Reactivating Remembrance

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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 necessary.

On Mt. Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus in the West Bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to Yahweh. The sanctuary was constructed during the Persian period 066around 450 B.C.E. and was in continuous use until its destruction in 110 B.C.E.¹ In its first building phase, the sacred precinct was a relatively small and square enclosure (about 330 by 330 ft) with two main gates in the north and south walls and a few auxiliary buildings. During the Hellenistic period around 200 B.C.E., the sanctuary area was significantly expanded, especially to the south and east, and a number of auxiliary rooms, courtyards, and even a fortification were added to the enclosure. In the sanctuary’s 067eastern wall, a third gate was added with a monumental ramp or staircase leading up to it.

Also in the Hellenistic period, in the late fourth century B.C.E., a city was founded just south of the sacred precinct. It grew steadily until it reached a size of about 100 acres and a population of up to 10,000 in the second century B.C.E.

The Yahweh-sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim appears to have been a happening place in the late Persian and Hellenistic periods. Both the sanctuary and the city expanded, and a number of pilgrims visited the site to give gifts to Yahweh. People as far away as the Greek island of Delos and the Egyptian island of Elephantine corresponded with and sent offerings to Gerizim. But in 110 B.C.E., both the popular cult place and the bustling city came to a violent end. The Hasmonean ruler in Jerusalem, John Hyrcanus I, destroyed the city and the sanctuary as part of a campaign that continued his predecessors’ rather aggressive expansionist strategy. Neither the city nor the sanctuary was rebuilt after this destruction.

Partly due to the sanctuary’s violent end, and partly due to subsequent building activity and “stone-robbing” on the site, it is difficult to get a clear picture of what everyday worship was like on Mt. Gerizim. One clue is the vast amounts of residue from sacrifices that have been found in several parts of the sanctuary, for example, in the southwestern corner where the layer of bones and ashes is 6.5 feet deep. In the square adjacent to the Hellenistic-period eastern gate, a plaster-covered stone altar has been excavated. Around it there were also large amounts of ashes and burnt animal bones. In total, more than 300,000 bone fragments mostly from sheep and goats, but also from cows and pigeons, have been excavated in the sanctuary precinct. This suggests that sacrifices were a significant part of the daily worship on Mt. Gerizim.

Another clue comes in the shape of the hundreds of dedicatory inscriptions that have been discovered 068on Mt. Gerizim. The dedicatory inscriptions are carved on square, hewn building stones (ashlars). They are written mostly in Aramaic, but a few of them are in Hebrew. They all seem to date to the sanctuary’s second building phase in the Hellenistic period, and they consist of a relatively brief dedicatory formula that refers to something that was given (usually without specifying what it was) and then gives the name(s) of the donor and the donor’s dependents. In some of the inscriptions, the donor requests a counter-gift of “good remembrance,” that is, to be remembered favorably and to be in good standing with the deity. One example of such an inscription is no. 149, which is written in Aramaic in three lines: “[That which] offered Amram son of […] for his [wife] and for his father [and … for] good [remembrance] before the go[d].”

No dedicatory inscription was found in its original setting (in situ). One was secondarily incorporated into the monumental staircase outside the sanctuary’s east wall (no. 223) and was discovered there. The rest were also discovered in secondary contexts, where they had fallen down the slope or had been reused in later structures like the inscribed stone in the staircase. This means that the original location of the inscriptions inside the sanctuary is unknown. Since the inscriptions are carved on similarly hewn building stones, it is possible that they were part of the same structure that once stood inside the sanctuary enclosure.

The director of the most recent excavations on Gerizim, Dr. Yitzhak Magen, suggests that the inscriptions were carved on the stones of an inner wall that surrounded a temple building and sacrificial altar more or less in the middle of the sacred precinct. But since neither the building, the altar, nor the wall has actually been found, this specific reconstruction remains a hypothesis. However, it does seem reasonable to imagine that the dedicatory inscriptions would have been placed somewhere in the sanctuary precinct where they would have been visible and perhaps accessible to other visitors.

To commission an inscription and have it set up in the sanctuary was probably not an everyday occurrence for ordinary worshipers. It would have been relatively costly to pay for the gift referenced in the inscriptions. These gifts may have been a donation of sacrifices, money, or other valuables that were seen to match the price for having an inscription made. Further, there may even have been an additional cost to pay for the work of a stonecutter unless this expense was part of the sanctuary’s price for an inscription.² Yet the sight and experience of these inscriptions were probably part of 069every regular visit to the sanctuary, whether a person came to give a less expensive offering, stopped by to conduct some other business, or simply went to the temple of Yahweh to linger there and soak up the atmosphere.

About 50 of the dedicatory inscriptions from Mt. Gerizim contain a reference to “good remembrance,” a counter-gift from the deity. In this respect, the Gerizim inscriptions resemble a large number of Aramaic dedicatory inscriptions and graffiti in the Eastern Mediterranean area where the phrase “for good remembrance” and the more common “may he/she be remembered for good” is widespread. These other inscriptions are dated roughly from the second century B.C.E. to the second century C.E., and come from sanctuaries in places such as Hatra and Assur (in modern Iraq) and Palmyra (in modern Syria).

This larger family of “remembrance inscriptions” provides us with two pieces of interesting information. The first is the stress on the deity’s remembrance. There appears to be a common notion across these different sanctuaries that to be remembered positively by a deity is desirable—probably conceptually similar to the notion of being blessed—and that it can be obtained by placing a physical object in close proximity to where the deity is perceived to be present, so that this object—the inscription—may continuously remind the deity of the worshiper who donated the inscription.

Interestingly, this perception is quite similar to ideas about Yahweh’s remembrance that can be found in the Hebrew Bible.³ To be remembered by Yahweh is thought to have had a palpable and positive effect for the person remembered. Yahweh 070remembers Noah in the ark in Genesis 8:1 and makes the waters withdraw. Yahweh remembers the childless Rachel in Genesis 30:22 and opens her womb.

Yahweh is sometimes described as using physical reminders of things that he wants to remember. Perhaps the best example of this is in Genesis 9:16, where Yahweh places his bow in the sky as a sign to remind him of his covenant with Noah. In this text, the rainbow works exactly like tying a piece of string around one’s finger in order not to forget something.

Along a similar line of thought, in the ritual texts in the Pentateuch, Yahweh’s remembrance can be evoked by means of ritual, where physical reminders are brought inside the sanctuary, where Yahweh resides, or placed in front of it. For instance, the gemstones on the High Priest Aaron’s breastplate that are engraved with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel are to be “a continual remembrance before Yahweh” (Exodus 28:29). The engraved stones underline Aaron’s cultic role as the representative of the entire people. As the only person permitted to enter the sanctuary’s innermost room, he brings the people of Israel to Yahweh’s attention by physically bringing a reminder of their existence into Yahweh’s presence. This concept of divine remembrance as something that can be evoked through ritual by placing a material reminder in front of the deity is very close to what seems to be the rationale behind the remembrance inscriptions, where a physical reminder—the inscription—is placed in front of the deity in the sanctuary to bring about divine remembrance.

The second piece of information that the larger group of remembrance inscriptions provides is details on how visitors to the sanctuary may have acted around and interacted with the dedicatory inscriptions on Mt. Gerizim.

One dedicatory inscription from Palmyra, inscription no. 0319, is particularly interesting in this respect, because it explicates the function of the remembrance formula.⁴ Written on a rather large altar, the 11-line inscription is 14 inches tall. Above the inscription is a relief depicting a person, leaning on a cane. The inscription reads: “[T]hese two altars made Obaidu son of Animu [son of] Shadilat, a Nabataean of the Rawwah[a], who has been a cavalry soldier [at] Hirta and in the camp of Ana, to Shaialqaum the good and generous god, who does not drink wine, for the life of himself and the life of Meaiti and Abdu his brothers and Shadilat his son, in the month Elul of the year 443, and remembered be Zebaida son of Shimeon son of Belaqab, his host and friend before Shaialqaum the good god, and remembered be whoever frequents these altars and 071says remembered be all these for good.”

This inscription clearly encourages everyone who passes by the altars to pray for the persons mentioned in the inscription. In this way, the positive remembrance requested in the inscription is reactivated by the participation of visitors to the sanctuary, and through their participation, they themselves receive a share in the deity’s good remembrance. This type of remembrance inscription that explicitly encourages interaction is quite rare, but there are a couple of similar inscriptions from Hatra, where the rationale appears to be the same—although it is expressed as a threat rather than a promise. One example is this two-line inscription, which reads: “Remembered be Nšry son of ‘bdmlyk and ‘by his son before Maren for good Hnj son [ ]hj and the curse of Maren on anyone who reads this inscription and does not say remembered be.”⁵

The question, of course, is whether the performative practice of saying “remembered be” is to be understood in every occurrence of the remembrance formula. Considering the limited number of inscriptions that explicitly encourage action, it may be inadvisable to apply this explanation to the entire body of material. However, these interactive inscriptions do seem to offer us a glimpse of what a visit to the sanctuary could have entailed.

These inscriptions may also offer a solution to a riddle that has vexed archaeologists and historians of religion for quite some time, namely, the seeming imbalance between the relatively high number of “private” texts in sanctuaries and other spaces in the Hellenistic and Roman periods and the degree of illiteracy in the population, which was most likely still widespread at this time. We simply cannot assume that all visitors to these sanctuaries were literate, so an actual recitation of the text of the inscription seems unlikely. However, it is possible that some literate visitors could have read aloud to others. It 086may even be possible that literate temple personnel could have assisted visitors in reading inscriptions. Even if visitors were unable to read and had no opportunity to have the inscriptions read for them, these inscriptions may have been culturally recognizable as objects that required an interactive response. If that is the case, then the inscriptions may have triggered visitors to the sanctuary to touch one or several of the inscriptions that they passed on their way and to mumble, “Remembered be,” as they did so.

If this assumption is correct, an extra dimension is added to the significance of these types of inscriptions in the sanctuary. The inscription not only reminds the deity of the donor and represents him or her in front of the deity, but every time a visitor comes to the sanctuary this representation is also reactivated and reenacted, so that it includes both the people mentioned in the inscriptions and the person who says, “Remembered be.”

So to end where we began, we know precious little about what went on in ancient sanctuaries during everyday worship. But perhaps we should imagine that a common part of the behavioral pattern of ordinary visitors to the sanctuary was to somehow interact with the dedicatory inscriptions that were set up there and to perform a kind of material or monumental literacy that did not require them actually to read or recite the text of the inscriptions. Instead a visitor to the sanctuary would enact the prayer for blessing that these inscriptions were commonly known to contain and, thereby, reactivate the plea for Yahweh’s good remembrance.

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 […]