Queries & Comments

010

Readers’ Solution to the Mysterious Pot from Tel Batash

Concerning the “Mysterious Pot from Tel Batash” in the January/February issue (“Excavating in Samson Country—Philistines and Israelites at Tel Batash,” BAR 15:01), I have seen such pots here in Africa. The pots in Nigeria have about the same size and distribution of holes, but the shapes of the pots are slightly different. They vary in size and are without handles. Upon seeing the “mystery pot” I took the article to some of our female students to ask them what it was used for. In Nigeria, they told me, they are used for drying meat or fish for preservation. Raw meat is placed inside the pot, which in turn is placed over a low flame fire. The smaller versions of such pots (about 6” in diameter) are used for burning incense. Hot coals are placed in the pot and incense is sprinkled over them.

My chemist husband, who is also a gardener, says the pot is a hanging flower pot—that it can be immersed in water to saturate the soil and drain to keep it from being water logged.

My immediate thought was that the jar was for storing root crops that need air circulation, like potatoes or onions. By the size of the pot, my guess would be onions.

I would suggest that this perforated pot of many holes was used to dry herbs, such as mint leaves or basil. The leaves could be inserted into the pot and the holes would allow air to circulate evenly inside the pot, causing the herbs to dry out. The shape and size of the jar lends itself easily to storage.

I would like to thank Professor Kelm and Professor Mazar for offering their readers a chance to contribute to the efforts of archaeology in this way.

Have you considered the idea that it might be some sort of incense or potpourri holder? I know that the Catholic church used to burn incense in a similar type of jar that the altar boy would swing during the ceremony. This jar could have been suspended from string by the handles on the two sides of the pot. I have also seen similar holders at craft shops that hold dried potpourri for scenting linen closets, etc. The potpourri scent escapes through the many holes.

I also liked your possible theory of its being used as some sort of ritual shower.

Whenever your magazine arrives, it feels like it should be a holiday so I could spend the day curled up on my favorite chair gleaning every page.

I was especially intrigued by “The Mysterious Pot from Tel Batash.” George Kelm and Amihai Mazar were bold enough to ask readers to send in their solutions to the mystery.

Perhaps they should reverse their thinking about how the pot functioned. Perhaps the small holes served to let in a liquid, rather than let it out as they seem to have focused on.

Consider the practice of placing such a pot in a small tub, irrigation channel, stream, etc., where the action of the water could feed, wash, dilute, etc., the object(s) in the pot. The convenience of moving the objects in and out of the liquid medium without handling the objects themselves could be considerable. The location of the handle at the very top of the pot suggests the possibility of moving the pots in and out of a liquid with ease and without getting their hands wet while immersion took place.

Could it have been used to hold wool or flax pieces while being dipped into the dye vats?

I hope someone solves this mystery soon!

Insert a solid piece of dye in it and add liquid. The liquid would then drain out.

It is a cheese pot. If curds were placed in the pot, the whey could drain away as the cheese cured. I know that cheesecloth is often used, but such a clay pot would probably have been cheaper and more practical than woven fabric in that time and place.

In my early days on the ranch, there were no supermarkets and we made our own cottage cheese. The sour milk was heated until it curdled. Then we poured it into a colander and suspended it. Sometimes we hung it in cheesecloth, but these people would not have had that. This pot would be easy to hang. We hung it on the clothesline. The longer the curd hung, the more solid the cheese. Since these people could not easily transport fresh milk, this would have been a way to keep dairy products longer. We never saved the whey. 012The early Spanish people saved the whey and used it to paint and seal adobe walls and floors.

Anyway, your article was extremely interesting and I’d love to know what else is buried in that mound.

I believe that this pot was to keep a fire in. If this pot was used for straining something, the holes (piercings) are too high and close to the mouth of the jar. However, if a fire, charcoal or otherwise, were kept and replenished, even if ash would close the lower holes, there would still be plenty of draft to keep the fire burning, even to the top of the pot.

I believe also that this pot was used for lighting lamps and braziers and furnaces—perhaps in a temple in Tel Batash. I have found that to start a fire without matches is no picnic. Rubbing two sticks together is laborious, even twirling the stick with a fire drill, using two people. With a bow drill, it is only slightly less so. And as far as hitting two rocks together, either pyrites or flints, it is haphazard, at best. Many sparks fizzle out, some burn the user and some miss the tinder. Many times if the tinder is damp or not fine enough, the spark will not catch. Even if it does, and you blow a bit too hard … Start again. Try it!

So I believe the Mysterious Pot held a fire, perhaps over the sabbath.

In ancient Mohenjo-Daro on the Sind (Indus) River circa 2500–1500 B.C., there were cylindrical ceramic objects with small holes in them. The function of these cylinders was to provide illumination as well as a modest degree of heat for a room during twilight or nighttime. The vessel was placed on the dirt floor (no fire hazard). The wide mouth made it easy to put in tinder, wood, dung, etc. The combustible material at the bottom half provided modest heat. The empty upper half provided a crude source of illumination through the many holes. The smallness of the holes accomplished several things: 1. Ashes (hot or cold) did not readily spill out on the dirt floor. 2. Fire hazard due to any exploding combustible material was reduced dramatically.

If the Tel Batash pot had the same functions (illumination—heating) as the Mohenjo-Daro vessels, it might have been partially placed in a specially dug hole lined with loose fitting stones.

Prior to my appointment as historian for the Village of Menands, I was looking over an area located in North Albany, New York, where a construction crew was remodeling a local building. During this process they bulldozed about four to five feet down in front of the building. Several persons had located old privy pits, and the remains of at least three cisterns. The contents of one cistern included bottles from the circa-1840 period and other items dating to the mid-19th century.

At the bottom of the cistern appeared the top of a large ceramic jug with a thick lip having an opening of about 4 inches. When the worker tried to pull the jug from the ground it would not move. He began to scoop up handfuls of pea-sized stones that were surrounding the jug. After removing many handfuls of stone, he rocked the jug back and forth and then pulled up hard. With a great sucking noise the jug came free and I was astonished to watch water drain from hundreds of tiny holes throughout the surface of the jug.

The jug stood about two feet high, had a short neck with the top portion being slightly larger around than the base. The holes in the jug were about the size of the diameter of a present-day match. The holes began at the bottom of the jug and ended at about the shoulder area or slightly above.

I believe the jug was designed and used to filter out foreign matter that would find its way into drinking water in the cistern, first through the small stones around the jug and then into the jug itself.

I hope this information may be of some help to you.

We submit the following:

A. To let air enter for

1. Storage of coals
2. Storage of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables
3. Storage of dried meat

B. To let water exit when

1. Rinsing blood from meat
2. Rinsing offal
3. Rinsing dried fruits and vegetables

C. To create steam

Current clay cooking pots retain water in the structural interstices when the pot is immersed briefly in water. The steam is released during cooking and will tenderize the toughest meat.

The most probable use of the illustrated pot was in processing olives. Raw olives contain glucosides rendering them too bitter to eat. Olives are made edible by soaking in a dilute lye solution. The pot would probably have been filled with wood ashes and immersed in a vat containing water and olives. The rate of solution of the lye in the ashes could be controlled by lifting a portion of the pot above the water surface.

Medical Confirmation of Fertility Rite

In the article by George L. Kelm and Amihai Mazar (“Excavating in Samson Country,” BAR 15:01), they show molded figurines found at Tel Batash (Timnah), which, they speculate, were used in some kind of fertility rite. Viewing these figures from a medical perspective confirms their observations.

Specifically, the physiognomy of the female figure on the left appears to be younger, has smaller breasts and more proportionate waist and thighs. There is a striking contrast between her abdomen and that of the figurine on the right. The latter is strikingly more rotund and protuberant with obliteration of the waistline. This could simply represent obesity, especially since the thighs of the figurine are also slightly larger. However, that physiognomy is exactly what we see in pregnant women. Further, the breasts on the right figurine appear more pendulous and full, a condition also seen in the pregnant state.

These two figurines certainly could be a sort of “before and after,” and from a medical perspective their appearance would certainly support the conjecture that these figurines may have been used in some kind of fertility rite.

How to Tell a Marketplace Inside a Gate?

My compliments to George L. Kelm and Amihai Mazar on their very fine article on Tel Batash in your January/February issue (“Excavating in Samson Country,” BAR 15:01).

I would like to draw your attention to the following: “A large square or piazza inside the city, adjacent to the gate, served as a marketplace and as a focal point of the city’s social life. We exposed part of the piazza in stratum II, the seventh-century city.”

Herodotus, visiting Babylon between 470 and 460 B.C. writes: “The Persians do not frequent market places and in effect, do not possess in their country a single market place” (Herodotus 1.153).

A. L. Oppenheim¹ claims that 016archaeological evidence speaks against the existence of marketplaces within the cities of the ancient Near East. In fact, it appears that the Agora of Athens became the very first city market known in the fourth century B.C.² Perhaps my information is outdated and other marketplaces have been found?

How does one recognize a marketplace, archaeologically speaking? What would be some of the distinguishing signs?

Amihai Mazar replies:

I thank my good friend Egon Lass for his interesting question. The identification of the piazza inside the gate as a markerplace is based mainly on written sources. Leo Oppenheim, the same scholar cited by Lass, mentions in his classic textbook Ancient Mesopotamia (1964) that gates at both Assur and Jerusalem were named after a certain merchandise traded in their vicinity, such as the Sheep Gate and the Fish Gate.

Oppenheim indeed writes that the “institution of the markets … was in Mesopotamia clearly of limited and marginal importance,” but at the same time he cites the term “market gate,” known from Neo-Babylonian documents (contemporary with the gate at Tel Batash). An Assyrian document from the time of Assurbanipal specifically mentions buying and selling at the market gate (Oppenheim, p. 129). In addition, there are several Biblical references to trade activities at the city gate, such as 2 Kings 7:1. Also, Nehemiah 13:16 mentions Tyrian merchants who used to sell fish and “all kind of wares” at Jerusalem (though there the city gate area is not specifically mentioned). The Biblical word Hutsot is usually translated as market, or shop street (see 1 Kings 20:34 referring to international trade between Aram [Syria] and Israel). Shops and shop streets were identified at a number of excavations in Israel. Thus a street inside the gate of Lachish had a row of shops at the front of houses.

Thanks for the Memories

The latest issue (Jan./Feb.) is a great way for me to start the new year. The cover picture, as well as the picture on page 20, are of the grid where I worked as a volunteer at Ashkelon, Israel, in 1987. I worked in the square next to the one where Lois Sargent spent her days in the “Betsy Ross” hat. Her article “First Hand: A Poet at Ashkelon,” BAR 15:01, is right on target. There are so many memories that come to mind from reading her story. The picture of her in the pit reminds me of all the times we had to walk carefully to avoid falling into her pit. Larry Stager, the author of “The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not,” BAR 15:01, was our director.

In 1988, I dug at Abila of the Decapolis, Jordan. Dr. Harold Mare is the director of that dig and he and Dr. W. W. Winter were my supervisors at the site called “Mother of Columns.” So, you can imagine my delight in seeing a picture of that fine excavation. While that excavation group was much smaller than the group at Ashkelon, and the living conditions were much more primitive, I learned invaluable lessons in the science of archaeology and in Biblical history.

The field trips we took with each excavation group were also of great importance. My knowledge of the Holy Land has increased greatly, and my daily Scripture study is immeasurably enhanced by having spent so many weeks exploring the geography and the history of that area. When I read of the cities and towns, the mountains and low places, the rivers and lakes, I can say I’ve been there. I have some idea of the conditions under which the Hebrews and Gentiles lived and died.

As a result of these experiences, I have had the opportunity to share the excitement of archaeology and the Middle East with several groups of interested persons here in Owensboro. So thanks again, BAR, for your part in these experiences.

Attacks Hyperdramatization

If Avraham Biran (“Prize Find: Tel Dan Scepter Head,” BAR 15:01) wants to know what the scepter head Queen Esther touched looked like, why doesn’t he take note of the oh-so-famous, larger-than-life stone relief of King Darius at the ruins of Persepolis, photographs of which are quite familiar to anyone with even the slightest interest in Biblical history or archaeology. In the king’s hand is the very scepter described in the Book of Esther, scepter head and all, and standing right behind the king is the crown prince Artaxerxes, the Biblical Ahashuerus, destined to inherit the kingdom and the scepter from his father. Biran’s “prize find” at Tel Dan, if it is a scepter head at all, would be as out of place in the Persian court as would President Reagan strolling on the White House lawn in a suit of armor, what with a full 400 years (“a few centuries” in Biran’s words), 800 miles, foreign 017countries and foreign cultures separating the two. Esther’s scepter head and Biran’s find have no relation whatever and Biran knows it! Your readers don’t want phoney hyperdramatizations a la Biran. We would rather have the truth.

In Those Days, a Hazan Was Not a Cantor

In the article on the Golan by Shlomit Nemlich and Ann Killebrew [“Rediscovering the Ancient Golan—The Golan Archaeological Museum,” BAR 14:06], the inscription on the Fiq column is mistranslated. Ana Yehuda Hazana does not mean “I am Yehuda the Cantor.” While it is true that in current usage hazana or hazan means cantor, in Byzantine times the hazan was the chief administrative officer of the synagogue, roughly equivalent to the president of a modern American synagogue.

Ann Killebrew and Shlomit Nemlich reply:

Rabbi Kollin is right.

To Obtain Information on Book of Mormon’s Authenticity

Those who would like to do further reading on the authenticity of the Book of Mormon should contact the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), P.O. Box 7113, University Station, Provo, UT 84602. FARMS offers a large number of scholarly books, tapes and articles that present credible evidence for the Book of Mormon’s authenticity.

On Speaking Ill of Others

I carefully followed the hoop-la in your pages regarding the Mormons and the Timeline Chart [see Queries & Comments, BAR 14:02; Queries & Comments, BAR 14:04; Queries & Comments, BAR 14:06; and Queries & Comments, BAR 15:02]. After three issues of Mormon-bashing festivities, a simple note was placed opposite the advertisement stating that this timeline had Book-of-Mormon events listed. That should have been all that was ever said.

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; I am also a customer of yours. You provide a magazine in return for good green money. The magazine is expected to deal with archaeology as related to Bible times, events, people and writings.

Simply put, I am not subscribing to Biblical Archaeology Review to read anti-Mormon letters, opinions, etc. Indeed, not anti-anything.

Speaking ill of others and their religious beliefs is not something to be tolerated in this day and age. You have a responsibility to be better than that and I will not support behavior less than that.

If you ever again behave in such a manner, I will not renew my subscription.

The Beit Lei Cave and Its Relation to the Mormon Prophet Lehi

Being a Mormon, it was interesting and educational for me to read the article on the Khirbet Beit Lei cave in the November/December 1988 issue [“Is the Mormon Figure Lehi Connected with a Prophetic Inscription Near Jerusalem?” Queries & Comments, BAR 14:06].

However, I do believe the author has done a disservice to readers when, by not stating the reasons Mormons believe the Beit Lei cave may have been the cave mentioned in 1 Nephi 3:27 of the Book of Mormon, he implies the only reason is that “Lei” sounds like “Lehi” and since these names are linguistically unrelated the Mormon attitude has been called “unscholarly.”

May I briefly point out that:

1. The inscription in the cave is dated by Professor Cross to the same time period that the prophet Lehi left Jerusalem.

2. The cave is located in the same general direction from Jerusalem that Nephi and his brothers fled from their pursuers back toward the tent of their father Lehi, located some distance away to the south. The detour eastward toward Hebron makes all the more sense since it was a city of refuge.

3. On the basis of what the inscription says, and its style, Professor Cross believes it was written by “a refugee fleeing the Chaldeans [Babylonians] who conquered Judah and destroyed the holy city [Jerusalem] in 587 B.C.” This is the very situation of Lehi and his family with the proviso that they were fleeing Jerusalem before the destruction, having been forewarned by the gift of prophecy from the Lord.

4. The inscriptions are not written in Arabic and the name Lei does not occur in them. The cave gets its name from the tradition of the indigenous people who lived in the area. This was an oral not a written tradition. Consider for a moment how a non-Arabic name would be passed on by 018Arabs by word of mouth for centuries, then written down in our day. What was once Lehi could easily become Lei, notwithstanding that Lei bears no etymological relationship to Lehi.

A Colossal Disappointment

Your January/February issue (15:01) was a colossal disappointment. No indignant letters demanding cancellation of subscriptions or threatening exposures to the Not-So-Silent Majority. For shame. You have disappointed thousands of readers such as myself who immediately upon receipt of your fine magazine scan the Queries & Comments for proof positive that man was not created equal. I trust the malfeasant who neglected to include the required obscenity has been discharged.

In a somewhat more serious vein, I greatly enjoy your fine articles and the subject matter presented. Please never fall into the trap of catering to the narrow-minded or bigoted, for they comprise only an insignificant portion of your readers and probably wouldn’t extend their subscriptions anyway.

Objects to a White Nefertiti

First, just let me tell you how much I enjoy BAR. I will continue to subscribe, but I was offended by an advertisement in the January/February issue (15:01). This was for a Queen Nefertiti doll. My complaint is that this doll is portrayed as being white. Queen Nefertiti was a beautiful black Egyptian queen. The Egyptians are a black race of people. This doll has creamy white skin color and is supposed to portray a queen of Egypt, of all places—a country that is hot all year round with plenty of desert land!

It surprised me that a magazine of your standing would even print such an ad.

BAR’s Advertisements

We enjoy BAR and Bible Review [BAR’s sister publication] almost as much for the letters as for the excellent content. There are many more who sagely read the advertisements for what they are than there are those who write thinking the ads indicate the policy and the “teachings” of management. (They seem to be doing what they accuse us Papists of doing—swallowing whatever is “officially” published.) Keep up the good work. I am glad I don’t agree with everything you print in the real meat of the magazines. They keep me thinking—and sometimes grinning.

More on the Dating of the Exodus

In the midst of the furor over the dating of the Exodus [John J. Bimson and David Livingston, “Redating the Exodus,” BAR 13:05; Baruch Halpern, “Radical Exodus Redating Fatally Flawed,” BAR 13:06; 019Bimson, “A Reply to Baruch Halpern’s ‘Radical Exodus Redating Fatally Flawed,’” BAR 14:04 and Manfred Bietak, “Contra Bimson, Bietak Says Late Bronze Age Cannot Begin as Late as 1400 B.C.,” BAR 14:04. For important letters from David Livingston, John Bimson and Professor Anson Rainey of Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, see also Queries & Comments, BAR 14:02; Queries & Comments, BAR 14:05; Queries & Comments, BAR 14:06; and Queries & Comments, BAR 15:01], I wondered if anyone bothered to ask what the ancients thought about this matter. They seemed to believe it was Ramesses II, as I shall explain. To be sure they also might be wrong, but it is worth noting that in Jubilees 47:5, a document that probably dates to the second century B.C., the daughter of the pharaoh who found Moses by the Nile is said to be Tharmuth, a daughter of Ramesses II. Again, in Josephus’s Antiquities 2.224ff. we find another form of this same tradition. Various ancient authorities took for granted that the pharaoh of the Exodus was Ramesses II. Of course, Exodus 2:23 indicates that the pharaoh of the Exodus was not the same as the pharaoh who ruled when Moses was born, but it is significant that various ancient authorities do date the time of Moses in Egypt to the same general period as most modern scholars.

Insights Into the Song of Deborah

Professor Lawrence Stager’s fascinating analysis, “The Song of Deborah—Why Some Tribes Answered the Call and Others Did Not,” BAR 15:01, coincided with the reading of these chapters (Judges 4–5) in the synagogue on January 21, 1989, as the weekly Prophetic portion for the Sabbath. This enhanced my enjoyment of both the article and the Biblical reading. Several points in the Biblical text and in Professor Stager’s article deserve further scrutiny.

Stager states that in the prose account (Judges 4), Barak musters his troops from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun only, while the other tribes mentioned in the poetic version (Judges 5) are omitted. Actually, the prose account only informs us which tribes Barak called to battle, not who actually participated. The text reads: “And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kadesh” (Judges 4:10). The Kingdom of Hazor was located in the midst of these two tribes. We see from Judges 1 that after the settlement of the land and the death of Joshua, each tribe was responsible for conquering the enemies in their own territory. Thus, Barak could not put out a general call to arms. He could only demand the participation of Naphtali and Zebulun, though he may have hoped for outside support. Perhaps this is why Deborah’s poem merely chides the tribes who did not join the battle, rather than cursing them. Only two tribes were required to go to war. The others who volunteered were praised while those who did not could not be too vigorously condemned.

Commenting upon the absence of Judah and Simeon from either account, Stager feels that these tribes were not yet a vital part of the tribal confederation. Yet they were allocated land by Joshua and appear on other tribal lists before and after the time of Deborah. A more plausible explanation may be that these tribes bordered on another security threat, namely the Philistines, who already were involved in a skirmish with the Israelites (Judges 3:31). These two tribes could not send their armies to the north leaving their own populations at risk; nor could they be faulted for not participating in the battle.

Gilead, which did not join in, may be identical with Gad, as the land of Gilead was divided between Gad, Reuben and Manesseh. It may instead refer to Gilead the son of Machir, both descendants of Manasseh. This would fit nicely with Professor Stager’s description of the social order of the Israelites being based along kinship lines. The Tribe of Manasseh was divided with the clan of Machir, joining in the battle, while the “sub-clan” of Gilead the son of Machir remained behind.

Professor Stager interprets the verb yaqur (Judges 5:17) in reference to the Tribe of Dan serving as “clients on ships.” He suggests they served on the Mediterranean coast under the Canaanites or Philistines. An alternate explanation offered by the first-century B.C.E. Biblical translator Jonathan been Uzziel is that the verse refers to the portion of Dan that moved to the north, conquering the city of Laish. This would place them in the vicinity of the Jordan River as well as near the Kingdom of Hazor. Perhaps they served on ships sailing the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee, operated by the Canaanite enemy. This would certainly explain Dan’s reluctance to do battle with their own employers.