Inside BAR

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Some may think that the irrepressible Avraham Biran—who was 57 when he began directing the ongoing Tel Dan excavations 20 years ago—has found the fountain of youth at this major northern Galilee dig. In an interview with BAR editor Hershel Shanks (“BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan”), Biran makes no such claim, but he does describe important discoveries at Dan that might not have been made without his perseverance—for example, the “Dancer From Dan,” a unique 14th–13th century B.C. plaque of a dancing man playing the lute. Biran also shares conclusions the excavators have reached—thanks to discoveries in the most recent seasons—about a civilization at Dan at the time Israel entered Canaan.

No trace of Solomon’s temple, built in Jerusalem about 950 B.C., has yet been unearthed, and we don’t know from the Bible exactly how it looked. But Biblical descriptions give archaeological sleuths a wealth of information to compare to ancient temples that have been discovered. In “Temple Architecture: What Can Archaeology Tell Us About Solomon’s Temple?” Volkmar Fritz turns for clues toward Syria, where temples built on a long-room plan—reminiscent of Solomon’s Temple—were erected as early as the second millennium B.C.

After studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Fritz joined his teacher Yohanan Aharoni in excavating Biblical Arad, Lachish and Beersheba. He has also co-directed a dig at Tel Masos in the Negev and now directs a dig at ancient Kinneret, one of the Canaanite cities that fought Joshua and the Israelites. Fritz is professor of Old Testament studies and Biblical archaeology at the University of Mainz in West Germany.

“Cult Stands—A Bewildering Variety of Shapes and Sizes,” by LaMoine F. DeVries, displays an array of stands that range in height from a few inches to about three feet and are made of limestone, pottery, bronze or basalt. Not just for burning incense, says DeVries, these stands were also used in antiquity for grain and animal offerings, libations and even as cultic flower pots—water was poured over seeds in soil, as part of fertility rites.

A former Baptist minister, DeVries teaches religious studies at Southwest Missouri State University. He has excavated at Ai and Raddana and has published numerous articles on Biblical and archaeological subjects.

In the world of Biblical archaeology, interpretation of finds is rarely absolute. As new discoveries are made at other sites, or even as other experts analyze the existing data, interpretations are revised. In this issue, we present new theories about the elaborate and elegant burial caves beneath Jerusalem’s St. Étienne monastery that were the subject of “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the First Temple,” BAR 12:02. In that issue archaeologists Amos Kloner and Gary Barkay suggested that the huge cave complexes belonged to “an important and wealthy family.” The authors even hinted that “the royal tombs [of the kings of Judah] closely resembled [these] burial caves.” Now, reports Hershel Shanks in “Have the Tombs of the Kings of Judah Been Found?” Amos Kloner has gone one step further; he has proposed that the later kings of Judah, who lived at the time of the First Temple, were buried in these well-preserved tombs.

In the St. Étienne cave tombs, the dead were laid on stone burial benches with their heads positioned in horseshoe-shaped headrests. Barkay and Kloner, in the March/April 1986 BAR, compared these headrests to “the wig typically worn by the Egyptian goddess Hathor.” Completely wrong, says Othmar Keel. Why would kings of Judah want to look like an Egyptian goddess? The headrests, Keel argues, are a common Mesopotamian artistic motif; they symbolize the human womb and by extension the womb of mother earth as well, to which the deceased hoped to return after death.

An expert on the iconographic approach to the Old Testament, Keel is professor of Old Testament in the Theological Faculty of the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the author of the popular book, The Symbolism of the Biblical World, reviewed in Books in Brief, BAR 11:03.

A sad note: Père Pierre Benoit, distinguished and beloved scholar of ancient Jerusalem, died in Jerusalem only weeks ago. Hershel Shanks, his friend and interviewer (“The Religious Message of the Bible,” BAR 12:02), remembers him in an obituary in “BARview: Pierre Benoit, O.P. 1906–1987.” Gabriel Barkay recalls Benoit’s support for his study of the Israelite tombs on the grounds of the École Biblique, where Benoit worked and lived during his many decades in Jerusalem.

Some may think that the irrepressible Avraham Biran—who was 57 when he began directing the ongoing Tel Dan excavations 20 years ago—has found the fountain of youth at this major northern Galilee dig. In an interview with BAR editor Hershel Shanks (“BAR Interview: Avraham Biran—Twenty Years of Digging at Tel Dan”), Biran makes no such claim, but he does describe important discoveries at Dan that might not have been made without his perseverance—for example, the “Dancer From Dan,” a unique 14th–13th century B.C. plaque of a dancing man playing the lute. Biran also shares conclusions the excavators have reached—thanks […]