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Reactivating Remembrance

Interactive Inscriptions from Mt. Gerizim

By Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme

What went on in ancient sanctuaries? In spite of the information we get from texts such as the Hebrew Bible, from inscriptions and iconography, and from archaeology, we know precious little about what “ordinary people” did when they visited a temple in ancient Palestine. Yet we do have some clues. The dedicatory inscriptions from the Yahweh temple on Mt. Gerizim help us envision what a visit to an ancient sanctuary may have entailed. First, however, before reconstructing this everyday worship, a brief introduction to the temple on Mt. Gerizim and to the inscriptions excavated there in the 1990s is […]

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Endnotes

1.
For more detailed information on the sanctuary and the city on Mt. Gerizim, see Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, Before the God in This Place for Good Remembrance: A Comparative Analysis of the Aramaic Votive Inscriptions from Mount Gerizim (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013); Yitzhak Magen, Haggai Misgav, and Levana Tsfania, Mount Gerizim Excavations Volume 1: The Aramaic, Hebrew and Samaritan Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004); Yitzhak Magen, Mount Gerizim Excavations Volume 2: A Temple City (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2008).

2.
A couple of stonecutter workshops have been excavated in the city on Mt. Gerizim, and they may have been independent businesses that were commissioned by the temple or by individual worshipers, but they may also have been temple-run and temple-owned.

3.
There is only an indirect link between the Hebrew Bible and the sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim, and that link is the deity Yahweh. Yahweh was worshiped by the people who visited the sanctuary on Gerizim and by the authors of the Hebrew Bible, but there is no indication that the people on Gerizim were familiar with the Hebrew Bible. Nevertheless, the sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim is one of relatively few surviving Yahweh sanctuaries, and the Hebrew Bible is by far the most extensive and theologically informative ‘yahwistic’ text that we have. In this sense, it seems worthwhile to consider—with all the necessary caveats—how the text and the sanctuary may have been informed by each other.

4.
See Delbert R. Hillers and Leonora Cussini, Palmyrene Aramaic Texts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

5. The inscriptions from Hatra have been numbered according to the order in which they were found since 1951. In 1981 Francesco Vattioni’s catalog of inscriptions appeared containing nos. 1-341, Le Iscrizioni di Hatra. Supplemento n. 28 agli ANNALI, vol. 41, fasc. 3 (Napoli: Istituto Orientale di Napoli), and in 1991 came Basile Aggoula’s catalog containing nos. 1-387, Inventaire des inscriptions hatréennes (Paris: P. Geuthner). The inscription cited here is Hatra no. 101.