Contents:
Todas las citas de Banchs se tomaran aqui de esta edici6n, y en adelante anotare en el texto el numero de pagina entre parentesis. Petrarca vive en los versos de La urna con plena conciencia de su autor: Espiritu gentil que de Valclusa las selvas de laurel paseaste tanto, razonando de amores con la musa que alargaba el honor de tu quebranto: Maestro soy en el amar doliente, aunque no en la elegancia del estilo ni en la ilustre nobleza del dictado; pero viendo el laurel que honra tu frente pienso, grave y tranquilo, que un sentimiento igual nos ha acercado No duda Banchs de que lo hermana al espiritu gentil de Valclusa iddntica t6nica sentimental.
Raz6n tenia, y sobrada. Lo hermanan tambien temas y modos, y no creo que sea por ventura que decidiera escribir La urna toda en sonetos, la forma de la cual fue Petrarca artifice absoluto. Sin embargo, no he de intentar aqui deslindes de fuentes cuya puntualizaci6n no haria mas que alargar la lista de autores clasicos de los que sin duda nuestro joven poeta fue avido lector.
Lo que ahora interesa es esa participaci6n en una constante espiritual que puede mostrarnos a Banchs hermanado en pensamiento y emoci6n con la mas cimera tradici6n po6tica del Renacimiento. Tanto mas revelador es el hecho cuanto que en este caso no parece tratarse de una fuente directa y si de la reelaboraci6n consciente o inconsciente de un tema que no resalta a primera lectura como peculiarmente petrarquista, y que por cierto no aparece en el Canzoniere de Petrarca.
Los cuatro sonetos de Enrique Banchs se refieren a una estatua de -mujer cuya hermosura emociona al poeta. En el siglo xvii, Giambattista Marino, en su famosa Galeria, se muestra movido de sentimiento similar: Del modernismo a la E se Natura pits di te s'apprezza perch6 da l'alme ai simulacri suoi, tu vinci lei, poi che senz'alma puoi l'alme nostre invaghir di tua belleza.
Anzi vantaggio ii tuo difetto fai, poich' immortal miracolo novello, non vivend'alma in te, sempre vivrai. Ceda dunque la falce a lo scarpello, che certo al Tempo ed a la Morte mai soggiacer non devea corpo si bello 4 En el poema de La Galeria encontramos, por un lado, el tema, la estatua de mujer que conmueve al poeta; por otro, el esbozo en dos versos de lo que Enrique Banchs desarrollari en cuatro sonetos: I Padova, , p.
Marino escribi6 otro poema con el mismo titulo y semejante tema, una sextina, que apenas vale la pena mencionar porque en sus versos aparece la metafora del diamante, como en el primer soneto de Banchs: Naturalmente, el uso de la imagen en Banchs es lo bastante tradicional para no tener que depender necesariamente de los poemas de Marino. Tu que nunca podris cerrar la mano, tienes en gesto de carifio humano la Tinica mano abierta en mi camino El dialogo enamorado con la estatua es comin a ambos poetas, como lo es la paradoja de la hermosura sin alma, pero hay un detalle nuevo en esta tradici6n y que define la emoci6n de Banchs ya desde el primer verso.
Asi, el tinico ser que promete amor estd paralizado en puro gesto sin vida. Los dos tercetos de Marino definen esa paradoja de la inmortalidad de lo que no tiene alma. Tal es el tema del segundo soneto de Enrique Banchs: Esa mano lujuriosa, asi como el artista enamorado de la estatua, es tema de remota alcurnia clasica: Pigmali6n y su hermosa de marfil. Es, claro estd, en las Metamorfosis X, donde se encuentra ese mismo erotismo, idealizado en Banchs y la corriente petrarquista, y por lo menos una vez exacerbado en nuestra poesia de los siglos aureos, en un soneto an6nimo de estirpe claramente ovidiana: Cuanto el lascivo impulso me limito a tu belleza tanto mas se atreve.
Vali6te ser en piedra rostro y cuello: Nada de tales torpezas se columbra en nuestro poeta, que apenas arrima la amorosa ofrenda de sus sienes en flor a los senos de la hermosa. Y, sin embargo, el mito de Pigmali6n sobrevive en la caricia enamorada y en el deseo no por tdcito menos intenso de amar la mujer estatua. Los efectos del deseo imposible se subliman conmovidos en la meditaci6n sobre la inmortal belleza de la escultura amada. En el cuarto soneto volvemos a leer de la inm6vil hermosura que derrota al tiempo, de la indiferente hermosura que el cincel ha hecho, tanto en Marino como en Banchs, vencedora de la muerte: Qui6n tuviera, loh, mujer que no suspira!
Conclusions Our analyses altogether support the authenticity of the JI tablet and tablet inscription. All evidence hints to a joint or very close age origin of the production of the tablet and the incised inscription. The central crack and the upper fracture cut across several lines and letters, 2. The margins of the letters are weathered, 3. Quartz and feldspar grains found within the patina are identical to those found within the rock, 4. The patina that covers the tablet includes carbon ash particles and minute and well-sorted globules of pure gold, a product of melting, 5.
The surface pattern inside 32 II Kings The age of the charcoal interlocked within the patina is approximately 2, years BP according to carbon dating, 7. We did not find any element related to the use of modern tools, 8. The microbiogenic patina is dense, coating all surfaces as well as the engraved letters, and indicates growth over extended periods of time. The use of the oxygen isotope method for the authentication of archaeological artifacts is premature and unreliable. To our knowledge this method is not used in any lab in the world today.
Cited R eferences Bender, F. Berlin, Gebrueder Borntraeger Berlin. Hebrew, Idumean, and Cuneiform. Hebrew Bible Monographs 8. Sheffield, Sheffield Phoenix Press, pp. Lisbon, University of Lisbon. Atmospheric Dust in Israel: Sedimentological and Meteorological Analysis of Dust Deposition. Jerusalem, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Tel Aviv 31, pp. Israel Geological Survey Current Research 13, pp. K rumbein and J. Journal of Archaeological Science 35, pp. R amage and P. Cambridge, British Museum, pp. The Journal of the Paul Getty Museum. Tel Aviv, Ministry of Defense, pp. Note the detail of the tablet showing part of the right side of the prominent central fissure now broken transecting the engraved letters.
The patina is covering the letters as well as the fissure the width of the righthand margin is approximately 15 mm. A view of the lower part of the broken tablet along the fissure in Figure 1 line 8 of the right side including its lower margin. A thin black, orange-brown biogenic patina layer attached firmly to the rock covers all surfaces of the tablet as well as the grooves of the letters the black and brown-patina is 1 mm thick. Enlargement of Figure 2. The patina layers consist of a lower biogenic iron oxide black to brown film above which is a light beige-ochre upper layer the width of the engraved grooves of the letter is about 1 mm.
Observe a groove representing a part of a letter and the layers of the patina that fill in and cover the letter as well as the rock surface. The lower patina layer consists of black and orange-brown layers occurring one next to the other. Both are composed of iron-oxide that can be seen on lateral margins of the groove as well as on the surface of the tablet, above which is a light beige-ochre upper patina layer the width of the groove is about 1 mm.
Note the morphological continuity between the patina on the rock surface and the engraved rock. This iron oxide patina is the product of microcolonial fungi activity during a long period of time the width of the groove of the letter is about 1 mm. The script on the tablet, transliterated to current Hebrew letters. After Ilani et al. A reassessment is made of the local archaeological evidence and especially of the findings of the Hejazi Qurayya pottery in archaeological assemblages of the southern Levant. It is argued that the chronology of the New Kingdom activities at Timna needs a revision towards lower dates.
Timna — Egypt — Qurayya pottery — Chronology Resumen: October 3rd ; approved: Bimson Until the s it was widely believed, following the work of Nelson Glueck, that the copper deposits of the southern Arabah had been exploited during Iron Age II by the biblical King Solomon and his successors. This view was overturned by the results of the Arabah Expedition, begun by Beno Rothenberg in Within ten years a very different picture had emerged from the work of Rothenberg and his colleagues.
The copper industry of the area had been active during three main phases: These finds fixed the date of those operations firmly to the 13th—12th centuries BC. In I questioned the new consensus, pointing out that the Egyptian finds are in tension with other evidence that points to a later date. Since then there have been a number of attempts to shorten the conventional chronology of Egypt by varying degrees. Scholars dealing with the history and archaeology of all areas that depend on Egypt for their dates would do well to note the comment of Egyptologist Aidan Dodson: Much of that paper is now out of date and the present one should be regarded as superseding it.
The present paper begins by briefly sketching the history of the debate between Glueck and Rothenberg. It then focuses on some of the chronological tensions which the new consensus has not resolved, and which point to the need for a shorter chronology for Egypt. Finally it explores how one model for a revised chronology could resolve those tensions. Bimson The southern Arabah was identified as a copper-working area by J. Petherick as long ago as Partly on the basis of the pottery he found in the area, which he felt was all Iron Age II, and partly on the basis of historical probability, Glueck became convinced that the mines had been exploited from the time of Solomon, in the 10th century BC, down to the end of the Judean monarchy in the 6th century BC.
Tell el-Kheleifeh lies half a kilometre from the shore of the Gulf of Aqabah, midway between the modern towns of Aqabah and Elat and only a few metres from the boundary between Israel and Jordan. Glueck never published a technical report of his excavations at Tell elKheleifeh but he discussed the site and its pottery in several articles. He divided its occupation history into five levels which he idiosyncratically numbered from the bottom up.
Only Level IV, the second level from the surface, produced useful dating criteria. However, his reason for stretching Dodson Glueck interpreted one of the structures at Tell el-Kheleifeh as a refinery, and believed that copper from the mines in the southern Arabah at Timna and in Wadi Amrani had been smelted there. He also compared some of the pottery he found associated with the Arabah mines with the pottery from Tell el-Kheleifeh. The work was undertaken by Gary Pratico and published in Hence Tell el-Kheleifeh cannot have been Ezion-geber or any other Solomonic settlement.
Pratico distinguished two phases at Tell el-Kheleifeh, the first surrounded by a casemate wall, the second, covering a larger area, surrounded by an offsetinset wall. In Rothenberg founded the Arabah Expedition to study systematically the ancient metallurgical operations there. The Expedition soon distinguished three main types of pottery in the region: It is now generally known as Negev or Negevite ware.
Mussell , see pp. This is usually wheel-made, pink-buff ware with a heavy cream-coloured slip, decorated in brown, reddish-brown and black. However, it also differs from Edomite ware, e. The origins of this pottery became apparent in when it was found in abundance at the site of Qurayya in the Hejaz northwest Arabia , about 70 km NW of Tabuk.
Petrographic analysis revealed that the pottery of this type found at Timna had almost certainly come from the Hejaz, probably from Qurayya. The rest seems to have been made locally. Of the three types this was the most abundant and the only one for which datable comparanda existed in Palestine and neighbouring areas. Shallow, carinated cooking pots with small folded rims and no handles were a particularly useful guide.
The latter also refers to INAA results. In , during the excavation of a smelting camp known as Site 2, all three types of Arabah pottery were found together for the first time in a well-stratified context, and Rothenberg reported the discovery as follows: The pottery must be dated 12th—11th centuries BC and nothing later was found in the excavations. Here all three types of pottery were found together again, and this time they were stratified with inscribed Egyptian finds bearing the cartouches of pharaohs from the 19th and 20th Dynasties.
This discovery required even earlier dates for the pottery, in 18 Aharoni Similarly in Glueck Albright, quoted by Glueck Glueck acknowledged the Egyptian finds in the second edition of his book The Other Side of the Jordan,23 but still did not accept that his late dates for the pottery had been refuted. Albright, however, accepted the implication of the Egyptian finds.
Shortly before his own death in September that same year, he retracted his earlier statements, saying that he and Glueck had both been wrong in their dating of the Arabah pottery. On the other hand, the early dates based on the Egyptian finds are in tension with other evidence that points to a later date.
Chronological questions John J. Gold, almug wood and precious stones are said to have been imported from Ophir via this port 9: The copper mines of the southern Arabah were close to the Red Sea, offering a valuable trading commodity. It would have made little economic sense for the mines to lie unworked when the organization for their effective exploitation existed, and a port with an expanding maritime trade had been established nearby.
Glueck initially interpreted a solidly-built, four-room structure as a copper smelter. He thought that holes in its walls had been flues, and that some of the pottery vessels found there were crucibles. He also found signs of fire which he thought pointed to its use for smelting. This interpretation was later overturned by Rothenberg: Rothenberg reinterpreted the building as a granary, a view which Glueck accepted.
While retracting his interpretation of the building as a copper smelter, Glueck emphasised that copper slag had been found at the site. The slag is of the fayalite type, produced by the use of an iron oxide flux. In this respect it is similar to the majority of slags from Site 2 and Site 30 Layers 3—2 at Timna.
But if so, this still leaves the question of where the copper ore may have come from. Copper mines in the Faynan district in the north-eastern Arabah were being exploited during Iron II,35 but these lie some km from Tell elKheleifeh; the mines at Timna lie only 25 km from Tell el-Kheleifeh, and those in Wadi Amrani are less than half that distance away. Therefore, no analysis based on these parameters allows us to distinguish unambiguously between copper produced at Timna and Faynan. Koucky and Miller For details of slag from Timna see e. Baron in turn replied to Rothenberg: None of the pottery presently in the collection from these sites can be identified as dating to the Late Bronze Period.
The evidence for this comes from Site 30, a smelting camp where three strata have been distinguished. The earlier two strata, numbered Layer 3 and Layer 2, contained the same mixture of pottery types as the Hathor temple with the addition in the earliest stratum, Layer 3, of some Egyptian red-burnished pottery. Between Layer 2 and Layer 1 was a layer of wind-blown soil, indicating a period of abandonment. Layer 1 differs from those below in its smelting technology and its pottery: From there it reached the Arabah, Edom, the central Negev and a few sites further into southern Palestine.
The majority of sites where it occurs have yielded only a few sherds. It is therefore important to look more closely at the stratigraphy of the Hathor temple Site For a thorough discussion of the distribution of this pottery see now Tebes a; for earlier discussions: Rothenberg and Glass ; Rothenberg Her detailed stylistic analysis of the numerous votive offerings from the temple leads her to conclude: Rothenberg has resisted this conclusion on stratigraphical grounds.
In light of this it is worth recalling an earlier debate concerning an inscribed building stone from the Hathor temple site. This bears a partially effaced cartouche which K. Kitchen, on the basis of a photograph, read as that of a Thutmose Kitchen This would have required a foundation date in the 18th Dynasty.
Schulman, the Egyptologist for the Arabah Expedition, insists that the cartouche is that of a Ramesside pharaoh Schulman With little or no break, worship at the temple site was renewed in Stratum II. Worshippers at the shrine continued to use QPW: In her view, QPW did not appear until the 12th century BC and may have been in use for only a short period. Its users may simply have left the Timna Valley. But he was only able to produce good dating criteria for what he called Level IV. These included Edomite inscriptions and many items of pottery which showed a strong Assyrian influence: Assyrian metal and pottery vessels All other pottery from the site belongs to the 8th—6th centuries BC and later.
Rothenberg has Glueck On possible continuation to the end of the Persian period see Bienkowski a, especially pp. The chief reason for resorting to such arguments is that criteria derived from Egyptian chronology especially, but not exclusively, the finds at Timna have pushed the manufacture of QPW back to the 13th—12th centuries BC, and it is generally considered unlikely that it continued in use for several centuries.
At Tawilan, in addition to two sherds of QPW found during surface surveys,71 a stratified sherd was excavated by C. This was associated with late Iron II pottery. See also Singer-Avitz She informed me pers. BC, that is, some seven hundred years. By contrast, the Qurayya painted pottery combines simple shapes with sophisticated decorations that show a high level of aesthetic appreciation. But if it is unlikely that QPW was in use for several centuries, it is also methodologically dubious to posit phantom Iron I strata to which sherds can be attributed.
This line of reasoning has led in many cases to assumptions that are not properly supported by the evidence.
Specifically, the existence of Iron I occupation has been suggested at several sites because of the occurrence of QPW, despite the fact 73 Rothenberg and Glass Rothenberg and Glass Yet such a model seems to be at odds with the growing findings of QPW in late contexts in the Negev and Edom. Calibrated 14C dates indicate occupation during the 11th—early 9th centuries BC. Findings of QPW led the excavator, T.
Levy, to suggest earlier dates for occupation in the site, as early as the 12th century BC,96 although the exact find spots of these ceramics were not provided. Fritz, suggested an 11th century BC date for the local QPW;98 however, soon after this site was radiocarbon dated to the 9th century BC. Here, the opposite case. Moreover, she suggests that this early occupation—and the QPW that originated in it— dates to the 12th century BC.
Although the evidence for ascribing QPW to Iron II contexts is reasonably strong, some caution must be expressed for a number of reasons. First of all, given the similarities between the QPW painted decorations and those in other Late Bronze wares, it has become customary to identify QPW based on their decorative patterns and their origin Qurayya. Although it cannot be ruled out that someday QPW will be found to have been manufactured in Edom or the Negev, examples of QPW found in late contexts have been identified as such because of their decorations but so far neither Neutron Activation Analysis NAA nor petrographic studies have been carried out on them.
Second, the amount of QPW in fact, sherds that has been unearthed in very late contexts is so far very limited. A third problem is the resemblance between some of the QPW decorative patterns with those of the Edomite painted pottery, which could have led the inexperienced eye to confuse both pottery traditions. Fourth, material from surveys supplements the repertoire of QPW in southern Jordanian sites. Because all of these wares were found in surveys out of any stratigraphic context, and given the uncertainties regarding the Iron I period in Edom, it is uncertain whether they belong to the Iron I or Iron II periods.
Lastly, some of these QPW sherds might be stray finds, sherds that somehow found their way into later strata. The above discussion demonstrates that more research is needed on the QPW found in late contexts, particularly NAA and petrographic studies. These investigations may shed new light onto the relationship between the QPW and Edomite ceramics.
The Edomite pottery is a distinctive ceramic group found in the territory of Biblical Edom southern Transjordan and in Negev sites of the Late Iron Age. An important point is that, typologically, it is very difficult to find similarities in form between the QPW and Edomite ceramics. It should be noted that there is a restricted spectrum of QPW types, which appear predominantly in the form of small table wares and containers.
Edomite wares, by contrast, exhibit a wider range of types and variations. Typologically, QPW bowls bear more resemblance to the coarser, hand-made Negevite pottery that was characteristic of the whole Iron Age, than to the finer Edomite bowl types. However, in dealing with parallels for the QPW one should bear in mind that not only has it been found in relatively large quantities only at Timna, but also that in this place it was especially concentrated in the Temple of Hathor, a fact that accounts for the unusually high ratio of small table wares bowls and containers jugs, juglets, goblets found at the site.
The main pointers to a putative relationship between the QPW and Edomite pottery are the patterns of decoration. Geometrical designs occur on both wares. Radial strokes around the rims of bowls; 3. Small dots between two bands; 4. Vertical lines between horizontal lines; 5. Net pattern; Oakeshott Crosses between two horizontal lines—however those in the QPW are smaller; 7.
Triangles between two bands. However, a number of characteristic QPW decorative traits are consistently absent in the Edomite pottery, such as chevrons, lozenges, arches, semicircles, wavy lines, scrolls, depictions of birds—apparently ostriches—, schematic representations of human beings and camels. It is also interesting to assess the fabric and origin of both pottery traditions.
A cursory review of the available evidence shows that QPW and Edomite ceramics diverge in fabric and origin. Particularly, it should be noted that the QPW was of coarser manufacture, made on slow wheels and sometimes hand-made. That these ceramics show close resemblance to each other should not be surprising in the light of their spatial overlapping as well as their temporal contiguity. Certainly, other contemporary traditions of painted decoration existed in the Negev and southern Transjordan.
I have suggested elsewhere that the Rothenberg and Glass Peter Parr has speculated on a possible relationship between the Edomite and Khuraybah styles, but even more intriguing is the possibility that the QPW was ancestral to the Khuraybah pottery. There are admittedly some significant differences between the two types: Qurayya designs are more elaborate and include animal and bird motifs which are absent from the Khuraybah pottery. Arabia in the Late Bronze Age. Applying a R evised Chronology John J. Bimson We could summarise much of the foregoing discussion by saying that Egyptian dating criteria applied to the mining and smelting activities at Timna are in tension with other dating criteria which are independent of Egyptian chronology.
See also Parr This chronological tension is not confined to the Arabah, but is replicated in numerous cultures around the Mediterranean. Because they are dependent on Egyptian chronology, dates for the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age are also reduced by this revision. If Pinch is correct in arguing that offerings to Hathor were already being made at Timna by the reign of Amenhotep III, we can suggest there was an Egyptian presence there shortly before BC. Seti I would have reigned c. In the revision, Ramesses III reigns c.
For subsequent bibliography on this chronology, see references in Morkot and James in this volume of Antiguo Oriente. This, however, rests on questionable correlations between biblical and Egyptian history and raises more problems than it solves. As we have seen, the latest cartouche from the Hathor temple belongs to Ramesses V. The revision would probably place his short reign in the s BC. Lack of later Egyptian finds from the temple, and the period of abandonment attested at Site 30, suggest that the Egyptians left Timna during or soon after the reign of Ramesses V.
Rothenberg has to assume a gap of two centuries or more between this Egyptian withdrawal from Timna and the revival of activity under Shoshenq I. In the Centuries of Darkness model, the 21st Dynasty overlaps with both the 20th and the 22nd, leaving only a short gap between the end of the 20th Dynasty and the start of the 22nd. Shoshenq I, the first king of the 22nd Dynasty, reigns c.
This would explain the copper ores and slag found at the latter site. However, if James et. It may be that the people who used it had simply left the copper mining and smelting sites by that time. As yet there is no clear evidence for the time when Qurayya painted ware went out of use. In terms of the year revision it certainly becomes feasible that its use extended into the 8th century BC, where it can readily be seen as an antecedent of Edomite pottery. An 8th-century BC date for the demise of Qurayya pottery also means that Tell el-Kheleifeh could have been founded shortly before it went out of use, explaining the few sherds found there by Glueck.
Each of the following deserves a much longer discussion, but the aim here is simply to point out a few implications. A likely candidate is the island of Jeziret al-Farun, a few kilometres away down the west coast of the Gulf of Aqabah. Bartlett suggests Tell el-Kheleifeh could still be identified with biblical Elath, a suggestion in keeping john j. Significantly, surveys of Jeziret al-Farun have produced QPW, leading Rothenberg to suggest it served as a harbour for the mining expeditions of the 13th—12th centuries BC. Much lower dates for QPW would naturally affect the dating of occupation at Qurayya itself.
In this way the dating of QPW has played a small part in the heated debate over the age of the Kingdom of Edom. Lower dates for the end of the New Kingdom would not resolve all the issues, some of which involve the interpretation of C14 dates, but they would reduce the conflict over ceramics. Part of the debate over state-formation in Edom concerns the date of the fortresses at Tell el-Kheleifeh and En Hazeva the latter lying further north in the western Arabah.
Some possible Iron II pottery was also found. On the basis of their wheel-made pottery the Negev fortresses have been assigned a date in the 10th or 11th century BC, prompting Pratico to comment: If the Iron Age has been over-extended by a falsely high chronology for the LBA, the ceramics which provide the date of the Negev fortresses will have been dated too early. The difference in dates between the Negev fortresses and Tell el-Kheleifeh would be reduced, and perhaps eliminated, by the revision proposed above.
In my article I tried to show that several of the results then available were evidence of mining and smelting activities during the time of the Israelite monarchy. As well as wheel-made pottery the central Negev fortresses produced examples of the hand-made Negev ware, which Rothenberg also found at Timna. The association of Negev ware with Egyptian finds at Timna led Rothenberg These are reproduced below with location details simplified.
The late dates are, however, compatible with the lower chronology we have experimented with above, in which Egyptian activity at Timna probably from the late 18th Dynasty to the early 22nd Dynasty spans the 12th—8th centuries BC. Because of their range, some dates could be compatible with either the conventional or the lower chronology.
A few of the low dates deserve highlighting. BM provides a low date for material immediately overlying the Hathor temple Site , in good Weisgerber BM also suggests low dates for Site 2. Seven charcoal samples were taken from mining tunnels at Site excavated in — , where some shafts and galleries contained Early Bronze Age pottery and others contained pottery contemporary with that from the Hathor temple. Two samples not included in our table gave dates in the Early Bronze Age. The two samples BM and BM are both from Layer 1 at Site 30, the stratum now associated with 22nd-Dynasty activity which Rothenberg suggests began with the campaign of Shoshenq I.
Given the vagaries of radiometric dating, and bearing in mind that some of these samples were tested three decades ago when techniques were relatively crude, it would be unwise to attach much weight to the small number of radiocarbon dates currently available from Timna. On the other hand, unexpectedly late dates can be explained in terms of incorrect association and Iron Age re-use of the sites. Bimson The dates currently given to mining and smelting operations in the southern Arabah produce a number of chronological anomalies and tensions. An experiment with the revised chronology of James et al.
This does not, of course, prove the correctness of that model, and it is not the only revision to have been proposed in recent years; on the other hand, less radical revisions would not resolve the chronological tensions to the same degree. He would like to express his gratitude to the following awards, without which this research would not have been possible: It should be noted that several of the lesser reductions that have been proposed can theoretically be combined to yield an overall reduction of over years for New Kingdom dates Bimson Palestine Exploration Quarterly 94, pp.
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Based upon the results of four oxygen isotopic analyses of the carbonate patina, Goren et al. The present paper begins by briefly sketching the history of the debate between Glueck and Rothenberg. A view of the lower part of the broken tablet along the fissure in Figure 1 line 8 of the right side including its lower margin. Notable in this period is an increasing number of pottery types and a greater circulation of raw materials e. We maintain that these microfossils within the patina can be easily explained as a component of a genuine patina derived from the surrounding Cretaceous marine carbonate rocks that are ubiquitous 20 Goren et al. We are grateful to Robert Porter and two anonymous Antiguo Oriente referees for reading drafts and suggesting improvements.
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Bibliotheca Orientalis 41, cols. Studies in Arabian Archaeology. Sheffield Archaeological Monographs 7. A Response to Garth Bawden. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 4, pp. Votive Offerings to Hathor. Griffith Institute, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum 10, pp.
A Test of Time. Palestine Exploration Quarterly 98, , pp. Archaeology in the Negev and the Arabah.
Givataim-Ramat Gan, Masada in Hebrew. Valley of the Biblical Copper Mines. London, Thames and Hudson. Der Anschnitt, Beiheft 1. Bochum, Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum, pp. The Egyptian Mining Temple at Timna. Researches in the Arabah — vol. Der Anschnitt, Beiheft 8. Bochum, Deutsches Bergbau-Museum, pp. Palestine Exploration Quarterly , pp.
Culture and History of the Ancient Near East The Qurayyah Painted Ware. Tel Aviv 35, pp. Antiguo Oriente 4, pp. Buried History 43, pp. Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 17, pp. Biblical Archaeologist 24, pp. Distribution of Qurayya pottery in the southern Levant from Tebes a: Similar painted decorative patterns in Qurayya and Edomite wares.
Bienkowski, Oakeshott and Berlin Freud and Beit-Arieh An Arab at Babylon BM The treatment of non-Babylonian personal names in this tablet and CTMMA 3 6 from the same archive differs from the treatment of Babylonian names suggesting that the scribe distinguished between the kin-groupaffiliated Babylonians and the non-Babylonians who lacked such affiliations.
Neo-Babylonian — cuneiform — Arabic — onomastics Resumen: April 3rd ; approved: Jonathan Taylor was kind enough to photograph BM for me for the purposes of this article. Another non-Babylonian personal name present in the archive poses some difficulty. On this tablet, however, the name is written m ad-bi-i-lu.
The best way to interpret this name is to normalize it as Adbi ilu and understand it as being derived from Arabic adaba and il. Von Dassow and Spar Neo-Babylonian Legal and Administrative Documents. Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 1. Babylonische Rechtsurkunden des ausgehenden 8.
Munich, Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Neubabylonische Rechts- und Verwaltungsurkunden. Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art 3. Bottom edge antiguo oriente 7 - aldbi ilu: Monthly, 10 shekels will accrue per mina upon it. Research concerning the exchange of local commodities was almost ignored or was discussed in parochial studies, focusing on specific archaeological finds. It is the intention of this paper to present the results of recent research of the exchange of commodities provided by archaeological data from excavations in the Southern Levant with regard to economic theories on the exchange-value of goods and exchange networks.
Conclusions regarding the type of society and the forms of government in the Southern Levant during the Early Bronze Age are also presented. Intercambio local in the Levante meridional durante la Edad del Bronce Temprano: February 15th ; approved: Exchange, sometimes called barter, refers to a particular type of interchange of commodities in which no money or other medium of exchange is used, although nominal exchange-values existed.
Numerous earlier studies have dealt with the subject in diverse regions and from a comprehensive theoretical point of view.
However, studies dealing with this subject in the southern Levant have hitherto tended to be limited. They either concentrated on aspects related to particular finds or were restricted to very localized regions. International connections or contacts between the southern Levant and neighboring regions, such as Egypt, are related to trade and exchange and have been dealt with extensively by scholars for the Early Bronze hereafter, EB Age.
However, localized exchange within the southern Levant, understood as a system of circulation of goods between sites and local regions Figure 1 , is a subject that has not been fully addressed for this period, even though it has been the subject of study for later periods. This research attempts to fill this gap in the understanding by providing a synthetic study for the region during the entire EB Age Table 1.
Chronology of the Early Bronze Age in the southern Levant. Towards that end, different commodities within the EB were identified and then defined by site, region and period. These commodities included such items as recognizable groups of pottery i. They were first studied as specific cases according to site, region and period within the EB Age. They were then considered in terms of socio-economic relations, i. This work has also adopted elements from models on archaeological exchange developed by Renfrew and Plog. Exchange Networks Interpreting patterns of exchange through data from the archaeological record can, at least for certain commodities, be extremely difficult and the results somewhat tentative because of the limitations of the available data.
By investigating the exchange of commodities during the EB Age some important observations may be made. First of all, it may be stated that no centralized or unified network of exchange existed; rather, there were several lines or paths of circulation that at times converged into approaching networks, some of which eventually displayed evidence of regional centralization. The separation of networks is sometimes clearly observable, as that between the north and south-central regions, where little interaction or mutual exchange Marx ; ; Rubin Renfrew ; ; However, some networks actually linked different regions, such as those of the Hill Country with the Shephelah, and those of the Southern Coastal Plain with the Shephelah, so that in different time spans and in associations with different commodities, intercourse between different regions did take place.
Economic aspects of these networks are notable in discernable patterns Figure 2. They indicate that each branch of production had a defined network of distribution, sometimes associated with related commodities as in the case of Canaanean blades and bitumen originating from the Dead Sea in the center and southern regions see further below. Other patterns suggest sympathetic networks for more than one commodity, such as in the case of Arkosic holemouth ceramic vessels originating in the Wadi Feinan area and metal objects from the northern Negev during EB II.
Distribution of Commodities In particular, an analysis of the networks of pottery distribution showed well-defined patterns. The outstanding characteristic of the pottery distribution networks in most cases is the existence of concentric areas of circulation radiating from core areas where it appears that pottery was produced. In addition, there are some cases of pottery exchange networks in which the distribution of specialized wares remained within a very restricted zone.
Such patterns shifted over time; thus, all chronological parameters are important in understanding the networks of pottery exchange during the EB Age. In general, there appears to be a major trend from a general decentralization of production during EB IA e. Gray Burnished Ware 10 towards regional Rosen Milevski, Marder and Goring-Morris A similar observation may be made concerning the appearance of Nilotic shells in association with Egyptian pottery.
However, the subject on the exchange with external regions is beyond the scope of this study. Porat ; Adams This type of network circulation could also be relevant for metal objects that may have passed through a number of stations. Presumably they derived from copper sources in the Feinan area14 and passed through metallurgical workshops before finding their way to the end users. There is, however, a major difference in the locales of these networks.
Metal sources only seem to be in the Eastern Aravah, while Canaanean flint segments originated in numerous locales in the center and northern regions. Such examples differ considerably from the pattern suggested by the distribution of tabular scrapers. These specialized tools appear to have been exchanged over long distances from supposed centers of production. Most notably, scrapers gradually decrease in appearance at sites from south to north as the distance from the sources of material is larger. Simple networks, such as those concerning distribution of raw materials bitumen, carnelian and shells were characterized by more direct patterns of exchange.
Of course they were also subject to chronological variations. It is difficult to estimate the relative abundance or lack of exchanged commodities per network or region since quantitative data is available in only a few instances. Generally this information is confined to objects such as flint and zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical remains. Nevertheless, attempts 11 Greenberg and Porat Such attempts allow for estimates, which may then be further factored with estimates relating volumes of excavated areas to quantities or frequencies of specific commodities.
This work has attempted to take into account the problems of limited data noted above and then consider distances from the sources or between locales of exchange, not just in linear terms, but also by taking into account topographical features that add to the expenditure of energy and costs. These social factors i. With all the above considerations in mind, it is possible, at least to a limited extent, to address questions on the quantities of different commodities locally exchanged during the EB Age.
It is assumed that, in all cases, abundance of pottery types defines core areas, while lesser quantities in more distant zones indicate pottery distributed from core areas. This interpretation seems to be borne out by observations from the archaeological network. In general all morphological types of particular wares or groups of wares tended to be found within core areas, while few variants seemed to have made their way to more distant locales, and those that did were generally the smallest and easiest to transport. Basalt and ground stone tools seem to be most evenly distributed and they were relatively abundant in relation to distance and weight.
By contrast, most metal objects were concentrated in the south-central regions, close to the sources in the Wadi Feinan area, although a few were found in northernmost sites such as Rosh Haniqra and Tel Dan. When it could be observed it indicated a diversity of patterns that not necessarily oppose one another, although sometimes it is difficult to follow the circulation outlines of some commodities. The Huleh Valley, the Jordan Valley, the Aravah, and the Central and Southern Coastal Plains acted as the major south Levantine conduits for exchange along a north-south axis in accordance with their geographic parameters.
Galilee, the Jezreel Valley, the Central Hill Country, and the Shephelah tended to be regions in which east-west tracks were observed. The Negev and southern regions appear to have fostered exchanged networks showing mixed directionality. In particular cases such as those involving exchange of Canaanean blades, as far as may be understood, there are multidirectional networks, dependent on location of sources, sites and the extent of particular areas in which exchange took place.
Symmetry and directionality of exchange networks during the EB Age show unequal patterns Figure 3. Exchange networks at this time show unequal patterns that were sometimes symmetrical i. Several examples indicate the types of patterns. Notably, pottery of northern origin i. Utilization of bitumen for hafting flint tools is well known at south-central sites, and significantly, is unknown at sites in the north.
Flint tabular scrapers that most probably originated in southern areas were brought in small amounts to sites in the north. Although poorly represented there, they provide evidence that some of those objects could be exchanged over long distances. It can also be suggested that these scrapers found their way through networks that were primarily devoted to other commodities. The only areas that show a degree of symmetry in the circulation of goods are the Jordan Valley, and to a lesser degree, the Aravah.
In the cases of the Jordan Valley and the Coastal Plain, there is a predominance of northern products, indicating much stronger links with that region of the country rather than with the south. Lack of symmetry within exchange networks and between others is understood to be the most significant factor for explaining why no centralized or unified network of exchange ever existed in the EB Age of the Southern Levant. Judging from the distribution pattern of types i. Also asymmetrical are network relations between north and south during EB II.
Furthermore there is no correspondence between the appearance of Metallic Ware and the Tel Aphek bowls,20 although both groups are notable for having common forms i. It must be emphasized that decentralization and diversity over the varied areas of exchange of the Southern Levant during EB are the main characteristics of exchange networks that could be observed. Indeed, the Southern Levant may best be characterized in regards to exchange as a mosaic of regions loosely held together with skeins of far-flung networks that, at certain peak periods of activity, showed evidence of regional centralization.
Plog21 has defined similar phenomena that may also be used to describe the southern Levant in EB I as was already by Joffe. Some appear in the very beginning of the EB IA. They 20 Beck During EB IB the multiplicity of commodities and networks reached its peak. Notable in this period is an increasing number of pottery types and a greater circulation of raw materials e. This is reflected in another, albeit smaller way in the archaeological record. It is interesting to note that while EB IA yielded higher frequencies of donkey remains, it was not until EB IB that the first representations of these animals in figurines appear, and then mostly in ritual contexts see further below.
This is probably the result of a guild of merchants that came into being only at the end EB I. These changes may be the result of a reduced number of settlements in EB II that tended to have larger concentrations of population. It is possible that very large population centers, not extensively excavated, would not have yielded data on this matter. Centralization in distribution of some pottery wares such as Metallic Ware surely reflects this tendency. Ziadeh28 has pointed out that the most changing aspects of material culture lie in the shift from a self-sufficient economy to one based on wage-labor as reflected in domestic artifacts.
These objects were acquired through exterior relationships. From the beginning of EB, metal tools such as axes, adzes and chisels replaced similar flint tools. That process was not the direct result of urbanization but involved evolution of metal production during the Chalcolithic period and the development of exchange networks and a probably distinct division of labor in EB I. Genz,30 however, explain this in two possible ways, suggesting that additional information from other centers is unavailable because it has either not been excavated within these sites or metallurgical activity took place in extramural locations.
He further suggested the possibility that it was associated with smaller, non-urban centers of population that remain unexplored. Such 27 Getzov, Paz and Gophna Dependent upon the alternate scenarios suggested above, methods and networks of distribution may have been quite varied. Alternatively, they may have only had control over distribution, with indirect control of production associated with a large number of smaller producers that obtained materials from the sources.
Unfortunately, we do not have much information about the circulation of other wares in EB III, besides evidence for restricted exchange of pottery from the Dead Sea Eastern Plain, and in general, archaeological records indicating exchange are lesser. In summary, there is a gradual tendency towards the centralization of exchange along the chronological trajectory of the EB Age.
In EB I the number of commodities is greatest as are the number of exchange networks and centers from which they radiate. By EB II they are significantly reduced in number and probably more centralized. Specialized Commodities Zaccagnini,32 in his treatment of gift-giving in the Ancient Near East, has proposed that the value of a luxury item that eventually could be a gift-item was a combination of its exchange value in the regular way of other standard commodities plus a symbolic connotation attached to the artifact.
The three luxury or prestige items or valuables that we can point out among the commodities that circulated during EB are ivory, shells and carnelian. Other valuables such as bed models Beck , decorated bones Zarrzecki-Peleg and alabaster objects Amiran have not been considered in this research since there is no clear information on their proveniences they are Egyptian imports. These objects appear to fit the definition of valuables known from written sources of the Ancient Near East of the second millennium B.
Donkey figurines in this study were not interpreted as a simple commodity, but rather as symbolic objects of a cult involving merchants or people linked to the use of donkeys as means of transportation and beasts of burden. In this sense they can also be called prestige artifacts. These figurines may have circulated only among these people, and were therefore not objects of exchange in regular networks.
Gifts or objects of special significance of the figurine type are, unfortunately, not sufficiently observable from available data for patterns of exchange to be ascertained with any certainty. However, some likely hints of this type of specialized exchange may be observed from the discovery of shells from the Red Sea at sites in the Mediterranean coastal plain and vice versa. In addition, some specialized pottery wares may actually have been objects within a system of gift exchanges, although no specific archaeological indicators of such a type of exchange can be discerned.
Such status, it appears, would sometimes be related to producers, sometimes independent of them. In all instances it is suggested they were 34 Zaccagnini If merchants were part of the communities and settlements where producers resided, they must have been dependent upon the rule of local authorities and upon the ability and willingness of producers of commodities to provision them. If, on the other hand, they resided outside settlements or centers of production i. Similarly, populations close to sources of raw materials copper, flint, rocks, bitumen, etc.
EB II and III urban centers with their large populations could have possessed their own group of merchants as in the case of the Ebla palatial economy of the third millennium B. Cult The existence of a cult related to donkeys, as represented by donkey figurines with containers40 Figure 4: Lod, Tel es-Sakan 42; however it is not clear if these burials e.
Later developments in the region contrast with the EB reality, suggesting differences, some substantive but which presage developments in trade. A change seemed to have occurred during the Middle Bronze hereafter, MB Age and onwards when there were a series of temples on the Coastal Plain and their internal routes, the Jordan Valley and the Aravah. They probably served as sanctuaries related to trade and exchange, whose deities protected the merchants and their economic activities.
Our research assumes that such types of temples were not present in the EB archaeological records because the inter-regional exchange was not so developed as in the MB Age. Thus, donkeys are representative of exchange, the bull representative of governorship, while cultic scenes and buildings in seal impressions46 are representative of governorship or priesthood. They have largely drawn on developments and settlement patterns47 and information from pottery studies. It has been suggested that in the middle of the third millennium BC the circulation of goods of accessible materials previously produced either by households, or by independent specialists, fell under state control.
However, by the end of the third millennium BC, when numerous urban centers were abandoned or considerably reduced in size and population and the number of villages increased49 there may have been a reversion to less centralized production. It has pointed out that during times of strong political control elites were provided with subsistence products by non-elite populations. In the region of Lagash, archaeozoological data suggest movements of goods to regional centers during the Early Dynastic period third millennium BC 52 In Iran at Malyan, during the second millennium BC, animals were probably brought to an urban center from nearby villages.
It appears that while some of the features described above are similar to the phenomena that took place in the Levant, others are very different. According to the present research, urban centers of the Southern Levant register a certain concentration of commodities; however, there were no administrative records to explain on which basis these commodities were acquired and circulated. In addition its location could have allowed it to profit from exchange of tabular scrapers, if as is suspected, the Jafr Basin was indeed functioning as a producer of these tools during the EB Age, or if they were contemporaneously produced in the Har Qeren area.
Authorities in these urban centers could take advantage of merchant traffic by requesting tribute for transit through an urban center of population or region under its control, or by means of an exchange of commodities i. In all these cases, ruling classes would benefit by extracting some of the value from exchange i. Such workshops could exist within population centers57 or at smaller settlements. Flint workshops at Har Haruvim could have been controlled by Megiddo.
Similar distribution 54 Rathje The weight and bulk of prestige items allowed them to be exchanged more easily and over great distances. It is surmised that this was accomplished with extant networks of exchange of utilitarian commodities such as pottery vessels.