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Tag: Archeology

The Texts From The Biblical-Period Fortress At Tel Arad Were Written By 12 Different Authors

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The implication: Literacy in the kingdom of Judah was widespread

How many people in the Kingdom of Judah could read and write? And what does this say about the date of the composition of biblical texts like the Books of Kings? Researchers at Tel Aviv University used state-of-the-art image processing and machine learning technologies and collaborated with senior handwriting examiner to analyze 18 ancient texts from the Tel Arad military post dating back to around 600 BCE. They concluded that they were written by no fewer than 12 authors, a finding suggesting that many of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah during that period were able to read and write, with literacy not reserved as an exclusive domain in the hands of a few royal scribes.

Who wrote the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings?

The special interdisciplinary study was conducted by Dr. Arie Shaus, Ms. Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, and Dr. Barak Sober of the Department of Applied Mathematics, Prof. Eli Piasetzky of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy, and Prof. Israel Finkelstein of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations. The forensic handwriting specialist is Ms. Yana Gerber, a senior expert who served for 27 years in the Questioned Documents Laboratory of Israel Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science, and in the police’s International Crime Investigations Unit. “There is a lively debate among experts as to whether the books of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings were compiled in the last days of the kingdom of Judah, or after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians,” explains Dr. Shaus. “One way to try to get to the bottom of this question is to ask when there was the potential for the writing of such complex historical works. For the period following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BC, there is a very scant archaeological evidence of Hebrew writing in Jerusalem and its surroundings, whereas for the period preceding the destruction of the Temple, an abundance of written documents has been found. But then the question arises – who wrote these documents? Was this a society with widespread literacy, or was there just a handful of literate people?” To answer this question, the researchers examined the writings found in Tel Arad – ostraca (fragments of pottery vessels containing ink inscriptions) that were discovered at the Tel Arad site in the 1960s. Tel Arad was a small military post on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah; its built-up area was about two dunams and it housed between 20 and 30 soldiers. “We examined the question of literacy empirically, from different directions of image processing and machine learning,” says Ms. Faigenbaum-Golovin. “Among other things, these areas help us today with the identification, recognition and analysis of handwriting, signatures, and so on. The big challenge was to adapt modern technologies to 2,600-year-old ostraca. With a lot of effort, we were able to produce two algorithms that could compare letters and answer the question of whether two given ostraca were written by two different people.”

Police detective work following biblical texts

In 2016, the researchers published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) that algorithmically, and with high statistical probability, 18 texts – the longest of the Tel Arad inscriptions – were written by at least four different authors. Combined with the textual evidence, the researchers concluded that there were in fact at least six different writers. The study aroused great interest around the world. Now, in an unprecedent move, the Tel Aviv University researchers have decided to compare the algorithmic methods, which have since been refined, to the forensic approach. To this end, Yana Gerber, a retired superintendent and senior questioned document examiner from the Israel Police Division of Identification and Forensic Science, joined the team. After an in-depth examination of the ancient inscriptions, Ms. Gerber found that the 18 texts were written by at least 12 distinct writers with varying degrees of certainty. Gerber examined the original Tel Arad ostraca at the Israel Museum, the Eretz Israel Museum, the Sonia and Marco Nedler Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, and the Israel Antiquities Authority’s warehouses at Beit Shemesh. “This study was very exciting, perhaps the most exciting in my professional career,” says Ms. Gerber. “These are ancient Hebrew inscriptions written in ink on shards of pottery, utilizing an alphabet that was previously unfamiliar to me. I studied the characteristics of the writing in order to analyze and compare the inscriptions, while benefitting from the skills and knowledge I acquired during my bachelor’s degree in classical archaeology and ancient Greek at Tel Aviv University. I delved into the microscopic details of these inscriptions written by people from the First Temple period, from routine issues such as orders concerning the movement of soldiers and the supply of wine, oil and flour, through correspondence with neighboring fortresses, to orders that reached the Tel Arad fortress from the high ranks of the Judahite military system. I had the feeling that the time stood still and there was no gap of 2,600 years between the writers of the ostraca and ourselves.”

Combining forces between the human eye and the algorithm

Gerber explains: “Handwriting is made up of unconscious habit patterns. The handwriting identification is based on the principle that these writing patterns are unique to each person and no two people write exactly alike. It is also assumed that repetitions of the same text or characters by the same writer are not exactly identical and one can define a range of natural handwriting variations specific to each one. Thus, the forensic handwriting analysis aims at tracking features corresponding to specific individuals, and concluding whether a single or rather different authors wrote the given documents. The examination process is divided into three steps: analysis, comparison, and evaluation. The analysis includes a detailed examination of every single inscription, according various features, such as the spacing between letters, their proportions, slant, etc. The comparison is based upon the aforementioned features across various handwritings. In addition, consistent patterns, common for different inscriptions, are identified i.e., the same combinations of letters, words, punctuation, etc. Finally, an evaluation of identicalness or distinctiveness of the writers is made.   It should be noted that according to an Israel Supreme Court ruling, a person can be convicted of a crime based on the opinion of a forensic handwriting expert.” Says Dr. Shaus: “We were in for a big surprise: Yana identified more authors than our algorithms did. It must be understood that currently, our algorithms are of a “cautious” nature – they know how to identify cases in which the texts were written by people with significantly different writing; in other cases they refrain from definite conclusions.  Contrastingly, an expert in handwriting analysis knows not only how to spot the differences between writers more accurately, but in some cases may also arrive at the conclusion that several texts were actually written by a single person. Naturally, in terms of consequences, it is very interesting to see who the authors are. Thanks to the findings, we were able to construct an entire flowchart of the correspondence concerning the military fortress – who wrote to whom and regarding what matter”. This reflects the chain of command within the Judahite army. “For example, in the area of ​​Arad, close to the border between the kingdoms of Judah and Edom, there was a military force whose soldiers are referred to as “Kittiyim” in the inscriptions, most likely Greek mercenaries. Someone, probably their Judahite commander or liaison officer, requested provisions for the Kittiyim unit. He writes to the quartermaster of the fortress in Arad ‘give the Kittiyim flour, bread, wine’ and so on. Now, thanks to the identification of the handwriting, we can say with high probability that there was not only one Judahite commander writing, but at least four different ones. It is conceivable that each time another officer was sent to join the patrol – they took turns.”

Literary education in the Kingdom of Judah

According to the researchers, the findings shed new light on Judahite society on the eve of the destruction of the First Temple – and on the setting of the compilation of biblical texts. “It should be remembered that this was a small outpost, one of a series of outposts on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah,” says Dr. Sober. “Since we found at least 12 different authors out of 18 texts in total, we can conclude that there was a high level of literacy throughout the entire kingdom. The commanding ranks and liaison officers at the outpost, and even the quartermaster Eliashib and his deputy, Nahum, were literate. Someone had to teach them how to read and write, so we must assume the existence of an appropriate educational system in Judah at the end of the First Temple period. This, of course, does not mean that there was almost universal literacy as there is today, but it seems that significant portions of the residents of the kingdom of Judah were literate. This is important to the discussion on the composition of biblical texts. If there were only two or three people in the whole kingdom who could read and write, then it is unlikely that complex texts would have been composed.” “Whoever wrote the biblical works did not do so for us, so that we could read them after 2,600 years, they did so in order to promote the ideological messages of the time,” Prof. Finkelstein says. “There are different opinions regarding the date of the composition of biblical texts. Some scholars suggest that many of the historical texts in the Bible – from Joshua to II Kings – were written at the end of the 7th century BC, that is, very close to the period of the Arad ostraca. It is important to ask who these texts were written for. According to one view, there were events in which the few people who could read and write stood before the illiterate public and read texts out to them. A high literacy rate in Judah puts things into a different light.” Prof. Finkelstein adds: “Until now, the discussion of literacy in the kingdom of Judah has been based on circular arguments, that is, on what is written within the Bible itself, for example on scribes in the kingdom. We have shifted the discussion to an empirical perspective. If in a remote place like Tel Arad there was, over a short period of time, a minimum of 12 authors of 18 inscriptions, out of the population of Judah which is estimated to have been no more than 120,000 people, it means that literacy was not the exclusive domain of a handful of royal scribes in Jerusalem. The quartermaster from the Tel Arad outpost also had the ability to read and appreciate them.” Featured image: Hebrew ostraca from Arad

Straight to the Point

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A Link between Arrowheads Used by Ancient Empires and the Historical Events during the First and the Second Temple Periods.

Researches from Tel Aviv University proposed a novel model that ties arrowheads dated to the end of the First Temple and the beginning of the Second Temple period, with key historical events. They also managed to define different arrowhead types used by armies of ancient eastern empires. Many of the arrowheads, examined by the researchers, were found in destruction layers from Babylonian and Assyrian assaults on cities in the land of Israel, while others were found in camps in which those armies stayed. “Arrows were a key component in military tactics of the ancient world, and the importance of this weapon is mainly due to its ability to strike the enemy from afar.” Explains Dr. Guy Stiebel. “The use of arrows for hunting is already known from the prehistoric era, but developments in military forces during the Bronze era increased the use of bows and arrows.”

The following researchers took part in this study: Prof. Oded Lipschits and Dr. Guy Stiebel from the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East Studies, together with the research student Sean Dugaw, who wrote his M.A. thesis on the subject. The research was published in IEJ (Israel Exploration Journal).

In this study, the researchers show a model that accurately defines the development of arrowhead types starting from 7th century BCE. Prof. Lipschits explains, “Creating a new typology and marking the evolutionary process of arrowhead types and their chronological point of reference, gives researchers a new dating tool, which allows connecting the layers and sites in which evidence of battle activities of the Empires’ Armies, inside and outside the region of Israel, were found.”

The researchers explain that the various arrowheads discussed in the paper were developed and employed starting from 7th century BCE. Those arrowheads of the three bladed variety had an improved aerodynamic structure  which steadied their flight and inflicted more serious wounds than the two bladed arrowheads which preceded them. The functional development of the arrowheads teaches us about combat tactics and the specialty of the archers in the East. Archers in these regions were known for their professionalism and the complex powerful bows that they used, as we see some arrowheads which were designed to penetrate armor (more common in the eastern Mediterranean) while others were made for accurate shooting from a distance.

The earliest known trilobate socketed copper-alloy arrowhead had two blades. Such arrowheads are often referred to by scholars as “Scytho-Iranian arrowheads”. They first appear in Israel during the mid-7th Century BCE at sites associated the Assyrian military occupation. In the study, the researchers suggest tying this appearance with mercenaries serving in the Assyrian army or exiles brought to the area from north of the Assyrian Empire. This arrowhead type does not appear in the Levant after the Assyrian Empire retreat.

The study identified a three bladed socket arrowhead variant associated with Babylonian activity in the region, especially during the military campaigns of Nebuchadnezzar II. This arrowhead type was initially used by the Scythians and Medes at the dawn of the Babylonian empire. It has been found at sites destroyed by Babylonians and Medes in Assyria and Syria. While it may have been used by Scythian mercenaries in Babylonian service, it was eventually adopted by the Babylonians themselves and was used prominently during the Babylonian military campaign against the Kingdom Judah which resulted in the destruction along with its main cities, most importantly – Jerusalem. It is possible that the development and intensive use of this arrowhead helped the Babylonians conquer their enemies. Such arrowheads are found in the administrative citadel in Ramat Rachel, and serve as a clear evidence of Babylonian presence in the area.

Additional arrowhead types were identified that dated to the Persian and Hellenistic eras, some of which were also found in capital cities of the Persian Empire and at the major battle sites of the Greco-Persian wars. They were used throughout the Hellenistic periodSome were even used by Jewish rebels during the second revolt. Although most of the arrowheads used by the Roman archers during the early Roman period were iron and were attached with a tang rather than a socket, they retained the three bladed design of the earlier periods.

This research fits well into the new program at the Departments of Archaeology and Jewish History. This program puts emphasis on the combined research and teaching M.A.: “Many Faces of War” – the History and Archeology of War in Israel, which is made for studying and examining the phenomenon of war, which is always both current and historic.

Dead Sea Scrolls “puzzle” solved with DNA from ancient animal skins

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Ancient DNA extracted from Dead Sea Scrolls by Tel Aviv University researchers permits rare, unanticipated glimpse into world of Second Temple Judaism

An interdisciplinary team from Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Oded Rechavi of TAU’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, Prof. Noam Mizrahi of TAU’s Department of Biblical Studies, in collaboration with Prof. Mattias Jakobsson of Uppsala University in Sweden, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Prof. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medicine, has successfully decoded ancient DNA extracted from the animal skins on which the Dead Sea Scrolls were written. By characterizing the genetic relationships between different scroll fragments, the researchers were able to discern important historical connections. The research, conducted over seven years, sheds new light on the Dead Sea Scrolls. “There are many scroll fragments that we don’t know how to connect, and if we connect wrong pieces together it can change dramatically the interpretation of any scroll. Assuming that fragments that are made from the same sheep belong to the same scroll,” explains Prof. Rechavi, “it is like piecing together parts of a puzzle.” The Dead Sea Scrolls refers to some 25,000 fragments of leather and papyrus discovered beginning in 1947, mostly in the Qumran caves but also in other sites located in the Judean Desert. Among other things, the scrolls contain the oldest copies of biblical texts. Since their discovery, scholars have faced the breathtaking challenge of classifying the fragments and piecing them together into the remains of some 1,000 manuscripts, which were hidden in the caves before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.

A puzzle with thousands of pieces 

Researchers have long been puzzled as to the degree this collection of manuscripts, a veritable library from the Qumran caves, reflects the broad cultural milieu of Second Temple Judaism, or whether it should be regarded as the work of a radical sect (identified by most as the Essenes) discovered by chance. “Imagine that Israel is destroyed to the ground, and only one library survives — the library of an isolated, ‘extremist’ sect: What could we deduce, if anything, from this library about greater Israel?” Prof. Rechavi says. “To distinguish between scrolls particular to this sect and other scrolls reflecting a more widespread distribution, we sequenced ancient DNA extracted from the animal skins on which some of the manuscripts were inscribed. But sequencing, decoding and comparing 2,000-year old genomes is very challenging, especially since the manuscripts are extremely fragmented and only minimal samples could be obtained.” Pnina Shor, founder of the Dead Sea Scrolls Unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority, adds, “The Israel Antiquities Authority is in charge of both preserving the scrolls for posterity and making them accessible to the public and to scholars. Recent scientific and technological advances enable us to minimize physical intervention on the scrolls, thus facilitating multidisciplinary collaborations.” New methods for solving ancient mysteries To tackle their daunting task, the researchers developed sophisticated methods to deduce information from tiny amounts of ancient DNA, carefully filtering out potential contaminations and statistically validating the findings. The team employed these mechanisms to deal with the challenge posed by the fact that genomes of individual animals of the same species (for instance, two sheep of the same herd) are almost identical to one another, and even genomes of different species (such as sheep and goats) are very similar. For the purpose of the research, the Dead Sea Scrolls Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority supplied samples — sometimes only scroll “dust” carefully removed from the uninscribed back of the fragments — and sent them for analysis by Prof. Rechavi’s team: Dr. Sarit Anava, Moran Neuhof, Dr. Hila Gingold and Or Sagi. To prevent DNA contamination, Dr. Anava traveled to Sweden to extract the DNA under the meticulous conditions required for ancient DNA analysis (e.g. wearing special full-body suits) in Prof. Jakobsson’s paleogenomics lab in Uppsala, which is equipped with cutting-edge equipment. In parallel to the teams that were studying the animals’ ancient DNA, Prof. Mason’s metagenomics lab in New York studied the scrolls’ microbial contaminants. Prof. Jakobsson says, “It is remarkable that we were able to retrieve enough authentic ancient DNA from some of these 2,000 year old fragments considering the tough history of the animal hides. They were processed into parchment, used in a rough environment, left for two millennia, and then finally handled by humans again when they were rediscovered.”

Textual pluralism opens window into culture of Second Temple Jewish society

According to Prof. Rechavi, one of the most significant findings was the identification of two very distinct Jeremiah fragments. “Almost all the scrolls we sampled were found to be made of sheepskin, so most of the effort was invested in the very challenging task of trying to piece together fragments made from the skin of particular sheep, and to separate these from fragments written on skins of different sheep that also share an almost identical genome,” says Prof. Rechavi. “However, two samples were discovered to be made of cowhide, and these happen to belong to two different fragments taken from the Book of Jeremiah. In the past, one of the cow skin-made fragments was thought to belong to the same scroll as another fragment that we found to be made of sheepskin. The mismatch now officially disproves this theory. ​   “What’s more, cow husbandry requires grass and water, so it is very likely that cow hide was not processed in the desert but was brought to the Qumran caves from another place. This finding bears crucial significance, because the cowhide fragments came from two different copies of the Book of Jeremiah, reflecting different versions of the book, which stray from the biblical text as we know it today.” Prof. Mizrahi further explains, “Since late antiquity, there has been almost complete uniformity of the biblical text. A Torah scroll in a synagogue in Kiev would be virtually identical to one in Sydney, down to the letter. By contrast, in Qumran we find in the very same cave different versions of the same book. But, in each case, one must ask: Is the textual ‘pluriformity,’ as we call it, yet another peculiar characteristic of the sectarian group whose writings were found in the Qumran caves? Or does it reflect a broader feature, shared by the rest of Jewish society of the period? The ancient DNA proves that two copies of Jeremiah, textually different from each other, were brought from outside the Judean Desert. This fact suggests that the concept of scriptural authority — emanating from the perception of biblical texts as a record of the Divine Word — was different in this period from that which dominated after the destruction of the Second Temple. In the formative age of classical Judaism and nascent Christianity, the polemic between Jewish sects and movements was focused on the ‘correct’ interpretation of the text, not its wording or exact linguistic form.”

Study finds ancient Canaanites genetically linked to modern populations

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Today’s Jews and Arabs in Israel, Jordan and Lebanon get half their ancestry from Bronze Age Levantines

Most of today’s Jewish and Arabic-speaking populations share a strong genetic link to the ancient Canaanites, according to a new study conducted by an international team of archaeologists and geneticists, including TAU’s Prof. Israel Finkelstein from the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. The study concludes that modern-day groups in Lebanon, Israel and Jordan share a large part of their ancestry, in most cases more than half, with the people who lived in the Levant during the Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago. The researchers also determined that the Canaanites – who frequently appear in ancient sources, including the Bible – descended from a mixture of an earlier Levantine population and migrants coming from the Caucasus region or modern-day Iran. Tale of bones The researchers analyzed genetic material from dozens of skeletons found at Canaanite sites across Israel and neighbouring countries, and compared it to the genomes of other ancient populations as well as to modern-day groups. “This study suggests there is a deep genetic connection of many Jewish groups today across the Diaspora and many Arab groups to this part of the world thousands of years ago,” said Prof. Reich, a Harvard University geneticist and one of the world’s top experts in the study of ancient DNA, speaking to Haaretz. Invasion or migration? Experts know the ancient Canaanites were divided into independent city states, such as Megiddo, Hazor, and Acre. Most of the texts about them come from outsiders or later sources, so did the “Canaanite people” really exist as a coherent entity? The new study shows that genetically at least, the Canaanites did have a lot in common with each other. Most of the recovered genomes could be modelled as having a roughly 50/50 contribution of ancestry from local Neolithic inhabitants and from a group that hailed from the Caucasus or the Northwestern Zagros mountains, in today’s Iran. For the ancestry of the Canaanites to be split halfway between locals and newcomers there would have had to be an influx of a significant number of people; and a question that begs to be asked is whether this inflow was an invasion or a peaceful migration. “I don’t think we are dealing with an invasion,” Prof. Finkelstein said. “We have no archaeological evidence of destruction or a major disruption in the Early Bronze Age.” The next step for researchers will be to continue modelling the ancient populations of the Levant, especially after the time of the Canaanites. According to Prof. Finkelstein: “It will be interesting to see what happened afterwards, what was the genetic profile of the people of biblical Israel and Judah, how do they connect to us and to their predecessors, and what were the other contributions to the genetic pool along the way.”

Iron Age Temple Complex Discovered Near Jerusalem Calls Into Question Biblical Depiction of Centralized Cult

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Tel Moẓa site proves there were other sanctioned temples besides the official temple in Jerusalem, TAU and IAA researchers say In 2012, a monumental Iron Age temple complex dating to the late 10th and early ninth centuries BCE was discovered at Tel Moẓa near Jerusalem by archaeologists of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The site, identified as the biblical city of Moẓa, within the boundary of the tribe of Benjamin (Joshua 18:26), served as an administrative center for the storage and redistribution of grain. In the spring of 2019, the first academic excavation of the site set out to fully unearth and study two cult buildings discovered one on top of the other at Tel Moẓa: The monumental temple complex built in the late 10th to early ninth centuries BCE, and a structure beneath it that has only partially been uncovered, tentatively dated to the 10th century BCE. The Moẓa Expedition Project was led by Tel Aviv University and IAA researchers. The initial findings of the project were published in Biblical Archaeology Review in January. Shua Kisilevitz and Prof. Oded Lipschits of TAU’s Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology, principal investigators in the excavation and lead authors of the study, say the dig is the site of the only monumental Iron Age temple excavated in the heart of Judah. Their new study details the project’s exceptional finds at the site, the area under the complex’s earliest floor, which include cultic installations and artifacts such as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines and a large decorated cult stand. “Could a monumental temple really exist in the heart of Judah, outside Jerusalem? Did Jerusalem know about it?” writes PhD student Kisilevitz. “If so, could this other temple possibly have been part of the Judahite administrative system? The Bible details the religious reforms of King Hezekiah and King Josiah, who consolidated worship practices to Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, and eliminated cultic activity beyond its boundaries. “However, our analysis of the archaeological finds and biblical texts clearly demonstrates that the temple at Moẓa conformed to ancient Near Eastern religious conventions and traditions and biblical depictions of cult places throughout the land. It has become clear that temples such as the one at Moẓa not only could but also must have existed throughout most of the Iron II period as part of the official, royally sanctioned religious construct.” “Despite the biblical narratives describing Hezekiah’s and Josiah’s reforms, there were sanctioned temples in Judah in addition to the official temple in Jerusalem,” Prof. Lipschits adds. “Our discoveries thus far have fundamentally changed the way we understand the religious practices of Judahites.” The rich assemblage of cultic artifacts and architectural remains at the site — including human-shape figurines, horse figurines, a cult stand decorated with a pair of lions or sphinxes, a stone built altar, a stone-built offering table and a pit filled with ash and animal bones — provides an important opportunity to study the formation of cult and religion in the region at the time and provide a framework for the formation of the Kingdom of Judah. According to the study, the construction of a central cult location with regulated worship dedicated to this purpose was a natural progression for a growing community. As the site’s function as a granary intensified, a temple was constructed to ensure economic success and to strengthen the control of the local leaders over the community around the economic and cultic center. The study of the economic function of the site in tandem with its religious function strengthens the idea that a local polity emerged in the Moẓa region in the 10th century BCE, possibly hailing the establishment of a Judahite polity later in the era. “We suggest that the Tel Moẓa temple was the undertaking of a local group, initially representing several extended families or perhaps villages that banded together to pool their resources and maximize production and yield,” the researchers write. “The rest remains to be discovered.” The Moẓa Expedition Project will resume excavation at the site this spring. The expedition will comprise a team of 50 participants, including staff and students from Tel Aviv University, Charles University (Prague) in the Czech Republic, Universität Osnabrück in Germany and UCLA in the United States. See the publication at the Biblical Archaeology Review web site: https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/46/1/4. Featured image:
Horse Figurine.
(photo credit: CLARA AMIT ISRAELI ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY)

New study reveals palace bureaucracy in ancient Samaria

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Researchers find different inscriptions were penned by the same author, bringing together math, physics and archaeology

The ancient Samaria ostraca — eighth-century BCE ink-on-clay inscriptions unearthed at the beginning of the 20th century in Samaria, the capital of the biblical kingdom of Israel — are among the earliest collections of ancient Hebrew writings ever discovered. But despite a century of research, major aspects of the ostraca remain in dispute, including their precise geographical origins — either Samaria or its outlying villages — and the number of scribes involved in their composition. A new Tel Aviv University study found that just two writers were involved in composing 31 of the more than 100 inscriptions and that the writers were contemporaneous, indicating that the inscriptions were written in the city of Samaria itself. Research for the study was conducted by Ph.D. candidate Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Dr. Arie Shaus, Dr. Barak Sober and Prof. Eli Turkel, all of TAU’s School of Mathematical Sciences; Prof. Eli Piasetzky of TAU’s School of Physics; and Prof. Israel Finkelstein, Jacob M. Alkow Professor of the Archaeology of Israel in the Bronze and Iron Ages, of TAU’s Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology.

A palace bureaucracy

The inscriptions list repetitive shipment details of wine and oil supplies to Samaria and span a minimal period of seven years. For archaeologists, they also provide critical insights into the logistical infrastructure of the kingdom of Israel. The inscriptions feature the date of composition (year of a given monarch), commodity type (oil, wine), name of a person, name of a clan and name of a village near the capital. Based on letter-shape considerations, the ostraca have been dated to the first half of the eighth century BCE, possibly during the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel. “If only two scribes wrote the examined Samaria texts contemporaneously and both were located in Samaria rather than in the countryside, this would indicate a palace bureaucracy at the peak of the kingdom of Israel’s prosperity,” Prof. Finkelstein explains. “Our results, accompanied by other pieces of evidence, seem also to indicate a limited dispersion of literacy in Israel in the early eighth century BCE,” Prof. Piasetzky says.

When math solves history

“Our interdisciplinary team harnessed a novel algorithm, consisting of image processing and newly developed machine learning techniques, to conclude that two writers wrote the 31 examined texts, with a confidence interval of 95%,” said Dr. Sober, now a member of Duke University’s mathematics department. Prof. Israel Finkelstein at a TAU dig in Megido “The innovative technique can be used in other cases, both in the Land of Israel and beyond. Our innovative tool enables handwriting comparison and can establish the number of authors in a given corpus,” adds Faigenbaum-Golovin. The new research follows up from the findings of the group’s 2016 study, which indicated widespread literacy in the kingdom of Judah a century and a half to two centuries later, circa 600 BCE. For that study, the group developed a novel algorithm with which they estimated the minimal number of writers involved in composing ostraca unearthed at the desert fortress of Arad. That investigation concluded that at least six writers composed the 18 inscriptions that were examined. “It seems that during these two centuries that passed between the composition of the Samaria and the Arad corpora, there was an increase in literacy rates within the population of the Hebrew kingdoms,” Dr. Shaus says. “Our previous research paved the way for the current study. We enhanced our previously developed methodology, which sought the minimum number of writers, and introduced new statistical tools to establish a maximum likelihood estimate for the number of hands in a corpus.”

Featured Image: Inscriptions on pottery fragments from Samaria, the capital of Israel, with added color. The inscriptions date to the first half of the 8th century BCE. (photo: Harvard Semitic Museum)

Study shows Europeans migrated to the Levant 40,000 years ago

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Discovery of teeth in Manot Cave sheds light on a population known for its cultural contributions, TAU researchers say
Who exactly were the Aurignacians, who lived in the Levant 40,000 years ago? Researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Ben-Gurion University now report that these culturally sophisticated yet mysterious humans migrated from Europe to the Levant some 40,000 years ago, shedding light on a significant era in the region’s history. The Aurignacian culture first appeared in Europe some 43,000 years ago and is known for having produced bone tools, artifacts, jewelry, musical instruments, and cave paintings. For years, researchers believed that modern man’s entry into Europe led to the rapid decline of the Neanderthals, either through violent confrontation or wresting control of food sources. But recent genetic studies have shown that Neanderthals did not vanish. Instead, they assimilated into modern human immigrant populations. The new study adds further evidence to substantiate this theory. Through cutting-edge dental research on six human teeth discovered at Manot Cave in the Western Galilee, Dr. Rachel Sarig of TAU’s Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research and Shmunis Family Anthropology Institute in collaboration with Dr. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority and colleagues in Austria and the United States, have demonstrated that Aurignacians arrived in modern-day Israel from Europe some 40,000 years ago — and that these Aurignacians comprised Neanderthals and Homo sapiens alike.

Teeth stand the test of time

“Unlike bones, teeth are preserved well because they’re made of enamel, the substance in the human body most resistant to the effects of time,” Dr. Sarig explains. “The structure, shape, and topography or surface bumps of the teeth provided important genetic information. We were able to use the external and internal shape of the teeth found in the cave to associate them with typical hominin groups: Neanderthal and Homo sapiens.” The researchers performed in-depth lab tests using micro-CT scans and 3D analyses on four of the teeth. The results surprised the researchers: Two teeth showed a typical morphology for Homo sapiens; one tooth showed features characteristic of Neanderthals; the last tooth showed a combination of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens features. This combination of Neanderthal and modern human features has, to date, been found only in European populations from the early Paleolithic period, suggesting their common origin.

A first-of-its-kind discovery

“Following the migration of European populations into this region, a new culture existed in the Levant for a short time, approximately 2,000-3,000 years. It then disappeared for no apparent reason,” adds Dr. Sarig. “Now we know something about their makeup.” “Until now, we hadn’t found any human remains with valid dating from this period in Israel,” adds Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, head of the Dan David Center, “so the group remains a mystery. This groundbreaking study contributes to the story of the population responsible for some of the world’s most important cultural contributions.”

Mmm Mmm Marrow?

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Study Finds Prehistoric Humans Ate Bone Marrow Like Canned Soup 400,000 Years Ago

Bone and skin preserved the nutritious marrow for later consumption, TAU researchers say Tel Aviv University researchers, in collaboration with scholars from Spain, have uncovered evidence of the storage and delayed consumption of animal bone marrow at Qesem Cave near Tel Aviv, the site of many major discoveries from the late Lower Paleolithic period some 400,000 years ago. The research provides direct evidence that early Paleolithic people saved animal bones for up to nine weeks before feasting on them inside Qesem Cave. The study, which was published in the October 9 issue of Science Advances, was led by Dr. Ruth Blasco of TAU’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations and Centro Nacional de Investigación Sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) and her TAU colleagues Prof. Ran Barkai and Prof. Avi Gopher. It was conducted in collaboration with Profs. Jordi Rosell and Maite Arilla of Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES); Prof. Antoni Margalida of University of Lleida, University of Bern, and the Institute for Game and Wildlife Research (IREC); and Prof. Daniel Villalba of University of Lleida. “Bone marrow constitutes a significant source of nutrition and as such was long featured in the prehistoric diet,” explains Prof. Barkai. “Until now, evidence has pointed to immediate consumption of marrow following the procurement and removal of soft tissues. In our paper, we present evidence of storage and delayed consumption of bone marrow at Qesem Cave.” “This is the earliest evidence of such behavior and offers insight into the socioeconomics of the humans who lived at Qesem,” adds Dr. Blasco. “It also marks a threshold for new modes of Paleolithic human adaptation.” “Prehistoric humans brought to the cave selected body parts of the hunted animal carcasses,” explains Prof. Rosell. “The most common prey was fallow deer, and limbs and skulls were brought to the cave while the rest of the carcass was stripped of meat and fat at the hunting scene and left there. We found that the deer leg bones, specifically the metapodials, exhibited unique chopping marks on the shafts, which are not characteristic of the marks left from stripping fresh skin to fracture the bone and extract the marrow.” The researchers contend that the deer metapodials were kept at the cave covered in skin to facilitate the preservation of marrow for consumption in time of need. The researchers evaluated the preservation of bone marrow using an experimental series on deer, controlling exposure time and environmental parameters, combined with chemical analyses. The combination of archaeological and experimental results allowed them to isolate the specific marks linked to dry skin removal and determine a low rate of marrow fat degradation of up to nine weeks of exposure. “We discovered that preserving the bone along with the skin, for a period that could last for many weeks, enabled early humans to break the bone when necessary and eat the still nutritious bone marrow,” adds Dr. Blasco. “The bones were used as ‘cans’ that preserved the bone marrow for a long period until it was time to take off the dry skin, shatter the bone and eat the marrow,” Prof. Barkai emphasizes. Until recently, it was believed that the Paleolithic people were hunter gatherers who lived hand-to-mouth (the Stone Age version of farm-to-table), consuming whatever they caught that day and enduring long periods of hunger when food sources were scarce. “We show for the first time in our study that 420,000 to 200,000 years ago, prehistoric humans at Qesem Cave were sophisticated enough, intelligent enough and talented enough to know that it was possible to preserve particular bones of animals under specific conditions, and, when necessary, remove the skin, crack the bone and eat the bone marrow,” Prof. Gopher explains. According to the research, this is the earliest evidence in the world of food preservation and delayed consumption of food. This discovery joins other evidence of innovative behaviors found in Qesem Cave including recycling, the regular use of fire, and cooking and roasting meat. “We assume that all this was because elephants, previously a major source of food for humans, were no longer available, so the prehistoric humans in our region had to develop and invent new ways of living,” concludes Prof. Barkai. “This kind of behavior allowed humans to evolve and enter into a far more sophisticated kind of socioeconomic existence.” Photo caption: Marrow inside a metapodial bone after six weeks of storage. Credit: Dr. Ruth Blasco.  

Early Humans Deliberately Recycled Flint To Create Tiny, Sharp Tools

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Exceptional conditions at Israel’s Qesem Cave preserved 400,000-year-old “tool kit,” TAU researchers say

A new Tel Aviv University study finds that prehistoric humans “recycled” discarded or broken flint tools 400,000 years ago to create small, sharp utensils with specific functions. These recycled tools were then used with great precision and accuracy to perform specific tasks involved in the processing of animal products and vegetal materials.

The site of Qesem Cave, located just outside Tel Aviv, was discovered during a road construction project in 2000. It has since offered up countless insights into life in the region hundreds of thousands of years ago.

In collaboration with Prof. Cristina Lemorini of Sapienza University of Rome, the research was led jointly by postdoctoral fellow Dr. Flavia Venditti in collaboration with Profs. Ran Barkai and Avi Gopher. All three are members of TAU’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. It was published on April 11 in the Journal of Human Evolution.

In recent years, archaeologists working in caves in Spain and North Africa and digs in Italy and Israel have unearthed evidence that prehistoric people recycled objects they used in daily life. Just as we recycle materials such as paper and plastic to manufacture new items today, early hominids collected discarded or broken tools made of flint to create new utensils for specific purposes hundreds of thousands of years ago.

“Recycling was a way of life for these people,” Prof. Barkai says. “It has long been a part of human evolution and culture. Now, for the first time, we are discovering the specific uses of the recycled ‘tool kit’ at Qesem Cave.”

Exceptional conditions in the cave allowed for the immaculate preservation of the materials, including micro residue on the surface of the flint tools.

“We used microscopic and chemical analyses to discover that these small and sharp recycled tools were specifically produced to process animal resources like meat, hide, fat and bones,” Venditti explains. “We also found evidence of plant and tuber processing, which demonstrated that they were also part of the hominids’ diet and subsistence strategies.”

According to the study, signs of use were found on the outer edges of the tiny objects, indicating targeted cutting activities related to the consumption of food: butchery activities and tuber, hide and bone processing. The researchers used two different and independent spectroscopic chemical techniques: Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX).

“The meticulous analysis we conducted allowed us to demonstrate that the small recycled flakes were used in tandem with other types of utensils. They therefore constituted a larger, more diversified tool kit in which each tool was designed for specific objectives,” Venditti says.

She adds, “The research also demonstrates that the Qesem inhabitants practiced various activities in different parts of the cave: The fireplace and the area surrounding it were eventually a central area of activity devoted to the consumption of the hunted animal and collected vegetal resources, while the so-called ‘shelf area’ was used to process animal and vegetal materials to obtain different by-products.”

“This research highlights two debated topics in the field of Paleolithic archaeology: the meaning of recycling and the functional role of small tools,” Prof. Barkai observes. “The data from the unique, well-preserved and investigated Qesem Cave serve to enrich the discussion of these phenomena in the scientific community.”

“Our data shows that lithic recycling at Qesem Cave was not occasional and not provoked by the scarcity of flint,” Venditti concludes. “On the contrary, it was a conscious behavior which allowed early humans to quickly obtain tiny sharp tools to be used in tasks where precision and accuracy were essential.”

The researchers are continuing to investigate prehistoric recycling by applying their analysis to other sites in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Photo caption: Experimental activity of cutting tubers with a small recycled flake and a close-up of its prehension (inset). Photo credit: Flavia Venditti.

New evidence points to existence of Biblical figure

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A line of the Mesha Stele inscription lends credence to the story of Balaam in the Book of Numbers, Tel Aviv University researchers say

he legendary King Balak from the Book of Numbers may have been a real historical figure, according to a new reading of the Mesha Stele, the longest extra-biblical inscription in existence.
 
The Mesha Stele, an ancient inscribed stone dating to the ninth century BCE, tells the story of the territorial expansion and construction endeavors of King Mesha of Moab, who is also mentioned in the Second Book of Kings in the Old Testament. The stele was found in the 19th century among the ruins of the ancient town of Dibon in Moab, located in today’s Jordan, east of the Dead Sea. The stele is on display at the Louvre Museum.
 
According to the study, a word on Line 31 of the stele that has until now been interpreted as “House of David” in fact refers to King “Balak,” who is known as a Moab ruler only from the Book of Numbers.
 
The new Tel Aviv University-Collège de France study was published on May 2 in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. It was co-authored by Prof. Israel Finkelstein and Prof. Nadav Na’aman of TAU’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures in collaboration with Prof. Thomas Römer of Collège de France and the University of Lausanne.

Learning from the “squeeze”

A recent exhibit, Mésha et la Bible, held in October 2018 at the Collège de France in Paris in conjunction with the Louvre Museum, showcased the Meshe Stele “squeeze,” a reverse copy of the inscription on paper. This exhibition afforded researchers the unique opportunity to take high-resolution photographs of the squeeze.
 
Although the stele had been cracked in the 19th century, the parts that went missing were preserved in the squeeze, which was made before the stone broke into pieces.
 
The authors of the new research studied new high-resolution photographs of the squeeze and of the stele itself. These new images made it clear that there are three consonants in the name of the monarch mentioned in Line 31, and that the first is the Hebrew letter bet, which corresponds to the English letter “B.”
 
The most likely candidate for the monarch’s name is “Balak.” The seat of the king referred to in Line 31 was “Horonaim,” which is mentioned four times in the Bible in relation to the Moabite territory south of the Arnon River.

No longer the “House of David”

“We believe Balak was a historical figure like Balaam, who, before the discovery of the famous Deir Alla inscription in Jordan in 1967, was considered an ‘invented’ character,” explains Prof. Finkelstein. “The new photographs of the Mesha Stele and the squeeze indicate that the reading ‘House of David’ — accepted by many scholars for more than two decades — is no longer valid.”
 
In 1994 the French epigrapher André Lemaire suggested that letters missing in Line 31 of the stele would spell “House of David,” as in the Tel Dan Stele, which features the term in reference to the Kingdom of Judah. Accordingly, Lemaire proposed that in the mid-ninth century Judah ruled in southern Moab, east of the Dead Sea.
 
“With due caution, we suggest that the line refers to the Moabite King Balak, who, according to the Balaam story in Numbers 22-24, was supposed to bring a divine curse on the people of Israel,” Prof. Na’aman says.
 
“The biblical story was written down later than the time of the Moabite king referred to in the Mesha Stele,” Prof. Römer adds. “But to proffer a sense of authenticity to his story, its author must have integrated into the plot certain elements borrowed from ancient reality, including the names Balaam and Balak.”

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