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Benjamin Mazar (1906–1995)

Professor Benjamin Mazar died on September 8th, at the age of 89. The world has lost its greatest living Biblical archaeologist and historian, Israel has lost a preeminent educator and citizen, and I have lost a friend and mentor.

From his childhood in Russia to his last days in Jerusalem, Mazar pursued his quest for the ancient cultural and historical roots of the Jews in the land of Israel. For these roots he knew he had to dig deep, back into the Biblical period, and to search wide, across the diverse contexts of neighboring Near Eastern cultures.

At the age of 22, when most of us are completing our undergraduate degrees, Mazar received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Giessen in Germany, under the tutelage of the famous cuneiform scholar Julius Levy. That same year, 1928, he published his first article, on Amarna, in the German edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica. Once, not knowing that Mazar began his studies of Akkadian as a teenager, I asked him if he had read the 14th-century B.C.E. Amarna Letters in cuneiform before he wrote the article. He looked at me incredulously and replied: “Would it be possible to do it any other way?”

Toward the end of 1928, Mazar fulfilled his dream of settling in the Promised Land, joining his family in Haifa. He later moved to Jerusalem, where he met his most influential teacher, William F. Albright, who was director of the American Schools of Oriental Research during the 1930s. In Mazar’s pantheon of great scholars dealing with the Biblical world, Albright occupied the paramount position. For a time, Mazar joined Albright on the dig at Tell Beit Mirsim, where by day he learned the fundamentals of stratigraphy and pottery typology, and by night he spoke with Albright about ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Mazar was fond of relating a particular anecdote: One night, they were sitting around the table trying to pronounce the Egyptian word Aamu, usually translated as “Asiatic,” which begins with two gutturals. After much hacking and coughing, Albright thought he had succeeded in the task. He summoned the cook’s son, whose native Arabic is rich in gutturals. But when the puzzled lad failed miserably to replicate Albright’s solution, the boy was quickly remanded to the kitchen.

In 1943 Mazar joined the faculty of the Hebrew University as lecturer in Biblical history and the historical geography of Palestine. Before that appointment, he had been an “independent” scholar, happy but penniless. In following years, Mazar advanced historical geography and territorial history through archaeological surveys. He also directed the archaeological excavations at Beit She’arim, which provided a window on Jewish art, architecture and customs in the period of the Mishnah and the Talmud. In 1951, Mazar was promoted to professor of the history of the Jewish people in the Biblical period and the archaeology of Palestine.

At that time, Hebrew University, exiled from its traditional home on Mt. Scopus, was struggling to survive. Mazar had the vision to help renew and rebuild the university, which would “serve as the spiritual center of the Jewish people, as a focal point for scientific and cultural development, and as the training ground for young scholars who would enhance the prestige of the State of Israel.” In 1952 he became rector and, a year later, president of Hebrew University. He sacrificed much of his own scholarly production during the following decade to ensure that future generations in all fields of scholarship would have a strong institutional base. Among other things, Mazar helped create the campus at Ramat Gan, which served as the center of the University until 1967 and today houses the division of sciences and the National Library.

The capstone of his archaeological field career is the decade-long dig he directed in his beloved Jerusalem, beginning in 1967, just south of the Temple Mount. There he unearthed an Umayyad palace and remains associated with the First and Second Temples. He was delighted that his granddaughter Eilat Mazar continues the excavations there.

Mazar combined a philological expertise with a burgeoning knowledge of archaeological and historical research to create his own remarkable syntheses. In his “Autobiographical Reflections of a University Teacher,” Mazar wrote: “I have always aspired to bring together in my own work and in that of my 023students the various disciplines—history, historical geography, Biblical archaeology and epigraphy and, as far as possible, the ancient oriental cultures and their languages.”

His success in realizing these aspirations is evident in two volumes of his collected essays in English: Biblical Israel (Magnes Press, 1992) and The Early Biblical Period (Israel Exploration Society, 1986). The magnitude of Professor Mazar’s influence is suggested by the list of professors and museum curators who studied with him: Avraham Malamat, Yohanan Aharoni, Hayim and Miriam Tadmor, Moshe and Trude Dothan, to name but a few.

Professor Mazar was the consummate teacher, whether in the classroom, a hotel lobby, a car, a coffee shop or his home. Just as his favorite written form of scholarly communication was the essay rather than the full-length book, so his most effective pedagogical forum was the seminar and the tutorial.

For his many contributions as scholar and educator, Professor Mazar was awarded the Israel Prize in 1968, the country’s highest cultural award.

Mazar visited the Ashkelon excavation, which I direct, every year since its inception. (He was instrumental in launching the Leon Levy Expedition in 1985). And, usually, I would drive to Jerusalem for lunch and a tutorial at his home on the Sabbath. He or I would choose the topic of the day, always having something to do with the Biblical world. When the subject related to a Biblical text, he would complain that his memory was failing him and then invariably turn to within a verse or two of the relevant passage in his hand-sized Hebrew Bible. While discussing the dog cemetery at Ashkelon, I asked if there were any references linking Gula, the Mesopotamian goddess of healing whose emblem was the dog, to Phoenicia or Israel. Mazar immediately recalled that Gula was once invoked at the beginning of a treaty between Assyria and Tyre. We checked the text and there she was.

Just this past July, Mazar attended the Ashkelon excavations for the last time. We had planned his week-long visit to coincide with that of Frank M. Cross—another luminary who considers Mazar, along with Albright, his most influential teacher—who was the staff epigraphist. Together we had a memorable time: we walked through the 4,000-year-old city gate, built during the Age of the Amorites and still standing two stories high; we sat on the mudbrick walls of a large building, constructed by the Philistines; we handled the distinctive red- and black-painted Philistine pottery, which reminded Mazar of his own pioneering excavations 45 years ago at the Philistine site of Tel Qasile in Tel Aviv. Mazar was proud that his nephew Amihai Mazar continued the work begun there. It was a week suffused with 077the warmth of friendship and the stimulation of scholarly discussions. And now it looms more memorable than ever.

Until the end of his life, Mazar continued to revel in new discoveries. Archaeologists and historians constantly came to his home to discuss their latest finds. He was always ready to help put those discoveries into their wider context.

All of us who knew and loved Professor Mazar celebrate his wonderful life and mourn our considerable loss.

IEJ Appoints New Editors

Baruch Levine and Miriam Tadmor have been named to succeed the late Jonas Greenfield as editors of the Israel Exploration Journal (IEJ), published by the Israel Exploration Society. Levine will retire from New York University, giving up his position as Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies to move to Israel. A scholar of ancient Semitic epigraphy, Ugaritic and Aramaic literature, Levine is a member of the Archaeological Council of the Israel Exploration Society, author of commentaries on Leviticus and Numbers and a contributor to The Eretz-Israel series.

Tadmor comes to her new post with almost 40 years experience as a curator for the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Museum, which she helped plan and where she has served as chief curator of archaeology. Tadmor has excavated at Tell Qasile, Rosh ha-Niqra and Beth Yerah; her many publications include “Displaying History: The Samuel Bronfman Biblical and Archaeological Museum,” Israel Museum Journal, and “Figurines and Miniature Vessels from the Chalcolithic Period,” Eretz-Israel.

BAR Travel Scholarships

Congratulations to the three recipients of BAR Travel Scholarships to address the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. Esther Eshel, a graduate student at Hebrew University, will lecture on “New Aramaic Texts from the Bar-Kokhba Period found in the Judean Desert”; Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist Nurit Feig will discuss “The Agricultural Hinterland of Jerusalem during Iron Age II (1000–586 B.C.E.)”; and Norma Franklin, a graduate student at Tel Aviv University, will offer “An Historical and Geographical Trip Around Sargon II’s Palace.”

The 1995 Annual Meeting will be held November 18–21, in Philadelphia.

Correction

In “New Carbon-14 Results Leave Room for Debate,” BAR 21:04, the age of the linen fragment said to have come from Cave 2 at Qumran should have been 13th or 14th century C.E., not B.C.E.

Benjamin Mazar (1906–1995)