Yohanan Aharoni—The Man and His Work

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Research in the land of the Bible has suffered a heavy loss in the untimely death of Yohanan Aharoni, chairman of the Department of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. To his associates he has bequeathed the task of continuing and summarizing the achievements of his last great project, the investigation of the Biblical Negev.

Aharoni immigrated to Palestine from Germany in 1933 at the age of 14. He became one of the founding members of Kibbutz Allonim beside the Jezreel Valley, and lived there until 1947. At that time, he joined the Israel Defense Forces. After the War of Independence, in 1950, he was appointed Antiquities Inspector for Galilee, a post which he held for the next five years—and, thus, began his public archaeological career. During these years he conducted an archaeological survey of the Galilee which led to his doctoral dissertation on The Settlement of the Israelite Tribes in Upper Galilee (published in Hebrew, Jerusalem 1957). For four years thereafter he served as a staff archaeologist on the Hazor Expedition led by Yigael Yadin. At Hazor, Aharoni was in charge of Area A and uncovered the casemate wall and Solomonic gate; he was the first to date them correctly and his dating of them has now been universally accepted. Before coming to Tel Aviv University, Aharoni was Associate Professor at the Hebrew University for two years.

To students of Biblical history and archaeology all over the world Aharoni is probably best known for his historical geography, Land of the Bible (London and Philadelphia, 1967) and The Macmillan Bible Atlas (New York, 1968), written jointly with the late Michael Avi-Yonah. The atlas is the only one dealing with every Biblical passage that can be represented on a map. These two books provide the geographical dimension so essential to understanding Biblical history. (At his death, Aharoni had completed a revision of the atlas in Hebrew; his notes for a new edition of Land of the Bible are now being prepared for publication.)

Aharoni’s most recent publication, for which he received the Ben-Zvi Prize, was a translation and commentary of the Arad Inscriptions (in Hebrew, Jerusalem, 1975). These fabulous Hebrew texts, the largest corpus ever found, were discovered by Aharoni in the small Israelite fortress at Arad. 040His translations are simple and common-sensical, reflecting a close familiarity with both Biblical Hebrew and with everyday life in Biblical times. They are a vast improvement over W. F. Albright’s selected translations in the Supplementary Volume of Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, 1969). Aharoni’s Arad Inscriptions is now being translated into English (including a chapter on the Aramaic texts from Arad by Joseph Naveh) and will undoubtedly become a classic in the study of ancient Hebrew epigraphy.

Aharoni’s most outstanding characteristic as a Biblical scholar was his insistence on the use of original sources. His personal preference for excavation as a tool of Biblical research was clear; he loved archaeological field work: “I’m always working with fresh material,” he said. To Aharoni, both original textual and material evidence served the greater purpose of enriching our understanding of man’s way of life in Biblical days.

The search to understand this life started for Aharoni in the Galilee and continued in the Biblical Negev till the end of his life. His first major excavation in the Negev (co-directed with Ruth Amiran) was the Israelite fortress at Arad. There he discovered an Israelite temple with sacrificial altar, the holy of holies, cult objects and an extraordinary collection of Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions. The inscriptions included complete alphabets from several occupation levels and thus put the dating of ancient Hebrew palaeography on a sounder footing than ever before. Arad also provided the archaeological world with a representative repertoire of whole pottery vessels in situ for the entire Iron Age.

Aharoni’s study of the Biblical Negev continued at Beer-Sheva, which for seven seasons was the central project of his newly founded Institute of Archaeology. There and at the other sites which he excavated in the Negev he would continue to test his three major assumptions: (1) that the climate in the Negev should favor the preservation of artifacts, most importantly written documents, (2) that the process of settlement by the Israelite tribes in this region of marginal rainfall should be more clearly demonstrated in the archaeological record than in other areas since there was evidently a very limited Canaanite population prior to their arrival, and (3) that the Negev changed hands so frequently with the rising and falling fortunes of the Judean kingdom that there should be some clear traces of these events in the material remains which could be reasonably well correlated with known historical events. All these assumptions have been admirably confirmed, while many new questions have been raised.

Aharoni clearly distinguished between an assumption or a working hypothesis, on the one hand, and an axiom, on the other. An axiom is supposed to be a “self-evident truth”, but in Palestinian archaeology it is often merely the opinion of an influential personality. A case in point is the “axiom” of Yigael Yadin, Aharoni’s arch-rival during the latter part of Aharoni’s life, that all 10th century Israelite fortification walls were of the casemate type, while in the 9th century and later they were replaced by solid walls as a defense against the newly-invented battering ram (See Yadin’s article in The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 33, p. 68 (1970)). Aharoni’s excavations at Beer-Sheva thoroughly disproved Yadin’s “axiom”. The great solid wall at Beer-Sheva, which was in use during two strata of the early monarchy was replaced by a casemate wall. The casemate fortification consisting of two parallel walls joined by casemates lasted through the next two strata. The archaeological “establishment” is finding it hard to accept Aharoni’s date of 701 B.C. for the final destruction of this casemate wall. However, the architectural facts are clear. At one time Beer-Sheva was sufficiently important to warrant a solid wall; later this solid wall was replaced with a casemate wall—in the heyday of the battering ram! Nothing can explain this away. On the basis of many examples Aharoni has shown that the choice of wall type depended on considerations of expense, the importance of the city to be defended, and the need for space within the wall. (See Aharoni’s article in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 154, p. 35 (1959)). It is true that there is a casemate structure near the Beer-Sheva city gate beneath the solid wall, but between this casemate structure and the solid wall above it was a complete stratum which included a house containing early 10th century 048pottery in situ (See Aharoni’s article in the Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 25, 1975, 169–170), so this casemate structure actually preceded the Solomonic period and the solid wall above it must date from the period of the early monarchy. Despite the overwhelming evidence in support of Aharoni’s dating, we can still expect considerable controversy concerning the dating of the various Beer-Sheva walls.

The methodology employed by Aharoni at Beer-Sheva and other sites he excavated always served his search for answers. Methodology itself never became an obsession, never an end in itself. He sometimes said of the balks which bound the digging areas and reflect the various strata, “I don’t bow down and worship at the balk.” In archaeological excavation every move the excavator makes destroys evidence, so it takes special courage and flexibility to decide as Aharoni did to remove the balks and excavate the greater part of Tell Beer-Sheva down to the level of the Biblical store city. Renowned scholars touring various digs in the country have marvelled at the impact of this exposure. Aharoni’s decision to make a broad exposure at Beer-Sheva, rather than to cut through the site in a narrow trench, demonstrated his rejection of a popular shibboleth, i.e., that a “scientific” excavation goes through all the strata in a limited portion of the tell leaving the rest of the site for future generations to excavate with as yet unknown, and presumably far superior, methods. Aharoni believed that when new methods are developed there will be plenty of sites on which to use them. Meanwhile, to chop up all the strata of a tell in a restricted space is simply to ruin the horizontal picture for future excavation. The methods employed at Beer-Sheva were suitable, he contended, for areas with or without architectural remains. This point of view was frequently criticized by some American archaeologists (See Dever, Eretz-Israel 11, 1973, 1*–8*).

Aharoni often disagreed with the archaeological “establishment”, American, British and Israeli. He did not make a fetish of being different; but when new evidence came to light he did not try to make it palatable to the “authorities”.

Above all Yohanan had what has been called “the courage of imperfection.” He was not afraid to make mistakes or to admit them afterwards, in contrast to those who must always be right in whatever they say or publish. What a needless waste of talent is required to perpetuate one’s own infallibility. Yohanan was not like that.

It is hard to say goodbye to Yohanan Aharoni. It will be harder still to live up to his example. On the last day of the eighth season of excavations at Beer-Sheva, we planted an eshel tree (tamarisk, see Genesis 21:33) beside the ancient well. As we did so, we pledged ourselves to preparing and presenting Yohanan’s vast store of archaeological evidence to the scholarly and popular world. While the tree is growing, we can only hope that the influence of his discoveries will also begin to bear their fruit.