Books in Brief

006

Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times

Donald B. Redford

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992) 511 pp., including 46 illustrations and maps, 7 tables, $39.95

This splendid volume surveys the relationships between ancient Egypt and the peoples of Canaan/Israel from long before 3000 B.C. down to the fall of the kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C. Redford, professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Toronto, presents his theme in four main parts: before the Egyptian New Kingdom (16th century B.C.), the epoch of Egypt’s empire in Canaan, the coming of the Sea Peoples and beginnings of Israel, and the relations between Egypt and the Hebrew monarchies. Unfortunately, a strong first half of the book is followed by a less-than-scholarly second half.

Part 1 details the first significant links between Egypt and Canaan, which emerged around 3000 B.C. as Egypt changed from a rural prehistory to the centralized monarchy of the first pharaohs. By the mid-third millennium B.C., in the splendid Old Kingdom or Pyramid Age, Egypt’s interests had moved farther north—to Byblos, the seaport-gateway to the ample supplies of first-rate timber that Egypt herself lacked. The lines of trade reached right across Syria to Ebla, where objects have been found bearing the cartouches of the Egyptian rulers Khafre and Pepi I. Back in Canaan, Egyptian alabaster vessels from the Early Bronze citadel at Et-Tell might indicate friendly relations with Egypt. But not all relations were friendly, as Redford points out, quoting the famous account of Uni or Weny, who five times led a considerable army into Canaan, leaving a trail of destruction. To his account may be added the siege of a foreign fort in Canaan depicted in the tomb of Inti at Deshasheh in Middle Egypt, which shows Egyptians using scaling-ladders and sapping walls. The fall of the prosperous Early Bronze III civilization in Canaan has long intrigued Palestinologists. Contributing to this fall, Redford suggests, was the destruction wrought by successive Egyptian armies like that of Weny.

During Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (21st to 18th centuries B.C.), Canaan moved through an intermediate period into the cultural climax of the Middle Bronze Age. Based on a major inscription from Saqqara under Amenemhat II (c. 1900 B.C.), Egypt also intervened in Canaan then, as Redford clearly shows.

Eventually, Egypt came under foreign rule by the Hyksos from Canaan (c. 1650–1540 B.C.). Redford correctly insists that they were mainly speakers of West Semitic (which includes Canaanite and eventually Hebrew), not Indo-European or Hurrian. The latter are not totally absent, however, as the name Simike-eni (Hurrian for “Simike is my god”) bears witness. Boldly—and probably rightly—Redford speaks in favor of a Hyksos takeover by force (as Egyptian sources state), not just a gradual process. Redford bewails the apparent lack of links between Hyksos Egypt and the Middle Minoan world of Crete and the Aegean, a gap now filled by the discovery of Minoan frescoes at Tell el-Dab’a, the great East Delta Hyksos city.^a

The Egyptian dominion over Canaan is woven in Part 2 into a rich, well-documented tapestry. It includes a look at Syro-Canaanite society under Egyptian rule, the position of Levantine aliens in Egypt and the impact of the outside world on various facets of Egyptian life.

Part 3 is a transition in more ways than one. Around 1200 B.C., the Sea Peoples arrived in the Levant, destroying its petty kingdoms and hammering on Egypt’s gates, heralding a new order in the history of the ancient Near East. This is well set forth, but when Redford turns to the origins of Biblical early Israel, there is a complete change of attitude to the sources.

In dealing with Egypt, early Canaan and the broader Near East, Redford is appropriately critical, in the proper and best sense of coolly weighing data and their significance, and showing empathy, with ‘fellow-feeling’ for the ancient writers whose words he weighs. Even the most voluble Egyptian rhetoric gets its fair due. Confronted with the Biblical writings, however, Redford’s admirably judicial attitude all but disappears. He describes the early narratives as: “the historical pastiche that ancient Israel fabricated [italics added] to justify its ingress” into Canaan (p. 237). No such pejorative terms are applied to Egyptian accounts or reasons for invading Canaan. All attempt at a proper scholarly assessment of 008Hebrew tradition is abandoned in favor of a lopsided and ill-founded hostility to the Hebrew text. Space does not allow a thorough examination of the blunders to which such thinking leads.

One example is his treatment of “biblical chronology” (pp. 258–260), which can only merit Redford’s own phrase about others’ work: “manhandling of the evidence” (p. 260). Any fool can simply tot up all the Biblical figures in Joshua-Judges, Samuel, and Kings-Chronicles, plus the Pentateuch before these, and pretend that this is “biblical chronology”—and quite a few have. Such totalling is merely modern, Western misuse of ancient Near Eastern figures that must be handled in accord with ancient Near Eastern usage, and not our modern prejudices, be they pro-Biblical or (like Redford) anti-Biblical. Redford would profit from a calmer consideration of the Biblical data studied from the neutral viewpoint of professional ancient Near Eastern scholarship. He would never dream of mechanically totalling up all the figures for Egyptian dynasties in the Turin Canon of Kings or in Manetho, so getting a figure 600 years too high for the beginning of pharaonic history, and then ridiculing his fellow Egyptologists for applying appropriate explanations to the data. And still less would he total Mesopotamian king-lists in such a way and then ridicule Assyriologists for seeking appropriate explanation to correlate the lists with the real course of history. Neither, therefore, has he any right to ridicule the Biblical data a priori or those who would patiently seek to apply appropriate Near Eastern criteria to these data also. He even lapses into being very out-of-date—Nuzi parallels have never been a firm dating criterion for the patriarchs.

On the nature of the Biblical text (particularly in the Pentateuch), we are treated to arbitrary (even mocking) comparisons for which no scholarly justification is offered (pp. 260–261). Comparisons with tales of King Arthur and Merlin the Magician or with Dido, or Romulus and Remus are irrelevant. Furthermore, the presence of named individuals in fictional narratives does not automatically prove that such individuals are also fictional. The Egyptian Tales of the Magicians (Papyrus Westcar, c. 1600 B.C.) are purest fiction—but they name several real kings of Egypt of a 1,000 years earlier and in their correct order. And for much of the Pentateuch, there is a growing mass of valid background that increasingly forbids arbitrary down-dating of its contents, and that point in the direction of its essential content being more factual than fictional—but this needs a book, not a review.

The review of data and theories on Israel’s entry (or appearance) in Canaan is, again, superficial in dealing with the Biblical data. There is no “whirlwind annihilation” (p. 264) in Joshua; only three “cities” destroyed and a handful of lightning raids leaving “very much land to be possessed” Joshua 13:1). Ai is an unsolved enigma; Jericho’s last levels were all but totally eroded millennia before archaeologists could tackle them; Hazor may have a correlatable destruction. At other sites, kings got killed, but total destructions are not claimed. So where is the overwhelming problem? Redford has spent much time explaining that the highlands that became part of Judah were of little interest to Egypt’s empire—then he wonders why the Biblical accounts do not mention Egyptian contacts where they were not! “Negative evidence” of this kind is pointless.

In dealing with some modern theories of Israel’s origins in Canaan, Redford is equally scathing, and with rather more justification. Thus, he has little difficulty in disposing of the sociological claptrap of the “peasant revolt” theory, and the linked theory that Canaanites withdrew from the plains to the hills and then somehow magically become “Israelites.” He himself would derive the Israelites from the Shasu, for which theory there is no more evidence than for those that he has rejected.

The long account of Egypt’s relations with the Hebrew monarchies in part 4 is in many ways informative, but it is also marred by the same kind of failure to maintain an impartial attitude and a properly scholarly acceptance of the full facts available. He is inconsistent in largely dismissing Solomon’s reign one moment (chapter 11) and then invoking its peace and prosperity (p. 312) to account for Shishak’s invasion. The guesswork on the presumed sources of the Book of Kings is fascinating (pp. 319–334), but neither proven nor wholly convincing.

In the pre-Biblical half, this book is a welcome, scholarly and relatively impartial contribution of real merit on the relations of Egypt and Canaan from earliest times to about 1100 B.C. In the Biblically concerned half, the mindset is that of the 1880s, not what should be in the 1990s; it merely reflects old-fashioned contempt for the Biblical texts and writers in slightly modernized dress, with vast omissions in terms of relevant background data. This half is as unreliable and partisan as the first half is sane and well-balanced. It is a great pity to see a good work spoiled in this way.

The Egyptian Mining Temple at Timna

Beno Rothenberg

Researches in the Arabah 1959–1984, Volume 1 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 462 pp including 159 photo plates, £75

The Ancient Metallurgy of Copper

Beno Rothenberg, editor

Researches in the Arabah 1959–1984, Volume 2 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990),191 pp including 118 photo plates, £48

Important insights into early mining and metallurgy fill the first two volumes of the final excavation report on the mines of Timna in the Arabah. The surveys of the Arabah expedition begun by Beno Rothenberg in 1959^b first located the copper mines that supplied ore to the smelting sites of the Timna Valley, which had been traditionally associated with King Solomon’s mines. Rothenberg dates the mining activity at Timna to three periods (in addition to brief exploitation by the Israelis), none of them in the tenth or ninth centuries B.C., when Solomon’s supposed mines would have been worked.¹ Based on the evidence of several dozen experts who contributed analyses and interpretations of the various excavated materials, from glass to textiles, the earliest period of activity at Timna is Chalcolithic (fifth-fourth millennia B.C.), the second is that of the XIXth and XXth Egyptian Dynasties (1318–1156 B.C.) and the latest is Roman (100–235 A.D.).

Volume one discusses a temple built to Hathor, the patron goddess of Egyptian miners. Artifacts found in the temple include a small, sensitively modeled votive mask of Hathor in Egyptian faience that has become the symbol of the excavations. Particularly important is an equally famous small serpent of bronze containing three percent tin, similar to those found in Late Bronze Age Mevorakh and Hazor, that evokes the ‘serpent of brass’ mentioned in Numbers 21:9.

But most of the finds at the temple, and of the survey in general, are more important for their social and technological meaning than for their individual artistic merit. For example, along with Egyptian ceramics and inscriptions of the XIXth and XXth Dynasties were found coarser Midianite wares and, typical of the Midianite homeland in Arabia, a tent shrine. Also suggestive of Midianite presence were the camel bones found in the smelting camps. Camels were not used by the Egyptians until Roman times. The copper wire found there was hand made (that is, not drawn through a die) by a method seldom observed elsewhere in the ancient world.² Even the corrosion products, when analyzed, proved 010distinctive. Romarchite, a tin oxide hitherto found only on a pewter object in Canada, was identified on a small piece of tin.

The second volume, The Ancient Metallurgy of Copper, subtitled Archaeology—Experiment—Theory, reports on the smelting furnaces and the analyses made of their associated debris. The data was then used to reproduce the process of smelting the copper ore, first in the laboratory at the Institute of Archaeo-Metallurgical Studies (IAMS) and later in the field. Headquartered at the Institute of Archaeology of University College, London, IAMS was founded by Rothenberg to answer the need for extensive scientific investigation of the materials from Timna. Though the word “archaeometallurgy” is not yet recognized by the Oxford English Dictionary, IAMS has given it wide circulation.

Rothenberg’s work and that of his collaborators from many different scientific disciplines have profoundly affected the study of ancient mining and metallurgy.³ Underground workings as extensive as those at Timna were once thought to have dated no earlier than the Roman period; at Timna they date to the Chalcolithic. Two iron 012bracelets provisionally dated to the Iron Age are now dated to the Late Bronze Age (14th–12th centuries B.C.). And iron finger rings, one gilded, found at the temple were not made of meteoritic iron but of smelted iron. Chemical analysis showed that this smelted iron was a byproduct of copper smelting, and lead isotope measurements indicated the source was in the local ore of Timna. The iron had not been imported from Egypt.

Results such as these make us eager for the next two volumes of the excavation report, which will cover other ancient copper mines of the Arabah and the excavations of the copper smelters.

The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide From Earliest Times to 1700, Third Edition

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor

(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992) 471 pp., $14.95

Since its first appearance in 1980, this archaeological guide has been very popular among informed visitors to Israel, and deservedly so. The third edition is the most useful yet, containing 170 more pages than the first edition and over 100 more than the second. It contains 17 new essays and a revision of 22 previous entries. The new entries describe sites not in the previous volumes, including the important prehistoric site of Shaar ha-Golan, the Iron Age site of Tel Miqne^c and monasteries in the Judean desert.

As in the two previous editions, a large portion of the new volume (nearly 150 pages) is devoted to Jerusalem. This section alone makes the guide indispensable to anyone who wishes to have a fighting chance at comprehending Jerusalem’s vast, complex archaeological history.

The Holy Land is lavishly illustrated with 129 figures, 11 of which are either not in previous editions or have been revised from earlier versions (for an example of the latter, compare the drawing of the City of David in the second edition, [p. 96] with the revised figure in the third [p. 115]). On the other hand, six figures in the second edition do not appear in the third. While a couple of these omissions may not be missed (such as Nazareth or Shiloh), the absence of others is more noticeable. This is particularly true of the general map of Jerusalem, which was very useful for an over-all geographical orientation to the city. Was this an oversight? In the introductory remarks, the map is said to be on page 10.

Even more noticeable by its absence is an archaeological map of Israel showing the location of excavated sites. Murphy-O’Connor gives a grid location for each site, keyed to the Israel Touring Map published by the Survey of Israel. The inclusion of this map in previous editions made the location of the sites easy and greatly enhanced the usefulness of the volumes.

Due to continuing excavations in Israel (both of new sites and the re-excavation of old ones), any archaeological guide to this part of the world will always be out-of-date or at least lagging behind. But The Holy Land comes as close as possible to being a thoroughly reliable source. To anyone traveling to Israel and interested in its archaeology: Don’t leave home without it!

Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times

Donald B. Redford

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992) 511 pp., including 46 illustrations and maps, 7 tables, $39.95