Queries & Comments

043

What Is Palestine?

To the Editor:

I am writing in hopes that you or a member of your staff could clarify the use of the word Palestine in archeological terminology.

A few years ago I heard Kathleen Kenyon speak about Jericho at the University of Chicago. During the entire lecture she never referred to the dig as being in Israel, but only identified the area as Palestine. When I inquired about this of friends who knew something about archaeology I was told that Miss Kenyon was anti-Zionist and pro-Arab and refused to recognize the state of Israel.

More recently I have heard another English archeologist do the same thing; also P. R. S. Moorey, author of Biblical Lands which was sold in Israel. Digs in present day Israel are located in “Palestine.” Yet the 20th century states of Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan are identified as such.

Is this the recognized terminology among professionals? I would very much appreciate having an answer.

Thank you for a fascinating journal. I don’t know how we ever got along without it.

Because of the sensitive nature of this query, we asked several scholars to respond.

Dan Cole is an American archaeologist who has been excavating in Israel for many years. He was on the core staff of the excavations at Tell Gezer, sponsored by Hebrew Union College and the American Schools of Oriental Research. He is now Associate Director of the excavations at Tell Halif (See “How A Dig Begins,” BAR 03:02, by Catherine Cole). Professor Cole teaches religion and Near Eastern archaeology at Lake Forest College.

Jonas Greenfield is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of BAR and Editor of the Israel Exploration Journal. He is one of the outstanding scholars of Semitic languages. Professor Greenfield teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dame Kathleen Kenyon was, at the time of her death on August 24, one of the world’s most eminent archaeologists. She was for years director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. She directed excavations at Jericho from 1952 to 1958 and in Jerusalem from 1961 to 1967. She was the author of Digging Up Jericho, Digging Up Jerusalem, Royal Cities of the Old Testament, Archaeology of the Holy Land, and other books. Her political views were the subject of articles and discussion in Biblical Archaeology Review in “Kathleen Kenyon’s Anti-Zionist Politics—Does It Affect Her Work?” BAR 01:03; Queries & Comments, BAR 01:04; and “Kathleen Kenyon Replies to the BAR,” BAR 02:01.

Although there is some repetition in the answers, we thought our readers would be interested in the differing approaches taken by our respondents.—Ed.

Dan Cole replies:

Your question is a common one. An increasing number of people seem perplexed over archaeologists’ use of the word “Palestine”. Perhaps this is because we hear it used today mostly in a political context.

It is important, therefore, to point out that the word was not invented by the Palestine Liberation Organization or even by the British after World War I. It has been an accepted geographical designation for centuries.

The term “Palestine” goes back as early as the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century B.C., who referred to the coastal plain by a name derived from the Philistines who live there: Palaistine. The Romans officially adopted the name Palestina after 138 A.D., first for the coastal district, later for the whole region eastward to the Jordan rift.

People in western nations continued to use the name over the following centuries, largely ignoring the strange-sounding and shifting designations imposed on the area after the Arab conquests. The label generally was applied to the territory south of the Litani River and north of the “River of Egypt” (Wadi el-Arish), from the Mediterranean eastward at least as far as the Jordan and usually extended farther to the edge of the Arabian Desert.

The modern disciplines of archaeology and historical geography evolved, therefore, when “Palestine” already was the accepted name in the western world to be applied to the entire region. From Edward Robinson’s explorations in the early 19th century, reported in his monumental Biblical Researches in Palestine, right down to the Second World War, geographers and archaeologists alike identified the land as “Palestine”. The formal use of this label for the Mandate territory administered by the British after World War I only provided further reinforcement for the use of a term which already had been used for centuries as a geographical rather than a political designation.

Since the division of the territory in 1948 between the new state of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, there has been a tendency, of course, to adopt new labels. It is understandable that Israeli scholars particularly have been inclined to abandon “Palestine” for other designations such as, for instance, “Eretz Israel” (Land of Israel).

The fact that a number of scholars continue to use the term “Palestine,” however, does not necessarily mean that they are denying the legitimacy of the state of Israel nor that they are rock-bound traditionalists who refuse to discard terminology learned prior to 1948. Some simply feel the continued need for a common designation for the region which embraces modern Israel and western Jordan—that region which experienced a common history through so many periods and which presents such similar archaeological materials and methodological problems. “Palestine” still seems to many to be a relevant name for that region.

044

Of course, the question of terminology has been further complicated in regard to the West Bank territory since 1967, certainly in situations such as the lecture to which you allude. Quite aside from the fact that Kathleen Kenyon has been outspokenly critical of Israeli policies in regard to the occupied areas, what should she have called the region in which Jericho lies? When she dug there in 1952–58 it was in Jordan. When she lectured about it in Chicago a few years ago it was under Israeli administration, but the legitimacy of Israel’s occupation remains in dispute. Had Dr. Kenyon referred to Jericho either as in “Jordan” or as in “the occupied West Bank” she would indeed have been making a political statement, and it simply would have been incorrect for her to have spoken of it as being “in Israel”. Although I cannot say what intentions may have stood behind her choice of label, in that instance “Palestine” might have been the least confusing or politically-loaded term to use.

I realize that the word now is being given a new political connotation in connection with the activities of the PLO and Arab refugees’ aspirations for a separate homeland. This year, for the first time, a fellow faculty member questioned my use of it in our college catalogue to describe the region under study in my Biblical archaeology course. I think it will be unfortunate, though, if we have to abandon “Palestine” as a time-honored and useful geographical designation.

Jonas Greenfield replies:

We use the term Palestine in the Israel Exploration Journal. It was used in our Journal way before it became “political” and it is a convenient term allowing us to report in an unequivocal manner about all the periods of archaeological presence—prehistoric, Canaanite, Israelite, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, etc. The term Israel or Land of Israel is not sufficiently broad. On the other hand, Israel is used clearly in our title, etc. as a precise geographic and political term. We avoid extending the term Israel to the administered territories since we are not engaged in political controversy and assume that our readers know where Shechem or Jericho is. Miss Kenyon’s Jericho dig was in Eretz Israel (the Land of Israel) but not in Israel. I suppose one could say that it was in Jordanian occupied Palestine. On the other 045hand, if a lecturer on the “Archaeology of Palestine” (proper!) refers to Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, Arad, Beer Sheba, Lachish, etc. as being in Palestine, this is improper and shows political bias.

Kathleen Kenyon replies:

I am surprised that Mrs. Gerson has not apparently heard of the geographical term Palestine. It has a respectable antiquity from the Hellenistic and Roman periods, therefore two thousand years or so. It was more precisely defined after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, when Great Britain was given the mandate for Palestine. This period of the Palestine Mandate was when I first became involved in archaeology of the country. Perhaps Mrs. Gerson is too young to remember this period. The geographical definition is precise, from the shore of the Mediterranean to the River Jordan.

I fear that Mrs. Gerson’s attitude to the use of Palestine as a geographical term is due to the application of Palestinian to the regrettable terrorist activities of the present day. In the same way, to those who remember 1948, Zionist has a regrettable association of terrorism.

Archaeologists must keep clear of politics, and I have told you very strongly what I think of your efforts to suggest that my professional archaeological conclusions are based on politics. (See “Kathleen Kenyon Replies to the BAR,” BAR 02:01.)

In point of fact, my use of the geographical term Palestine is an attempt to avoid giving offense to either side. I hope that even you, Mr. Shanks, will accept that there is another side to that of the Zionists.

As to the statement in the second paragraph of Mrs. Gerson’s letter that I did not refer to my dig at Jericho as in Israel, it was not. It was in Jordan, with the cooperation of the Department of Antiquities in Jordan. It is now in Israeli-occupied Jordan.

In summary, the history of this small area shows an enormous variety of nomenclature. Nothing between Canaanite and Palestinian covers the area adequately. I am, of course, throughout dealing with ancient history. The geographical term Israel only comes into existence in the 10th century B.C. It only lasts until the Assyrian expansion at the end of the 7th century B.C. In archaeological terms, Israel is an anachronism after that point.

I remain convinced that the general geographical area is defined as Palestine. I am too busy to enter into further discussion.

Upside Down Stone from Nea Church

To the Editor:

One of the photographs accompanying Meir Ben-Dov’s letter (Queries & Comments, BAR 04:01) concerning the Nea Church is a carved stone, reported to have been found in secondary use in the wall of a Moslem Omayyad Palace, which he believes is part of a lintel from the Nea Church.

Is it possible that the given location of this stone is in error? I photographed a duplicate of this stone, even to being upside down and the same in every other detail, in secondary use on the South Wall of the Jerusalem Temple Mount. I would appreciate Mr. Ben-Dov’s comment.

Meir Ben-Dov replies:

As to your observation concerning the carved stone found in secondary use in the wall of a Moslem Omayyad Palace, I wish to draw your attention to the fact that this is the stone that I mentioned in my article. However, it is not found in the South Wall of the Temple Mount but in the South City Wall of the Turkish period. The Turks used the remains of the Omayyad Palace Walls as a foundation for their City Wall.

I would like to point out that the photographs which appeared in Queries & Comments, BAR 04:01, were an addition to my article which appeared in an earlier issue of BAR (“Found After 1400 Years—The Magnificent Nea,” BAR 03:04). That article would clarify my theory.

046

New BAR Format

To the Editor:

Form came to the aid of substance in your new format. Thank you for this improvement. It adds considerably to ease in reading and enhances my interest in the articles. Hooray for the color photography.

As a retired clergyman, I appreciate the opportunity BAR affords to acquaint myself with modern authors in the field.

To the Editor:

Your journal is an exciting addition to my regular reading. Your willingness to be open and include controversial issues is commendable.

Hathor Mask on March Cover

To the Editor:

I have just received my copy of the June 1978 issue of BAR. On seeing the cover, I was filled with pride and no small amount of pleasant memories. My son John and I, digging in the same square, on separate days, each uncovered one of the two parts of the faience votive mask of Hathor and marvelled at its excellent condition. I understand also that the votive mask was a major theme on posters for a British Museum exhibition.

Digging at Timna with Beno Rothenberg was a real privilege and the archaeological highlight of my four years in Israel.

Does Gasur Map Show Syrian Ebla?

To the Editor:

I read Mr. Maloney’s article “Assessing Ebla,” BAR 04:01, with interest. However, I believe that the matter of the Gasur map requires further comment and clarification.

The identity of the area described by the map has been a topic of discussion since the early 1930’s. The Syrian location adopted by Mr. Maloney was suggested as a possibility first in a note in BASOR 42 (1931) and then, more fully, by T. Meek in AASOR XIII (1933). Focusing on the identification of Mashkan-dur-ibla of the map with Ebla of Syria, this interpretation was appealing at the time but was considered “not very likely” by Meek, himself. In the AASOR XIII article, cited by Mt. Maloney, Meek states that “ … the probability is that it is a district somewhere 047between the Zagros Mountains and the chain of hills running north and south through Kirkuk. The river flowing out of the north may be the Lower Zab or the Radanu, and the other coming round the western hills may be the Tigris.”

Subsequent to the publication of the AASOR XIII article, the city name Duribla/Dur-ubla was found on tablets from Nuzi, the mid-second millennium name for Gasur. This city was in the vicinity of Nuzi/Gasur in the Kirkuk region of what is now Iraq and was one of the many settlements in the land of Arrapha (see, among others, A. L. Oppenheim, “Etude sur la topographic de Nuzi,”RA 35, 1938). Thus, in “Old Akkadian, Sumerian and Cappadocian Texts from Nuzi: Excavations at Nuzi, Vol. 3” Harvard Semitic Series, Vol. X (1935), the volume of texts in which the map was published, T. Meek presented a second interpretation. Here, he equates Mashkan-dur-ibla of the map with Dur-ibla of the Kirkuk region and states that the map indicates the location of an estate in that area, some four hundred miles away from the Syrian Ebla.

This second location has been the generally accepted one since 1935, so much so that Mrs. H. Lewy used the map and military records to pinpoint the location of Dur-ibla of the Nuzi period. In “A Contribution to the Historical Geography of the Nuzi Texts,” JAOS 88 (1968), Mrs. Lewy provides us with a map based on the Gasur map and showing Dur-ibla and other important cities of the era. In this work, Mrs. Lewy suggests that the body of water at the north of the Gasur map is the “great swamp along the western shore of which the Kasa Cay flows” and the other river is the Matar Dere, thus placing the map in Iraq.

The source of these conflicting views is that the map itself preserves few complete geographical names and only one—Mashkan-dur-ibla—that relates to known geographical terms. As Nadezhda Freedman states in “The Nuzi Ebla,” BA, March, 1977, the “other names on the map are tantalizingly incomplete, open to conjecture, or simply mysterious.” Although the recent news of Ebla has reinspired interest in the Gasur map, we have no new information relating to this intriguing ancient document. Hence, we still can not state with certainty what region is described by the map.

Paul Maloney replies:

There is a fundamental problem interpreting the Gasur Map. First, so many of the names on the map are mutilated and only educated guesses can be made about their identification. The few complete names left are subject to a number of interpretations. Dr. Robert Pfeiffer, in his 1935 report 048to the Smithsonian Institution made the following statement (p. 546):

… The identification of the region represented by the map rests on the interpretation of the words “sha-ad/t a-za-la” written in its center. If we translate “Mount Azala” the region is somewhere in northern Syria between the Anti-Lebanon and the Zagros range, where there is a city named Ibla [Cf. Albright, “On the Map Found at Nuti”, BASOR, 42 (April, 1931) p. 7–10]; if, however, we translate “field of Azala” or “belonging to Azala”, the map represents a landed property, comprising “354 iku of cultivated land”, belonging to a certain Azala.

The map refers to a “Mashgan-dur-ibla” (“Settlement of the Fortress of Ibla”). To my knowledge this map, which dates from the pre-sargonic period at Gasur, is the only document found there which spells the name “Ibla”. Hundreds of years later after the Hurrians migrated into Gasur and changed its name to Nuzi one does find documents which contain the name “Dur-ubla” and it is this Dur-ubla which Meek later came to believe was identical to the “Dur-ibla” on the Gasur map. And, as Dr. Morrison has pointed out, others have followed suit. It seems to me that Mrs. H. Lewy has made a strong case for the location of Dur-ubla in the Kirkuk region and I accept that location. But I do not believe in the light of present evidence that it has been conclusively proven that the “Mashgan-dur-ibla” of the Gasur map is identical to the “Dur-ubla” of the Nuti documents written hundreds of years later although surface evidence might seem to lean in that direction.

In the light of Pettinato’s statements that Syrian Ebla was the capital of a great commercial empire, this whole question of the identification of “Mashgan-dur-ibla” must be reopened. It is certainly not impossible that there was more than one Ebla—one in Syria, one near Kirkuk, and another which is said to be near Babylon (Cf. D. O. Edrard, Die “Zweite Zwischenzeit” Babyloniens. p. 40, n. 177). Furthermore it may not be impossible that they could have been commercial outposts of the parent city Ebla. It is known that Ebla had a commercial colony near Emar (See Pettinato in Akkadica II:2 (Mar.–Apr. 1977), p. 25) and Pettinato believes that Ebla may have been responsible for establishing another one at Kanish (Biblical Archeologist, 39:2, p. 48). But we must wait until the Ebla texts are published (See the announcement in JNES, 37:3, pp. 286f) before we can begin to take a new look at this question.

Double Paternity in Egypt

To the Editor:

The ancient world is replete with heroes of dual paternity. References from Sumerian, Babylonian, Mycenaean, Greek and Roman literature should be sufficient to prove Cyrus H. Gordon’s point. He need not inaccurately invoke the pharaonic system, especially by citing Hatshepset (see “The Double Paternity of Jesus,” BAR 04:02).

This queen began her reign as the legitimate sister-wife of Thotmose II who died shortly after, leaving her apparently childless. She reigned alone for sixteen years until her younger brother reached maturity at which time he assumed his role as pharaoh under the name of Thotmose III.

Hatshepset’s reign was entirely in keeping with pharaonic tradition: the dynasty descended through the female line and the kingship was secured by 049marriage to the heiress, the divine Daughter of the Son whose only consort worthy of her was a Son of the Sun. Hence in the sixteen years of her “solo” reign, she was in fact holding two offices: pharaona in her own right and regent for her minor brother.

In Egypt divine descent was implied by the office which the pharaonic siblings inherited in every generation and every dynasty from Mene to the last Ptolemaic pair, Cleopatra the Great and her son Ptolemy Caesareon.

Cyrus H. Gordon replies:

There is no doubt whatever that Hatshepsut claimed the god Amon as her divine father. The crown he wears at his nuptials with her mother, on the relief at Deir el-Bahari, is Amon’s distinctive headgear. An annotated bibliography of Hatshepsut’s claim to divine paternity is provided by Drioton and Vandier in their authoritative L’Egypte (4th ed., 1962, p. 370).

L. Folkard-Stengel does not go far enough chronologically in bringing the notion of “divine descent” down only “to the last Ptolemaic pair.” I revisited both of the principal mammisi’s (“birth houses”) in the Ptolemaic temples at Edfu and Dendera early in 1978. The Dendera temple depicts in relief the queen mother’s marriage with the god Amon (wearing the same crown as in Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari). Khnum still fashions the sovereign-to-be on the potter’s wheel; etc. But what is especially interesting is the royal name of the Roman “Pharaoh” Nero, recorded in hieroglyphs in the inscription to the right of the relief (Nero was born in 37 and died in 68; he ruled as Roman Emperor from 54 to 68 A.D.)

Francois Daumas published all of the texts and monuments in his Les Mammisis de Dendara (1959).

The concept of dual paternity for the Pharaohs continued into Imperial Roman times, including the century in which Christ lived.

The Egyptian evidence for the concept of double paternity is vast. To cover it in my brief BAR article was out of the question. I selected Hatshepsut as my example because I find her more engaging than the normal male Pharaohs. Female Pharaohs defied all the rules of ancient Egypt and are very hard to come by.

046

Expedition Salutes Tel Aviv University Archaeology

The Summer 1978 issue (Vol. 20, No. 4) of Expedition magazine salutes the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University; the entire issue is devoted to articles about Tel Aviv University digs, written by the excavators. Included are “Lachish,” by David Ussishkin, “Canaanite Aphek” by Moshe Kochavi, and “Israelite City Planning” (as seen in the light of Beer-sheba and Arad excavations) by Ze’ev Herzog.

Expedition is the magazine of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. BAR readers may order the Summer 1978 issue by sending $2.25 for the University Museum; 33rd and Spruce St.; Philadelphia, Pa. 19104.

049

Correction: Israel Exploration Society Dues

BAR subscribers may join the Israel Exploration Society at the special rate of $12 per year, not $10 as stated in our September/October 1978 issue. Latest news from the IES is that the fourth and final volume of the Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land is now available to members of the Society for $18.75, a 25% reduction from the regular price.