Is the Cultic Installation at Dan Really an Olive Press?
A discussion that started in BAR escalates in the scholarly world
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Footnotes
Bamah refers to a large open-air platform used for cultic rituals such as sacrifices. Sometimes a bamah is called a “high place.”
Independently, the same interpretation was offered by Oded Borowski in “A Note on the ‘Iron Age Cult Installation’ at Tel Dan,” Israel Exploration Journal 32:1 (1982).
“Production and Commerce in Temple Courtyards An Olive Press in the Sacred Precinct at Tel Dan,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR) 243 (1981). Although the date of the BASOR containing Stager and Wolff’s article was 1981, the journal actually appeared in print in 1982. (Frequently scholarly journals fall behind in their publication schedules but continue to date issues according to the planned sequence.) Stager and Wolff’s article was written late in 1981, as a result of hearing Biran present his ideas in Dallas in December 1980.
As BAR was about to go to press, a phone call from Trude Dothan, co-director of the excavations at Tel Miqne (Biblical Ekron), brought us news of yet another oil press, uncovered this past summer at Ekron. This one, dated to the seventh century B.C., is also the type with a central basin flanked by basins on either side. In addition, the excavators found perforated stones and charred wood from a beam. Nearby, Dothan reports, a small horned altar was discovered.
Stager points out that “virgin oil” was still being used in sanctuary lamps in this century in Artas, a Moslem community near Bethlehem. G. M. Crowfoot and L. Baldensperger, in From Cedar to Hyssop (New York, 1932), pp. 28–29, describe the oil manufacturing this way:
“There is a rock face with a shelf in it and there are holes on the floor of the shelf in which the women beat and bruise the olives with a stone pounder. When crushed, the pulp is placed in hot water and the oil skimmed from the top when it rises, and this oil is thought to be very pure and peculiarly suitable for offerings to holy places to be burnt in the lamps hung there.”
Endnotes
George L. Kelm and Amihai Mazar, “Notes and News: Tel Batash (Timnah), 1982,” Israel Exploration Journal 33 (1983), p. 126 and esp. Plate 16:C.
Lawrence E. Stager, “The Finest Olive Oil in Samaria,” Journal of Semitic Studies XXVIII/1 (Spring 1983).