based on sources both archaeological and literary is called "historiography. " It is obvious that such an act is both political and focused on explaining history in order to bring certain events to the fore. The "Whig interpretation of history" is the practice of reading history in light of the present, in order to vindicate the present. Needless to say, it has been rejected in the philosophy of history since Butterfield's seminal text in 1931 (see above link), yet continues today among apologists and academics. This trap must be avoided, but has been a major stumbling block in biblical archaeology and history (and many other social sciences, I might add, for example, Francis Fukuyama sees history as leading inexorably to liberal democracy, while Karl Marx saw history as leading inexorably to the emancipation of the working class). Thus, while we may identify different authors of the Pentateuch, just because one seems more primitive than the other does not imply that it is in fact more primitive until a good reason for its age can be argued. The danger of reading the present into the past is always there.

The Hebrew Bible itself contains large sections of ancient historiographical writings (indeed, these are the parts that interest archaeologists), and understanding that fact alone leads one to a more nuanced understanding of what is and is not verifiable. It becomes obvious that it suffers from what we would now term a Whiggish interpretation of history (and some might argue that this is the goal of the ancient historiographers), and that its writing was always politically motivated. The cycle of Israelites sinning, misfortune befalling them, their repentence, and their eventual deliverance, so common throughout the Bible, is a good example of Whiggish history in practice. Yet while Herodotus (an ancient Greek historian who wasn't even that reliable) is sometimes drawn upon to shed light on events and even explain discrepancies, so too is the Bible (which is even more unreliable). Literary criticism comes in here to help understand the Bible and deal with the layers in order that it can better unravel the political motivations of the authors. But there are further problems.

The Bible is a unique case in that no other ancient work has been so influential on the study of a field of archaeology. The reasons for this are obvious—the large Judeo-Christian heritage of the West had dominated archaeological thinking of the previous 100 years, but since the last 20-30 years, it is no longer taken for granted. The long-held assumption of a core of truth to any and every biblical story has now been found to be mistaken, and it's not just the minimalists who are pointing this out. No scholar would take the book of Joshua or Judges at face value any longer (although at one time, both of these books represented the paradigms of leading theories for the rise of the Israelites), and few can agree upon when historically reliable information starts to appear in the Bible. That is the core dispute between maximalists (who would point towards David and Solomon's reigns, and find much use in Samuel and Kings) and minimalists (who would point towards the later kings prior to the Babylonian exile, but rather just ignore the Bible). However, this dispute will be dealt later in the series.

How did it all begin?

The beginnings of Biblical archaeology can be traced to Napolean's expedition in Egypt, from which the famous Rosetta Stone was extracted. Its parallel with Greek and Egyptian immediately enabled scholars to decipher hieroglyphics, and in turn led to an explosion of a new study, Egyptology. The first coup came for J.F. Champollion, who discovered a list of towns defeated during the Pharoah Shishak's (Shoshenq's) campaign through Palestine, attested in 2 Chronicles 12:3. Through the 19th century, explorers and treasure hunters began combing the lands of ancient Egypt and Babylon for artifacts. They were often untrained or ill-equipped, knowing none of the methods available to us today. Some, like Henry Layard and Paul Botta (trained as a lawyer and doctor, respectively), worked by digging, like early paleontologists, unwarily through the rocks in search of monumental artifacts or tablets bearing inscriptions.

Back in their home countries, the new "Egyptologists" and "Assyriologists" worked in deciphering texts and publishing their results to an enthralled public. First H.C. Rawlinson (generally acknowledged as the father of Assyriology) uncovered an inscription by Sennacherib bearing the names of Hezekiah, Judah, and Jerusalem. A collaborator of his, Irish clergyman Edward Hincks, also noticed "Yua, son of Humri" was equivalent to "Jehu, son of Omri" on the Black Obelisk. Then Layard published Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon which cited 55 names of rulers, cities, or countries common to the Hebrew Bible and Assyrian texts. For the first time in two millenia, people in Europe were being reconnected with the origins of their religions, and spurred on more expeditions in an effort to recover more of these, believing that the Bible was being spectacularly confirmed, in an age when uniformitarianism and Darwin's theory of evolution seemed to undermine much of the Biblical record. Unfortunately, we must move on at this point. An interesting article on this period of early Assyriology can be found here: Biblical Assyria and Other Anxieties in the British Empire by the Journal of Religion & Society.

With such spectacular finds in Assyria and Egypt, Palestinian archaeology was largely the poor cousin. Heinrich Schliemann had gone to Turkey, The Iliad in one hand, and a spade in the other, and had discovered Troy in a mound (a tel in Hebrew or tell in Arabic) at Hissarlik. However, his contribution went much further—he uncovered several layers of the city and showed how, by cutting trenches through the mound, one could observe the growth of the mound and provide a relative chronology of the site. Sir Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) turned biblical archaeology into a fledgling science, and his lasting contributions were pottery typology (classifying pottery according to type and style) and his introduction of stratification (the study of strata (layers) in a typical tel) which he had probably learned from Schliemann. These ideas revolutionised the field—scattered bits of pottery found everywhere were now useful objects of study in themselves, and the idea of a tel as a layered cake (think of geological columns) allowed one to sequence the findings in relative chronological order. G.A. Reisner arrived later, and his understanding of the complex structure of the tel permitted him to develop a new way of excavating—they dug till they reached a floor level, and then cleared horizontally from there. By doing so, their finds were immediately consistent to a stratum. His method, unfortunately, was not followed by many others, and it was only later when the Wheeler-Kenyon method (in truth, similar to Reisner's) arrived in the 1950s that a better method of excavation was developed.

After Petrie, new breakthroughs and methods were to arrive in the interwar years (1918-1940), which many call the "Golden Age of Archaeology." The collapse of the Ottoman empire following the First World War opened up swathes of Middle Eastern land to archaeologists. Here, many leading archaeologists like William Foxwell Albright, the giant of the period, appeared on the scene and left their mark. Albright mastered Petrie's pottery analysis, and promoted his methods. However, his major contribution (or curse?) was to tie archaeology with historiography—interpreting the finds in the light of the Bible and other Near Eastern studies. His vast knowledge and ability to synthesise wide and disparate fields (he had comparably little field experience, most of it at Tell Beit Mirsim) enabled him to make great comparisons with the Bible, even if some of his methods were later shown to be faulty. One of his students, G.E. Wright, popularised his findings and led to the public belief that archaeology confirmed the truth of many biblical events.

It was only after the Second World War that this verdict began to be challenged at length. Kathleen Kenyon arrived at Jericho to develop a new method of studying tels. The older, "architectural method" consisted of analysing different architectural components such as floors and walls and so required destructive large-scale exposure and digging. Kenyon designed a less intrusive layered excavation such that each layer was examined in small 5-metre squares, and so differing time periods could be analysed at a specific site. Thus a consistent verification of layers could be made and analysed. This method was adopted by many, but also ran into problems—many of the complexities of habitation could not be fully understood, and Kenyon was also found to have made mistakes because of her neglect of areas around the site. Several methods are now used today, but the shortcomings of each must be recognised since excavation is always a destructive and permanent act.

Recent developments

Finally in the 1970s, regional surveys began to be conducted which attempted to match strata from one site with that of another. It is here that one looks if one wants to dispute the Joshua's invasion of Canaan. A systematic overview of Palestine across several locations was attempted to give a fuller review of the life and culture of the ancient Israelites and their neighbours. William G. Dever, spurred by shifts in North American archaeology, began to criticise the older generation of biblical archaeologists for failing to incorporate work from other disciplines, remaining altogether too narrowly within a theological angle of vision. The field began to move toward a more interdisciplinary approach—archaeologists began working alongside sociologists, anthropologists, biologists, historians, and others (though not necessarily at the digs!) to work at constructing the bigger picture. It is also during this time that the minimalists (sometimes refered to as the Copenhagen school) started disputing the connections with the Bible. T.L. Thompson in 1974, published a devastating work demonstrating the circularity of much of Albright's synthesis in biblical scholarship, ironically, in conjuction with Dever's assault from the archaeological viewpoint, as they were to later clash acrimoniously in the 1990s. We will return to this later in the series.

Work of course, continues today. Vast amounts of discoveries have been made since its unscrupulous beginnings, and many assumptions have been overturned by new theories, and those replaced by yet newer ones. But fieldwork is always complicated by political factors. Excavation at Jerusalem, probably the most important city, is greatly hampered by the sensitive religious nature of many of the sites, particularly the old quarter. Obviously, terror and violence and political conflict do not help the situation. Much of the possible finds remain tantalysingly out of the grasp of archaeologists, perhaps sitting under the Muslim Dome of the Rock or the Jewish Wailing Wall. Perhaps some of the most intriguing archaeological remains will remain forever out of our grasp.

With this briefest of introductions to history and method, we'll get to more interesting things next. In the few pieces, we will cover a brief overview of the different periods (what exactly is the difference between Iron Age II and Iron Age IIA?), some key finds (no, not the James ossuary), some theories of Israelite emergence (just what is wrong with Albright anyway?), and the main disputes (minimaximalism at last!). Stay tuned.

Revised July 2nd, 2004

[1] Other books I will use throughout the series to varying degrees (in no particular order) are:

1. A. Mazar, 1990, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000 - 586 B.C.E., New York: Doubleday
2. E. Stern, 2001, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian Periods (732 - 332 B.C.E.), New York: Doubleday
3. A. Negev & S. Gibson, 2001, Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, New York: Continuum
4. P.R.S. Moorey, 1991, A Century of Biblical Archaeology, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press
5. M.D. Coogan (ed.), 2001, The Oxford History of the Biblical World, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. D.B. Redford, 1992, Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times, Princeton: Princeton University Press
7. Z. Zevit, 2001, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches, New York: Continuum
8. W.G. Dever, 2003, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans Publishing
9. I. Finkelstein & N.A. Silberman, 2001, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, New York: Touchstone
10. N.P. Lemche, 1998, Prelude to Israel's Past: Backgrounds and Beginnings of Israelite History and Identity, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers

[2] Laughlin, 2000, p.10-16 has further discussion, while a definitive critique can be found in K.W. Whitelam, 1996, The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History, London: Routledge.

[3] N.K. Gottwald, 2001, The Politics of Ancient Israel, Library of Ancient Israel, Louisville: Westminster, p.186

[4] Here we can introduce two important terms in archaeology: the terminus post quem and terminus ante quem. The terminus ante quem places the upper date of a find—an object discovered in Stratum III cannot date to Stratum IV, for example. The terminus post quem marks the lower limit for dating—the artifact cannot date to Stratum II either.

For example if a tel was dug with the following layers identified:

STRATUM IV: 600B.C.E.

STRATUM III: ?? B.C.E.

STRATUM II: 700 B.C.E.

The terminus post quem for the object found in Stratum III would be 700 B.C.E., while the terminus ante quem for the object would be 600 B.C.E. In this way, relatively precise dating of finds is possible. Many disputes in archaeology are actually seemingly mundane—being fought over a particular stratum's date—but with larger implications for when a practice, innovation, or invasion may be dated. Don't get too discouraged by differing dates—it is more important to understand the terminology and become conversant with the arguments. On a final note, this ante/post quem terminology has made its way into many other fields related to archaeology, but its origins are from stratigraphic analysis.

From Stone to Bronze

Introduction to Biblical Archaeology 2:
From Stone to Bronze

by Joel Ng (2003)

The Grand Narrative

With a brief understanding of how biblical archaeology developed and its methods, we can move on to a journey through time. Before I get to the bit where I can step on the toes in presenting the story, some explanation is in order. Underdetermination of data (that is, the theory that for any given body of empirical data, multiple theories can be constructed to account for it) is a particular problem.

Further, the underdetermination theory states that theory choice (that is, the grounds for making a decision to adhere to one of the competing theories) is subjective.

This is tied in with the idea of incommensurability—that is, that theories cannot be evaluated as "better" or "worse" because they either have different rules of evidence, or draw on different interpretations of evidence altogether. Lack of consensus in almost every archaeological matter seems to give much credence to these theories. As I quoted Gottwald in the earlier introduction, I reiterate that archaeological interpretation is a subjective field for which little remains conclusive for long.

In some sense, this can be circumvented by avoiding the historiographical implications of the Bible and archaeology, but this defeats the purpose of many who work in the field. They want to know not just how ancient people lived, but how accurately they wrote their historical works. They want to know the religions of these people, but also how closely and when the biblical account of the development of Jewish and Israelite religion follows "reality." Secondly, rules which everyone can agree upon as to what constitutes "evidence" needs to be more thoroughly debated—that is, the rules of methodology and epistemology. This is unfortunately a problem with this field, which is why many have claimed that it is still a "young" science. So what exactly do archaeologists agree on?

Rocks of Ages

The various ages embedded in sediment follow what you'd expect: There's the stone age, the bronze age, the iron age, and so on. When exactly these came about is disputed, some by fractional amounts, and others by thousands of years. We will follow the story of the rise of Israel from what we can gather of these periods, and compare it with the Biblical account where possible. Here I defer to the Archaeological Encyclopaedia of the Holy Land (eds. A. Negev & S. Gibson, 2001, New York: Continuum). Roughly, the identified ages are (and potentially useful in pub quizzes if nothing else):

Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age)	1,400,000 - 17,000 B.C.E.
Epipalaeolithic/Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age)	17,000 - 8500 B.C.E.
Neolithic (New Stone Age)
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A	8500 - 7000 B.C.E.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B	7000 - 6000 B.C.E.
Pottery Neolithic	6000 - 4500 B.C.E.
Chalcolithic (Copper Stone Age)	4500 - 3500 B.C.E.
Early Bronze (EB) Age
EB IA	3500 - 3300 B.C.E.
EB IB	3300 - 3050 B.C.E.
EB II	3050 - 2700 B.C.E.
EB III	2700 - 2350 B.C.E.
Intermediate Bronze Age
(EB IV/MB I)	2350 - 2000 B.C.E.
Middle Bronze (MB) Age
MB IIA	2000 - 1800 B.C.E.	the Patriarchs?
MB IIB	1800 - 1550 B.C.E.	Hyksos in Egypt
Late Bronze (LB) Age
LB I	1550 - 1400 B.C.E.
LB II (Amarna Age)	1400 - 1300 B.C.E.	slavery in Egypt?
LB IIB	1300 - 1200 B.C.E.	the Exodus?
Iron Age
Iron IA	1200 - 1150 B.C.E.	Conquest & Judges?
Iron IB	1150 - 1000 B.C.E.	Period of the Judges?
Iron IIA	1000 - 900 B.C.E.	United Monarchy?
Iron IIB	900 - 700 B.C.E.	Divided Monarchy
Iron IIC	700 - 586 B.C.E.	Judah
Babylonian/Persian Period	586 - 332 B.C.E.
Early Hellenistic	332 - 167 B.C.E.
Late Hellenistic	167 - 37 B.C.E.
Early Roman	37 B.C.E. - 135 C.E.
Late Roman	135 - 325 C.E.

As immediately becomes apparent, the rise of civilisation is a slow and steady one, in which no invocations of deities or aliens should be necessary. The second important feature is that the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem, dated to 587 or 586 B.C.E. is a seminal moment in history (and a point where we can confidently correlate some Biblical accounts with archaeological excavations). Archaeology does not like long peaceful periods of thumb twiddling and making hay. Indeed, the easiest way to identify a layer is if there is a ubiquitous level of carbon and ash—in short, the razing of a city or town.

A Prehistorical Journey

Archaeology, however, can do far more. Let us forget the Bible for a moment, and journey back into the dawn of history (the timeline above may help). It is now evident that man has inhabited the Ancient Near East and Nile Regions for hundreds of thousands of years, and shared this land with our relatives Homo erectus and Neanderthal man. Here we shall take a brief glimpse at some of the major changes along the way. Recent discoveries in Israel have pointed to the possibility of the first use of controlled fire by humans being found here, almost 800,000 years ago. Similarly, we know some of our earliest ancestors walked through the Levant as Oldowan tools (around 2 million years old) made their way from Africa into Georgia.

Crude pear-shaped axes have been discovered (and are classified as belonging to the "Acheullian" stone age culture and probably the products of H. erectus) from the early Ice Ages. Mousterian, another stone age culture, is responsible for tools that, from evidence outside of the Near East, were the products of Neanderthals. Intriguingly, another "first" may also have occurred here, as evidence for grain milling and baking has been discovered at Ohalo, southwest of the Sea of Galilee—agriculture must then have predated agricultural civilisations considerably. This sleepy time came to a close with the end of the last great ice age some 20,000 years ago. After this, the tools grew in variety—blade making and polishing, cultural expression, and composite tools make their appearance.

Middle Stone Age

In the Epipalaeolithic, the Sebilian culture in Egypt is the witness to this transition—they seem to have got the basics of animal domestication, and have become semisedentary, that is, they are no longer permanent nomads like other hunter gatherers (because they are fortunate enough to live in the rich valley of the Nile). In Palestine, the Natufian culture has emerged, with larger social organisation (living in groups of up to 150).

There are permanent bases, from which hunters would move out to seasonal hunting grounds. They are technologically superior to their forebears in the Old Stone Age—having made good use of flint, bone, and stone to create specialised tools. At about 9000 B.C.E. our time machine blacks out, and we are left with an infuriating darkness—archaeologists do not know when the crucial transition from hunter-gatherers to sedentary agricultural societies takes place.

New Stone Age and Pottery

But when we emerge, we have reached the Neolithic (New Stone Age). Here we see a mix of agricultural techniques. Some argue that it was introduced from elsewhere, and the composite of advanced methods of farming and basic hunter gatherer lifestyles show an uneasy reception to these new techniques. Humans have not yet discovered pottery, but Jericho is already a city, built with enormous walls 3 metres wide and 4 metres tall. Defense seems to be the priority. A look at ancient words can give us a clue as to the process of sedentarisation (the process of making permanent settlements): âlu in Akkadian has its linguistic roots in the plural for "tent" while other terms for settlement are linguistically equivalent to our modern "fort." Some burial customs point to the emergence of religious belief—"skull plastering" is done over the dead to recreate lifelike human features. Perhaps we have some sort of belief in the afterlife.

Then, sometime late in the seventh millennium B.C.E., pottery is discovered. Amihai Mazar argues that it developed first through the use of clay for flooring or depressions used as basins, and perhaps a chance fire hardened it and so pottery is "discovered" rather than "invented." Laughlin (wrongly) states that Mazar attributes it to plastered fireplaces. Older theories may imagine an early human sitting down at a fire and tossing clay figurines into the fire to see what happens, and thus we could call pottery an "invention."

Whatever the case, once people discover that portable containers can be created out of this hard substance, it revolutionises our way of life. Not only that, but people decorate their new inventions with innovative cultural symbols, though we can still see interrelationships between the types of pottery, and thus early people have inadvertently taken a major step forward in helping us to understand them.

Chalcolithic Innovation

Things accelerate, and by the fifth millennium, the technology to produce copper emerges, although stone tools are not completely replaced (hence "Chalco"—copper, "lithic"—stone). The main culture of this time is called "Ghassulian" culture. It produces a flurry of copper crafts—the best example being a "Cave of Treasure" at Nahal Mishmar (just west of the Dead Sea) was discovered in 1961 where a cache of over 400 copper objects were discovered, preserved by the dry Judean desert.

Here, we have all variety of tools, advanced metalwork is evident using lost wax casting and combinations of other metals from far afield (probably Armenia). We can conclude that specialists have arrived on the scene—no longer are people just hunter-gatherers or farmers, but a new class of artisans has emerged, capable of skillfully creating figures of ivory, bone, metal, flint, and stone.

At Teleilat Ghassul (from which the name "Ghassulian" comes), settlement patterns show signs of planning with houses built along straight narrow streets. North of Nahal Mishmar is a Chalcolithic temple at En Gedi (from where it is speculated the treasure comes), which has its own inner chamber (like a "Holy of Holies" in the Biblical temple), courtyard, and possibly a living quarter. Again, another sort of specialised class—priests—have emerged, as has a religious institution alongside them.

The Bronze Age

Early Bronze I and the Coming of Cities

We could explore this region much more, but we have to move on. With earlier experimenting of mixing metals, the key breakthrough of melting tin and copper together lead to harder and more useful metals. There is a slight break in continuity between the Early Bronze I (EB I) and the previous Chalcolithic in Palestine, which has led some to conclude that EB I peoples were foreign invaders. For example, oval houses are found in several locations in the north, where the previous period favoured rectangular layouts.

However, growing consensus is that there is an evolutionary connection in pottery style between the ages, and Egyptian contact and development of the agropastoral community is enough to account for the changes in between. Perhaps imported features from Syria, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia had a great influence as well. Whether Egyptian pottery discovered in Palestine represents Egyptian trade, colonisation, or conquest is difficult to tell. However, this period ended by EB II.

Settlements in the south seem to decrease dramatically, and Israel Finkelstein suggests that there were economic advantages of living in highlands, while others theorise a population explosion. At Hartuv, standing stones known as massebot have been discovered, which figure in Canaanite and Israelite religion. Lack of iconographic evidence (that is, religious or cultural figurines) makes it difficult to confidently ascertain their use, and in fact, temples of this period are not identified with too much certainty either.

Early Bronze II-III and Disaster

The first cities arise in the Early Bronze, most of it in EB II-III. Egypt's first dynasty, Sumer's early dynastic period, and Akkadian civilisation are all in the ascent at this point. Of course, these civilisations did not just pop out of thin air, but material conditions (agriculture, trade, etc.) made the construction and habitation of cities possible. For Egypt, a colossus is rising, and its organisational structure changes to accommodate the transition into a nation. Couriers, residents, transporters, retainers, hosts, dependents, headmen, producers and purveyors of food, and service providers are all necessary, and Egypt rises to the challenge with a fundamentally new means of organisation.

Egypt's access to Palestine is largely through the port of Byblos, where Lebanese wood is much sought after. Sumer meanwhile is influential in Syria and in particular by EB III, Ebla (Tel Mardikh) is the centre of literacy and writing. Ebla has its own unique language and writing system, and is the oldest West Semitic language known. It is a precursor to the Ugaritic language, which in turn is a precursor to ancient Hebrew. Akkad plays an influence in this region which will cause the end of the EB III.

Many prominent cities of the Bible emerge during this time, either being rebuilt (Tel Dan (Laish), Megiddo, Ai, Beth Shan, Jericho) or founded (Bethel, Beth-Shemesh, Tell Beit Mirsim, Hazor). Large fortifications are built at major cities—if there is any doubt about Jericho in the Neolithic, there is no such doubt about the purpose of fortifications at Megiddo (25 feet thick), Arad (3800 feet long), and Jericho (repaired 17 times, according to Kathleen Kenyon). Yet by the end of EB III, "the fears that led to such massive fortifications were realized." (Laughlin, p. 50) These fortifications and cities were either abandoned or destroyed by 2300 B.C.E., throughout Palestine and beyond (Ebla fell in 2250 B.C.E. to Naram Sin of Akkad).

Intermediate Bronze Age

With the destruction of these large cities, we lapse back to a quieter time in Palestine—the transition from EB IV to the Middle Bronze. Settlements are sparse, and much of what we can know about this time comes from cemeteries. The most numerous sites from EB IV are at Negev and Sinai are very small and have been called "open air museums" because of the excellent preservation.

Settlement patterns are slightly similar to EB II sites, but also resemble Neolithic sites. The sites uncovered seem to be out of touch of trade routes. Only in some regions around the Transjordan (east of the Dead Sea and Jordan River) do we see much connection with EB III pottery and culture, particularly at Khirbet Iskander where large fortifications and monumental architecture remains.

The whole period seems to be something of a mystery. It has been proposed that Syrian tribes known as the Amurru (Sumerian MAR.TU) or Amorites were the invaders (or perhaps just filled the empty space) and in fact initiated the move to the Middle Bronze. Ilan argues that connections could be found with the north in terms of sun-dried mud bricks (useful in Syria, prone to erosion in Palestine), new burial practices, multiple populations, and pottery similarities.

Another theory argued that these people were Indo-Europeans, based on the similarity in copper torques (necklaces) found in graves in Ras Shamra and Europe. Still another theory reached the same conclusion based on studies of tumuli (burial mounds) and dolmens (also tombs where a stone is laid horizontally over upright stones, and made famous in the Asterix comics), which were peculiar to Europe at this time.

William Dever's views, which are also the dominant view, is that these EB IV/MB I sites (particularly the Negev and Sinai sites) are merely continuations of indigenous culture and not a product of any foreign invasions or migrations. The urbanisation in EB III were extreme, and perhaps these rural settlements preserved their way of life from much earlier times better than most. We can at least confidently state that these people were both sedentary and nomadic. Certainly, a different mix of factors was at work here, and much work remains to be done.

The Middle Bronze Age

However, recovery from the desolation and abandonment at the end of EB III soon comes as we enter the MB II. Again, the dates for the start of MB II are hotly contested, though not particularly exciting, so I should state that the 2000 B.C.E. date (per the timeline above) is considered a "high" chronology, and perhaps a bit conservative. It is here that Albright tries to place the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), and it is the first period where a comparison with the Biblical account might be possible (it would be rather silly to try to fit the Tower of Babel into EB IV/MB I or even a local Noachian deluge (Noah's flood) into EB II/III where the Bible places them).

Again, as in EB III, large structures and fortifications are being built throughout Palestine and illustrate the rise of Canaanite city-states. Some texts written on Egyptian artifacts dated to the twentieth century B.C.E. attest (by name) to the cities of Beth Shan, Jerusalem, Laish (Tel Dan), Shechem, Hazor, and Beth-Shemesh which we have already noticed in EB II. Palaces, temples, defensive gates, and residential buildings are all identifiable in this period, some of them, such as at Megiddo, would continue to be used into the Late Bronze Age. Some 400 sites have been identified in this period, and is clearly a thriving region in contrast to the Intermediate Age before. At Mari (Tell Hariri), the discovery of over 25,000 tablets describing trade records and legal and diplomatic letters shed dramatic light on this region, and we shall hear more about it later.

The Hyksos in Egypt

An important change also takes place in Egypt. The Fifteenth Dynasty is established by a West Semitic people known as the Hyksos, who reign from the 17th to 16th centuries B.C.E.. The Egyptian writer Manetho, in the third century B.C.E. mentions them invading from the north, and he is quoted (and thereby preserved) by the first century CE Jewish historian Josephus (in Contra Apion 1.74, Josephus states that they are the ancestors of the Jews).

They controlled Egypt, and perhaps reached as far as Syria and Baghdad, and introduced such revolutionary weapons as the war chariot and composite bow. Their dominance also helps explain the organisation of Canaanite city-states, where the connections are clear: Palestinian and Phoenician pottery are strikingly similar to those of the Hyksos'. It is possible that because Egypt had a large foreign population, they took over peacefully with the weakening of the royal authority in Egypt. Surely a candidate for the Hebrew enslavement in Egypt?

Well not really. The Hyksos left behind no writings of their own (hence their name is taken from Manetho's description of them). Donald Redford notes that Kamose of Thebes, the Egyptian ruler who rebelled and eventually defeated them considered them destroyers, as did Hatsheput (who referred to them as nomads), about 50 years later. We have evidence of large scale destruction of Egyptian monuments that speak of a violent takeover and victorious reprisals. Their religion also differed from the Biblical Hebrews. They featured Anat, the bloodthirsty consort of Canaanite Ba'al, and a male mountain deity (hr) probably identifiable with Ba'al.

Whatever the case, Kamose laid siege to their capital Avaris, and defeated them (but then dies suddenly). The Hyksos fled to Sharuhen (Tell el-Ajjul), a fort south of the Gaza strip (not quite an Exodus) but Kamose's brother Ah-mose finished the defeat and established the Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt. A long period of Egyptian domination of Palestine would follow soon after.

The Patriarchs in the Middle Bronze?

The Biblical chronology contains two contradictory accounts. If we are to take the Exodus as correlating to a destruction layer found around Jericho, 'Ai and other cities in the 13th century, then the 17th century fits the Hyksos period and Joseph's rule quite nicely (see Exodus 12:40, where the Israelites emerge from Egypt 400 years after arriving). 1 Kings 6:1, however, states that Solomon built his temple 480 years after the Exodus, which means that we require a 15th century date for the Exodus (and therefore, Albright's older age for the period of patriarchs in the turn of the second millennium). Elsewhere, the combined ages of the Judges conflict with the chronology given in 1 Kings. This problem is generally ignored, and dates are assigned as convenient to the debate.

Here we meet our first argument between maximalists and minimalists. Maximalists would generally assign the date for the patriarchal narratives in Genesis to the time of Solomon (10th century B.C.E.), while minimalists would probably push it further back, possibly as late as the Persian period (and of course, arguments have been made for just about every date in between as well). Much of the argument is linguistic, which we will have to leave till we study Genesis itself later in the series. The connection with archaeology is unclear, but I have included it out of possible interest of the reader. Note that nobody here is crediting the authorship to Moses.

Amihai Mazar (as a sample maximalist) argues that the similarities between MB II culture and Genesis are too close to be ignored, and that the traditions in Genesis are extremely old, having passed through oral transmission. He further draws attention to many dissimilarities between MB II and the time of Solomon, and that these could not be simply made up.

John Van Seters (sample minimalist) dates these stories to the exilic and post-exilic periods (6th-5th centuries B.C.E.). He compares them to historiographical work (or antiquities/genealogies) of Greece and Rome that write of the earliest humans and its relation to the rise of nationhood as we see in Genesis. The influence of Mesopotamian, Phoenician and Canaanite myths on Genesis raise large doubts about the age of the stories.

It is clear that establishing a plausible setting in the MB II does not necessitate its placement there. Many scholars have shown that while a story may be consistent with a certain age, it may also be consistent with a whole range of other dates. On the other hand, a late date need not mean that the stories are entirely fictional. The Bible itself lists numerous lost books from which stories have been drawn. Mazar expects too much from the correlations he has drawn, while Van Seters has no way of establishing the originals beneath the layers are late—he has no clear way of denying a pre-tenth century date for the original stories. This debate continues...

The End of the Middle Bronze

After the defeat of the Hyksos at Sharuhen, reprisals continued into Palestine, and J.M. Weinstein and many others conclude that a destruction layer found around several MB sites is limited to those under Hyksos rule, and probably carried out by Egyptians. Donald Redford, on the other hand, concludes that the experience at Avaris and Sharuhen showed that the Egyptians were largely incompetent at laying a seige (Avaris held out for several decades, and Sharuhen for 3 years). Although Redford notes the absence of Egyptian artifacts or governors in ancient lists, this may be explained by the theory that Egypt was not going in search of imperial conquests, but merely carrying out reprisals.

Redford theorises that a new Hurrian nation-state called "Mitanni" may be responsible for this destruction. It rises rapidly in the 16th century, while Babylon, lacking leadership after the demise of Hammurabi is waning, and grows to lead Hurrian culture and dominate Assyria. In fact, Kadesh on the Orontes dominates Palestine, and its rulers bear Mitanni names.

Whatever the case, the fall of the Hyksos, and a consistent destruction layer around 1500 B.C.E. mark the end of the Middle Bronze. Some cities such as Shechem show several destruction layers, and this is a tumultuous time for the inhabitants. With so many cities sacked during this period some would not return for several centuries (Jericho) or never again (Ai). However, northern cities such as Megiddo and Hazor would survive for a while later. Unlike the destruction at the end of EB III, there would be a continuity in Canaanite culture.

We will cover the Late Bronze Age, early Iron Age, and the rise of Israel in the next episode. Stay tuned.

Notes:

[1] I particularly like Larry Laudan's description of Imre Lakatos's position that, "any theory can be made to look good, provided enough bright people commit their talents to it." What Lakatos really writes is, "A brilliant school of scholars (backed by a rich society to finance a few well-planned tests) might succeed in pushing any fantastic programme [however 'absurd] ahead, or, alternatively, if so inclined, in overthrowing any arbitrarily chosen pillar of 'established knowledge.'" in Lakatos & Musgrave Criticism of the Growth of Knowledge, pp.187-8; taken from Laudan, 1996, Beyond Positivism and Relativism Westview Press, p. 19 and 249 n.31. One need only look at the usual fallguys like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany to see that such is possible. The problems of underdetermination, however, are a problem for epistemology and the philosophy of science (see for example, Hugo's introductory series), so I must leave the debate with only the note that archaeologists can (and do) disagree about any and every thing.

[2] Others, however, argue that the enormous stone walls at Jericho were built to stop flooding or sedimentation. It is striking that Jericho would need such strong defense against enemies with primitive weapons amounting to little more than spears and clubs (and certainly no siege weapons of any sort had yet been developed).

[3] Strictly, bronze is made of copper and tin, but copper, in various combinations with tin, lead, or zinc may all be refered to as "bronzes" or "brasses" depending on the alloy content.

[4] Egyptian chronology (dates) follows according to its dynasty of kings. There is little agreement on when exactly the first dynasty (Narmer) emerged, but it is usually between 3200 and 2900 B.C.E. (with the most accepted date around 3100 B.C.E.). If you assign an earlier date, you would be assigning a "high" chronology, while if you assign a later date, you would call it a "low" chronology. The problems of this sort of dating are difficult. For example, the end of EB II follows the end of the Second Dynasty, so depending on your chronology, EB II can fluctuate accordingly, but the general consensus would be around 2700 B.C.E..

Carbon dating is used to calibrate this analysis, but there are several problems: Firstly, carbon dating has a small margin of error, which is sometimes too big for the archaeologists to be satisfied with (particularly when it comes to the emergence of the Israelite kingdom). Secondly, whether an object is EB I or II or III is sometimes a matter of interpretation—delineating the strata is difficult where there are few clear lines. Thus carbon dating may be of no use if it gives a date that allows for either period (and where the competing theories require it to be in one or the other period, the arguments can get quite acrimonious).

[5] A note for the confused here: EB IV = MB I, so the Middle Bronze Age starts here. Where MB I is used in the Intermediate Bronze, then the Middle Bronze actually starts at MB II. So don't be shocked if you read that Bietak is arguing for a MB I age starting around 1900 B.C.E.. What he is referring to is what I call here the MB II. The terminology I'm using follows Albright's older demarcation.

[6] More notes for the confused: Egyptian dynasties are a mishmash of overlapping kings and rulers. So while the 16th dynasty ruled a part of Egypt (Thebes) not controlled by the Hyksos, and were replaced by the 17th dynasty, also in Thebes. Seqenenre Ta'o, the penultimate ruler of the Seventeenth dynasty, died in combat against the Hyksos, and his recovered mummy showed damage from spears and arrows and finally an axe crushing his skull. Kamose was the last king of the 17th dynasty, and therefore Ah-mose (sometimes Ahmosis) "logically" is the one to set up the 18th dynasty. I'm no Egyptologist, so perhaps someone else can explain it better than I can.

[7] It doesn't take much effort to realise that the long ages of the patriarchs is also problematic, considering that all burial sites show a life expectancy of roughly 50 years during the EB and MB. More problems with chronology will become clear as we deal with the Late Bronze Age.