The Context of Scripture Archival Documents from the Biblical World, volume 3
Edited by William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger
(Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2002), liv + 406 pp., $129
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If you like reading other people’s letters, or if you are fascinated by old documents, this is a book you will greatly enjoy. It includes scores of letters, legal deeds, accounts and notes written between 2600 B.C. and 100 B.C. Translated from Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, Phoenician and Ugaritic, these texts offer glimpses of life in Biblical times among social classes ranging from the well-to-do to the disadvantaged. Although most of the documents were written by professional scribes, they nevertheless reflect ordinary people’s everyday concerns and so differ markedly from the earlier volumes in this series, Canonical Compositionsa and Monumental Inscriptions.
One of the most famous collections of ancient documents was found on the island of Elephantine (ancient Yeb) in the Nile at Aswan (ancient Syene) a century or so ago. A number of Jews and Aramaeans lived there in the fifth century B.C. and, when the community collapsed, the dry soil preserved some of their deeds and letters inside the ruins of their houses. These documents were written on papyrus, in Aramaic. Thirty-one of them are translated here by Bezalel Porten, who has made the Elephantine papyri his life work, and has greatly improved our understanding of them.
Most of the Elephantine papyri concern family matters: the sale or disposal of property, making a loan or bequest, adopting a child, formalizing a marriage. In this last group of papers we read, “She is my wife and I am her husband from this day and forever!” (Apparently, newlyweds have always been optimistic.) Yet ancient brides and grooms were more pragmatic than many of their modern counterparts. The marriage agreements also incorporate a kind of “pre-nup”: They provide for the sharing of property in the event of divorce. Such agreements were common during all periods.
In addition to legal deeds, this volume of The Context of Scripture presents documents relating to the religious activities of the Jewish community at Elephantine. The Jews had built a temple to Yahweh, but their Egyptian neighbors destroyed it in 410 B.C. We find petitions from the Elephantine community to fellow Jews in Jerusalem and to the ruling Persian authorities there seeking support to rebuild the temple. One fragmentary letter suggests that the Elephantine community had posed a question to Jews in Jerusalem about the observance of Passover (the letter was the reply they received, evidently with the approval of the Persian king). Instructive comparisons can be made between these texts and certain passages in Ezra-Nehemiah and Esther, as co-editors William Hallo and K. Lawson Younger demonstrate with helpful references and footnotes.
On the mainland at Syene, meanwhile, scribes jotted notes on potsherds to be ferried across to the island. Many of these ostraca bear short messages urging immediate action: “Come and shear the big ewe before her fleece is torn by thorns;” “Send me some salt; buy it if there isn’t any in the house.” Once read, these notes were discarded on Elephantine, and lay forgotten until they were unearthed in modern times.
Such brief, ephemeral messages were also scribbled—in Hebrew—on potsherds in ancient Israel and Judah. The surviving Hebrew ostraca constitute our only documentation of daily life. Among those translated in this volume are six of the “Lachish Letters,” a list of names from Jerusalem and the plea of an oppressed worker from Mesad Hashavyahu. These were recovered in scientific excavations. Another ostracon—called “The Widow’s Plea”—was bought on the antiquities market and is said by some to be 062a forgery.b Here Dennis Pardee, who translated most of the Hebrew documents in the volume, argues vigorously that the ostracon is authentic, and that its text—a childless widow’s entreaty for an inheritance—can be linked to several Biblical passages.
Although these texts belong to the period of the Israelite Monarchy or later, the attitudes and customs they attest can often be traced back to earlier times, as seen in a few legal deeds from the second millennium B.C. found at Alalakh (translated by Richard Hess), at Ugarit (translated by Michael Heltzer) and in a single will from Alalakh. It may perhaps have been helpful to see a few more Babylonian examples, describing arrangements for surrogate motherhood or adoption in childless marriages, division of inheritances, manumission and other aspects of family life.
A selection of Sumerian contracts and court cases from the third and second millennia B.C. does deal with such matters. Forty-two letters from Ugarit and 20 Hittite letters give some idea of the thoughts that occupied kings and their servants. “Write to me quickly concerning the condition of the vines, the cattle and the sheep in that land,” reads one short missive; we also find accounts of military positions and enemy attacks.
Egyptian archival documents are fewer in number; most were written on papyrus, and therefore have decayed. Extant examples include a collection of letters from a man named Heqanakht, living about 1950 B.C., which tell of the difficulties arising from a poor harvest. In addition, deeds dating as late as the second century B.C. note the “self-dedication” of individuals to various gods, in return for protection. There are also records of two court cases concerning the Harem Conspiracy against Ramesses III (c. 1184–1153 B.C.) and of another case relating to the ownership of slaves. The Brooklyn Papyrus lists Semitic slaves living in Egypt around 1700 B.C., giving both their birth names and their Egyptian names. One entry reads, “The female Asiatic Shiphrah (?); called Senebhenutes; a weaver of fine linen.” Her name recalls the Hebrew midwife Shiphrah of Exodus 1:15.
Religious beliefs are manifest in these texts, and when not stated explicitly, they are implied by the use of personal names that invoke deities (the so-called theophoric element of a name). The Hittite archives provide detailed descriptions of religious images reminiscent of those in Exodus and in 1 Kings 6 and 8. Similar documents in Babylonian also survive. There are accounts of royalty presenting gifts to their gods in fulfillment of vows or in response to dreams. Such gifts often echoed the suppliant’s original request—for example, a queen might offer gold and silver ear-shaped votives to signify that the gods had heard her prayer.
Filing and storing documents in archives is an age-old chore, as this volume shows. In the Hittite capital Hattusha (now Boghazköy, Turkey), clerks made lists of the tablets housed in some of the buildings (four examples are included here). Then, as now, records sometimes went astray, so we find notations such as “Tablet Two…Tablet One is missing.” The ancient catalogues list many compositions that have been identified among the remnants of the Hittite archives—but many others that have not, a salutary reminder that even so large a collection as this volume is only a minute fraction of all the texts written in Biblical times.
As the final installment in a three-volume set, The Context of Scripture 3 supplies indices for all the volumes’ Scripture passages, a general index (covering proper names, ancient words cited and myriad topics) and a list of contributors. Presented as addenda are translations of the Egyptian “Dispute between a Man and His Ba” (by Nili Shupak) and of “The Akkadian Anzu Story” (by Marianna Vogelzang). It is hard to see the relevance of the latter, except for the fact that it is known from two different versions that were written centuries apart, and therefore can illustrate the development of a text over a long period of time. I, for one, would rather have seen the whole of the Gilgamesh Epic in The Context of Scripture, not just Tablet XI, which appears in volume 1.c
Now that it is complete, this major publication project will clearly replace James B. Pritchard’s long-standard Ancient Near Eastern Texts. The three volumes of The Context of Scripture offer improved renderings of familiar texts, introduce more recently published texts to a wider audience and shed new light on the Bible by means of detailed introductions and copious annotations. Yet one can happily read the texts without ever consulting the footnotes. The Context of Scripture will no doubt stimulate the reading of the Bible in its ancient context, resulting in a better understanding of what Israel shared with her Near Eastern neighbors, and how she differed from them.
Alan Millard is Rankin Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University of Liverpool, England.
If you like reading other people’s letters, or if you are fascinated by old documents, this is a book you will greatly enjoy. It includes scores of letters, legal deeds, accounts and notes written between 2600 B.C. and 100 B.C. Translated from Aramaic, Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hittite, Phoenician and Ugaritic, these texts offer glimpses of life in Biblical times among social classes ranging from the well-to-do to the disadvantaged. Although most of the documents were written by professional scribes, they nevertheless reflect ordinary people’s everyday concerns and so differ markedly from the earlier volumes in this series, Canonical Compositionsa […]
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The reading suggested by author John Wilkinson appears to me to be clearly wrong. He would read DDM.NOMIMUS. But the IV cannot be M. The letter I clearly follows the M. The letter following D cannot be D; on the contrary, it must be O. See Wilkinson, “The Inscription on the Jerusalem Ship Drawing,” PEQ 127 (1995).