Endnote 15 – When Palestine Meant Israel

There is considerable material evidence of Greeks in Palestine during the Iron Age. A graphic illustration of direct contact between Jews and Greeks is provided by Hebrew ostraca found in Arad, which date from the first decades of the sixth century B.C.E. These refer to the delivery of food supplies to Kittim, Greek or Cypriot mercenaries in the service of the last kings of Judah; see Yohanan Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1981), Ostraca nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7–8, 10–11, 14, 17. Imported Greek pottery from the seventh century B.C.E. onwards has been found at 50 sites in Palestine, and it is now generally agreed that this trade was run by Greek merchants; see Ephraim Stern, Material Culture of the Land of the Bible in the Persian Period, 538–332 B.C. (Warminster: Aris & Phillips; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982), pp. 137, 141, 283–286. Circumstances for direct contact between Jews and Greeks in Babylon, Persia and Egypt during the early classical period have been cited by Elias Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 13–14.