Queries & Comments

012

Readers Respond to Exodus Stories

To the Editor:

I have read with interest the pros and cons of Dr. Hans Goedicke’s theory of the Exodus (“The Exodus and the Crossing of the Red Sea, According to Hans Goedicke,” BAR 07:05) and I’m inclined to let his theory stand. While he’s hot, let’s send him to locate Sodom and Gomorrah and find Noah’s Ark!

More Holes in Goedicke’s Exodus Theories

To the Editor:

Hans Goedicke’s latest theories about the Exodus will do little to enhance his image as a “careful and cautious scholar” since there is nothing very careful or scholarly about his presentation and one can only conclude that it was really intended for a gullible public.

To begin at the end of the article, one should compare his highly idiosyncratic rendering of the Speos Artemidos inscription with earlier scholarly attempts, especially that of John A. Wilson, in order to realize how much of Goedicke’s reconstruction of events depends upon a very questionable translation. (Wilson’s translation appears in Ancient Near Eastern Texts (ANET), James B. Pritchard, ed., on page 231.) The text is admittedly difficult but it has long been recognized that the style is poetic parallelism so that an obscure line may be clarified by its immediate parallel. Goedicke’s rendering ignores this principle entirely. In Wilson’s translation there is nothing about annulling the former privileges of Asiatics, nothing about the Asiatics disregarding assigned tasks, only their neglect of Re’s cult, and nothing about the god Nun. The “father of fathers” is clearly Amon-Re, the deity who is the primary subject of the text and of Hatshepsut’s adulation. Consequently, there is nothing in the text about any water disaster. There is, however, some suggestion about the Queen’s expulsion of these Asiatics which is then expressed poetically in the parallel line: “The earth has carried off their footprints” (Wilson). This may mean a destruction of some Asiatic settlements in the Delta region and an “exodus” of some refugees. The military activity of subsequent pharaohs in Asia, however, soon meant a repopulation of the region with Asiatics as prisoners of war.

The remarks on the Semitic presence at Serabit el-Khadem are also misleading. First of all, it must be clearly understood that Asiatics were used in the mining expeditions as early as the Middle Kingdom, c. 1,900–1,800 B.C. After an interruption during the Second Intermediate Period, mining activity was resumed by the pharaohs at the beginning of the New Kingdom and it is reasonable to assume that Asiatics were used there throughout the New Kingdom. For this reason there can be no certainty about the dating of the Asiatic inscriptions there: Gardiner in fact argued for a Middle Kingdom date. Furthermore, the title Ba’alat almost certainly refers to Hathor, not to Hatshepsut, since the goddess had a special temple at Serabit el-Khadem where she was known as “Hathor, Mistress of the Turquoise.”

As far as Goedicke’s two routes out of Egypt are concerned, the southern one as he has presented it, is a complete invention. To follow this takes one through an area of sand dunes and complete desert. The true southern route is through the Wadi Tumilat and it is still the one used by the Bedouin today. The confusion of these two routes in the Biblical tradition as well as the identification of the “Reed Sea” is a more complex problem than Goedicke acknowledges. For a detailed discussion see Roland de Vaux, The Early History of Israel.

Goedicke’s effort to get rid of the name Ra’amses (not Ra’amzez) by identifying it with the obscure Egyptian place name R´mtny will not work either phonetically or for any other reason. Tell ed-Daba is Avaris as Bietak’s work there has demonstrated and most Egyptologists are inclined to agree with this. There is no other settlement of Hyksos date just south of Tell ed-Daba and Tell ed-Daba—Avaris can hardly be identified as a “store-city.” As far as the identity of Pithom is concerned, that raises a whole new problem. There is nothing to support the identification of Pithom with Tell el-Rataba. The abundance of inscriptional material at Tell Maskhuta points convincingly to its identification as Pithom. It is true that Pithom was founded as an Egyptian city about 600 B.C. by Necho II. Now while it is obvious that the exodus could not have taken place after 600 B.C., it is perfectly possible that the text in Exodus 1:11 is late, a conclusion that Redford reached on linguistic grounds long before our excavations at Maskhuta (see Exodus 1, 11, Vetus Testamentum 13 (1963), 408–413). The name Pithom would then be an anachronism. As far as the name Ra’amses is concerned, this is merely a late, degenerated form of the name for the old capital region of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, near modern Qantir. The name Ra’amses clung to the region long after the city fell into ruins as is evident in the references to it in sources from the Christian era.

Finally, many points in Goedicke’s reconstruction of the Biblical account are quite unacceptable. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that the Israelites were Egyptian mercenaries; nor is there any evidence that the Egyptians used any Asiatic mercenaries in the Eighteenth Dynasty. The Bible also strongly suggests that only the Israelites, the foreign population, and not the Egyptians themselves were put to hard labor and that this servitude lasted for many years. Goedicke is very selective in his use of Biblical “proof-texts” without, however, showing any concern for, or knowledge of, literary-critical methodology.

John Van Seters is the author of The Hyksos: A New Investigation, Yale University Press (1966).—Ed.

Fact or Fiction

To the Editor:

I would suggest that Messrs. Hans Goedicke and Charles Krahmalkov switch to writing children’s fiction; there is certainly nothing Biblical in their stories.

014

Who Made the Earliest Association of a Tsunami from Thera with the Exodus Flood?

To the Editor:

By no means can all of Goedicke’s theory be described as “new”. The theory linking the Red Sea crossing with a tidal wave caused by an eruption of Thera has been known and discussed for nearly twenty years. It was originally published (so far as I am aware) by a Dr. Bennett in Systematics, June 1963, in an article entitled “Geo-physics and Human History”¹, and became widely known when it was adopted and developed (with fitting acknowledgement) in a popular book on the Thera eruption by A. G. Galanopoulos and E. Bacon, Atlantis, the Truth behind the Legend, London 1969. In addition, I find that some aspects of Goedicke’s reconstruction are the same as my own published conclusions. In my book Redating the Exodus and Conquest, published in 1978², I (like Goedicke) adopt the view that Pithom and Raamses should be located at Tell el-Rataba (rather than Tell el-Mashkhuta) and Tell ed-Dab’a respectively, and when I developed my discussion of these geographical questions in an article published a year later³, I (again, like Goedicke) identified the region around Tell ed-Dab’a (the Khata’na-Qantir district) with Biblical Goshen, and suggested that Israelite settlement is marked by the Middle Bronze II culture found there; I further suggested that the abandonment of the site at the end of Middle Bronze II actually marks the Exodus.

BAR Unfair to Velikovsky

To the Editor:

On pp. 51–52 of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Ages In Chaos, published in 1952, Dr. Velikovsky translates a portion of the Speos Artemidos text (following Petrie) and, in his historical reconstruction, relates the story found there to the time of the Exodus. Thus, by 29 years, Immanuel Velikovsky must assume primacy over Professor Goedicke in the interpretation of this inscription, insofar as it relates to the Exodus.

This one, seemingly small problem is emblematic of how Biblical scholars have treated Velikovsky over the years. It is sad indeed when a theory like Goedicke’s—which has a number of serious flaws in it—can receive such serious attention in your publication that you, the editor, wrote the piece, and a theory such as Dr. Velikovsky’s—which, though it has problems, is still more solid than Goedicke’s—receives shabby treatment at the hands of Steibing and Sagan (“A Scientist Looks at Velikovsky’s ‘Worlds in Collision,’” BAR 06:01), and yet this shabbiness gets to appear in an influential and popular publication!

At least grant Velikovsky primacy in the Speos Artemidos matter.

Could a Volcanic Eruption of Thera Be Visible in the Nile Delta?

To the Editor:

While Hans Goedicke may be “a careful and cautious scholar,” his version of the Exodus is imaginative, to say the least. The association of the eruption of Thera with the Exodus is simply ill-conceived. Thera is 510 miles from the eastern delta region. It is therefore so far below the horizon that the volcanic plume would have to be over 200,000 feet high to be visible. To posit a volcanic pillar of fire luminous to such a height and visible from such a distance is preposterous.

Contrary to the assertion that the destruction of Minoan civilization has been linked beyond a doubt to a Theran eruption, current scholarship discounts such a connection. According to Doumas and Papazoglou in the 25 September 1980 Nature, pp. 322–4, the ash fall on Crete was less than on Rhodes which survived the blast. The cause of the demise of Minoan civilization is still unresolved, as is whether tsunamis were actually generated by the eruption.

More letters on theories of the Exodus will appear in our next issue.—Ed.

016

BAR’s Idol Set Draws Wrath

To the Editor:

Please cancel my subscription. I do not want to receive a magazine which advertises and sells Idol Sets.

To the Editor:

The Lord God destroyed nations and cities that worshipped the idols you are digging up and selling. Do you want money that bad to cause a repeat of history?

To the Editor:

Please cancel my subscription. Keep the money and magazine. I don’t need a magazine that sells idols or primeval games.

To the Editor:

My twelve year old son has been receiving BAR for several years now. I have checked each issue for immodesty before giving it to him. I have found only one thing I recall that had to be removed. I have been quite pleased with your magazine. It has been a real blessing to my son also.

When I opened your gift catalog I was shocked and horrified to see a naked sex idol being sold to God’s people for money. Does this serve God? Are you going to lead God’s people to sin against him by selling them a naked sex sinner to put in their homes? I asked the Lord if he had any scripture he wanted me to give to you and then I opened the scriptures where I felt led. He gave me Zechariah 13:1–3.

Is the Cultic Installation at Dan Really an Olive Press?

To the Editor:

In glancing at the photograph and drawings of the “unique cultic installation” found at Dan (“The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan,” BAR 07:05, by John C. H. Laughlin), I could not help but be struck by its overall similarity to a typical ancient olive press of Palestine. According to The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (article “oil”), the first stage of olive oil production was the treading of the fruit by foot, probably in a vat similar to the “central sunken basin” at Dan. (Ancient Palestinian wine vats, which probably doubled as oil vats, are typically square pits hewn out of rocky ground). The crushed olive pulp was gathered into wicker baskets which, by gentle shaking, strained the “pure oil” from the residue.

In the second stage of production, the pulp was heated and returned to the vat for final crushing. This was accomplished by pressing it beneath a heavy beam, one end of which fit into a niche in the wall; the other end was weighted by large hanging stones. This second-stage oil was allowed to run down prepared channels into the open 056mouths of buried jars. At Dan, two such buried jars were found with channels leading down to their mouths, and associated with them, a pile of hitherto unexplained stone weights, pierced with holes for hanging. The published pictures clearly show a stone wall behind the installation, but it does not seem to be preserved up to the height of the presumed niche. Could it be that this entire system is connected not with a “water libation ritual,” but with the production of olive oil?

John Laughlin replies:

The suggestion that the basin-jar complex found at Dan is some kind of olive press is ingenious, but not convincing.

First, most, if not all, olive presses that have been found in Israel are hewn from solid rock. The basin at Dan was built on top of flat stones and is not made of solid rock at all.

Furthermore, the spaces between the stones would have allowed some loss of oil by allowing it to seep into the ground.

Second, the stones lying close to the basin at Dan are not uniform in shape or size as one would expect if they had been cut for the special function of counter-balancing a press of some sort.

Third, there are no channels for any oil to run down into the jars as is being suggested. Note in the photograph in the September/October issue that the stone to the north of the basin doesn’t even come up flush with the edge of the basin. While there is a groove in the stone slab leading to the jar attached to the southern end, it is much too small to transport much of any liquid without considerable loss.

Fourth, the context in which this installation occurs needs to be emphasized. It is within a cultic area that has been clearly established by the artifacts recovered; not the least important being the horned altar and the votive inscription. That the inhabitants of the city would have engaged in such an activity as the making of olive oil in a sacred area is not likely.

Finally, while we do not know for certain what to call this installation nor to what use the citizens of Dan put it, the overall evidence points to some cultic function.

Is There a Trident on the Dan Altar?

To the Editor:

As an archaeological aficionado, I may have been overly zealous! Do my eyes and predisposition to make cultural connections deceive me? In your September/October issue I see two tridents, one on the bottom of the pottery bowl at the top of the page … and one right there decorating the incense altar at the bottom of the page.

I temporarily convinced others of the veracity of my opinion by tracing the symbols, a “proof” which probably holds as much water as the urn itself! The enigma so fascinates the staff in my office, that others suggestions concerning the decoration on the altar keep coming up. Thank you for focusing the conversation here on archaeology, something I have tried to do for years.

John Laughlin replies:

Concerning a possible trident on the horned altar pictured in the September/October BAR, I’m afraid not. I have gone over every inch of that altar in Jerusalem and I have other photographs of it from a slightly different angle than the one in BAR. What appears to be a trident dent in the BAR picture is the result of a crack turning part way down the side from the top combined with the light and shadows caused by the angle from which the BAR photograph was taken. There simply is no trident on the altar.

Avraham Biran, director of the excavations at Dan, agrees.—Ed.

BAR Is Fair

To the Editor:

Your editorial policy is so very fair! Both Yigael Yadin and Professor Aharoni were among the great in the field of archaeology. Yet the former scorned the latter. Alfonso Archi rails against scholarly Pettinato who could long ago have delivered the findings of Ebla to an eager world. But Syria will wait until we all die off in our forty-year wandering before she releases a distorted version to a new generation. Carl Sagan walks haughtily among the stars. Velikovsky indeed! Sir Flinders Petrie ignored tourist and trend alike, as he went through decades measuring carefully.

It is a tantalizing magazine which I study avidly, enjoying most of all the letters written by common people like myself to a patient editor.

On BAR’s “Ark Coin” Story

To the Editor:

Thank you very much for a splendid article on the “ark coin” of Trebonianus Gallus by Yaakov Meshorer in “An Ancient Coin Depicts Noah’s Ark,” BAR 07:05. As a numismatist, I have most of Meshorer’s publications in my library, and they are the “state of the art”.

One misleading line in his article “Apameia Kibotos [is] in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) near the mountains of Ararat”; As a matter of fact, Apameia Phrygiae (near modern Dinar) is over 750 miles away from Mt. Ararat. This is important, because the great distance suggests that the association of Apameia with Ararat is due to something quite other than geographical proximity.

Ramsay, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, (1895–97), which Meshorer cities, refers to a passage in the Sibylline literature that says the ark rested on a hill where the Marsyas rises; the Marsyas ran through Apameia.

To the Editor:

I disagree with Dr. Meshorer’s claim that the coin he describes is evidence for the tradition that Noah’s ark landed on Mt. Ararat. In fact, it is evidence against it, as I pointed out in my book, The Noah’s Ark Nonsense (p. 84). The city of Apamea Kibotos derived its name from the belief, held by its inhabitants, that Noah’s ark landed on a mountain near their city in Phrygia not on distant Mr. Ararat in Armenia. The coin reflects this tradition, and is not “unique” in this respect, for other Apamean coins reflect it also. The city had this name as early as Augustus. Around 270 A.D. Julius Africanus reported that in his day some people said that the ark landed at Celaenae in Phrygia (Chronicles 4). The tradition that the ark landed on Mt. Ararat (not the same as the Biblical “mountains of Ararat”) originated in the third or fourth century A.D. when Armenian Christians selected the highest mountain in their area. 058The basis in both cases was not factual knowledge, but a people’s desire to give prestige to their own locality.

Yaakov Meshorer replies:

I took it for granted that people were aware of the fact that ancient stories and legends were often related to more than one place or one people. For instance, the story of Andromeda was told as happening in Jaffa or on the coast of Ethiopia, etc. Some prestigious stones were adopted by various people to gain respect and glory. This must have happened in the case of Apameia in Phrygia, which is, as we all know, far away from the Ararat Mountains. (Who can be sure exactly what the Ararat Mountains are?)

The paper did not intend to give a detailed survey of all that’s been published and said concerning this coin type, as this could cover half of the BAR issue, but rather to give a summary with a good photograph of a newly acquired specimen of the Israel museum.

To the Editor:

I suppose others have called your attention to a boo-boo in “An Ancient Coin Depicts Noah’s Ark,” BAR 07:05, where Yaakov Meshorer refers to Moses’s sister Miriam as his mother. His mother was Yocheved!

From a Teacher at BAR’s Biblical Archaeology Vacation Seminar

To the Editor:

The Santa Cruz Vacation Seminar is a thing of the past and in my opinion was a full success. The campus is beautiful, the housing was fine, and the food superb.

The participants could not have been a finer group of people. I have never had a better and more appreciative audience or student body in my many years of lecturing and teaching. With one or two exceptions all had been in the Bible lands and were deeply interested in the subjects presented; two had been on digs as volunteers. These people were always on time for every appointment and could not seem to get enough, so that by popular demand we added a few more class periods to the schedule. Yet we still had time to make brief excursions to the Cowell Red Woods State Park, to a Begonia Garden, a Mystery Spot, and to see the seals and the sea lions at the beaches of Santa Cruz.

It makes a great difference whether one lectures to students who are obliged to listen because the course may belong to the core requirements and examinations are looming on the horizon, or to people who attend one’s lectures for their enjoyment and pleasure. The latter was the case at Santa Cruz.

Jim Brashler, an old friend of mine, did a fine job as co-lecturer and he brought in Elaine Pagels, the author of The Gnostic Gospels, as lecturer. This was also appreciated.

I wish you much success in your work and also hope that you get as much enjoyment out of it as I do.

Readers Respond to Exodus Stories

To the Editor: