Wish Upon a Stone

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A recently published Assyrian text may shed light on an enigmatic and biblically forbidden cultic object. It is one of the most obscure and least studied cultic objects mentioned in the Bible—the even maskit, or “maskit stone,” often rendered “decorated stone” or “engraved stone.”

The even maskit is mentioned only once in the entire Bible—in the so-called Holiness Code (Leviticus 18–26), a comprehensive series of ethical and ritual laws. In Leviticus 26:1, we read, “You shall not make idols…A maskit stone you shall not place in your land to bow down upon it.”

Although the term even maskit (plural, maskiyyot) itself occurs only once, the key word, maskit, is used to denote an illicit cultic object two other times and also appears in other contexts. Numbers 33:52 commands the conquering Israelites to obliterate the maskiyyot of the Canaanites, together with their molten images. And Ezekiel, guided by a divine messenger on a visionary tour of the Jerusalem Temple before the Babylonian destruction of the city, observes the elders performing abominable acts in their “maskit chambers” (Ezekiel 8:12).

Scholars have long puzzled over the term even maskit and the object it designates. The earliest Jewish sources interpret it as “stone for prostration.” Falling face down on the ground was an act of worship reserved for the Temple, where the ground was paved with stone tiles; the rabbis banned placing stones in the ground for prostration anywhere outside the 031Temple.¹ This is in keeping with their overall view that anything done in the Temple, or any object made for the Temple, is not to be replicated outside. (So, for example, since the lamp stand [menorah] in the Temple had seven branches, lamp stands in private homes or synagogues have either six or eight branches—but not seven.)

The prohibition against the maskit stone affects Jewish practice to this day. Synagogue liturgy affords very few occasions for prostration in the course of worship. Only during the Alenu (Adoration) prayer in the New Year services and during the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) service do the cantor and members of the congregation kneel, face to the ground, as they recall the prostrations performed in the Temple ritual on that day.² However, in both instances the worshiper places a rug, a handkerchief or some other covering on the floor in front of him or her to 032avoid seeming to bow down directly upon a stone floor, as would have been done in the Temple.

This venerated rabbinic interpretation and practice notwithstanding, the biblical prohibition must express more than a simple aversion to prostration. The context is clearly one of idolatrous practices, so the maskit stone must somehow be connected with idolatry.

Most modern, as well as traditional, exegetes interpret the maskit stone as a decorated or inscribed stone, or a stone to be looked at because of the engravings upon it.³ This interpretation is based on Ezekiel’s description of maskit chambers, the walls of which were covered with the forms of creeping things, disgusting beasts and idolatrous abominations.

Others have tried to identify the maskit stone with objects described in texts from different religions, or with artifacts from archaeological excavations. Some have identified it with the merqolis, an object mentioned in the Talmud that consists of a trilithon (two upright stones topped by a horizontal one) placed in front of a cult statue.⁴ Others associated it with baetylia (sacred meteoric stones), which were mentioned in classical sources as having been worshiped in parts of the Levant.⁵ It has also been compared with practices from the Egyptian worship of Osiris⁶ and with Babylonian kudurru stones (small monuments commemorating royal grants to faithful servants) engraved with divine symbols.⁷ One scholar compared it with the black stone of the Ka‘aba at Mecca, which is not a divine representation but was kissed and used as an instrument in praying and prostration.⁸ Another authority describes it as a kneeling post, referring to a specific church appurtenance.⁹

Clearly, no consensus has been reached on parallels with any known ancient Near Eastern object, nor can any of the candidates mentioned thus far be considered a serious contender. None of them bears the one requisite and certain characteristic: a stone upon which a person bowed down.

But now, at long last, an Assyrian text may shed new light on this enigmatic biblical artifact. The cuneiform tablet bearing the inscription is not itself a maskit stone, but the text mentions something similar—perhaps identical—to a maskit stone.

The inscription comes from Kuyunjik, the ancient city of Nineveh, last capital of the Assyrian empire and home of King Assurbanipal’s famous “library.” The tablet has been housed in the British Museum for about 150 years but was published only 13 years ago.¹⁰ This cuneiform inscription, joined from two fragments and designated K 4732 + Sm. 1081, contains on its front side 11 partially preserved lines of an inscription of Sennacherib, king of Assyria from 704 to 682 B.C.E. The body of the text, which is irrelevant for our purposes, refers to an event that occurred concurrent with or soon after Sennacherib’s much-publicized manufacture of the cult statues of the god Assur that stood in the temple Esharra in the city of Assur.

The back of the tablet contains four fully preserved lines of text. These lines are more crudely written than those on the front side, and they are incised in a different cuneiform script, so they may be assumed to be a caption for something that was written or drawn on the space above, on part of the tablet that did not survive. The four lines read

1. (Above is the) sðiknu that is on the threshold/slabs

2. of alallum stone of the temple of Assur

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3. that the king stands upon

4. (and) kisses the ground.

Several scholars interpret the untranslated, initial word sðiknu as “caption” or “arrangement of the script.” But this word never designates a written text. It is used only in the context of pictures or divine representations. This suggests that these four lines refer not to a text but to a drawing that has broken off the tablet. Whatever the case, these lines indicate that a text or picture was inscribed or drawn upon a stone found in a temple, and that the king would stand on the stone and then kiss the ground. Unless the king was an acrobat, able to touch his toes with his lips, he must have first stood on the stone and then bowed down or prostrated himself and kissed the ground in front of the stone. Accordingly, this stone of alallum bore at least partial similarity to the maskit stone of the biblical prohibition. Both are stones upon which prostration was performed, and both may be decorated, depending on how we interpret maskit, on the one hand, and sðiknu, on the other.

The stone upon which the king stands is designated a “threshold” in the Assyrian inscription. This reminds us of Ezekiel’s vision of the future temple, into which “the nasi (head of the community) will enter by way of the gate hallway from without, and will stand at the door post of the gate…and bow down on the threshold of the gate and go out” (Ezekiel 46:2). If the stone mentioned in the Assyrian inscription is 051functionally equivalent to the maskit stone, the possibility arises that the latter, too, was a decorated threshold.

The slab of the Assyrian inscription was alallu stone. This is a brownish limestone native to northern Assyria, 65 percent dolomite and 30 percent calcite.¹¹ Since the type of stone is explicitly mentioned, it would not be surprising if this aspect was related to its cultic function. Significantly, alallu stone is called in another text “a stone of speaking and complying.”¹² Assyriologists have explained this as a magical stone that guaranteed the fulfillment of a wish.

This special quality of the stone—fulfillment of a wish—may provide the long-sought clue to the function of the maskit stone and the meaning of the Hebrew term maskit. It has previously been taken to mean “covering,” “engraving,” “drawing” and the like. These suggestions, as previously mentioned, are based largely on Ezekiel’s description of the maskit chamber decorated with all sorts of abominations. But maskit may also mean “desire” and may be related to the same word in Psalm 73:7: “Their desires exceed fattened things, their hearts’ fancies (maskiyyot) are extravagant.” The stone may have been called a maskit stone because it was engraved and granted wishes. This is a magically laden double entendre by which the name of the physical characteristic (an engraving) would magically invoke the power of the stone to grant the homonym: An engraved stone (maskit) was employed in order to cause fulfillment of a wish (maskit).¹³

We must be cautious about automatically attributing to the maskit stone all the properties of the slab alluded to in the cuneiform text. Nonetheless, none of the Assyrian stone’s properties would be out of place were they the object of a biblical prohibition concerning a foreign ritual practice. After all, biblical authors frown not only upon idolatry proper but on other subsidiary preoccupations, such as divination and witchcraft (see Deuteronomy 18:9–14).

We may conclude, therefore, by suggesting that the biblical maskit stone may have resembled the probably decorated stone upon which Sennacherib’s inscription was engraved. If we make maximum use of the combined biblical and Assyrian evidence, we find that a maskit stone was a stone slab placed in the ground, possibly in a doorway, decorated with engraved divine symbols and bowed down upon, enabling the supplicant to kiss the ground with the purpose of having his or her wish granted. We may translate it as “decorated wishing stone.”

Leviticus bans the Israelites from bowing upon a maskit stone. But what is a maskit? A recently deciphered Assyrian inscription may hold the key to identifying this mysterious prohibited object.