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Shlomo: Studies in Epigraphy, Iconography, History and Archaeology in Honor of Shlomo Moussaieff
Edited by Robert Deutsch
(Tel Aviv-Jaffa: Archaeological Center Publications, 2003), 271 pp. plus 16 pp. in Hebrew.
(Available from the publisher, 7 Mazal Dagim St., Jaffa, Israel, for $90 plus $18 shipping.)
A festschrift is a volume of articles by scholars to honor an esteemed colleague. Dozens of festschriften are published every year, almost always to honor senior academics. This one, however, is an exception. The articles are sufficiently abstruse, but they pay tribute to an antiquities collector, not an academic. Shlomo Moussaieff, one of the world’s great collectors, turned 80 in September, so 24 scholars from around the world created a festschrift for him, under the editorship of Robert Deutsch, an Israeli antiquities dealer and epigrapher.
How does it happen that senior scholars such as André Lemaire of the Sorbonne, Wilfred Lambert of the University of Birmingham (England), Edward Lipinski of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Dan Barag of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Michael Heltzer of the University of Haifa, Bezalel Porten of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mirjo Salvini of the National Research Council (Rome) and Ran Zadok of Tel Aviv University, among others, contribute to a festschrift for a collector? After all, the archaeological establishment despises antiquities collectors; they are responsible for the antiquities market, which only encourages the looting of archaeological sites—or so it is charged. Articles on unprovenanced objects—objects from the antiquities market in the hands of collectors—cannot be published in the journals of, for example, the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). At annual meetings of these organizations, scholars are not allowed to present papers on unprovenanced artifacts.
Is it any wonder that those of us outside (or on the fringes of) the sacred halls of academe are confused? What is going on? Why are senior scholars contributing to a festschrift for a collector?
There is a growing divide in the academic community between those who won’t even gaze on something that comes from the antiquities market and those who want to learn what they can even from looted artifacts. The first group tends to include field archaeologists, the ones who get their hands dirty. Field archaeologists tend to feel that the only really good stuff is the stuff they find, even though it may be mostly walls and pots or seeds and animal bones—the precious stuff that reveals how people lived in ancient times. The second group tends to comprise scholars who specialize in texts and inscriptions and coins or art. You can’t be a scholar in these fields and ignore the antiquities market. In numismatics, for example, 90 percent of ancient coins come to light on the market. Textual caches like the Dead Sea Scrolls as often surface on the antiquities market as from excavations. If you deal in inscriptions, you really can’t keep abreast of what is going on in your field without taking account of what comes to light on the market.
What sometimes drives field archaeologists bonkers is that, as Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni write in their joint contribution to the Moussaieff festschrift, “Some of the best finds turn up on the antiquities market.” We do not really know why.
Though scholars are not permitted to deliver papers on unprovenanced finds at an AIA or ASOR meeting, at the international meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) this past summer in Cambridge, England, an entire session was devoted to objects in the Moussaieff collection. A few weeks earlier, at the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at the British Museum, a paper was given on an artifact in the collection of another major collector, Martin Schøyen of Norway. At the 16th International Congress of Classical Archaeology, held in conjunction with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in August, one of the speakers was an antiquities dealer and another was a collector defending collectors against the onslaught of scholarly criticism coming from the archaeological establishment.
Recently, a prominent past president of ASOR, Eric Meyers, came out in favor of relaxing ASOR’s complete prohibition against consideration of unprovenanced artifacts. If an artifact turns up on the market, he says, and the country where it is found decides it is authentic, then it is all right to study it and publish it and present papers on it.
All of this indicates that the wall of opposition to all objects that come from the antiquities market is cracking, if not crumbling.
The publication of the Moussaieff 025festschrift is another crack in the wall—and a significant one. The archaeological establishment that opposes the market is vocal, even vociferous. Few people, especially academics, are willing to articulate a defense of the antiquities market. The epigraphists and paleographers and numismatists and art historians simply go on publishing papers on objects that come from the market. But they seldom write about why, despite the opposition of the archaeological establishment, they feel justified in doing this. With the Moussaieff festschrift, however, many of them have come out of the woods, so to speak. They have written papers specifically to honor a collector—and, to make matters more interesting, the volume is edited by an antiquities dealer, albeit one who is completing two Ph.D.s, one at Tel Aviv University and the other at the University of Haifa.
But the scholars who have contributed to this festschrift have done so for a special collector. I divide collectors into two categories—good and bad. Shlomo Moussaieff is very good. Bad collectors keep their treasures to themselves, for their own private enjoyment. Some keep their collections secret in order to avoid being vilified by the archaeological establishment. Good collectors, however, make their treasures available to scholars to study and publish, and allow their objects to be exhibited in museums, eventually leaving them as a legacy to the public. Many of the contributors to this festschrift have studied and published objects from Moussaieff’s huge collection (more than 3,000 pieces). As the festschrift’s editor writes: “Mr. Moussaieff’s wise decision to make his collection known to the public is possibly his most important act. He acknowledged the fact that the real scientific value of an inscribed artifact is in its publication. Publicizing them is comparable to bringing them back to life.”
Moussaieff has already given his major collection of Jewish mystical texts (kabbalah) and rare books and manuscripts to Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv. In gratitude, the university conferred an honorary doctorate on him. This was not only justified, but wise. (In contrast, the Israel Antiquities Authority once had Moussaieff searched at the airport—as if he were a smuggler spiriting contraband out of the country. They found nothing. In another Keystone Kops operation, the Antiquities Authority secretly had Mousaieff’s Israel bank 026account searched to see whether he was laundering money involved in the purchase of illegal antiquities.)
But what of the argument that the antiquities market encourages archaeological looting, widely acknowledged to be a worldwide scourge? It is true that if there were no antiquities market, there would be no incentive to loot. But trying to eliminate the antiquities market is a quixotic task, nothing but tilting at windmills. Alas, there will always be an antiquities market. By vilifying collectors, we simply drive the market underground. The archaeological establishment’s campaign is counter-productive. It encourages collectors to be bad collectors instead of good. It sends historical treasures to basements where they will never be seen again, rather than to museums. As Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni note, for example, more than 1,400 Idumean ostraca have been identified in private collections, but “it is even said that the best pieces are still in collectors’ hands, waiting to be made known.” A more cordial welcome would probably bring these pieces out of the cupboard.
All agree that looting is worse than ever. There is no evidence, however, that the archaeological establishment’s campaign has reduced looting one whit. Some economists even say that the market value of looted objects is increased by the archaeology establishment’s effort to make looted objects contraband.
By concentrating on excoriating collectors and dealers, and by supporting laws to make their activities illegal, the archaeological establishment ignores other practical means to reduce looting—the use of electronic fences to protect endangered sites, undertaking rescue excavations of sites subject to looting (obtaining funds, if necessary, by agreeing to share the finds), drying up the market for low-end objects by selling duplicates (of which there are thousands), and other market-based strategies. These are not even discussed by the archaeological establishment.
In the present climate, no discussion of objects from the antiquities market can or should avoid the problem of forgeries. Moussaieff, like every other collector and dealer, has bought his share of them. There is no question that everything from the market, from the lowliest pot to the rarest inscription, comes with suspicion. Sometimes a fake is obvious, especially to an expert. But sometimes even the experts can be fooled. Sometimes, too, there is disagreement and we can never be sure whether a particular object is genuine or a fake. These are unfortunate facts of life. The question is what do we do? The answer of the archaeological establishment is that we should simply avoid all items that come from the market: Avert our eyes. Don’t look at them.
But there is a price to pay for this attitude: We may never see vastly important items.
The wiser decision would seem to be to examine the items with suspicion and then make a judgment. Sometimes an item is clearly authentic, like the Dead Sea Scrolls or a cuneiform tablet or a magic incantation bowl or a seal impression. These objects (all but the Dead Sea Scrolls) are the subjects of papers in this festschrift. Nobody would question the authenticity of the pieces presented here.
Other items in Moussaieff’s collection may be exposed as forgeries. As to still others, there may be doubt or even disagreement. But in the study of antiquity, disagreements of interpretation abound even when objects come to us from a professional excavation. There are many uncertainties in the study of ancient history. Authenticity is simply one more of them. But it seems far better to live with this fact of life than simply to ban consideration of all objects that come from the market.
The festschrift was presented to Mousaieff at a gala celebration in Israel attended by scholars from Israel, Italy, France, England and the United States. Aliza, Mousaieff’s wife of 55 years, and his entire family were there (including his son-in-law Ölafur Ragnar Grimssory, the president of Iceland, who spoke of his own wife as one of the most valuable items in Mousaieff’s collection). The president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, also honored Mousaieff with his attendance. (Compare this with Mousaieff’s treatment at the hands of the Israel Antiquities Authority.)
The articles in the festschrift vary widely, as might be expected. W.G. Lambert tells us that the monster Leviathan, referred to six times in Biblical poetry (and only there), is not a great fish, but a snake.
Mark Geller and Tuviah Kwasman analyze an Aramaic loan document written in ink on a piece of pottery (an ostracon). The debt is for three shekels and the interest is 50 percent (but it is not clear over what period of time).
Robert Deutsch publishes a hoard of 50 Hebrew clay seal impressions (bullae) from the time of Hezekiah, king of Judah (late eighth century B.C.E.) that Moussaieff purchased in 2002. Two of them are impressed with seals belonging to the king himself. Another also belonged to Hezekiah, but does not identify him as “king of Judah,” only “[son of] Ahaz.” Deutsch suggests that the seal that made this impression was used by Hezekiah while he was still a prince. Seven bullae belonged to “Servants of Hezekiah,” a servant being the equivalent of a minister or secretary (as in Secretary of the Treasury or Secretary of State). Another seal impression identifies the owner of the seal as “the Judge.” This is the first time this title has appeared in a Hebrew inscription. In the Biblical book of Judges, a judge is a ruler or governor of territory or a military leader in pre-monarchical Israel. By the time of Hezekiah, the king served in this role and judges were more like the judicial officers that we know today.
One of the seal impressions was impressed with a seal belonging to a woman, ’Ala’, who is identified as the “wife 027of Shallum.” To date, five bullae impressed with this seal are known. The seal itself, made of glass and set in a silver ring, is in the collection of another great collector, Chaim Kaufman, in Antwerp. Though bullae impressed with seals of women are not unknown, they are relatively rare. They have been found not only in Hebrew but in Aramaic, Moabite and Edomite. As Michael Heltzer points out in his paper, the evidence shows that women not only had seals, but had the power to act legally and were active in the economic world. Perhaps we should not be surprised because this is what we find on occasion in the Bible.
Most women’s seals identify the owner as the wife of so-and-so, but some women are given the puzzling designation ’amat. The word is sometimes translated “maid-servant,” but it really meant the chief concubine or even secondary wife or perhaps main wife. Still other women are identified on bullae as daughter of so-and-so.
Most bullae have on the back an impression of the rope that tied the document being sealed. But occasionally, there is the impression of a textile, indicating that the bulla sealed a sack containing an agricultural product, such as cereal or flour. One bulla in Moussaieff’s collection is convex on the back and filled with fingerprints, indicating that it was not used to seal documents or a sack but was, rather, a receipt. From these fiscal bullae, as these are called, we have learned that cities paid taxes to the king; these bullae have also given us the first extra-Biblical evidence for cities that had previously been known only from the Bible.
In another essay, Beatrice and Mirjo Salvini enlighten us about what Ararat, where Noah’s Ark landed, really signifies. We think it’s a mountain in Turkey near the border with Iran, the highest peak in the area. But that’s not at all what the Biblical author had in mind. In fact the Genesis text (8:4) says “mountains of Ararat” (plural). Ararat is also mentioned in a couple of other Biblical passages: When the Assyrian monarch Sennacherib was murdered by his sons, they fled to the “land of Ararat” (2 Kings 19:37=Isaiah 37:38). And when Jeremiah announces God’s judgment against Babylonia, among the countries that will arise against her is the “kingdom of Ararat” (Jeremiah 51:27). Indeed, Ararat is only one of the kingdoms that will rise against Babylon. Her enemies, Jeremiah proclaims, will include “the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz.”
Are these simply fictional kingdoms that no one ever heard of? They are mentioned nowhere else in the Bible.
Not at all, the Salvinis tell us. The key to Minni and Ashkenaz, as well as Ararat, is to be found in extensive cuneiform sources. The names Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz are simply “the deformed names of three political entities in the mountainous north of Mesopotamia which correspond to the realms of Urartu, of Manna and of the Scythians.” Ararat is the Hebrew Bible’s transcription of the cuneiform spelling of Urartu.
We learn about these three kingdoms from numerous Assyrian cuneiform texts of the seventh century B.C.E., when they fought armed battles with Assyria and were a real threat to the security of the Assyrian empire.
When the Bible speaks of the mountains (plural) of Ararat in Genesis, the Biblical author meant to refer to “a region and a state, not simply to a mountain,” claim the Salvinis. And the author was really referring to what we know otherwise as Urartu. This was well-known in the fourth century C.E. when Jerome completed his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate. Jerome translates the phrase as “super montes Armeniae,” on the mountains of Armenia. By the fourth century Armenia was a powerful kingdom in the same area where the kingdom of Urartu/Ararat was in the seventh century B.C.E. The mountain that modern tourists know as Mount Ararat has its own names in Armenian, in Turkish and in Persian, none of which is anything like Ararat.a
The Salvinis also derive from this that the Flood story in Genesis was written in the seventh century B.C.E., when the kingdom of Urartu was at its height.
This understanding of Ararat also helps us to understand better why Sennacherib’s sons fled to the land of Ararat after killing their father. At the time, Urartu and Assyria were two equal powers contending for dominance. Ararat/Urartu no doubt welcomed Sennacherib’s sons.
This finely produced festscrift is a fitting tribute to a collector who has used his collection to shine a new beam of light on the Biblical world.
Shlomo: Studies in Epigraphy, Iconography, History and Archaeology in Honor of Shlomo Moussaieff
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