Moab Comes to Life
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Footnotes
See Sigfried Horn, ‘Why the Moabite Stone Was Blown to Pieces,’ BAR 22:03.
See André Lemaire, “Fragments from the Book of Balaam Found at Deir Alla: Text Foretells Cosmic Disaster,” BAR 11:05.
See Floyd S. Fierman, “Rabbi Nelson Glueck: An Archaeologist’s Secret Life in the Service of the OSS,” BAR 12:05.
Rami Arav, Richard A. Freund and John F. Shroder, Jr., “Bethsaida Rediscovered,” BAR 26:01.
See Ze’ev Herzog, Miriam Aharoni and Anson F. Rainey, “Arad—An Ancient Israelite Fortress with a Temple to Yahweh,” BAR 13:02.
See Avraham Biran, “Sacred Spaces: Of Standing Stones, High Places and Cult Objects at Tel Dan,” BAR 21:05; reprinted as Chapter Seven in Celebrating Avraham (Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992), p. 92.
For ‘En Hatzeva, see Rudolf Cohen and Yigal Yisrael, “Smashing the Idols: Piecing Together an Edomite Shrine in Judah,” BAR 22:04. For Horvat Qitmit, see Itzhaq Beit-Arieh, “New Light on the Edomites,’ BAR 14:02.
Endnotes
There is actually little doubt that Kemosh was the chief god of the Moabites; he is the prime mover behind all the main accomplishments of which King Mesha boasted in his famous inscription, the “Moabite Stone.” For a convenient edition and commentaries, see A. Dearman, ed., Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Archaeology and Biblical Studies 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989); his name also appears, as the divine element, in the names of many ancient Moabites. See N. Avigad and B. Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem, 1997), p. 508.
The inhabitants of the Madaba plains cultivated superb vineyards long after the disappearance of Moab. The vine is central in the iconography of the numerous mosaics from Byzantine times, published in M. Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993).
On this term see M. Coogan and H. Tadmor, II Kings (Anchor Bible 11; New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 43.
On Moab’s tribute of lambs, see also Isaiah 16:1. In modern times, the 19th-century traveler Henry Baker Tristram left eyewitness comments that lend some plausibility to those figures (The Land of Moab. Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan [London: John Murray, 2nd ed. 1874], pp. 223–24).
See M. P. Graham, “The Discovery and Reconstruction of the Mesha Inscription,” pp. 41–92 in A. Dearman, ed., Studies in the Mesha Inscription and Moab (Archaeology and Biblical Studies 2; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989).