Books in Brief

004

Masada, The Yigael Yadin Excavation 1963–1965, Final Reports

Ed. by Joseph Aviram, Gideon Foerster and Ehud Netzer

(Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem) vol 1 (1989)146 pp.. 81 plates, $60; vol. 2(1989)258 pp., 48 plates, $72, vol.. 3 (1991) 683 pp., 945 illustrations, 78 plans, $144

These books, large in format, beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated, are the authoritative final publication of results from the excavations at Masada in 1963–1965. The site was King Herod’s desert palace and refuge, perched high on a mesa 1,000 feet above the Dead Sea in some of the earth’s most awe-inspiring terrain. During the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 C.E.^a), a few hundred resistance fighters, the sicarii, with their wives and their children, occupied Masada and ultimately, in 73 or 74 C.E., defended themselves heroically in the face of inevitable defeat and death. The late Yigael Yadin, the excavator, related the story brilliantly in his acclaimed book Masada: Herod’s Palace and the Zealots’ Last Stand.¹ In Yadin’s vivid retelling, the modern archaeologists’ adventures at Masada are hardly less gripping than the tragic final hours of the Jewish resistance fighters many centuries before.

Yadin’s excavation and his popular book brought the ancient Jewish resisters, whom he identified as “zealots,” back to life and transformed Masada into a symbol:

“Its scientific importance was known to be great. But more than that, Masada represents for all of us in Israel and for many elsewhere, archaeologists and laymen, a symbol of courage, a monument of our great national figures, heroes who chose death over a life of physical and moral serfdom.”²

Masada’s symbolic message is unflinching resistance to Israel’s enemies. For years many Israeli soldiers have recited the enlistment oath on this rock of supreme sacrifice, remembering what happened there with the words “Masada shall not fall again!”

These new books give the full detail behind Yadin’s stirring account of Masada and the excavations. Volume I has two parts, “The Aramaic and Hebrew Ostraca and Jar Inscriptions,” written by Joseph Naveh but also listing Yigael Yadin himself as an author, and Ya’akov Meshorer’s “The Coins of Masada.” Volume 2, by Hannah M. Cotton and Joseph Geiger, is “The Latin and Greek Documents,” while volume 3 is Ehud Netzer’s massive “The Buildings: Stratigraphy and Architecture.” The editors promise two more volumes in the next two years. Volume 4 will be Gideon Foerster’s study of the art and architecture, including the famous wall paintings and mosaics. Volume 5 will cover the lamps, stoneware, textiles and leather, weapons and human bones.

Nearly three decades have passed since Yadin organized the Masada excavation, with a small army of volunteers from many countries, soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and a staff from the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology. He finished the excavation in just two winter seasons, totaling 11 months. Immediately following the first season (1963–1964), Yadin presented a lengthy preliminary report in the Israel Exploration Journal,³ and the popular book Masada came out only a few months after the second season. Yet until the present series began to appear, nearly 30 years after the field work, the Masada excavation still lacked the all-important final reports. Many will ask, why the long delay? The answer lies in Yadin’s personality and career.

Yigael Yadin was a person of near “Renaissance man” versatility, a type that the young state of Israel produced in disproportionate numbers. While studying archaeology in the late 1930s, he also rose in the Haganah (the Jewish underground) and in 1949, just after independence, became chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Yadin retired from the military in 1952—his country’s top general at the ripe old age of 35!—but he was recalled to assist and advise when there were new wars in 1967 and 1973. Then came a political career. Between 1977 and 1981 Yadin led a political party in Israel’s Knesset (parliament) and served as deputy prime minister.

Simultaneously Yadin pursued a multifaceted, full-time career in teaching and research. Beginning in 1963, he occupied a professorial chair in the Hebrew University 006named for his father, the archaeologist E. L. Sukenik. From his father, one of the pioneers of Dead Sea Scroll research, he had inherited a fascination with the scrolls, and he published extensively on the subject: a popular book, numerous articles and no fewer than six volumes of Dead Sea Scroll texts. Looking for more scrolls, he led an expedition into the Judean desert in 1960 and 1961, discovered the Cave of the Letters and eventually authored a volume of texts and another highly popular book, titled Bar-Kokhba,⁴ on the finds. For many years he directed the Hebrew University’s excavations at Megiddo and Hazor, publishing, on Hazor, three final report volumes and still another popular book.⁵

All of this writing, along with teaching, administrative responsibilities and political activism, simply left Yigael Yadin with no time to return to the Masada material. Thinking, in his later sixties, that he still had many years left, he was struck down, tragically, by a heart attack in 1984. Like many other archaeologists, even a man of Yadin’s caliber had bitten off more than he could chew.

Paradoxically, it was Yadin’s death that set the process of publication in motion. There was no further need to await Yadin’s lead. The Hebrew University and the Israel Exploration Society, sponsors of the original excavation, established a memorial fund and appealed for gifts to finance such a costly undertaking. In his will, Yadin had named trustees of his scientific legacy, and they quickly assembled reams of scholars and editors for each remaining body of Yadin’s work. The Masada team, headed by Ehud Netzer and Gideon Foerster, with Joseph Aviram representing the Israel Exploration Society, deserves special plaudits for relatively quick work.

Yadin’s personality and career account for more, however, than the delay in publication, for he definitely left his imprint on Masada and on these volumes. Only a man with Yadin’s leadership instincts and vivacity could have assembled and coordinated such a talented staff. The roster of supervisors and specialists in volumes 1 and 3 reads like a “Who’s Who” of current archaeology in Israel, among them two later directors of antiquities who served Yadin as area supervisors. Only an exceptionally capable and well-led staff could have deployed so many volunteers effectively and performed so efficiently the technical tasks of recovery, preservation, recording, photography and architectural draftsmanship. In the crisp, clear photographs, every signboard and meter stick is in place; the reader can locate each archaeological find and architectural feature by map coordinates and locus number on the lucid, uncluttered drawings. It is clear from the final reports that Yadin’s excavation was organized meticulously in advance and executed with military precision.

More than this, while Yadin the scholar planned his excavation to advance scientific knowledge of Herodian architecture and archaeological topics, Yadin the general and statesman instinctively expected that his excavations would enhance the symbolic value of Masada. The “symbol of courage” about which Yadin wrote would gain immensely from actual physical remains that young people, military recruits and visitors from around the world could see and touch. Until 1963, knowledge of what happened there depended almost exclusively upon a single literary account of the fall of Masada written by the Jewish historian Josephus shortly after the event.⁶ It is Josephus who tells us that when all hope was lost the Jewish resisters preferred death by suicide to slavery or exile. If Josephus is not factual on this point—if Yadin’s zealots actually capitulated, or if they bent their necks helplessly to the Roman swords, or if many found safety in flight—the heroism of Masada would begin to look like futility, and the heroes like ordinary victims.

Not surprisingly, Yadin found evidence on every hand to support Josephus’ account 008of Masada’s fall. A recent BAR article has confirmed Josephus (and Yadin) on one important point,^b and our own excavations at Caesarea, Herod’s coastal city, likewise support the Jewish historian’s general veracity.^c Yet many scholars looking at the evidence that Yadin found now believe that Josephus fabricated much of the defenders’ heroism. The American scholar Shaye J. D. Cohen presented a relatively moderate version of the common opinion in 1982—in an essay written in Yadin’s honor!⁷ According to him, Josephus “created” his story from a combination of “historical truth, a fertile imagination, a flair for drama and exaggeration, polemic against the Sicarii [Yadin’s zealots], and literary borrowings.”^d Cohen’s views aside, in some cases the rejection of Josephus and Yadin has had a political tone, coming from those who think Masada is a “complex” that has engendered excessive rigidness and fanaticism in Israel’s relations with her Arab rivals.

The supreme importance of these books is the full evidence they contain on the Masada issue, permitting scholars and the public to make their own decision as to whether the defenders of Masada were heroes or hapless victims. Beyond this, the three volumes published so far present a wealth of new data on King Herod’s reign and the Jews in late Second Temple times, the age of Jesus and his disciples.

Joseph Naveh employs Yadin’s notes to present all 701 Semitic-language (Hebrew and Aramaic) inscriptions found at Masada written on pottery jars or ostraca (sherds of pottery used like scrap paper for making notations). Virtually all of these texts are thought to date from the time of the sicarii (66 to 73 or 74 C.E.). The majority are just a single letter or two, or a name or list of names, but still they are extremely valuable. Since they were written within a tightly enclosed time, the letter forms will help specialists recognize other documents of the same age. There is likewise new evidence here for languages in the time of Jesus and the early Christian Church. These ostraca agree with the Gospels, for example, that the people spoke and wrote Aramaic, while it was the priests who used Hebrew. Moreover, these brief texts speak for a strong sense of justice among the sicarii. It is likely that many were used in an elaborate food rationing system, including some that designated tithes set aside for members of priestly families among those living on Masada. In the most trying circumstances, these religious extremists took pains to distribute limited food supplies equitably and to observe meticulously the traditional rules for the purity of priestly shares.

A special group of ostraca is the 11 found together in the same place, which Yadin considered the most spectacular find on Masada. Written on each potsherd is a single name, among them “ben Yair,” surely none other than Eleazar ben-Yair, the leader of the sicarii who allegedly promoted the mass suicide. For Yadin these confirmed the Josephus version of the end of Masada, because they could only be the actual “lots” employed, as Josephus relates, to choose one from among the final ten men for the gruesome task of killing the rest. As Cohen and others have pointed out, however, one does not need 11 lots to select from ten men. Now that we see all 701 ostraca together in one book, it is tempting to interpret these examples too as connected somehow with the food rationing system.

Ya’akov Meshorer catalogues all 3,914 identifiable coins found at Masada, more 010than half of which were prutot (small bronze coins) used by the sicarii on Masada, who must have established a regular money economy during their relatively brief occupation. There were also enough Hasmonean coins in the ruins to suggest use of the site by the Jewish dynasty that preceded Herod the Great, although the excavations yielded little evidence of building during that period.

In their section, Hannah Cotton and Joseph Geiger publish a further 230 texts in Greek or Latin, again mostly only a single letter to a few words on papyrus or potsherds. Again, the Greek texts apparently were written by Jews, among whom Greek as well as Aramaic and Hebrew had come into wide use by the time of the Gospels, while the Latin documents came from the Roman besiegers of 73 or 74 C.E. Among the highlights are inscribed fragments of wine jars recording a shipment of Philonian wine from Italy to “Herod the Jewish King” in 19 B.C.E.—bearing witness to the king’s discriminating palate, and perhaps to the fact that rabbinic injunctions against drinking gentile wine were not yet in force. A Latin text, among the earliest surviving fragments of the poet Virgil, suggests that one Roman soldier, probably an officer, had the time and inclination for poetry during the heat and boredom of the siege.

Ehud Netzer, the acknowledged master of Herodian architecture, began his career as a scholar with Yadin on Masada. His volume in this series is a building-by-building, locus-by-locus description of Masada’s buildings, notably the terraced northern palace with the adjacent Roman bath and storeroom complex, the labyrinthine western palace and the casemate defense wall. Numerous reconstruction drawings inspire the reader to visualize King Herod and his court in these spacious and elegant rooms vacationing and entertaining guests. There is also an important chronological dimension to Netzer’s work. The Masada expedition does not appear to have emphasized stratigraphic archaeology or dating by pottery and coins, yet meticulous study of the architecture, of the relationship in time between one wall and another, has enabled Netzer to date each building, explain its development and ultimately to write a chronological interpretation of Masada architecture. During the reign of Herod, for example, Netzer distinguishes three general building phases, during the second of which Herod’s architects developed the great palaces. To the third phase, late in Herod’s reign, belongs the casemate wall and other signs of “buttoning up” to protect the aging, ill and increasingly paranoid king from his enemies.

Two generations later, the sicarii occupied the same buildings, blocking doorways and subdividing rooms to form dwelling units for their families, installing their ovens, storage bins and ritual baths. On the question of Masada’s fall, Netzer enthusiastically supports Josephus and his mentor Yadin. At last Netzer offers detailed archaeological evidence that in 73 or 74 C.E., as Josephus relates, the sicarii indeed did build a wall strengthened with wooden beams as a last-ditch defense where the Romans threatened to break in.^e There is ample evidence as well for the conflagration—according to Josephus purposely set—that engulfed Masada on the night of the mass suicide.

This is a set of volumes that any BAR reader would be proud to display on a coffee table. Actually reading them, however, is a far greater reward, for they are a goldmine of facts and insights about one of the most fascinating of all archaeological sites.

The Anchor Bible Dictionary

David Noel Freedman, Editor in Chief

(New York: Doubleday, 1992) 6 vols., 7,234 pp., $360.00

I am one of the few people qualified to review this massive set of books. That is because so many people (nearly 1,000) are disqualified because they are contributors. On the other hand, if a thousand Biblical scholars have been chosen and you haven’t been, then there is the problem of bias in the other direction.

I am neither a contributor, nor am I offended at not having been asked. David Noel Freedman, the editor in chief, asked me to write an entry on popular Biblical archaeology. I declined simply because I didn’t have the time. Writing for a Bible dictionary is serious business, and one doesn’t toss off the assignment cavalierly. Whether the absence of an entry on popular Biblical archaeology is an omission of any consequence is another matter; at least it qualifies me to review the set—or rather its presence, if I had written it, doesn’t disqualify me (that’s quite a difference!).

One qualification usually required of a reviewer is that he/she has read the work under review. On this basis, I admit to disqualification. But I have it as a personal confession that even Noel Freedman hasn’t read the entire thing.

The initial plan was that it would be a work of five million words in five volumes by five hundred authors to be produced in five years. It probably would have been better had the original plan been followed. As George Bernard Shaw (I think) is supposed to have written to one of his correspondents, “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time.”

As it turned out, the set consists of seven million words covering 6,200 entries in six volumes by nearly a thousand authors and took six years to complete. Still, quite an accomplishment!

One word will predictably and justifiably appear in every review of this set: monumental. As the promotional material says, this is “the first major Bible dictionary to be published in America in 30 years.” Well, that’s not exactly true. I will probably turn first to the one-volume Harper’s Bible Dictionary published in 1985 in conjunction with the Society of Biblical Literature and only then to the new Anchor Bible Dictionary (ABD, as it will be referred to) if I’m left dissatisfied. But the ABD will clearly replace the now often-out-of-date, multivolume Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible (IDB) of 30 years ago. (More erudite reviews will be more specific about some of the great articles in the IDB that even the “monumental” ABD cannot replace.)

I regret to state that I did not find the ABD to be reader friendly, largely for two reasons. One cannot be corrected; the other can. For these aging, bifocaled eyes, the type is simply too small and jammed together. Whether the problem is the type face, its size or the spacing between the lines, I’m not sure, but I know the effect. Of course the answer to this will be that if we made the type larger or airier, the set would be even larger and cost more, etc. The aim, we are told, was to make the set affordable. At $360 ($60 a volume; $70 in Canada), that’s questionable.

Second, for a set this size, I need more tools to find my way through it. This could be supplied in a separate slim volume, which I hope the publishers will consider producing. I fear that many important, even pathbreaking articles in this set may be missed simply because no one thinks to look under the appropriate title. I need an index. Cross-references in articles to other articles are not enough. I want to know where a 012particular item is mentioned in every article where it appears. The publisher’s promotional material tells me that somewhere inside this set there is a discussion of whether Christianity is an “offspring” or a “sibling” of rabbinic Judaism. I have no idea where to look for this discussion. Equally important, I would like a list of the 6,200 articles arranged in various ways—alphabetically, by major topics, etc.—so that I could see at a glance what articles might pertain to my particular topic. This would also help me to browse, enticed by the particular article. These listings should also contain the name of the entry’s author, for this is often the enticement to read it. I would also like a list of the authors that indicates which articles they have written. The publisher boasts that the contributors are “all the biggest names from around the world.” That’s true, but I have no way of finding the articles by my favorites. All this and more could still be issued in a supplement.

What about the content? The safe, but accurate answer is: spotty. Some are very good. Some not so good. In general this set is for the scholar. I didn’t find it fun to browse through. But I did find many entries intriguing. The material is often very technical, especially in the archaeological entries. With each sentence, someone should have asked, is this information that the reader of a comprehensive Bible dictionary would want to have? Too often the answer is that almost no one would be interested in this particular information, especially because most of the time it just sits there without forming the basis for any broader generalization or interpretation. As chief associate editor Gary Herion (who deserves much of the credit for directing the project) says in his graceful introduction, he noted in his contributors “a certain reluctance to place a given topic within a larger picture.”

Paradoxically, getting the leading experts to write on the subjects they know best sometimes results in a one-sided view. The entry on archaeology, by William G. Dever, is entitled “Archaeology, Syro-Palestinian and Biblical.” Dever has long been a proponent of the former and a denigrator of the latter. So Dever speaks of the “collapse” and the “demise” of Biblical archaeology in the 1960s. He tells us of the “calls for ‘biblical archaeology’s’ replacement by a more specialized, professional secular discipline termed ‘syro-Palestinian archaeology.’ There was heated opposition at first, much of it the result of semantic confusion or emotional overreaction from biblical scholars and threatened amateurs … It is beyond dispute that in the struggle of the ‘two archaeologies’ … Syro-Palestinian has triumphed … Thus the debate about ‘biblical archaeology’ now seems over.”

Quite coincidentally, at the same time I was reading this article by Dever, I read a review of his latest book by the distinguished British scholar, P. R. S. Moorey of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University. By contrast, Moorey notes that Dever’s “contention that a preoccupation with biblical studies necessarily made archaeological fieldwork unscientific was particularly resented, both inside and outside North America, while his restriction of the term ‘Biblical Archaeology’ to a particular historical relationship in certain North American academic circles … bewildered many outside the region. Moreover, at times Dever seemed to be arguing that there was little hope that ‘Biblical Archaeology’ would evolve, developing a new legitimacy of its own as a scientific discipline. Its practitioners [according to Dever] simply had to accept that only through a secular ‘syro-Palestinian Archaeology’ might American archaeologists working in the lands of the Bible keep in touch with the modern archaeological theory and practice through which alone they would earn the respect of their peers among professional field archaeologists. Few denied the validity of the call for a fully professional approach, but many rejected the manner and the implications of the call as Dever chose to make it twenty years ago.”^f One would not know this from Dever’s discussion in the ABD.

Another example. Tripartite pillared buildings of a clearly public, rather than domestic, nature have been found at numerous sites in ancient Israel and adjacent lands.^g Various functions have been suggested for these buildings by unusually prominent archaeologists, chiefly as storehouses or stables. I thought I would like to see what the ABD had to say on this major debate. I looked under “Tripartite Pillared Buildings,” but there was no entry (although there is for tripartite tractate). I then looked under “Storehouses.” Again no entry. In desperation I looked under “Stables.” If I had known that John Holladay had written the entry on stables, I would have immediately guessed where to find the discussion of these buildings, because Holladay is a major participant in the debate, and he believes they are stables. Holladay barely gives voice to his opponents, however, noting only that “various scholars have raised questions regarding … the interpretation of these particular buildings.” He does not even tell us that they think they are storehouses. Instead he explains at length the considerations that led him to the view that they are stables. He then concludes, “It seems clear this particular class of buildings was designed and perpetuated with only one function in mind: that of providing an efficient, workable setting for the care and maintenance of stalled horses” (emphasis in original).

This treatment may be contrasted with the treatment of the same subject in a new multiauthored book published by the Israel Exploration Society (The Architecture of Ancient Israel, 1992). There the editors tell us that each author will “present opinions that may be contrary to his or her own, or will at least draw the reader’s attention to their existence.” In an article on “Administrative Structures in the Iron Age,” Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze’ev Henog discusses the stable hypothesis at length if only to refute it (quite convincingly) in favor of the storehouse explanation.

Having thus looked at a new book on the architecture of ancient Israel, I thought I would see what the ABD had to say on the subject generally. I first looked under the heading “Architecture.” There I was told to look under “Art and Architecture.” Why these two vast subjects were combined in such a comprehensive dictionary is a mystery. Anyway, when I looked up “Art and Architecture,” I found that there were seven different articles on the subject—including “Persian Art,” “Mesopotamian Art and Architecture,” “Egyptian Art and Architecture,” “Early Christian Art,” and “Early 014Jewish Art and Architecture” (the last began in the Hellenistic period, so it did not cover ancient Israel). This set of articles was completed by two general articles—one on art in the ancient near east and the other on architecture in the ancient near east. If the architecture of ancient Israel were to be covered anywhere, it would be in this last-named article. So I looked there. In this article was a subheading for Anatolia and another for Syria and Palestine. Here, at last, if anywhere, would be a discussion of the architecture of ancient Israel. Alas, the two pages of text on the architecture of ancient Syria and Palestine (out of 61 for all of art and architecture) refers to almost no sites in Israel during the time of the Israelite monarchy, despite the extraordinary number of well-documented excavations in Israel in recent times. I am sure that somewhere in this mammoth Bible dictionary is a discussion, for example, of the numerous Iron Age fortresses in the Negev, but I am not directed to it in the discussion of architecture in ancient Syria and Palestine (and it’s not under “Fortresses”).

But I confess that all this is caviling. The ABD is a magnificent achievement. Of course it has weaknesses—which are more fun to talk about than its strengths. But it also has more formidable entries than I can count, on almost any subject you can imagine. Admittedly it’s not a novel, nor was it meant to be. It is a serious reference work for serious scholars. It will stand as a landmark for decades to come. All honor to David Noel Freedman, Gary Herion and managing editor Astrid Beck.

Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Vol. II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence

Martin Bernal

(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1991)

736 pp., $60.00 (cloth), $16.95 (paper)

Prophecy is a risky business, but I think we can safely predict that historians in 100 years will view the end of the present millennium as a period when “diversity,” “multiculturalism,” “ethnicity” and “pluralism” dominated attempts at historical interpretation in the West. The many facets of “political correctness” cannot be analyzed objectively. It is a concept that by now has become an impenetrable mire of attitudes, aspirations, corrections, denunciations and biases, some good, some bad. At present, we cannot know the ramifications of all this, nor even provide an accurate sketch of its outlines. We are too close to the trees for a description of the forest.

We can, though, try to understand, however imperfectly, the results of historical revisionism from our contemporary perspective; indeed, there is an obligation to do so. In the field of Greek antiquity, Martin Bernal’s Black Athena, the second volume of which has now appeared (there will be four in all), stands as a preeminent example of this phenomenon.

In the first volume, published in 1987, Bernal, a Sinologist at Cornell University, presented a provocative and manifold thesis: (1) The ancient Greeks traced the origins of their civilization to Egypt and Phoenicia, a hypothesis known as the “Ancient Model”; (2) this line of thinking persisted in historiographical tradition until the 18th century; (3) in the late 18th century, a systematic attempt began on the part of racist and anti-Semitic scholars, particularly in Germany (the home of the neoclassical revival), to deny these “exotic” contributions to Greek culture; (4) at that time an “Aryan Model,” positing invasion of indigenous Greeks by Indo-Europeans from the north, supplanted the Ancient Model and, in modified form, exists to this day. Bernal acknowledged that current scholarship recognizes Semitic influence on prehistoric Greece, but he claimed that evidence for Egyptian influences is still suppressed. He proposed, therefore, a “Revised Ancient Model,” which both affirms Indo-European incursions and restores the ancient view that put Egyptian and Phoenician settlers and invaders on Greek soil.^h

Now, in Black Athena 2, we are given the “archaeological and documentary evidence” for this theory. Unfortunately, the evidence is set in a context of “competitive plausibility,” a vague concept that permits Bernal’s assertions to stand simply because he makes them; no proof, no evidence, apart from his notions of likelihood, need bolster them so long as they seem “plausible.” This elusive methodological tool seriously undermines Bernal s credibility. What is the reader to make of arguments that are merely plausible? Throughout the ages, history has been written on the basis of evidence, concrete or otherwise, that leads to conclusions 016the historian can analyze in a defined context. Yet Bernal admits that he cannot provide “hard” evidence for many of his assertions. Moreover, he criticizes “archaeological positivists,” scholars who need tangible proof before they are convinced.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this methodology is to refer to chapters 2 and 3, dealing with purported Egyptian influence on Boeotia (in north-central Greece) and on the Peloponnese (southern Greece) in the third millennium B.C. Bernal asserts that similarities between Egyptian and Boeotian myths prove Egyptian presence in Boeotia in the early third millennium. But we know that folktales in many cultures share common themes and plot devices, so one must be cautious in drawing conclusions based on them. He also asserts that because the Greek hero Herakles (the Roman Hercules) is said to have possessed certain hydraulic skills that resemble those possessed by the Egyptians during the Middle Kingdom (third millennium), it must have been the Egyptians who drained the Boeotian Kopaic basin, not the Mycenaeans of a thousand years later (the current theory). Although no evidence exists for this assertion, as Bernal freely recognizes, he says that “[a date in] the 3rd millennium would seem plausible despite the lack of any definitively Egyptian objects from Boeotia in that period” (p. 135).

Similar lines of reasoning fill this long volume. Bernal is a widely read, erudite scholar who has a theory that he myopically sets out to prove. He uses the evidence he comes upon with great selectivity, rejecting anything that would seem to undermine his thesis, but happily highlighting information that serves his ends. His use of etymology is particularly troublesome: He suggests that Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek words have common roots. This is a tricky business, fraught with uncertainty. For example, he believes that the Egyptian Mnws (the name of a royal personage) is to be associated with Minos, the legendary king of Crete (chapter 10). This is highly unlikely. Although the superficial resemblance of the two names may seem striking, there are numerous similarities between Egyptian and Greek roots, similarities that prove to be illusory. Another example is Bernal’s attempt (p. 364) to connect the Egyptian Hyksos (foreign nobles) with Greek hiketai (suppliants): The latter is, in fact, derived from hitneomai (to come as a suppliant).

Equally disturbing is his theory about the Hyksos, a shadowy group that settled in the Nile Delta in the early second millennium B.C. The accepted view is that they were mercantile people who traded in wine and oil in the eastern Mediterranean, having come to Egypt from the Near East. But Bernal prefers to see them as belligerent pirates who were, in fact, the people who invaded mainland Greece and began the civilization we know as Mycenaean. Unfortunately for this theory, the archaeological evidence from Tell ed-Dab‘a in the Delta provides no proof of such a warlike nature for the Hyksos; in fact, recent evidence (Minoan frescoes) suggests that Cretans may have invaded the Hyksos, or at least settled among them, not the other way around.

Bernal’s ardent belief that black Egyptians and Phoenicians provided the primary influences on the Greek world as its civilization was being shaped leads him into territory he cannot chart. Certainly one must agree with his claim that many classical scholars of the 19th century, in Germany and elsewhere, were racist and anti-Semitic. The proof is in their writings. We are, however, unable to agree with his confident claim that these prejudiced writers warped an entire discipline. It is simply untrue that present-day scholars have suppressed information about influences from Africa and the Near East; on the contrary, much work has been done precisely along these lines in the last 20 years. Although bigoted scholars may, over the years, have misinterpreted evidence or incorrectly emphasized this or that point, the evidence itself remains, and we can and should reassess and reinterpret it. But the evidence cannot yield the conclusion that Bernal awkwardly tries to draw from it.

What saddens contemporary scholars of antiquity is the pain and frustration that incorrect theories, however well intentioned, can inflict on credulous readers. Athena was not black. But if she were, I know of not a single archaeologist or historian of ancient Greece who would not rejoice at such a thrilling discovery.

Jerusalemwalks

Nitza Rosovsky

(New York: Henry Holt, rev ed, 1992) 272 pp, 40 black-and-white photos, 7 maps, $14 95

Asking a guide to review someone else’s guidebook is a dicey proposition; if the book is good, and the reviewer says so, he may have put himself out of a job. Who needs a guide when the book will do instead? If the book is bad, and he says so, the reviewer may be unfairly accused of sour grapes.

So it is important to begin by saying that Jerusalemwalks is a good book. I “walked” the city (albeit from the comfort of my armchair) with an agreeable, learned and enthusiastic guide, and I enjoyed my trip. Ms. Rosovsky is especially keen on the people and buildings of the city over the past 75 to 100 years, and one can only admire the diligence with which she has gone in search of the remains of buildings long since disappeared.

It is doubtless inevitable that some things go out of date between the time a book is written and its appearance in the shops. So, for example, the author probably didn’t know then that Telephone Cards are more and more replacing the asimon telephone token; that the dome of the El Aqsa Mosque is no longer silvery, but lead black again; that the King Solomon Hotel is no longer the Sheraton; and that the sheep market has been moved away from the northeast corner of the Old City walls. But these matters are not serious; the worst that can happen is that the reader will look for a silver dome and not find it, and be confused about that for a few minutes, then forget it.

Errors of place and direction are more problematic; neither the seventh nor the eighth Stations of the Cross are on St. Francis Street; the seventh is on Suk Khan el-Zayit and the eighth on Khanka. The police (not the Muslim authorities) will certainly not let you walk into the Temple Mount from the Lions Gate—that has not been possible since 1967 and it’s important to know that when planning your trip. These errors must be corrected; people get lost when directions aren’t right, and that defeats the purpose of an otherwise excellent book.

In contrast, I am really not sure how important it is when facts and dates are wrong. After all, who apart from the professionals cares that the foundations of the Jaffa Gate area are Hasmonean and Herodian, not Hadrianic; that Robinson found the Siloam Tunnel in the 1830s, not “later in the 19th century”; that only two valleys—the Kidron and the Tyropocon—form the spur of the City of David; that Tancred didn’t break through the wall at the northwest corner—Godfrey de Bouillon scaled it near the Flower Gate; that Melisende ruled for nine full years; and that Arculf was the bishop’s name, not the place he came from.

This misinformation does nobody any harm, least of all tourists. But I found it unsettling. When I came across something really new, that the Christian Quarter Road, for example, is dead straight because it was the north wall of Hezekiah’s Pool, I didn’t know whether to trust the author or not. Too many mistakes about things I did know had made me wary, and more’s the pity.

I remember a French priest once guiding his group in front of my house in Ein Karem. After a long and elegant explanation, he concluded that the village had been in Israeli hands since 1967. I took him aside and said that I enjoyed his explanation, but that he should know that Ein Karem had been part of Israel since 1948. The whole modern geography of Jerusalem wouldn’t 017make sense otherwise. He replied, “N’importe. Pour les tourists c’est la même chose.” (It’s not important. It’s all the same to the tourists). He was undoubtedly correct about that, but it seems to me that when you write a book you really have to be sure you get things right.

I’d love to walk Jerusalem with Nitza Rosovsky. I will use her book and recommend that you do too. But I will double-check her facts.

Joshua’s Altar: The Dig at Mount Ebal

Milt Machlin

(New York Morrow, 1991) 256 pp., $22.95

This layperson’s account of Adam Zertal’s discovery of a purported altar on Mt. Ebal, in Israel’s central hill country, begins as an autobiographical summary of Milt Machlin’s metamorphosis from “owning no Bible” to becoming a self-described critical scholar. Several chapters summarize the controversy over the purpose of the Mt. Ebal installation, a controversy involving Zertal and a number of other scholars (especially Aharon Kempinski and Anson Rainey, covered in BAR following Zertal’s initial report in the 11:01 issue; see “Has Joshua’s Altar Been Found on Mt. Ebal?” BAR 11:01). Machlin champions the view that the Mt. Ebal installation was constructed by Joshua as the initial cultic center of the Israelites, following their infiltration into the central Ephraimite hill country. That belief is based on an integration of the architectural features and other archaeological data from the Mt. Ebal site and from archaeological sites in the area (Zertal’s and Israel Finkelstein’s surveys in the central hill country, the excavations of Deir Alla, etc.).

Joshua’s Altar’s greatest shortcoming is to combine archaeological and Biblical data without sufficient critical knowledge by Machlin about their relationship. Also disturbing are the book’s attempts to give legitimacy to modern political decisions on the basis of the Bible and on archaeological data from patriarchal and early Israelite times. The uncritical insertion of questionable data to sustain the author’s position creates the misleading impression of certainty.

Machlin’s rambling style, with numerous extended digressions of varying relevance and value to the primary subject matter, is distracting. The volume is rampant with questionable statements, on occasion couched as apparent quotations by Zertal that surely must be the author’s interpretation of what Zertal said or meant.

While it is undoubtedly true that the writing of many archaeologists is pedantic and lacks vitality, Joshua’s Altar is a prime example supporting the argument that interpretation of archaeological data, especially in reference to Biblical studies, should remain the purview of scholars with some critical awareness of the Bible and its legitimate implications for relevant archaeological data. Obviously there is a need for popular reporting of the results of archaeological research; in this case, however, the lay reader would have been better off without the author’s personal, unscholarly interpretations.

These drawbacks in no way minimize the importance and legitimacy of Zertal’s excavation nor of his competence in the interpretation of the archaeological evidence (though a number of competent archaeologists do not agree with his conclusions). The book also has considerable merit for its portrayal of the fascinating details of Zertal’s life—from his kibbutznik days, through his recovery from a life-threatening Six-Day War injury, to his directorship of the Mt. Ebal excavation. The author also provides delightful insights into the process of digging as he summarizes the progress of the excavation of “Joshua’s Altar” and Zertal’s interpretation of the architectural and cultural finds.

Zertal’s excavation and interpretation of “Joshua’s Altar” is a great story. After discounting most of Machlin’s unfortunate interpretive and political assertions and other questionable pontifications, the reader will find in Joshua’s Altar: The Dig at Mount Ebal a fascinating story of a heroic personal struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds to fulfill a dream.

Masada, The Yigael Yadin Excavation 1963–1965, Final Reports