Books in Brief
008
Deserves an “F”
Stranger in the Valley of the Kings: The Identification of Yuya as the Patriarch Joseph
Ahmed Osman
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 176 pp., $17.95
This ingenious work is one of those books whose author inexplicably fails to do his homework in one part, and lets his critical judgment lapse in the other. Sadly, Mr. Osman has no new evidence to offer, nor any new reconstruction of history other than that which, at one time or another, has suggested itself to many an undergraduate, only to be dismissed upon sober reflection. I find myself wondering, then, why Mr. Osman felt obliged to write the book at all. But he did write it, and my remarks are directed toward those who might be misled into taking it seriously.
The author seems to accept (p. 117) the notion that the Exodus must have taken place early in the XIXth Dynasty (1307–1196 B.C.). Accepting a four-generation span for the sojourn in the desert on the basis of Genesis 15:16 (“And they shall return here in the fourth generation”), he concludes that Joseph must have come to Egypt under Thutmose IV (last quarter of the 15th century B.C.), and that the family of Jacob lived during the following reign (Amenophis III [called Amenhotep III in the book]). Then, working backward chronologically, our author designates Thutmose III (c. first half of the 15th century B.C.) as the pharaoh of Abraham’s descent. He claims that Thutmose III sired Isaac by Sara (save the mark). Joseph himself is found to be none other than Yuya, the father-in-law of Amenophis III and the source of the monotheism that came to the fore during the reign of Yuya’s grandson Akhenaten. To bolster this pastiche of remarkable brainwaves, our author has recourse, from time to time, to passages not only from the Bible, but also from the Talmud and the Koran. His solemn trotting out of what can only be called a “Child’s Guide to the Documentary Hypothesis” does not save his theory from complete disaster. Mr. Osman certainly fails to make the case that Yuya and Joseph are identical.
The author treats the evidence as cavalierly as he pleases. He presents himself as a sober historian, yet when it suits him, the Biblical evidence is accepted at face value and literally. See, for example, Osman’s treatment of the chronological implications of Moses’ age on the supposed sequence of pharaohs (pp. 118–119), and his handling of the age of Joseph (p. 120). When the Biblical evidence does not suit Osman, it is discarded (pp. 114ff. on the length of the wilderness wandering of the Israelites) or ignored completely (e.g., the age of Jacob [Genesis 47:28], which by Osman’s reconstruction would put his birth well before that of his father, Isaac!). The narratives need not be binding, Osman advises, since they “were handed down over several centuries by word of mouth” (p. 31), yet we are invited to marvel at the precision in the numbers of the genealogy of Genesis 46 (p. 131). Again, all the author thinks he has to do is to state that there is a scholarly consensus, and this automatically becomes (for him) compelling evidence (pp. 71–73, 132). Needless to say, it is not “generally thought,” as Osman claims, that monotheism “had its origins in Yuya” (p. 139).
The work betrays a profound linguistic ignorance—for example, the ludicrous distinction implied between “Amurrites” and “Semitic elements” (p. 73); or the author’s inability to translate Hebrew (p. 73); or his outlandish derivation of the Turkish word wazir, “vizier,” from Egyptian wsr, “powerful” (p. 126). Anyone who would derive the Philistine seren, “ruler,” the West Semitic sar, “magistrate,” and the Latin personal name Caesar from the “same root” and the “same source” (p. 36, note 2) simply has a world of linguistic training ahead of him.
The work abounds in outright errors of fact. The –ham in the name “Abraham” has nothing to do with Egyptian h
Osman’s bibliography is only 50 items in length, and over half consists of works published prior to 1945! The gaps are enormous. He talks about Yuya’s physical remains, yet never cites the epoch-making x-raying of the Cairo mummies; he ponders the location of Pi-Raamses and Goshen (p. 107), and completely ignores the revolution in our knowledge of the eastern Delta brought about by the work of Alan Gardiner, Manfred Bietak, John Holladay and others within the last two decades. The enormous amount of research during the same period by Biblical scholars on the Exodus and the sources relating thereto are passed over in silence. “Recent studies” for our author (p. 95) means works written 35 years ago!
If this work had been submitted as a term paper by one of my undergraduates, I would have felt constrained to fail him or her. Mr. Osman is not an undergraduate, but I don’t see why he should be let off the hook: Stranger in the Valley of the Kings deserves nothing but an “F,” and its author a rap on the knuckles for wasting our time.
Lavish Reproductions
Maps of the Holy Land: Images of Terra Sancta Through Two Millennia
Kenneth Nebenzahl
(New York Abbeville Press, 1986) 170 pp., with 60 plates and 23 figures, $55.00
Maps of the Holy Land hold a special place among artistic works associated with the Bible. Neither mere decoration nor mere description, Holy Land maps are intended both to please the eye and to inform. A map abstracts, filters and simplifies, and thereby becomes an interpretation.
Kenneth Nebenzahl, an authority on antiquarian cartography, has put together an awesome collection of some of the most attractive and historically important maps of the Holy Land. They date from the oldest existing map—the Madaba mosaic (c. 565 009A.D.), which can be seen in a church in Madaba, Jordan—up to an example of state-of-the-art cartography during the Napoleonic period—the Joctin map (1818). Over 60 maps, gathered from world-wide collections, are lavishly reproduced here in color. Each map is accompanied by a background essay on the mapmaker, sources used and the significance of the map in the history of cartography.
Those who would like to venture into an unusual form of Biblical iconography may start with the first printed map, a world map based on the Bible and published in Augsburg in 1472 (only 16 years after the completion of the printing of the Gutenberg Bible). Nowadays we call such maps “cartograms,” a form that purposely distorts geographic shapes and sizes. Cartograms have often been mistaken for primitive maps, but there is nothing primitive about this masterpiece. It is based on a figure that appeared in Isadore of Seville’s Christian encyclopedia (c. 800). A circle representing the known world is trisected by a truncated “T” (really the Greek letter tau). This so-called T-in-O map (signifying orbis terrarum, “whole earth”) represents Divine perfection. The continents are peopled by the three sons of Noah (Asia by Shem, Africa by Ham and Europe by Japheth). Shem gets the top half of the world—a double portion for the firstborn. Jerusalem is close to the center of the world in accordance with Ezekiel 5:5: “Thus says the Lord God: ‘This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries round about her.’” Africa and Europe are separated by the Mediterranean Sea, which intersects the Red and Black Seas (or Nile and Don Rivers) at the shores of the Holy Land. East is “up” on this map, because east was the primary direction for orientation in the Bible. This orientation deviates from that used by Claudius Ptolemy, the second-century Alexandrian and geographic authority of the Renaissance, who arbitrarily placed north at the top of his maps.
Another map, dated to the 12th century A.D., is a copy of one by Jerome (c. 348–420), who translated the Bible into Latin. Here we see the Jordan River with its two supposed tributaries, the “Jor” and the “Dan” (a fanciful legend). The mapmaker’s choices—some of them eccentric—show us what was important to a fourth- or fifth-century scholar residing in the Holy Land.
The Peutinger Tablemap, a 12th-century manuscript copy of a road map of the Roman empire (c. 450), is strikingly modern in form—it looks like an American Automobile Association “TRIPTIK” strip map. The Holy Land is represented, and one finds written: Helya Capitolina Antea dicta Hierusalem (“Aelia Capitolina. It used to be called Jerusalem”)—yet another example, to 011add to those many on the ground in Israel, that power and wealth may be more fragile reeds than ideas.
Turn now to an example of Islamic cartography of the tenth century. This map appears upside down, until you realize that Mecca is the primary direction of interest to this mapmaker.
One can spend a good deal of time with the von Breitenback and Reowich map (Mainz, 1486) by pretending to be a 15th-century pilgrim. This map is, after all, taken from the first illustrated guidebook to the Holy Land. The magnificent view of Jerusalem looks out toward the west from the Mount of Olives—while the remainder of the Holy Land is oriented in the opposite direction, from the Mediterranean Sea toward the east. The scale of Jerusalem is many times larger than the rest of the land and takes up about half of the map. Naive? Amateurish? No, these fellows knew what they were doing. The best panoramic view of Jerusalem is from the east looking west, and a pilgrim might be expected to spend about half of his or her time in the Holy Land in the city of Jerusalem.
Jacob Ziegler (c. 1470–1549) had a sense of humor. That is obvious from the heinous, or perhaps hyena-us, expression on the face of the monstrous fish swimming through the frothy waters of the Mare Syracum (Sea of Syria), off the coast of the Holy Land. But also look at how he places the town of Haroher (Aroer) on the Arnon River, which flows into the Asphaltis (Dead Sea). The river swirls around the town so that it is truly a “city that is in the midst of the river” (Joshua 13:9), a lovely literal interpretation of this perplexing verse (but make sure you read the King James version, or the Masoretic text; some recent translations have “corrected” Scripture and spoiled the fun by leaving less to the imagination).
Well, I’ve gotten through only about one third of this book, and even so, I’ve skipped a lot. Some of my favorite maps are yet to come: Buenting’s 16th-century cloverleaf world; Adrichom’s 1590 map, on which Absalom can be seen hung up on a tree (2 Samuel 18:9); Zaddiq’s earliest known Hebrew map (1621), prophetically showing an Israeli navy in the Great Sea; Fuller’s map of the Dead Sea, with Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim in flames sinking into the “Mare Salsum” (Salt Sea); bar Yaaqov’s mystical Hebrew map of the 12 tribes; Dionysius’ view of Mount Sinai; and finally, Joctin’s triumph in the art of scientific mapping.
The publishers are to be commended for their care in reproduction and for the quality of the paper that they used. Even during a sweltering summer in Washington, D.C., these maps retained their shape without the slightest ripple. The book should last through years of browsing, as you discover new ways of looking at the land of the Bible.
Invaluable Reference
Maps of the Holy Land: Cartobibliography of Printed Maps 1475–1900
Eran Laor
(New York: Alan R. Liss, 1986) 222 pp., plus 24 color plates, $77.50
Although this book has the same title as Nebenzahl’s volume, reviewed above, it serves quite a different purpose. Laor’s book is a reference work on printed maps of the Holy Land. Anyone who wants to check on a map published before 1900 will probably find it described here. For example, several years ago a friend gave me an 1843 map of Palestine by William Hughes. He had purchased it in a book store in London, but knew nothing else about it. I was able to find Hughes and his works listed in Laor’s book, so my map now has a pedigree.
A copy of Laor’s book, therefore, belongs in every major library and in the home of any serious collector of maps. It is an attractive volume with 24 full-color plates and over 50 black-and-white illustrations of maps. Here you will find a 1552 map showing the tribes of Israel surrounding the Tabernacle, and several maps showing various representations of Solomon’s Temple. You can also peruse old plans of Jerusalem, or follow, on several maps, the Israelites on their journey through the desert to the Promised Land. In addition, this volume contains an index of personal names of mapmakers, a chronological index, biographical listings and a list of references for further study—all invaluable for the serious student and scholar.
Eran Laor has donated his collection of maps to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, which now has one of the finest, if not the finest, collections of Holy Land maps in the world. Laor is a master collector who explains, in the introduction to this book, how he came to enjoy maps and what adventures he had in the process of finding and purchasing maps. This adds a personal touch to a superb reference work.
Deserves an “F”
Stranger in the Valley of the Kings: The Identification of Yuya as the Patriarch Joseph
Ahmed Osman
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988) 176 pp., $17.95
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