When Was the Age of the Patriarchs?—Of Amorites, Canaanites, and Archaeology

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This is an important, original article, which we print despite the fact that it is somewhat more technical than our usual fare. A word of introduction may be helpful to the non-professional.

Instead of using absolute dates to designate a cultural period of time, archaeologists often find it easier to use generally agreed upon names for different cultural periods. Thus, archaeologists may speak of the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. This is far less cumbersome than reciting the dates each time the period is referred to. And it emphasizes that a cultural period is referred to rather than an arbitrary chunk of time, as absolute dates would imply. Names for cultural periods are also handy because it is sometimes difficult to specify precisely with absolute dates the beginning and end of the cultural period. Indeed, the absolute dates may shift on the basis of new knowledge, because these periods are marked by cultural breaks, rather than by any fixed point in time such as the end of a century. For all of these reasons, an archaeologist will probably use the term Bronze Age rather than giving the absolute dates for the period.

As knowledge has expanded, these cultural periods have been subdivided—into Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age and Iron I and II. On occasion, observed cultural discontinuities require further subdivisions and, sometimes, even further subdivisions. Thus, we have Middle Bronze I and Middle Bronze II, and even Middle Bronze IIA, Middle Bronze IIB, and Middle Bronze IIC.

The following article is particularly concerned with the Middle Bronze I and Middle Bronze II periods. Generally accepted absolute dates corresponding to these two periods are as follows:

Middle Bronze I—2300–1900 B.C.
Middle Bronze II—1900–1550 B.C.

—Ed.

The Bible mentions many ethnic elements living in Palestine before the Israelite Conquest, such as the Amalekites, Hittites, Horites, Jebusites, Kenites, Perizzites, and others.¹ But the Amorites and Canaanites appear to have been by far the most numerous and important. According to the Bible, the largest and most powerful cities of Palestine were populated by either Amorites or Canaanites. The Amorites seem to have been concentrated in the hill-country on both sides of the Jordan; the Canaanites, in the coastal plain, the vale of Esdraelon and the Jordan River valley.² On occasion, when the population of the land is summarized by two ethnic designations (one Semitic and one non-Semitic), the Semitic people is always either Amorite or Canaanite.³

Sometimes, Amorite or Canaanite is used for the entire population of Palestine. The “J” source of the Pentateuch exhibits a preference for “Canaanites” as a comprehensive designation for the pre-Israelite people of Palestine (Genesis 12:6; 13:7), while the “E” document favors “Amorites” (Genesis 15:16). The Deuteronomic historian uses “Amorite” as a comprehensive term in Joshua 24:15 and Judges 6:10; in Judges 1:1–3, 9, he uses “Canaanite” in the same way.⁴

Because of the prominence of the Amorites and Canaanites in the Biblical traditions, archaeologists and Biblical scholars have frequently attempted to assign 018Bronze Age archaeological finds from Palestine to either the Amorite culture or the Canaanite culture. At present, the most commonly accepted identification is that the Middle Bronze Age I (MB I) people (c. 2300–1900 B.C.)⁵ were Amorite⁶ and the Middle Bronze II (MB II) people (c.1900–1550 B.C.) were Canaanite. The most prominent defense of this position is Dame Kathleen Kenyon’s Amorites and Canaanites.⁷

Related to the MB I = Amorite hypothesis is the view that the entrance of the Hebrew patriarchs into Palestine and their wanderings there occurred during MB I. This position has been argued by Nelson Glueck, W. F. Albright and Pere Roland de Vaux, among others. The Hebrews were West Semites, closely related to the Amorites, and their movement into Palestine was probably related to movements of other West Semitic groups. If the Hebrew patriarchs came to Palestine in MB I, it is more likely that the people who established the MB I culture in the land were also Amorites—and vice versa. Thus, the view that the patriarchs entered Palestine during MB I fits in nicely with the contention that the MB I culture in Palestine represents an Amorite invasion.

However, a reexamination of the archaeological evidence, in connection with the relevant texts, indicates that both contentions are incorrect—the MB I invaders cannot be identified with the Amorites and the patriarchs entered Palestine not in MB I, but in MB II.

About 2300 B.C. the flourishing Early Bronze Age culture in Palestine was destroyed. The cities were burned and then abandoned by the invaders. For the next four centuries (MB I) there were no major urban cities in Palestine, and semi-nomadic tribes without significant architectural traditions occupied the land. An MB I gap characterizes every major tell in Palestine.

The most important evidence cited to support the identification of these semi-nomadic MB I invaders as Amorites consists of textual material from Mesopotamia and Egypt.

A number of Mesopotamian texts of the Akkadian Period (c. 2370–2230) and the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2113–2006) mention semi-nomadic people called Amurru (linguistically the equivalent of the Biblical “Amorite”)⁸.

A great influx of these Amorites into Mesopotamia occurred at the end of the MB I Period, but, unfortunately for the MB I = Amorite hypothesis, not at the beginning.⁹ If the Amorites destroyed the Early Bronze Age cities in Palestine about 2300 B.C. and thereafter occupied the Holy Land for the next 400 years, then the Amorite invasion of Palestine took place approximately three centuries earlier than their mass movements into Mesopotamia. While this is not impossible, the Mesopotamian texts provide no evidence of large scale movements and pressures of Amorites in any direction prior to their invasion of Mesopotamia at the end of the third millennium. Moreover, at the same time the Amorites were making massive thrusts into Mesopotamia (about 1900 B.C.), a new people was entering Palestine and displacing the MB I population there. It seems much more likely that the Amorites were the MB II invaders who displaced the MB I nomads than that these MB I nomads should be identified as Amorites. Moreover, the Mesopotamian texts indicate that the homeland of these Amorites with West Semitic names was Syria, rather than Palestine.¹⁰ None of these documents actually mentions Palestine or its inhabitants directly.

Egyptian texts have also been used to identify the MB I population of Palestine as Amorites. About 2185 B.C., at the end of Egypt’s Sixth Dynasty, the Old Kingdom collapsed and was succeeded by a century of anarchy known as the First Intermediate Period. During this time, due to Egyptian weakness, semi-nomads from Palestine entered the Delta and began pasturing their flocks in the fertile grasslands of Lower Egypt. It has been suggested that these people were MB I Amorites, but unfortunately, information on the ethnic affiliations of these people is not given in the Egyptian texts which label the invaders simply “Asiatics” or “barbarians.”¹¹ Nor is there any indication that these foreigners were in any way different from the “Asiatics” who had been disturbing Egypt’s borders since the early part of the Old Kingdom, long before the beginning of the MB I Period in Palestine.¹²

After the re-establishment of order in Egypt during the early Middle Kingdom, 019the Twelfth Dynasty (c. 1991–1786) renewed Egyptian influence at Byblos and Ugarit in Syria, again exploited the turquoise and copper mines in Sinai, and resumed trade with and through Palestine (as well as the military raids necessary to protect such trade).¹³ Execration Texts reflecting this Egyptian hegemony mention numerous Semitic names.¹⁴ It is often stated that these names in the Execration Texts are Amorite and that they indicate that the MB I invaders who destroyed the Palestinian EB cities and invaded Egypt after the collapse of the Old Kingdom were identical with the semi-nomadic Amurru of the Mesopotamian texts.¹⁵

However, the Execration Texts, which—on the basis of these West Semitic names—are the only documents to provide direct evidence of the ethnic composition of Palestine during this period, are now dated by leading authorities to the reign of Sesostris III, c. 1878–1843, or later.¹⁶ This is during the MB II Period, not MB I.

The only way the Execration Texts can relate to the MB I Period in Palestine is to accept W. F. Albright’ s low date of c. 1800 for the end of the MB I Period.¹⁷ But recent excavations at Shechem now make Albright’ s low date highly unlikely. Shechem is mentioned in an Egyptian account of a military campaign in Palestine during the reign of Sesostris III.¹⁸ However, G. Ernest Wright and his team found no evidence that Shechem was occupied during MB I.¹⁹ This Egyptian reference must be to the MB IIA city of which evidence was found.²⁰ This would indicate that the MB IIA Period had to have begun earlier than the death of Sesostris III (c. 1843), and the probability is that it began at least fifty to a hundred years before that date. All of this indicates that MB I ended in Palestine about 1900 B.C.

Since the date for the end of the MB I Period and the beginning of MB IIA probably was no later than 1950–1900 B.C., the Egyptian Execration Texts of the latter part of the Twelfth Dynasty should not be regarded as contemporaneous with MB I. Instead, the likelihood is that all of these Egyptian documents should be associated with MB II. Thus, they cannot be used to identify the MB I invaders of Palestine as Amorites.

Advocates of the MB I = Amorite hypothesis also find support for their views in the similarities between MB I archaeological materials from Palestine and from Syria, based on the fact that Syria, according to the Mesopotamian texts, is the home of the Amorites. For example, in both Syria and Palestine there is evidence of non-urban groups destroying cities and using the tells as cemeteries during MB I. Similarities in pottery and bronze objects are also common.²¹ The correspondences extend beyond the forms of the vessels to the decoration as well, bands of straight combed lines (sometimes combined with wavy lines) being characteristic of MB I in both areas.²²

The numerous archaeological parallels indicate an underlying relationship between the MB I groups in Palestine and an element of the population of Syria: However, the Syrian pottery and bronzes which show relationships with Palestinian objects are found mixed with various other types of pottery at some Syrian sites.²³ Also, while some Syrian cities seem to have been destroyed at the beginning of MB I as the Palestinian cities were, other towns in Syria continued to exist throughout this period.²⁴ There are thus archaeological indications that the population of Syria during the MB I was ethnically more diverse and complex than that of Palestine. Mesopotamian texts confirm the presence of numerous non-Semitic peoples in Syria at this time.²⁵ There is as yet no means of correlating the linguistic groups indicated in the texts with the various archaeological remains.

The artifacts characteristic of MB I in Palestine and Syria were replaced by those of the MB II culture about 1950–1900 B.C. Yet Amorites continued to play a significant role in Mesopotamian and other ancient records long after that date.There seems to be little reason why the correspondence of Palestinian and Syrian remains in MB I should be taken as evidence that the MB I people were Amorites when a similar correspondence in artifacts exists for the succeeding period,²⁷ during which Syria was still referred to as Amurru in contemporary texts.²⁸

In sum, the Mesopotamian texts mentioning Amorites do not refer directly to Palestine and give no evidence of aggressive movements by the Amorites until the end 020of MB I; the Egyptian Execration Texts which do relate to the population of Palestine belong almost certainly to MB II rather than MB I. Indeed, the same evidence used to identify the MB I people as Amorites could be applied equally well to the groups that initiated MB II.²⁹

Having broken the link between MB I and the West Semitic Amorites, a major support for the entry of the Patriarchs into Palestine during MB I has been destroyed. It can no longer be argued that the Patriarchs entered Palestine in MB I as part of West Semitic population movements evidenced archaeologically by an Amorite invasion of Palestine and their semi-nomadic wanderings in Palestine thereafter.

However, the MB I = Amorite hypothesis is not the only prop supporting the contention that the Patriarchs entered Palestine in MB I.

When Nelson Glueck’s surface surveys in the Negev produced abundant evidence of occupation during MB I but no signs of habitation during MB II or the Late Bronze Age,³⁰ Glueck followed by Albright,³¹ and de Vaux³² argued that the patriarchal stories presumed a situation which was fulfilled archaeologically only in MB I. Obviously, the Patriarchs could not have been wandering around the Negev in MB II if, as the archaeological evidence demonstrates, the area was totally devoid of occupation during the last three-fourths of the second millennium—this was the argument of Glueck, Albright and de Vaux.

Obviously, the patriarchal wanderings in the Negev are an important part of the tradition.³³ But equally important, if not more so, is the frequent reference to sedentary groups, cities and kings. Shechem, Bethel, Gerar and Hebron appear prominently in the patriarchal narratives³⁴ while a number of other cities receive passing mention. Yet the clear archaeological evidence is that there were no towns in Palestine during MB I. The urbanization reflected in the patriarchal stories make it impossible to date this period before the beginning of MB II.³⁵

The traditions connecting the patriarchs with the Negev are not necessarily in conflict with the archaeological evidence that reflects a lack of habitation there during MB II. The patriarchal wanderings in the Negev seem to have been confined to the semi-desert fringes near towns such as Gerar, and need not be taken as indications of extensive semi-nomadic seasonal occupation of the true desert areas of the Negev such as archaeology reveals during MB I but not during MB II.³⁶ While limited excursions into the Negev such as those indicated by the Biblical texts could have occurred during MB II or Late Bronze Age, it is impossible to place the frequent references to town life in an MB I milieu.

There is other evidence that the age of the Patriarchs should be assigned to MB II. The texts from Mari and Nuzi which provide parallels for patriarchal names and customs date respectively from the eighteenth and sixteenth centuries B.C.,³⁷ long after the end of the MB I. The tradition of multiple burial, a custom preserved in the patriarchal stories, also reflects an MB II setting. According to the Biblical narrative Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah as a family burial place (Genesis 23:7–20). He was buried there with his wife Sarah (Genesis 25:9–10), and the cave continued in use as a tomb for at least two more generations: Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah were also buried there (Genesis 49:29–31). Multiple burials were very rare in MB I but became extremely common in MB II, and the use of caves as burial places was far more frequent in MB II than in MB I. If the patriarchal traditions, do contain a basic element of historicity, it is clear that the ancestors of Israel entered Palestine during MB II or later and that they had no connection with the MB I groups. Who the MB I people were who invaded Palestine about 2300 B.C. must be regarded as an unsolved problem.

The problem of identifying the Canaanites archaeologically has also received a great deal of attention from Palestinian archaeologists. Kathleen Kenyon has argued that the culture which entered Palestine from the Syrian coast in MB II can be called Canaanite.³⁸ Kenyon has emphasized the close cultural relationship between Palestine and coastal Syria during the MB II Period and has theorized that the MB II culture first developed at Byblos out of an amalgamation of the native population with MB I newcomers (whom she considers Amorites).³⁹ Coastal Syria later became known as Kinahna in Akkadian texts and Kn‘n in Egyptian and Ugaritic 021texts; Kenyon relates these terms linguistically to the name Canaan.

Kenyon’s belief that the MB II culture in Palestine originated from a mixture of peoples is based primarily on three deposits excavated at Byblos containing mixtures of MB I and MB II material.⁴⁰ However, it has been persuasively argued that these deposits were caches of offerings made to temples over a long period of time.⁴¹ Accordingly, the MB I and MB II objects need not be ascribed to the same people nor to the same time.⁴²

But even if the MB II culture in Palestine did originate in coastal Syria, there would still be problems in identifying it as Canaanite. The earliest known occurrences of the terms Canaan and Canaanite do not appear in texts until the middle of the second millennium (that is, during the Late Bronze Age), about four hundred years after the establishment of the MB II culture in Palestine and Syria.⁴³ Kenyon assumes that the terms Canaan and Canaanite used in the Late Bronze Age can be extended backward and applied to the preceding period. However, this is questionable at best. While it is true that the Late Bronze material culture developed without a break from MB II, this does not necessarily mean, as Kenyon assumes, that there was no change in the ethnic composition of the population.⁴⁴ Textual sources indicate that the population of Palestine during the Late Bronze Age was very diverse ethnically even though the material culture was remarkably uniform. Accordingly, it is very dangerous to assume that the Canaanites who were in Palestine during the Late Bronze Age were also there earlier.

In non-Biblical texts the place Canaan occurs far more frequently than the people Canaanite.⁴⁵ It seems likely that the geographic term probably originated as a place name for coastal Syria and Palestine (perhaps deriving from the word for the red-purple dye for which the area became famous). Later the gentilic term Canaanite designated the people living in that area.⁴⁶ On occasion in the Bible and in other ancient Near Eastern texts “Canaanite” is used to designate not an ethnic group but a particular class, probably merchants.⁴⁷ Quite possibly, Amorites and Canaanites were ethnically and culturally identical, with the name Canaanite applied to those Amorites who inhabited the cities of the coastal plain, and specifically the merchant class which dominated those cities.

The Biblical usage of Amorites or Canaanites seems to indicate that while there must have been some differences between these two related West Semitic peoples, they were close enough linguistically and culturally for either name to be applied to the entire pre-Israelite population and culture in Palestine. The implication of these Biblical generalizations agrees with the archaeological evidence—that during MB II and the Late Bronze Age Palestine formed one cultural province with little diversity or local variation.

Unfortunately, the limited extent and confusing nature of the evidence has often been overlooked or given little weight by those seeking to credit specific archaeological remains to either Amorites or Canaanites. Ethnic identifications of archaeological remains require a great deal of textual evidence to verify them, and unfortunately such textual material does not now exist for Palestine in the pre-Israelite periods.

Perhaps in the future new evidence will make it possible to identify archaeological finds from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages with specific peoples and events. But until that day arrives archaeologists and Biblical scholars must resist the temptation to speak of Amorite tombs or Canaanite houses as if such identifications were certain, and instead continue to use unexciting but more accurate terminology like MB I or MB II to identify the pre-Iron Age cultures of Palestine.

This is an important, original article, which we print despite the fact that it is somewhat more technical than our usual fare. A word of introduction may be helpful to the non-professional.