So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
– Genesis 22:3 (ESV)
Analysis of teeth from an ancient donkey unearthed in Israel has yielded evidence for the oldest known use of a bridle bit (mouthpiece) in the Near East. The surprise for the authors of the study released earlier this summer in the journal PLOS One came when they determined the date for the finds as the Early Bronze period or around 2,700 BC.
According to an article in the Times of Israel, this would push back the date for the first use of bits in the region by some 700 years and overturn the previous thinking that the bit first came into the Israel and the Levant area with the introduction of the horse from central Asia, which is believed to have occurred at the start of the Middle Bronze era, conventionally dated to around 2,000 BC.
For those interested in the validity of the Bible, the findings of this study also give a key insight into how to think about the relation between biblical history and archaeological evidence.
“This is significant because it demonstrates how early domestic donkeys were controlled, and adds substantially to our knowledge of the history of donkey domestication and evolution of riding and equestrian technology,” said the paper’s lead author, Professor Haskel Greenfield, of the University of Manitoba.
The remains of four donkeys were found buried at the biblical city of Gath, home to the giant Goliath who was killed by David as a youth. The site is known today as Tell es-Safi and lies about halfway between Jerusalem and the coastal city of Ashkelon.
For the past twenty years, Aren Maeir, an archaeologist from Bar-Ilan University, has led the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project. The skeletons of the donkeys were excavated a decade ago, but have only intensely been studied by an international team of researchers for the last three years. A careful study of the wear patterns on teeth indicated clear evidence of the use of a soft bit made of rope or wood.
Commenting on the paradigm that has been overturned by the age of this find, Maeir stated, “Only later, from the Middle Bronze Age and onward (after 2000 BC), was it thought that bits, in particular metal bits, were used – first with horses that were introduced to the Near East at the time, and subsequently with other equids, such as donkeys.”
Archaeological evidence for the use of a metal bit was previously found in the mouth of a buried donkey at Tel Haror, Israel in the Negev. It was dated to the 1600s BC. The copper bit was thought to be part of a ritual burial and was excavated by Professor Guy Bar-Oz.
Bits lay in a gap between the front teeth and molars of donkeys and horses. They allowed greater control of for someone riding the animal as opposed to a tether or lead line that was either fastened to a halter around the horse’s face or a ring that ran through the nose. That method simply prevents an animal from wandering as they follow the one pulling the tether. The new technology of a bit changed that.
Different pressures are placed on a bit by a set of reins held by a rider (or a driver of a cart), which connect to the bit’s ends. These pressures coax the animal to maneuver in different ways, such as turning, stopping and even backing up. Over time, teeth become worn where the bit bumps or rubs against the teeth.
The Bible’s first indication of donkeys being used as beasts of burden is with Abraham in the 1900s BC. It is not clear if a bit was employed in that account or not.
Scholars had previously thought that nose rings were the way donkeys were controlled in this period because of several depictions of nose-ring use in Old Assyrian art. It turns out that those depictions didn’t tell the whole story. This shows the need for caution in drawing overreaching conclusions from limited amounts of data.
Just because nose rings were a common means of controlling donkeys, and no scene depicting bit use had yet been found, that is not grounds for concluding that bits were not in use in that era. This highlights a popular maxim in archaeology that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
The analysis of dental isotopes revealed that this particular donkey was born in Egypt and was imported to Gath in the last months of its life. This gives archaeologists new clues about international trade at the time.
The donkeys were found buried under the floors of Canaanite/Philistine houses in a manner showing that they were ritualistically sacrificed before construction of the residence – perhaps a ritual invoking protection for the home.
Foundation sacrifices of donkeys are also found at other Bronze Age sites including at Avaris in the Nile Delta many centuries later. These burials indicate the importance of the donkey in that society, most likely as a beast of burden that was also used in trade.
Avaris also contains evidence matching the history of the early Israelites in Egypt found in the books of Genesis and Exodus. Donkey sacrifice is not associated with later Jewish sites that held them to be ritually unclean.
Were Chariots in Egypt for a Middle Kingdom Exodus?
The lessons of this find extend to one of the arguments made against the possibility of the Exodus occurring at the end of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (13th Dynasty) as proposed by Egyptologist, David Rohl in numerous booksand the film Patterns of Evidence: The Exodus. Rohl thinks Egypt’s timeline has been overstretched by centuries, and the dates for everything before the period of this overstretching would need to be reduced by 2-3 centuries. The result would be that the end of the 13th Dynasty, which is normally dated in the 1600s BC, would shift forward to the 1400s BC and align with the Bible’s date for Exodus.
So he [Pharaoh] made ready his chariot and took his army with him, and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. – Exodus 14:6-7 (ESV)
Those who oppose this theory are generally satisfied that scholars have accurately constructed Egypt’s timeline – to within one or two decades of the true dates. Another argument they put forward is that the Exodus could not have happened at the end of the Middle Kingdom because Pharaoh’s army that pursued Moses and the Israelites is said to have included a large chariot force, but Egypt did not have chariots at this time according to the majority view.
In his interview with Patterns of Evidence, Egyptologist James Hoffmeier expressed this view. “Really, chariotry becomes very important in the middle part of the 18th Dynasty,” Hoffmeier stated. “In the time of Ramesses it reaches its zenith. We have the stables at Per Ramesses, discovered by Edgar Push that can house 500 horses. We have no possibility of that size of a chariotry in the Hyksos period. They may have had a few horses and chariots, but to have a major chariotry that could send 600 chariots after the Israelites, I don’t think that fits that earlier period.”
In the standard view, chariots first arrived in Egypt around 1650 BC (100 years before the New Kingdom), with the incursion of the foreign Hyksos. Most historians propose that one of the reasons the Hyksos were able to overcome the mighty Egyptians was that the Hyksos had chariots and the Egyptians didn’t. The Hyksos (and their chariots) occupied the northern portions of Egypt for more than a century before the first pharaoh of the New Kingdom expelled them.
Horses would not have pulled chariots very effectively (especially with the speed and maneuverability required for battle) without the essential piece of equipment – the bit. The question is, was this technology much delayed in its entrance into Egypt?
Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand, and clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain about his neck. And he made him ride in his second chariot. And they called out before him, “Bow the knee!” Thus he set him over all the land of Egypt.
– Genesis 41:42-43 (ESV)
And there went up with him both chariots and horsemen. It was a very great company.
– Genesis 50:9 (ESV)
There are good reasons to question this challenge against an earlier Exodus. In the Bible, Joseph was given Pharaoh’s second chariot to ride, and this was hundreds of years before the Exodus and before chariots were supposedly first used by the Egyptians. About 26 years later, a company of horsemen and chariots are said to have joined Joseph in the trip to bury his father Jacob in Canaan (see verses above). So if the Bible’s history is accurate, then the standard theory must be wrong.
Additionally, there is archaeological and inscriptional evidence for horses and chariots in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom. The remains of a horse were actually found in the southern super-fortress of Buhen from the end of the Middle Kingdom. Chariot use is generally understood to have come earlier than riding horseback in the ancient Near East. So finding evidence of horses would normally establish the use of chariots in Egypt at this time. Buhen would fall to the Kushites soon after the period that the horse remains were from – about the same time as the Hyksos took over northern Egypt. Could this be another sign of the collapse of Egypt due to the repercussions of the biblical exodus?
Moreover, David Rohl, in his book Pharaohs and Kings, highlights a depiction of the son of Pharaoh Dudimose (13th Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom), along with his chariot gloves. Prince Khonsuemwaset and his wife are seen seated on this stela fragment, with symbols of their daily life underneath; a mirror, jewelry box and riding gloves.
In Egypt’s oppressively hot climate, leather gloves were not known to be worn except by charioteers. The gloves depicted with Prince Khonsuemwaset in this scene are in the same artistic style as those that identify later New Kingdom figures as holding the rank of ‘Master of Horse’ that were the head of the chariot force.
If Rohl’s proposal is accurate, then the reason that the Hyksos were able to dominate Egypt at the end of the 13th Dynasty was not because the Egyptians did not yet use chariots, but rather because Egypt had been shattered by the events of the exodus, and its army lay at the bottom of the sea.
Until the recent discovery of the use of bits for ancient donkeys, the accepted date for their first use may have been in error by 700 years. The same principle may be in play with the majority view for the first use of chariots in Egypt.
Only about a half dozen chariots from all of ancient Egypt’s history have been discovered. Stables in Egypt from the Middle Kingdom that would verify a large chariot force, have not yet been found. However, with so little of Egypt’s past surviving to today, that is no reason to exclude the idea that Egypt had chariots in the 13th Dynasty. Therefore, the current lack of direct evidence for chariots should not be used as a reason to dismiss the feasibility of the exodus occurring in the Middle Kingdom. A pattern of evidence is forming that indicates that they did actually exist in Egypt at that time.
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Top Image: An Early Bronze Age donkey skeleton unearthed at the biblical city of Gath. (photo credit: Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project)
