It Is There: Ancient Texts Prove It

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With unqualified certainty, Margreet Steiner asserts that in the Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 B.C.E.), the period just before the Israelite settlement, there was “no … town, let alone a city” of Jerusalem. As far as the archaeological record is concerned, there is, for that period, “simply nothing.”

Interestingly, this gap in occupation escaped the two modern archaeologists who directed excavations on the spur south of the Temple Mount known as the City of David, the oldest inhabited part of Jerusalem. Neither British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon nor Israeli archaeologist Yigal Shiloh, both highly qualified excavators, seemed to notice this supposed gap in occupation. Their publications show no awareness of a gap of hundreds of years in the pottery repertoire between the Middle Bronze Age (2200–1550 B.C.E.) and Iron Age I (1200–1000 B.C.E.). On the contrary, Kenyon’s preliminary reports date the earliest phase of certain structures to the Late Bronze Age.¹ Shiloh also dated potsherds and a specific stratum (Stratum 16) to the Late Bronze Age.²

Indeed, Dr. Steiner herself at one time concluded that there was Late Bronze material from Kenyon’s dig. In her final report, she discussed the earliest phase of one of Kenyon’s trenches. Steiner described certain rock ledges, which she said are probably the result of quarrying, and concluded that “on the basis of the stratigraphy and the pottery this quarry may be dated as early as the Late Bronze Age.” Moreover, Steiner dated most of the pottery drawn in the accompanying plate to the Late Bronze Age.³ It seems Dr. Steiner has now changed her mind, although she does not explain why.

Dr. Steiner, unfortunately, works under a handicap: She did not excavate the site. She only received the material for publication. How can she know—when, for example, she asserts that only 15 Late Bronze sherds were found in a particular terrace fill—how many potsherds were kept for publication and how many were thrown away in the early process of deciding what to keep and what to discard? The issue of whether Jerusalem existed as a city or even a town in the Late Bronze Age has arisen only in quite recent scholarship. I am sure that future excavators will look carefully into this matter and retain for study all Late Bronze fragments. Kenyon and Shiloh, however, were not aware of this issue, and it is misleading to draw statistical conclusions on the basis of what they kept for publication after the daily sorting of pottery in the field.

Steiner’s archaeological conclusions thus clash not only with those of Kenyon and Shiloh, but also, to some extent, with her own previous conclusion.

Steiner must of course also deal with the famous Amarna letters from the Late Bronze Age (14th century B.C.E.), six of which were sent by ‘Abdi-Håeba, king of Jerusalem, to the Egyptian pharaoh. Until recently, historians inferred from these references to Jerusalem that it was the center of a Canaanite city-state governed by its own king, who maintained close relations with Egypt and who dominated either all the hill country of Judah⁴ or only the northern part of Judah.⁵ That was the extent of the scholarly disagreement.

Not long ago, Steiner (and her colleague H.J. Franken) sought to dismiss these references to Jerusalem in the Amarna letters by contending that “Urusalim” is not the same as the city we know as Jerusalem.⁶ Now, from her current article, it appears that Steiner has abandoned this claim. Instead she argues that the references to Jerusalem do not indicate that it is a city or even a town. It was probably just a “royal domain of the pharaoh,” whose “king” was merely the pharaoh’s steward. Steiner goes so far as to consider the possibility that the steward, ‘Abdi-Håeba, “lived in a fortified house somewhere near the Gihon Spring,” and not on the spur known as the City of David.

I believe the Amarna letters referring to Jerusalem deserve a closer look.

• ‘Abdi-Håeba is called the king of Jerusalem (which is written Urusalim). His title, however, was hazannu, which is the equivalent of mayor. This is the same title that all the local rulers in the land of Canaan bore. The title does not imply dynastic succession. But ‘Abdi-Håeba was of the royal dynasty of Jerusalem, as he declares in two of his letters: “The strong arm of the king brought me into my father’s house.”⁷ Perhaps more important, the idea of a steward is completely alien to 043the title hazannu. Hazannu was the title given to the governors of Egyptian towns. The title expresses their personal responsibility for the integrity and safety of their territories.

• It is clear from the letters that ‘Abdi-Håeba lived in a house (bitu) in Jerusalem. It is referred to several times.

• In another “house” in Jerusalem, 50 Egyptian soldiers were temporarily garrisoned.⁸

• ‘Abdi-Håeba sent exceptionally rich caravans to the pharaoh. One such caravan included prisoners, 5,000 unidentified objects and 8 (or 18) porters. Another caravan carried ten slaves. A third included 21 girls and 80 prisoners.⁹

• Especially telling is the fact that one letter explicitly refers to “a town belonging to Jerusalem.”¹⁰ How many other towns “belonged” to Jerusalem we have no way of knowing.

• The ‘Abdi-Håeba letters exhibit several writing peculiarities, as noted by scholar William Moran, one of which involves the way the scribes wrote the names of towns.¹¹ In cuneiform writing, prefixes called determinatives usually define the character of the following word but are not themselves pronounced or translated. However, the use of determinatives in the Jerusalem Armana letters is different from that in other letters from Palestine. Town names in the other letters are usually preceded by the determinative URU. The Jerusalemite scribe, however, used several determinatives to mean “town,” such as KUR and KUR.HåI.A, among others. That means all of the names of places with these determinatives mentioned by the Jerusalem scribe should be translated as the names of towns. It is thus evident that the town of Jerusalem is frequently mentioned in ‘Abdi-Håeba letters. Steiner suggests that the phrase the “lands of Urusalim” refers to a royal domain of the pharaoh. But most references in the letters refer to the town of Jerusalem, not to the lands of Jerusalem.

• Finally, ‘Abdi-Håeba seems to be quite a mover and shaker. In one letter the king of Gath complains that ‘Abdi-Håeba bribed the elders of Keilah, a town in the territory of Gath, to join in “tak[ing] the town from my land.” In his complaint, the king of Gath compares ‘Abdi-Håeba to Lab’ayu, the infamous king of Shechem, who seized towns from Gath. Lab’ayu was an able statesman and strategist bent on territorial expansion. In one letter he is even accused of seeking the destruction of mighty Megiddo.¹² To be compared to Lab’ayu is, in a way, quite a compliment.

‘Abdi-Håeba may well have obtained the prisoners he sent to the pharaoh by raiding nearby territories. On one occasion, a league of lowland kingdoms, including Gezer, Gath and Gath-kirmil, attacked ‘Abdi-Håeba.¹³ All this certainly suggests much more than a royal Egyptian domain with an appointed steward to oversee it.

In short, the Amarna tablets indicate that ‘Abdi-Håeba. lived in a residence within a town called Urusalim (Jerusalem). His status in Canaan and his relations with the Egyptian authorities were no different from those of all the other “mayors” of city-states in Canaan.

Admittedly, Late Bronze Age Jerusalem was no 044metropolis. It was the seat of a local ruler who effectively governed only a limited territory to the north and south of his town, not all the hill country of what was later to become Judah. The large highland areas around his territory were a kind of no man’s land, inhabited by local clans and bands of outlaws. The view that Jerusalem dominated all the area we know as Judah, one of the positions I referred to earlier (see note 4), must be rejected in light of recent archaeological surveys.¹⁴ The kingdom of Jerusalem was simply a small hill-country kingdom. This is the picture that emerges when we carefully consider the archaeological and textual materials in tandem.

Incidentally, Jerusalem is not the only site in which we find an ostensible discrepancy between the Amarna letters and the archaeological data. The same is true for Taanach, in the Jezreel Valley, where excavations revealed only a sparsely inhabited Late Bronze Age II settlement.¹⁵ Yet Taanach was the seat of an independent ruler, who participated in a coalition against Lab’ayu of Shechem.¹⁶ In addition, 13 cuneiform tablets discovered at Taanach leave no doubt that it was a significant city-state in the Late Bronze Age.

A similar case could made for Megiddo. No city wall or other defense line can be dated to the Late Bronze Age,¹⁷ yet we have textual evidence of a defense wall that may refer to either a belt of houses or the massive wall of a palace.¹⁸

These apparent discrepancies between documentary evidence and excavation results should caution against too hasty conclusions on the basis of negative archaeological evidence. The survival of archaeological material depends on many variables. The admitted paucity of Late Bronze Age remains recovered from Jerusalem may be explained as the result of an uninterrupted continuity of settlement for thousands of years. The City of David, where the Late Bronze Age town was located, was built largely on terraces, and it is these terraces that account for much of the excavated area. As is well known, terraces often collapse, and each new city erects its foundations on bedrock, destroying whatever is underneath. The Late Bronze Age buildings in Jerusalem were utterly destroyed by later building activity and their stones robbed and reused, so that only fragments of the former Canaanite city survived the destruction of later periods.

We have seen how easy—should I say tempting?—it is to draw unjustified negative conclusions from scant archaeological materials. In the case of Late Bronze Age Jerusalem, we have the corrective of the Amarna letters. But we should be equally cautious where, as a result of the vagaries of time, we do not have such a fortuitous corrective. I refer, of course, to the situation in Jerusalem with respect to the tenth century B.C.E., the time of the United Monarchy and the reigns of David and Solomon, whose Jerusalem was also located on the terraces of the City of David. For this period we do not have any Amarna letters. But we should nevertheless be equally cautious about drawing conclusions from supposedly negative archaeological evidence.

As Jane Cahill and David Tarler, who are publishing much of the final report of Yigal Shiloh’s excavation, have wisely written: “Beware of historical conclusions based on negative or scanty evidence from small-scale excavations conducted at hill country sites such as Jerusalem. All too often, such negative or scanty evidence reflects more on a site’s present state of preservation than on its historical development.”¹⁹