Summary: A look at ancient inscriptions made on vessels, graffiti and monuments from the biblical world shows some surprising findings, including some intersections with biblical studies.
They made the plate of the holy crown of pure gold, and wrote on it an inscription, like the engraving of a signet, “Holy to the LORD.” – Ex 39:30 (ESV)
“Set in Stone” – Messages with Biblical Connections
People tend to infer that statements which appear in writing are more durable and less inclined to dispute or controversy, hence the phrase “set in stone.” A written message tends to transcend time, at least as long as the written message lasts. Memories fail, friable sources deteriorate, but something written in stone (or on clay) tends to last longer. People may argue about what the statement(s) may mean, but the written source remains the starting point for most discussions.
The ancient Mesopotamians wrote predominantly in cuneiform on clay tablets.1 Huge quantities of these have come to light in excavations and populate many of our great museums. Egypt generally used papyrus, which while friable, could survive quite long in the normally dry atmosphere and relatively constant temperatures of Egypt. Of course, both civilizations wrote on stone as well and the Egyptian hieroglyphs have become iconic inscriptions that have fascinated humanity for centuries.
For ancient Canaan and Palestine, inscriptions usually were on stone, clay, and leather or parchment (a more refined version of leather). Ostraca were subjects of the discussion in the previous installment of this series, but this one focuses more on “formal” types of inscriptions.2 (See Dr. Manor’s Thinker on post-it-notes discovered from Bible times)
It is often thought that more formal inscriptions reflect the thinking and attitudes of the elite on the assumption that few of the lower classes were literate.3 Hence some argue that formal inscriptions do not reflect the thinking or beliefs of the masses, but they are skewed to reflect the leaders and elite. We have evidence in some periods, however, that writing was not always limited to the elite.
Ideally, archaeologists and historians would have access to two major sources of evidence—artifacts and texts. Regretfully, these are often divorced from their original contexts and from each other. We, thus, are sometimes adrift on exactly how to proceed. While artifacts alone may permit interpretive inferences,4 ideally we like to find inscriptions that reflect the thinking of the people relative to the artifacts.
Inscriptions, however, pose their own sets of challenges. Just as we sometimes misunderstand what our friends might say, that confusion can be compounded when we deal with inscriptional material that is culturally, linguistically, and geographically removed from us. It is critical to consider as many avenues of contextual evidence that might be available so we can more accurately assess the meanings of the inscriptions. A further complication is that inscriptions are usually fragmentary and/or abraded thus losing parts of the text.5 Sometimes the only part of a preserved “text” is a single letter (or even a fragment of a letter), which clearly opens the question of meaning.
C. W. Ceram well describes the tension between the disciplines of archaeology and textual studies: “The dominance of philology in the study of antiquity—the result of a long tradition of textual criticism and the relatively late beginnings of serious excavation—has frequently led to grotesque absurdities. Eminent scholars, insisting on the authority of their texts, have denied what everyone could see plainly with his own eyes. But the converse has also been true: diggers with the spade have produced ‘results’ which have had to be checked and rectified by the tedious toil of decipherers and philologists. Nowadays there can be little doubt that the diggers and the philologists are both servants of the selfsame master: the historian” (98).
This brief article cannot begin to discuss the array of issues connected with the study of inscriptions, but it will survey a few of the kinds of inscriptions that have come to light in the biblical world, some of which intersect with biblical studies. The survey will briefly consider inscriptions on vessels (i.e., storage jars, jugs, etc.), graffiti, monumental inscriptions, and other types of written works.
An important caveat is to realize that inscriptions from the area of ancient Canaan, Israel, and Palestine are quite rare! In over thirty-five seasons of excavation at Tel Beth-Shemesh, only six inscriptions have come to light. One appears to be an Ugaritic abecedary6 and the other five are single words or fragments of words. While some sites from ancient Canaan/Israel/Palestine have yielded more numerous inscriptions, none have approached the mass of inscriptions that have characterized some of the sites in Mesopotamia, Syria, or Egypt.
Inscriptions on Vessels
Inscriptions on vessels might reflect a host of purposes, but they occasionally will note ownership or label the contents. Sometimes the purpose of the inscription will remain unknown. These usually were written either in ink or incised. Incised inscriptions can be placed on the vessel before it is fired or scratched or “chiseled” into the vessel after it is fired. One can differentiate between before- or after-firing by examining whether there are ridges caused during the incision process when the tool squeezes some of the wet clay aside as the impression occurs. The difference might imply the purpose of the vessel (before firing) or if it was later appropriated to a purpose.
The non-Yahwistic character of Canaan clearly appears in an inscription from the site of Lachish. The vessel came from what is called the “Fosse Temple” dating from ca. 1250-1200 BC. The alphabetic inscription appears in red ink and accompanies some stylized artwork consisting of two ibexes nibbling at the limbs of a tree. The tree looks like a Hebrew menorah (see photo at top). Over the drawing the text translates either to: “Mattan; a tribute to my Lady ’Elat” or “A gift: a lamb for my Lady ’Elat” (Cross, “Evolution” 20-21). ’Elat was considered the fertility consort of the Canaanite god ’El (King and Stager 303), who also became known as Asherah (Frayne and Stuckey 84).
A vessel discovered at the Philistine site of Tel Miqne/Ekron reflects similar non-Yahwistic devotions of people. The ink inscriptions indicate that the vessel is “holy” (qdš) and is dedicated to Asherah (l’šrt; Dothan and Gitin 1058). Another inscription on the vessel identifies its contents as [olive] “oil” (šmn; Dothan and Gitin 1058). To dedicate such a commodity is not surprising since Ekron was a major producer of olive oil during the seventh century BC, and olive oil was such a pervasively used product.
The excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa on the ridge above the Elah Valley uncovered a storage jar with an inscription incised into the shoulder. The level in which the jar was found dates to the late 11th-10th century BC. The first part of the inscription is missing and/or obscured, but the remainder is fairly clear and reads: “…’šb‘l bn bd‘ “ [with vowels: ’Ishba‘al ben Beda’]; see Garfinkel, Golub, Misgav, and Ganor). Literally, the first word—’Ishba‘al—translates to “man of Baal” and is the same name as one of Saul’s sons (Eshbaal; 1 Chr. 8:33; 9:39) who generally was known as Ish-bosheth in the Samuel narratives (e.g., 2 Sam. 2:10; 4:1et al.).7 A name which includes a divine name is often referred to as a theophoric name.
The excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh have also uncovered a fragment of an inscription which preserves the term ba‘al (see photo below). This sherd dates from ca. 1150-1100 BC (McCarter, Bunimovitz, and Lederman 36-40), slightly earlier than the one from Khirbet Qeiyafa. Ba‘al appears to be the end of a theophoric name, the beginning of which is missing with the exception of the last letter (h) of the previous word. The authors suggest that the inscription identified the owner and further indicated the capacity of the contents of the store jar (Ibid 41-42).
A number of such theophoric names appear in the Bible. Some of them include the term Baal, while others include parts of the name of Yahweh (e.g., Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.; the English “-jah” and “-iah” endings reflect abbreviations of the first part of the Hebrew name “Yahweh”).8 Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s friend, had a son named Merib-baal (1 Chr. 8:33; 9:39), but in the Samuel narratives he was better known as Mephibosheth (cf. 2 Sam. 9). He was Jonathan’s son upon whom David bestowed his kindness to honor his promise to Jonathan to care for his surviving offspring (cf. 1 Sam. 20:13-17; 2 Sam. 9:1, 7).
The appearance of the name Ba‘al to the personal names of Israelites raises some interesting questions. It is important, however, to understand that the Canaanite term ba‘al does not always refer to the deity by that name. The Canaanite/Hebrew term ba‘al is a generic term meaning “owner, lord [in the sense of “master” —DW.M], husband, landowner, citizen” (Koehler and Baumgartner 1:142-43). It also becomes the name of the chief Canaanite deity because of his perceived role as a master, thus becoming a proper name as well. It is, therefore, unclear if the presence of the term ba‘al in formal names early in Israel’s history reflects a divine recognition, or if it is an honorific description of the person’s hope or expectation. That said, however, it would have been easy for people to confuse the term to refer to the deity known by that same name.
It is interesting that there are no occurrences of ba‘al as a part of a person’s name in the territory of Judah once the United Monarchy ends (ca. 930 BC), whereas such names with ba‘al have come to light in the archaeological record in the northern kingdom of Samaria (Garfinkel, Golub, Misgav, and Ganor 230). (See R. Brian Rickett’s Thinker on the discovery of a temple at Lachish)
Another inscription from Tel Beth-Shemesh was preserved on the interior of a bowl dating from the late 8th century BC—when the site was a victim of Sennacherib’s campaign (i.e., 701 BC; cf. the pervasiveness of his campaign in 2 Kings 18:13 and on the Taylor Prism). The bowl came from the ruins of a house and preserved the Hebrew term qdš (qodeš) chiseled in large letters into the surface (below).9
The Hebrew word qodeš means “holy,” implying some specialized, religious use for the bowl. On a certain level, this inference is not surprising. The town of Beth-Shemesh was occupied by Levites and was so designated in Joshua (19:13-16). Furthermore, the Levites at Beth-Shemesh facilitated the sacrifice of the cattle that accompanied the return of the Ark of the Covenant when the Philistines sent it back to Israelite custody (1 Sam. 6:13-15).
What the function of the “holy” bowl was, however, remains elusive. Leviticus indicates that the priests were to mediate between divine issues and the people (Lev. 10:10); Ezekiel condemned priests who failed to do so (Ezek. 22:26). The book of Numbers (18:8-20) prescribes a variety of offerings that the people were to share with the priests. Perhaps this bowl was a collection receptacle for such special contributions (for a more complete discussion of the bowl and its implications, see Manor, “Priest’s House”).
Graffiti
Once people learned to write (and/or draw) it is not surprising that graffiti (plural; singular is “graffito”) would become a mode of expression. In contrast with monumental inscriptions which tend to reflect “official” decrees, beliefs, and expectations, graffiti more likely will reflect the will or sentiments of the people and often even counter-cultural perspectives. Burnett notes (45-47) that during the Greco-Roman period graffiti might be written by the elite as well as commoners and “were created for varied reasons. Some of these messages boast about sexual encounters, others about the graffitist’s civic pride or favorite gladiator, and still others are word puzzles” (45).
Examples of graffiti can help put some beliefs in perspective. The site of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (also known as Horvat Teman) is in the southern Negeb near the border of modern Egypt and Israel. It dates from the late 9th to the early 8th centuries BC (Carmi and Segal 61-63). It appears to be a religious site which was frequented by “desert travelers, the caravan drivers and to the pilgrims to Sinai and Mt. Horeb” (Meshel, “Nature” 68). The ruins preserve dozens of inscriptions, some of which were on plaster coating the walls and others on storage jars. The graffiti nature of some of the images are clear from the layering of the various drawings, letters, and statements as shown on the drawing of one of the storage jars below.
Among the inscriptions from the plaster were statements encouraging blessings to Baal, the god of the Canaanites, whose name is in parallel with a reference to El (Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel 110-14). Another refers to YHWH who is identified as the god of Teman (Ibid 105-07).
A syncretistic perspective is apparent when some of the inscriptions join “[Y]HWH of Teman and His asherah…” (Ibid; Teman apparently refers to the geographical region south-southeast of ancient Israel/Judah). However, reflecting ancient Israel itself was an inscription on a storage jar that offers blessings of a person to “YHWH of Shômrôn (Samaria) and to His asherah” (Ibid 87- 91).
One might argue that such appearances of Asherah might be expected in either Teman or the northern kingdom of Israel/Samaria. The Bible clearly indicates that Ahab fostered the worship of Baal and Asherah (cf. 1 Kgs. 16:29-33; 18:19; 2 Kgs. 17:15-16; Ahab’s reign began about 875 BC). However, a similar inscription connecting YHWH with “his Asherah” (see photo below) has come to light in the heartland of Judah at a site known as Khirbet el-Qôm, twelve miles west of Hebron and dating from the mid-eighth century BC (Dever; Zevit). Syncretistic worship clearly occurred in Judah as well (this would be roughly the time of the prophets Amos and Micah, with Isaiah’s career just on the horizon; cf. Mic. 5:14). (Researcher uses inscriptions to confirm existence of 53 people in the Bible)
A major question is to what does the term asherah refer? The above references in italics to asherah reflect the translations offered by the excavators and scholars connected directly with the excavation project. The scholarly world’s interpretation of asherah ranges from a reference to a sacred pole object (Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel 130-32) to a reference to the female deity of the Canaanite world who had been considered the mother goddess and consort of El (cf. Ackerman; Manor, “Archaeological…,” 212-96).10
A rather jarring graffito with an accompanying drawing comes from the Palatine Hill in Rome, one of the seven hills on which Rome rests (see drawing above).
The drawing dates from the late second or early third century AD (Ferguson, Backgrounds 559-61; Evans 123) and was etched on a plaster wall. It portrays a man standing in front of a person hanging on a cross, who has the head of a donkey. The sloppily executed inscription translates to: “Alexamenos worships (his) god” (Burnett 13).11 While the meaning is open to interpretation, the predominant one argues that it is a sarcastic portrayal of a man worshiping Jesus. Evans notes (124, n. 48): “The Jewish roots of the Christian movement may well explain the similar mockery of Jesus. From Tertullian (To the Heathen 1.14.1-4) we know that Christians were accused of worshipping a deity whose head was that of a donkey.” Finegan (373) aptly notes Paul’s remark from 1 Corinthians 1:18: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,…”
The drawing and statement certainly reflect the graffitist’s distorted perception of Christianity. Christianity was misunderstood (sometime perhaps deliberately) and thus maligned with a growing caricature of misrepresentation in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD (see Ferguson, Church 64-85).
Look forward to Part Two of this article next week. Until then, keep thinking!
TOP PHOTO: A vessel from the “Fosse Temple” found at Lachish. (credit: DW.Manor, Courtesy of Israel Museum)
Notes:
1 Excavations have additionally uncovered ivory and wooden writing boards. These had raised edges surrounding a shallow, recessed surface which was coated with a bees wax compound; on this wax surface the scribes would incise either cuneiform or alphabetic script. When excavating at Nimrud, Mallowan discovered examples of such tablets from a well dating from the late 8th century BC. One set from Nimrud comprised several leaves of ivory (which Agatha Christie, Mallowan’s wife, tediously restored); another set was made of walnut, which still preserved some cuneiform characters in the wax (Oates and Oates 97-99, 219-20; photo of Nimrud tablets on p. 104). Evidence for such writing tablets date at least as far back as the 14th century BC, the date from which a set was discovered in the Ulu Burun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey (Payton).
2 For the purposes of this article, “ostraca” refers to pieces of pottery or stone that were used (i.e., recycled) to serve as the medium on which the written data appear. Inscriptions, on the other hand, were written messages or words on a more primary medium.
3 The discussion of the extent of literacy in the ancient world has not found a consensus. A good survey of the discussion appears in Niditch (39-59).
4 One may draw inferences from a convergence of various lines of evidence, hence the larger contexts of the finds. Among these are the dates of the artifacts in time (and one must exercise care to determine if the artifacts are in their original locations and use, or if they might have been curated by later peoples, or even be random components of secondary deposits such as fill or aggregate). An additional avenue for interpretation is the arrangement of artifacts in relation to other artifacts (i.e., does the clustering of these artifacts point to a particular function such as food preparation, religious expression, animal care, etc.). Ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological insights also provide valuable insights with which to interpret. While one may view artifacts as things to be used, they usually reflect some aspect of how the person or culture may have intended to use them or what they represented to the culture. This may permit one to infer what the people were thinking. An introduction to “Cognitive Archaeology, Art, and Religion” appears in Renfrew and Bahn (393-428).
5 In fairness, however, one can often reasonably reconstruct sections of missing text, especially when contextual constraints limit the options of what might have fit the physical voids in the text.
6 The initial assessment of the Ugaritic inscription concluded that “no satisfactory decipherment has been made” (Grant and Wright 46). Later evaluations with additional comparative material concluded that the Ugaritic inscription is a variant abecedary (Sanders).
7 There is no reason whatsoever to equate the person noted in this inscription as the son of Saul. His father is clearly identified as Beda‘.
8 Hebrew does not actually have a “j” sound; the Hebrew letter is more accurately reflected as an “i” or “y” sound.
9 The initial discovery of the incision was on one sherd which preserved the last letter (which looks like a “W” and represents the “sh” sound) along with small fragments of the first two letters. The photograph shows the initial sherd on which the “W” shaped letter appears. The remainder of the inscription was found later in the day as we were washing the pottery.
10 The bibliography discussing the significance of the reference to asherah in this inscription is massive and way beyond the scope of this article. Ahituv, Eshel, and Meshel (137, n. 23) refer the readers to a decent array of sources that one may pursue.
11 The plaster drawing is now housed in the Palatine Museum (Evans 123).
Bibliography:
Ackerman, Susan. “Asherah.” Pp. 297-99 in New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 1.Ed. K. D. Sakenfeld. Nashville: Abingdon, 2006.
Ahituv, Shmuel, Esther Eshel, and Ze’ev Meshel. “The Inscriptions.” Pp. 73-142 in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border. Ed. Z. Meshel. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012.
Burnett, D. Clint. Studying the New Testament through Inscriptions. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2020.
Carmi, Israel and Dror Segal. “ 14 C Dates from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud.” Pp. 61-63 in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border. Ed. Z. Meshel. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012.
Ceram, C. W. A Picture History of Archaeology. London: Thames & Hudson, 1962.
Cross, Frank Moore, Jr. “The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 134 (1954): 15-24.
Dever, William G. “Qôm, Khirbet el-.” Pp. 1233-35 in New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 4. Ed. E. Stern. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Carta, 1993.
Dothan, Trude and Seymour Gitin. “Miqne, Tel (Ekron).” Pp. 1051-59 in New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, vol. 3. Ed. E. Stern. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1992.
Evans, Craig A. Jesus and the Remains of his Day. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2015.
Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds of Early Christianity. 2d ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.
Ferguson, Everett. Church History, vol. 1: From Christ to Pre-Reformation. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.
Finegan, Jack. Light from the Ancient Past: The Archaeological Background of Judaism and Christianity. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University, 1959.
Frayne, Douglas R. and Johanna H. Stuckey. A Handbook of Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East. University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2021.
Garfinkel, Yosef, M. R. Golub, H. Misgav, and S. Ganor. “The ’Išba‘al Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 373 (2015): 217-33.
Grant, Elihu and G. Ernest Wright. Ain Shems Excavations (Palestine), Pt. V (Text). Haverford: Haverford College, 1939.
King, Philip J. and Lawrence E. Stager. Life in Biblical Israel. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
Koehler, L. and W. Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, vol. 1. Trans. and ed. M. E. J. Richardson. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994.
Manor, Dale W. An Archaeological Commentary on the Josianic Reforms. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Arizona. Ann Arbor: UMI, 1995.
Manor, Dale W. “A Priest’s House at Beth-Shemesh? An Incised qdš Bowl.” Pp. 470-79 in Tel Beth-Shemesh: A Border Community in Judah, vol. 2. Eds. S. Bunimovitz and Z. Lederman. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology, 2016.
McCarter, P. Kyle, S. Bunimovitz, and Z. Lederman. “An Archaic Ba‘l Inscription from Tel Beth-Shemesh.” Tel Aviv 38 (2011): 35-49.
Meshel, Ze’ev. “The Nature of the Site and its Biblical Background.” Pp. 65-9 in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border. Ed. Z. Meshel. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012.
Niditch, Susan. Oral Word and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996.
Oates, Joan and David Oates. Nimrud: An Assyrian Imperial City Revealed. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, 2001.
Payton, Robert. “The Ulu Burun Writing-Board Set.” Anatolian Studies 41 (1991): 99-106. JSTOR, 9 Apr 2021.
Renfrew, Colin and Paul Bahn. Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice. 4th ed. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
Sanders, Seth. “Beth Shemesh 1: Alphabetic Cuneiform Abecedary.” Pp. 157-60 in Cuneiform in Canaan: Cuneiform Sources from the Land of Israel in Ancient Times. Eds. W. Horowitz and T. Oshima. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2006.
Zevit, Ziony. “The Khirbet el-Qom Inscription Mentioning a Goddess.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 255 (1984): 39-47.
Dale W. Manor, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus Archaeology and Hebrew Bible Harding University Field Director of the Tel Beth-Shemesh Excavations, Israel
NOTE: Not every view expressed by scholars contributing Thinker articles necessarily reflects the views of Patterns of Evidence. We include perspectives from various sides of debates on biblical matters so that readers can become familiar with the different arguments involved. – Keep Thinking!
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