Israel's History and the History of Israel PDF

ISRAEL’S HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL BibleWorld Series Editors: James Crossley, University of Sheffield; Philip R. Davies, University of Sheffield BibleWorld shares the fruits of modern (and postmodern) biblical scholarship not only among practitioners and students, but also with anyone interested in what academic study of the Bible means in the twenty-first century. It explores our ever-increasing knowledge and understanding of the social world that produced the biblical texts, but also analyses aspects of the bible’s role in the history of our civilization and the many perspectives – not just religious and theological, but also cultural, political and aesthetic – which drive modern biblical scholarship. Published Sodomy: Yours Faithfully: A History of a Christian Biblical Myth Virtual Letters from the Bible Michael Carden Edited by: Philip R. Davies The Apostle Paul and His Letters The Origins of the ‘Second’ Temple: Edwin D. Freed Persian Imperial Policy and the Rebuilding of Jerusalem Diana Edelman An Introduction to the Bible The Morality of Paul’s Converts (Revised edition) Edwin D. Freed John Rogerson The Mythic Mind History, Literature and Theology in Essays on Cosmology and Religion in the Book of Chronicles Ugaritic and Old Testament Literature Ehud Ben Zvi N. Wyatt Sectarianism in Early Judaism Symposia Sciological Advances Dialogues Concerning the History Edited by David J. Chalcraft of Biblical Interpretation Roland Boer Jonah’s World Uruk Social Science and the Reading of The First City Prophetic Story Mario Liverani Lowell K. Handy Women Healing/Healing Women The Genderisation of Healing in Early Christianity Elaine Wainwright ISRAEL’S HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL MARIO LIVERANI TRANSLATED BY CHIARA PERI AND PHILIP R. DAVIES Published by UK: Equinox Publishing Ltd Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies St., London, SW11 2JW www.equinoxpub.com First published in Italian in 2003 by Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Roma-Bari, entitled Oltre la Bibbia: Storia Antica di Israele. This translation is published by arrangement with Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Roma-Bari. First published in English in hardback in 2005 by Equinox Publishing Ltd. This paperback edition published in 2007. © 2003 Gius. Laterza & Figli Spa, Rome-Bari This translation © Chiara Peri and Philip R. Davies 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permis- sion in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84553 341 0 (paperback) Typeset by CA Typesetting Ltd, www.publisherservices.co.uk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire eISBN: 1845534840 All kingdoms designated by the name of Assyria are so called because they enrich themselves at Israel's expense…all kingdoms designated by the name of Egypt are so called because they per- secute Israel. (Genesis Rabbah 16.4) CONTENTS List of Tables and Illustrations ix Foreword xv Abbreviations xix IMPRINTING Chapter 1 PALESTINE IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE (FOURTEENTH–THIRTEENTH CENTURIES) 3 Part I A NORMAL HISTORY Chapter 2 THE TRANSITION (TWELFTH CENTURY) 32 Chapter 3 THE NEW SOCIETY (c. 1150–1050) 52 Chapter 4 THE FORMATIVE PROCESS (c. 1050–930) 77 Chapter 5 THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL (c. 930–740) 104 Chapter 6 THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH (c. 930–720) 128 Chapter 7 THE IMPACT OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE (c. 740–640) 143 Chapter 8 PAUSE BETWEEN TWO EMPIRES (c. 640–610) 165 viii Israel’s History and the History of Israel Chapter 9 THE IMPACT OF THE BABYLONIAN EMPIRE (c. 610–585) 183 INTERMEZZO Chapter 10 THE AXIAL AGE 203 Chapter 11 THE DIASPORA 214 Chapter 12 THE WASTE LAND 231 Part II AN INVENTED HISTORY Chapter 13 RETURNEES AND ‘REMAINEES’: THE INVENTION OF THE PATRIARCHS 250 Chapter 14 RETURNEES AND ALIENS: THE INVENTION OF THE CONQUEST 270 Chapter 15 A NATION WITHOUT A KING: THE INVENTION OF THE JUDGES 292 Chapter 16 THE ROYAL OPTION: THE INVENTION OF THE UNITED MONARCHY 308 Chapter 17 THE PRIESTLY OPTION: THE INVENTION OF THE SOLOMONIC TEMPLE 324 Chapter 18 SELF-IDENTIFICATION: THE INVENTION OF THE LAW 342 EPILOGUE Chapter 19 LOCAL HISTORY AND UNIVERSAL VALUES 363 Bibliography 369 Index of References 407 Index of Names of Persons and Deities 415 Index of Placenames 423 LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Tables 1. Correlation of historical and biblical periodization (Author). 8 2. Chronology of the ‘formative period’ (Author). 80 3. Chronology of the Kingdom of Israel 950–720 (Author). 106 4. Demographic chart of Palestine in the eighth century (M. Broshi and I. Finkelstein, BASOR 287 , 54). 123 5. Chronology of the Kingdom of Judah, 930–640 (Author). 129 6. Chronology of the Near East 650–525 (Author). 185 7. Chronology of imperial expansion (Author). 198-199 8. Chronology of the Prophets (Author). 224 9. The patriarchal genealogies and the nations related by descent (Author). 259 10. Chronology of the Book of Judges (Author). 297 11. Tribal lists in the Bible (Based on K.L. Sparks, Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998, 298). 303 12. Judah in the Persian period, 540–330 (Author). 310 2. Figures 1. Relief map of Palestine, with reference grid (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 5 2. Late Bronze Age Palestine: distribution of settlements and probable boundaries (north on the left, south on the right) (I. Finkelstein, UF 28 , 254-55). 11 3. Egyptian domination in the Levant: the campaigns of Thutmoses III and the ‘provinces’ of the Amarna Age (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 13 4. Egyptian domination: forms of homage (G.T. Martin, The Hidden Tombs of Memphis, London: Thames & Hudson, 1991, ﬁg. 49). 14 x Israel’s History and the History of Israel 5. Commercial exchanges: above, Syrian merchants in Egypt; below Asiatic tribute to the Pharaoh ([a] JEA 33 , pl. VIII; [b] N.M. Davies, The Tombs of Menkheperra- sonb, Amenmose and Another, London: Egypt Explora- tion Society, 1933, pl. V). 20 6. The invasions of the twelfth century: (1 = Phrygians; 2 = Sea Peoples; 3 = Arameans; 4 = Libyans) (Author: drawn by Leonarda De Ninno). 33 7. The ‘Sea Peoples’ as depicted by the Egyptians: (a) the naval battle with Ramses III; (b) Philistine prisoners (Medinet Habu, I, Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1930, [a] pl. 37; [b] pl. 44). 36 8. The ‘regional system’ and the crisis of the twelfth century: (a) the system of the thirteenth century; (b) the system during Iron I (Author: drawn by Leonarda De Ninno). 39 9. The spread of the alphabet in Syria-Palestine during the thirteenth–eighth centuries (Based on W. Röllig, in Das Altertum 31 , 329). 44 10. The alphabet from ‘Izbet Sartah (twelfth century): (a) copy (b) transcription in the ‘classical’ script of the eighth century (c) equivalents in Roman script (Author). 46 11. Wadi dam system used for dry farming in Ramat Matred in the Negev: (a) general layout of the area (b) agro- pastoral settlement (c) sheepfolds (IEJ 10 , 30-33). 48 12. Trade routes and alphabets during Iron Age I–II (Author: drawn by Leonarda De Ninno). 50 13. Areas of ‘proto-Israelite’ villages: (a) ﬁrst phase (twelfth century); (b) second phase (end of eleventh century) (I. Finkelstein, The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998, 325, 329). 54 14. ‘Proto-Israelite’ villages in the Negev: (a) farmyard villages (b) fortiﬁed villages (R. Cohen, in BASOR 236 , 61- 79). 56 15. The structure of living quarters: pillared houses at (a) Tel Masos (b) Tell Beit Mirsim ([a] V. Fritz and A. Kempinski, Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf der Hirbet el-Msas, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1983, pl. 3; [b] Y. Shiloh, in IEJ 20 , ﬁg. 4 on p. 187). 57 16. The traditional arrangement of the ‘twelve tribes’ (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 61 List of Tables and Illustrations xi 17. The Philistine Pentapolis settlement pattern: (a) Late Bronze (fourteenth–thirteenth century); (b) Iron I (twelfth- eleventh century) (I. Finkelstein in IEJ 46 , ﬁgs. 1-2). 70 18. The ‘Egyptian’ residencies. Inset: residency 1500 at Beth- Shean (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 72 19. The ‘way of Horus’, as depicted on the inscription of Seti I at Karnak. The route connects Sile (B), on the eastern branch of the Nile delta, with Raﬁa (U), at the entrance to Canaan, via a series of fortresses (D,E,G,I-J,K,P-Q) and staging posts (F,H,L,M,N,O,S), of which the names are provided (JEA 6 , 99-116). 74-75 20. Palestine in a larger context: distribution of ‘ethnic states’ in Iron Age I (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 82 21. The kingdom of Saul (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 90 22. The kingdom of David (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 92 23. The ‘twelve districts’ of Solomon (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 97 24. The campaign of Sheshonq (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 102 25. Settlement in the highlands of Ephraim and population estimates over time: (a) Iron I (b) Iron II (c) Persian period (d) demographic chart (I. Finkelstein in Tel Aviv 15-16 [1988–89], 150, 152, 156, 172). 107 26. The kingdom of Israel c. 925–800 (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 109 27. The Tel Dan inscription (A. Biran and J. Naveh, IEJ 45 , 12). 113 28. Maximum extent of kingdom of Damascus under Hazael (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 115 29. The town-planning of the Omride dynasty: (a) Samaria; (b) Megiddo ([a] L. Nigro, Ricerche sull’architettura palazial della Palestina, Rome: University ‘La Sapienza’, 1994, table 53; [b] E. Stern [ed.], The New Encyclopedia of Archaeo- logical Excavations in the Holy Land, III, Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society & Carta, 1993, 1016). 122 30. The ‘Samaria ostraca’ (D. Diringer, Le Inscrizioni antico- ebraiche palestinesi, Firenze: Le Monnier, 1934, table IV). 126 31. The kingdom of Judah (c. 925–725) (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 130 xii Israel’s History and the History of Israel 32. The growth of the kingdom of Judah in the eighth–seventh centuries (a) demography (hectares excavated); (b) public buildings (square metres); luxury goods (numbers of objects); (d) written material (D.W. Jamieson-Drake, Scribes and Schools in Monarchical Judah, Shefﬁeld: JSOT Press, 1991, charts 3, 8, 10, 16). 135 33. Town planning in the kingdom of Judah: (a) plan of Beer- sheba; (b) plan of Tell en-Nasbeh (Mizpah) (Z. Herzog, Archaeology of the City, Tel Aviv: Yass Archaeology Press, 1997, ﬁgs. 5.31 and 5.26). 137 34. The Assyrian conquest: campaigns of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sennacherib (Author: based on Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible, maps 30 and 32, simpliﬁed; drawn by Serena Liverani). 144 35. Submission of Jehu, as depicted on the ‘Black Obelisk’ of Shalmaneser III (Design by Diletta Liverani). 145 36. The Assyrian conquest: the provinces (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 146 37. The growth of Jerusalem: (a) the ‘City of David’ and the expansion under Hezekiah; (b) the size of the city at differ- ent periods ([a] E. Stern, New Encyclopedia, II, 707; [b] Y. Shiloh, Excavations at the City of David, Jerusalem: Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, 1984, I, 72). 153 38. The Levant after the fall of the Assyrian empire (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 167 39. Tyrian trade in Ezekiel 27 (I agricultural products; II livestock products; III handicrafts and slaves; IV luxury goods, metals) (Author). 169 40. Judean buildings of the seventh century: (a) the palace at Ramat Rahel; (b) the fortress of Arad VII ([a] Nigro, Ricerche sull’architettura, ﬁg. 59; [b] BASOR 254 , 26). 172 41. The twelve districts of Judah and Benjamin (Joshua 15 and 18). The numbers within squares indicate the total of cities per district (N. Na’aman, Tel Aviv 18 , 19). 173 42. The letter of Adon, king of Ekron (B. Porter and A. Yardeni, Textbook of the Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1986, I, n. A1.1). 187 43. The Lachish ostraca (letter no. 4) (H. Torczyner, The Lachish Letters, London: Trustees of the Late Sir H. Wellcome, 1938, 78). 192 List of Tables and Illustrations xiii 44. The collapse in the sixth century (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 233 45. Babylon in the sixth century: (a) general plan; (b) southern palace and fortress ([a] G. Pettinato, Semiramide, Milan: Rusconi, 1985, ﬁg. 19; [b] R. Koldewey, Das wieder enste- hende Babylon, Leipzig: Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, no. 54). 237 46. An Assyrian royal park (S. Parpola [ed.], State Archives of Assyria, Helsinki, 1987, ﬁg. 23). 239 47. The tripartite world: geographical distribution of the ‘table of nations’ (Genesis 10) (Author: drawn by Leonarda De Ninno). 241 48. Assyrian images of nomads: (a) Median horse-breeders; (b) Arabs on camels ([a] State Archives of Assyria, I, ﬁg. 12; [b] A.H. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, London: John Murray, 1849). 245 49. The Persian empire at the time of Darius I. I-XX: list of the satrapies according to Herodotus 3.89-94 (Author). 252 50. The geography of the patriarchal sagas (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 262 51. Map of the conquest according to the book of Joshua (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 285 52. Palestine in the Achaemenid era (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 293 53. Palestinian building of the Persian period: the administrative palace at Lachish (Nigro, Ricerche sull’architettura, table 60). 294 54. The Judges: distribution map (Author: drawn by Serena Liverani). 299 55. The disposition of the twelve tribes: idealistic scheme: (a) Exodus encampment (Numbers 2 and 26); (b) allocation of the land (Ezekiel 48.1-29); (c) the gates of the future Jerusalem (Ezekiel 48.30-35). (Author [a: partly based on JSOT 85 (1999), 69]). 304 56. Solomon’s temple: reconstruction (W. Dever, Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990, ﬁg. 27). 327 57. Solomon’s palace and the Achaemenid apadāna: (a) Solomon’s palace (hypothetical reconstruction following 1 Kings 7.1-8); (b) Terrace of Persepolis with the apadāna 328 xiv Israel’s History and the History of Israel of Darius; (c) Provincial apadāna of Byblos ([a] Author; drawn by Leonarda De Ninno; [b] D.N. Wilber, Persepo- lis, London: Cassell, 1969, p. XVIII; [c] G.R.H. Wright, Ancient Buildings in South Syria and Palestine, I-II, Leiden: E.J. Brill, ﬁg. 201). 58. The Levitical cities and cities of refuge (Author; drawn by Serena Liverani). 338 FOREWORD Another history of ancient Israel? Are there not enough of them already? And what if its author is not even a professional Alttestamentler, but a historian of the ancient Near East? It is true: we already have many (per- haps too many) histories of ancient Israel, but they are all so similar to each other because, inescapably, they are all too similar to the story we ﬁnd in the Biblical text. They share its plot, its way of presenting facts, even when they question critically its historical reliability. The history of ancient Israel has always been presented as a sort of paraphrase of the Biblical text. At ﬁrst the theological relevance of the revealed word made it difﬁcult to accept a rational critique that could, even at great pains, open the way to a secular approach. Even the archaeo- logical discoveries in Palestine were not at ﬁrst so sensational as to allow a complete rethinking of the history of the area on the basis of ancient and original sources, as was the case in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Hittite Ana- tolia. Indeed, towards the end of the nineteenth century, archaeology began to be used as ‘proof’ of the reliability of the Biblical text, while that text was already being questioned at the time by the literary criticism of German philologists. During the last two centuries, Biblical criticism has progressively dis- mantled the historicity of creation and ﬂood, then of the patriarchs, then (in chronological order) of the exodus and of the conquest, of Moses and Joshua, then the period of Judges and the ‘twelve tribe league’, stopping at the era of the ‘United Monarchy’ of David and Solomon, which was still considered substantially historical. The realization that foundational epi- sodes of conquest and law-giving were in fact post-exilic retrojections, aiming to justify the national and religious unity and the possession of the land by groups of returnees from the Babylonian exile, implied a degree of rewriting of the history of Israel, but did not challenge the idea that Israel was a united (and powerful) state at the time of David and Solomon and that a ‘First Temple’ really existed. Hence the return from exile was under- stood as recreating an ethnic, political and religious reality that had existed in the past. xvi Israel’s History and the History of Israel Recent criticism of the concept of the ‘United Monarchy’ has ques- tioned the Biblical narrative from its very foundation, because it reduces the ‘historical’ Israel to one of several Palestinian kingdoms swept away by the Assyrian conquest. Any connection between Israel and Judah in the pre-exilic era (including the existence of a united Israel) is completely denied. At this point, a drastic rewriting of the history of Israel is needed. The critical approach to Israelite history, however, has always produced Prolegomena (to use Wellhausen’s expression) and brave theoretical mani- festos (some of them very recent), but not yet a narrated history following the order of modern reconstructions instead of the traditional plot of the Biblical narrative. If the critical deconstruction of the Biblical text is ac- cepted, why not also attempt a reconstruction, referring literary texts to the time in which they were written and not to the period they speak about? Some recent postmodernist critics have, however, denied the possibility of writing a history of ancient Israel and opened a gap between a narrated history of the traditional kind and a literary criticism that breaks any con- tact with a historical use of sources. In the present work I have tried to write – at least in the form of a ﬁrst draft – a new version of the history of Israel, starting from the results of textual and literary criticism as well as from data collected by archaeology and epigraphy. In doing this I have felt free to change the Biblical plot, while keeping a properly historical approach. This attempt, as obvious as it is, is nevertheless something new, and is attended by tremendous difﬁcul- ties and very serious implications. The result is a division of the history of Israel into two different phases. The ﬁrst one is the ‘normal’ (i.e. not unique) and quite insigniﬁcant history of two kingdoms in Palestine, very similar to the other kingdoms destroyed by the Assyrian and then Babylonian conquests, with the consequent devas- tation, deportations and deculturation. This ﬁrst phase is not particularly important, particularly interesting, nor consequential – just as the parallel histories of similar kingdoms (from Carchemish to Damascus, Tyre or Gaza) have importance only to the specialist. But the fact is that we cannot read the ‘Bibles’ of Carchemish, Damascus, Tyre or Gaza, and their tradi- tions were lost forever under the advance of the empires. In just one case a peculiar event occurred, prompted by the project of a king of Judah (Josiah) who planned to found a united kingdom of Judah- Israel in the decades between the collapse of Assyria and the rise of the Babylonian empire. Josiah’s plan had a religious (Yahwistic monotheism, ‘Mosaic’ law) and historiographical element. The speedy return to Pales- tine of Judean exiles not fully assimilated to the imperial world, their Foreword xvii attempt to create a temple-city (Jerusalem) on a Babylonian model and to gather around it a whole nation (Israel, in the broader sense) implied a huge and variegated rewriting of an ‘ordinary’ history with the aim of cre- ating a suitable context for those archetypes that they intended to revital- ize: united kingdom, monotheism and single temple, law, possession of the land, holy war, and so on. The whole history of Israel, therefore, had to be characterized by a very special calling. While the real but normal history had no more than a local interest, the invented and exceptional one became the basis for the foundation of a nation (Israel) and of a religion (Judaism) that would have an inﬂuence on the subsequent history of the whole world. Once again I have to express my gratitude to the Pontiﬁcal Biblical Institute of Rome for the kind hospitality of its library – one of the few places in the world where it is possible to realize a project like this – and for the efﬁciency and courtesy of all the staff. I am grateful to my friends Giovanni Garbini and Andrea Giardina for reading a ﬁrst version of the book and discussing with me some of the problems; to my daughter Serena for the computerizing of the many maps; to my daughter Diletta and to Mrs Leonarda De Ninno for drawing some of the pictures. I am particu- larly grateful to my Italian publisher Giuseppe Laterza for his encourage- ment to write this book – a tremendous decision. I did it in a relatively short time (two years), conscious that a whole life would not be enough to achieve a more satisfactory work. I think this book will please neither more progressive scholars, who will not like the ﬁrst part, as being too conﬁdently historical, nor more traditional ones, who will dislike the sec- ond part, as too critically destructive. But when I conceived this division, I did not consider the reaction of any particular readers: I honestly thought that this was the only way to describe the existent contradiction between a real and commonplace history and an invented one that has become the basis and the location of a set of universal values. Please note that all the dates are BCE if not differently speciﬁed. The chronological table (Table 1) is intended to help the reader with an initial diachronic orientation. In the book reference is made to the redactional schools responsible for the historical books of the Old Testament, which biblical critics have tried, rather successfully, to place in their historical context. Occasionally allu- sions are made to the ‘Elohist’ and ‘Yahwist’ – once dated to the monar- chic age and now dated to the exilic period. More frequent are references xviii Israel’s History and the History of Israel to ‘Deuteronomic’ works (named after the book of Deuteronomy), or the ‘Deuteronomistic school’ (or ‘Deuteronomistic historiography’), which began in Judah towards the end of the seventh century and continued during the Babylonian exile in the sixth century. Finally, the ‘Priestly’ school (including the author of the Book of Chronicles) can be dated to the time of the Babylonian exile, in the sixth to fourth centuries. For a general read- ing of this book, no more information is needed, while anyone interested in the problems of Old Testament criticism will ﬁnd useful references in the bibliography. Transcription of personal names has proved very problematic, because a certain consistency is needed, but forms too different from those familiar to the reader should be avoided. The names of the main kings of Judah and Israel, the patriarchs, tribes, prophets and other well-known characters are cited in the form currently used in English. For other names, a simpliﬁed but correct transcription of the Hebrew form is used, without diacritics or vowel length markers. Aspirated forms of consonants, apart from p/f, are not indicated. The same is true for Biblical placenames: for those par- ticularly well known the conventional form is used; for all the others a sim- pliﬁed transcription of the Hebrew name. Modern placenames (both Arabic and Hebrew) are written without diacritics. In the index the correct transcription of personal and placenames is indicated. For placenames (both ancient and modern) of the Palestinian region, geographical co-ordinates according to the modern Israel grid (as in picture 1 and in the margins of other maps) are also indicated: this is not an unnecessary technicality, but facilitates quick and precise location of sites. For placenames in other areas, the historical region alone is indi- cated. The indexes include multiple cross-references between ancient and modern placenames and an annotated index of personal names, all intended to provide the reader with an effective means of reference. ABBREVIATIONS Collections of Ancient Near Eastern Texts ABC A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Locust Valley, NY: J.J. Augustin, 1975. AEL M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literaure, I-III, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980. ANEP J.B. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954. ANET J.B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955 (plus Supplement, 1969). ARE J.H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, I-V, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1906. AS D.D. Luckenbill, The Annals of Sennacherib, Chicago: Univesity of Chicago Press, 1924. BIA R. Borger, Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996. EA The Amarna Letters (ed. and trans. W.L. Moran; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). Emar D. Arnaud, Recherches au pays d’Aštata. Emar, Texte 3; Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1986. HDT G. Beckman, Hittite Diplomatic Texts (SBL Writings from the Ancient World, 7; Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996). IAKA R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien, Graz: E. Weidner, 1956. ISK A. Fuchs, Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993. ITP H. Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III King of Assyria, Jerusalem: Israel Academy at Sciences and Humanities, 1994. LA M. Liverani, Le lettere di el-Amarna, I-II, Brescia: Paideia, 1998– 1999. LPAE E. Bresciani, Letteratura e poesia dell’antico Egitto, Torino: G. Einaudi, 19902. PRU Le palais royal d’Ugarit, II-VI, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1957–1970. RIMA The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Assyrian Periods, I-III, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987-1996. RIMB The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia. Babylonian Periods, II, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. xx Israel’s History and the History of Israel RTU N. Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, London: Sheffield Academic Press, 20022. SAA S. Parpola (ed.), State Archives of Assyria, I-XV, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1987–2001. SSI J.C.L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions. 1. Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions; 2. Aramaic Inscriptions; 3. Phoenician Inscriptions, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971; 1975; 1982. Ug. Ugaritica, I-VI, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1939-1969. Classical Sources Herod. Herodotus, Histories Ant. Flavius Josephus, Antiquitates Iudaicae C. Ap. Flavius Josephus, Contra Apionem Journals and Collections BA Biblical Archaeologist BAR Biblical Archaelogy Review BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research Bibl Biblica BZ Biblische Zeitschrift CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly EI Eretz-Israel HThR Harvard Theological Review IEJ Israel Exploration Journal JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JBL Journal of Biblical Literature JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies JESHO Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament KS A. Alt, Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel, I-III, München: Beck, 1959. Lev Levant OA Oriens Antiquus Or Orientalia PEQ Palestine Exploration Quarterly RB Revue Biblique Sem Semitica SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament Trans Transeuphratène UF Ugarit-Forschungen VT Vetus Testamentum ZABR Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ZDPV Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins IMPRINTING Chapter 1 PALESTINE IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE (FOURTEENTH–THIRTEENTH CENTURIES) 1. Landscape and Resources Palestine is a humble and fascinating land. It is humble in its natural re- sources and its marginality within the region; it is fascinating because of the historical stratiﬁcation of its human landscape and the symbolic strati- ﬁcation of its memories. In the south-eastern extremity of the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic rainfall crashes against the mountains, which are fairly high only in the northern part (about 1,000m in Upper Galilee, about 700m in the central area) and receive adequate rainfall. Palestine is almost entirely in the semi- arid zone (rainfall between 400 and 250 mm per year) and its southern parts, the Negev and Sinai desert, and its inland parts, the Transjordanian plateau and Syrian-Arabian desert, are in the highly arid zone (around 100 mm or less). There is only one river worth mentioning, the Jordan, which is fed from the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, with its peren- nial tributaries, the Yarmuk and the Jabbok, or Wadi Zarqa) ﬁlled from the eastern plateaux and ending in the closed and salty basin of the Dead Sea. Cultivation is therefore enabled not by irrigation (apart from little ‘oases’ near springs), but by rainfall: and it depends on the uncertain rains, regulated by inscrutable gods – sometimes generous and beneﬁ- cent, sometimes punitive. The contrast with neighbouring Egypt, where water is a stable ‘matter of fact’, not a matter for anxiety, was abundantly clear: For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden. But the land that you are crossing over to occupy is a land of hills and valleys, watered by rain from the sky, a land that the LORD your God looks after. The eyes of the LORD your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year (Deut. 11.10-12). 4 Israel’s History and the History of Israel The contrast was noticed also by the Egyptians, as recorded in Amen- hotep’s Great Hymn to Aten: All distant foreign countries, thou makest their life (also), For thou hast set a Nile in heaven, That it may descend for them and make waves upon the mountains, Like the great green sea, To water their ﬁelds in their towns. How effective they are, thy plans, O Lord of eternity! The Nile in heaven, it is for the foreign peoples And for the beasts of every desert that go upon (their) feet; (While the true) Nile comes from the underworld for Egypt (ANET, 371). The country is small: in Cisjordan, the area inhabited ‘from Dan to Beer- sheba’ is 200 km long (N–S) and 80 km wide (E–W); another 40 km area in Transjordan can be added. Altogether there are about 20,000 km2 – less than an Italian region like Piedmont or Sicily. To think that such a density of memories and events of millennial and universal relevance is concen- trated in such a small land! Not all the territory can be used for agriculture. The only alluvial plains are in the central valley of the Jordan and in the plain of Jezreel; the costal strip is sandy and salty, but the low hills of the Shephelah are much more suitable. The rest is all hills and mountains, once covered with woods, then stripped by the action of men and goats, destined to a process of erosion contained only by the exhausting work of terracing. Such a setting is suit- able for a transhumant sheep-rearing and to small-scale agriculture, re- stricted to valley ‘niches’ (or to the bottom of wadis in semi-arid zones), occupied only by family farms and minute villages. With the aid of constant human labour, this Mediterranean landscape becomes capable of sustaining a diverse, even if small, population and a region where agricultural and pastoral resources (especially when com- pared with the desert) are sufﬁcient to fulﬁl the necessities of human life in the ancient world. The description of a land ‘ﬂowing with milk and honey (Num. 13.27) is certainly exaggerated, but conveys the idea of a land that can sustain human habitation: a good land, a land with ﬂowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and ﬁg trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper (Deut. 8.7-9). 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 5 Figure 1. Relief map of Palestine, with reference grid Actually, metals are very scarce (the copper of the ‘Araba is not found in Palestine), there are no gemstones (the turquoise of Sinai lies even further away), and there is no valuable timber (as in Lebanon). The coast is mostly covered by dunes, with a few modest lagoons, and it does not afford secure harbours except in the extreme north, between the Carmel promontory and Ras en-Naqura on the Lebanese border. Caravans travelling along the 6 Israel’s History and the History of Israel ‘Way of the Sea’ from the Egyptian Delta to Syria were anxious as they traversed a poor and menacing land. Those travelling on the ‘King’s High- way’ from Arabia to Damascus and the Middle Euphrates, passed along the edge of Palestine, almost preferring the clear spaces of the desert to the misery of the settled land. Compared with other areas of the Near East, such as Egypt and Meso- potamia, Syria and Anatolia, which already in ancient times provided the seat of renowned civilizations, of extensive states centred on monumental cities, Palestine seems singularly unattractive. If the number of inhabitants is a valid indicator of the opportunities afforded to civilized communities for subsistence and development, the data are self-evident. In the Late Bronze Age, when Egypt and Mesopotamia hosted some millions of inhabitants, Palestine did not reach 250,000. Even at the summit of its development, during Iron Age II, its inhabitants numbered no more than 400,000. If we focus on the internal conﬁguration of Palestine, the narrowness of the landscape is striking: it is all fragmented into mountains and hills, and the view never meets an open horizon. Seen within a regional dimension, then, the marginality of the land appears with stark clarity: it lies to the extreme south of the ‘Fertile Crescent’, the semicircle of cultivated lands between the Syro-Arabian desert, the Iranian and Anatolian mountains and the Mediterranean sea. The role that geography dictates for this land, if any, is to serve as a connection (more for transit than for settlement) between Egypt and Western Asia: but this location seems to have brought the inhabitants of Palestine more misfortune than beneﬁt. Yet this country, so modest in natural resources and in population, has played a key role in the history of a large part of the world. The contradic- tion is due to the extraordinary ability of its inhabitants to bind together landscape and memory, conferring on their land a set of symbolic values that, through alternating episodes of dispersion and focalization, departure and return, spread widely beyond its borders. It is not only the landscape that is thoroughly man-made, as is normal in all countries with a long cultural history. Not only its constitutive ele- ments, even the smallest ones – a centuries-old oak, a well, a cave, some ancient ruins, an ancestral tomb – become sites of memory and tokens of legitimation. But the entire country, marked off from the surrounding diversity , is put at the centre of a complete mental history: as the object of a divine promise that makes it the selective heritage of certain groups, excluding others; and as the place of the physical presence of God in the world and therefore the setting of events whose value is universal and 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 7 eternal. The terms ‘Promised Land’ and ‘Holy Land’ indicate how a speciﬁc region could become a symbol and a value, without even naming it, since everyone knows immediately which land it is. 2. Geopolitical Fragmentation Topographical and ecologic characteristics, together with the technological capacity of the ancient world, determined to a great extent the geopolitical asset of Palestine over several millennia. The typical formation of ancient states is always conditioned by the relation between spatial factors, demo- graphic density and productive potential. A state lives on what is produced locally: long distance terrestrial trade may provide raw materials (especially metals) and luxury products that are economically transportable, but it cannot bring cereals. Since the foundation of the ﬁrst cities (i.e. settlements whose population is diversiﬁed in function and stratiﬁed in income, with a ‘public’ area – a temple, a palace, or both), territorial units are formed, simultaneously economic and political, comprising the city itself and an agricultural hinterland extending about 10 km in radius, together with a periphery of highlands or steppes suitable for transhumance. We could deﬁne these conﬁgurations as city-states, if the term were not burdened with historiographical and ideological connotations. In fact this deﬁnition immediately reminds us of the Greek polis and its values of democracy, freedom and market economy – an image actually derived more from the individual case of Athens rather than from a general evalua- tion. It is therefore wiser to use a more neutral and merely descriptive term such as ‘cantonal state’, or the deﬁnition used at the time: ‘little king- dom’, as opposed to the ‘great kingdom’ of the imperial ruler. The centre is the city, whose dimension is related to the resources of the territory it is able to draw upon: in Palestine, which was economically poor, Bronze Age cities (about 2800-1200) have hardly more than 3,000-4,000 inhabitants and the situation does not change much in Iron Age II (about 900–600), following the crisis of Iron Age I that had reduced them to their minimum size. In the city stands the residence of the ‘king’ (the palace, a building of about 1,000 m2), with a court for direct dependants: craftsmen, guards, servants/slaves (see below, §1.6). The rural population is concentrated in villages, ranging from a few houses to about 50. Transhumant groups are linked with villages, and are quite limited in size. Further north, in northern Syria, where the state for- mations are bigger and richer, the texts allow to reconstruct a cantonal state (Ugarit) of about 25,000 people, 8,000 of whom resided in the city 8 Israel’s History and the History of Israel and the rest in villages. In Palestine, the average cantonal state would have been about half this size. Also in Northern Syria (Alalakh) we know that the population was broadly divided into 20 percent of palace depend- ants, 20 percent shepherds and 60 percent farmers: these figures (which are merely indicative, of course) may also be valid for Palestine. Table 1. Correlation of historical and biblical periodization Absolute Archaeological Biblical Periods Historical Periods Chronology Periods c. 3500–2800 Late Chalcolithic c. 2800–2000 Early Bronze Age First urbanization c. 2000–1550 Middle Bronze Age Patriarchal Age Independent city-states c. 1550–1180 Late Bronze Age Exodus and Egyptian domination Conquest c. 1180–900 Iron Age I Judges Period of national United Monarchy formation c. 900–600 Iron Age II Divided kingdoms Divided kingdoms Assyrian domination c. 600–330 Iron Age III Exilic period Neo-Babylonian period Postexilic period Persian period This structure, the basic cell of political systems, remains unchanged for a long period. In other areas – Egypt, Mesopotamia – the presence of large rivers suitable for transport of bulky goods, and the necessity of coordinating irrigation systems that were initially local but later on a wide scale, necessitated the process of political uniﬁcation, creating states that may be deﬁned as ‘regional’. These states nevertheless remained as agglom- erations of ‘cantonal’ cells, each functioning as a economic unit, in the form of provinces, or ‘nomes’ as they are called in Egypt. Yet, political uniﬁcation in areas where land productivity was higher and the population much denser gave rise to a corresponding sudden change in scale. While the average Late Bronze Palestinian kingdoms had about 15,000 inhabi- tants (and the larger Iron II kingdoms as a whole an average of 50,000), Egypt could count, at a moderate estimate, on 3 or 4 million subjects of the Pharaoh, while Babylon (even in decline) on a couple of million. This process of uniﬁcation and corresponding change of scale (up to a 200-fold increase) was precluded in Palestine, mainly because of its geography and landscape. 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 9 3. Discontinuity of Settlements The third point to take into consideration is Palestine’s marginality, not in a strictly geographical sense, but rather from the socioeconomic and political point of view. Agricultural lands were in any case less rich than the alluvial plains of the Nile and Euphrates: light soils, with rain-fed agriculture and yields of 1:3 or 1:5 (the average yield in Egypt and Upper Mesopotamia was 1:10 and in Lower Mesopotamia 1:15 or more). More- over, the cultivable land, and the great part of the population, were con- centrated almost entirely in a few zones: the coast and the hills immediately behind it, the plain of Jezreel and the central and upper Jordan valley. This demographic concentration reached its peak during the Late Bronze Age. The rest of the land was mainly suitable for transhumant sheep- rearing and was thus occupied by quite small seasonal camps. Such was the case in the highlands (still covered with woods and Mediterranean scrub) of Judah, Samaria and Galilee, and of the steppe areas towards the east (Transjordan) and south (Negev) due to the decrease in rainfall. The Late Bronze Age political landscape reﬂects this disposition of settle- ments: thus the city-centred political units based on agriculture were concentrated along the coast, in the plain of Jezreel and in the Jordan valley, while they were extremely scarce in the highland zones and virtu- ally absent to the east of the Jordan and in the south of Judah. A typological diversity was established between the plain region, with close and self-intertwined city-states and the mountain region, where the cities were more scattered, free to expand their zone of inﬂuence and char- acterized by a stronger pastoral element (becoming exclusive in the steppe regions). A rough political map of fourteenth-century Palestine, as can be deduced from the Egyptian el-Amarna archive, shows a concentration of small states in the plains and then two fairly isolated towns, Jerusalem and Shechem, centres of the two most extensive cantonal states, one in the highlands of Judah and the other in the Ephraimite hill-country. This settlement scheme, which can be reconstructed from archaeologi- cal and textual data, holds for the Late Bronze Age (fourteenth–thirteenth centuries), but did not always exist: it is the result of transformations in the demographical history of the country, perhaps caused ultimately by cli- matic factors. If we compare the settlement distribution of the Late Bronze Age with that of previous phases (Middle Bronze and, even more, Early Bronze) we notice a progressive shrinking of the frontier of settlements and a concentration of the population in the areas more suitable for agri- culture. Semi-arid zones and highlands were gradually abandoned, so that 10 Israel’s History and the History of Israel in the Late Bronze Age there were no longer permanent settlements south of Hebron in Cisjordan, or of Madaba in Transjordan. During the Late Bronze Age, the arid steppes and wooded mountains were left to seasonal usage by shepherds, who practised their seasonal transhumance of the ‘vertical’ type on the central plateaux, moving between summer pastures in the highlands and winter pastures on the plains; and of the ‘horizontal’ type in the semi-arid steppes, moving between winter pastures in the steppe and summer pastures in cultivated valleys. The well- known interaction between sheep-rearing and agriculture is very close and the rhythms of transhumance tend to respect the needs of agricultural use of the land. Farmers and shepherds live in the same villages, representing integrated, even if not fully homogeneous productive units. But such a gen- eral neglect of the less favoured zones inevitably created a certain margin- alization (from the urban point of view) or autonomy (from the pastoral point of view) of human groups and spaces that, in other periods of his- tory, were much more closely integrated. 4. Egyptian Domination For about three centuries (c. 1460–c. 1170) Palestine was under the direct control of Egypt, though some degree of political (and cultural) inﬂuence existed before and afterwards. This long period of domination by a country whose ideological prestige was matched to a huge demographic, economic and military preponderance, naturally had a major impact on the political life of the region. This political imprinting of an imperial nature was proba- bly as profound and signiﬁcant as the more obvious inﬂuence of the geo- graphical setting we considered earlier. Egyptian control was mostly indirect, and the local ‘little kings’ pre- served their autonomy (but not their independence) as ‘servants’ and vassals of the Pharaoh. The picture we get from the ‘Amarna letters (1370–1350) shows that only three Syro-Palestinian towns were seats of Egyptian governors: Gaza, on the southern coast, Kumidi in the Lebanese Beq‘a valley, and Sumura on the northern coast, beside the present Syro- Lebanese border. There were also Egyptian garrisons in other places: Jaffa (near modern Tel Aviv), Beth-Shean (between the plain of Jezreel and the Jordan valley) and Ullaza (where the route from the Orontes valley reaches the coast). Even if we count the small standing garrisons and the army that, as we shall see, made an annual ‘tour’ for the collection of tribute, we can calculate that Egypt in the Amarna Age employed no more than 700 people to run and control its Syro-Palestinian ‘empire’. 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 11 12 Israel’s History and the History of Israel It had not always been like that. The large campaigns of the fifteenth century had employed up to 10,000 soldiers, but had become unnecessary after the peace treaty and intermarriage between Egypt and Mitanni in about 1420. For the current administration, the initial plan established by Thutmose III – the Pharaoh who had ﬁnally conquered Palestine and most of Syria around 1470-1460 – tried to establish an extensive direct Egyptian control with the ports and the best agricultural land directly managed by the Egyptians. But such a project was difﬁcult to realize and too expensive: similar results could be obtained by indirect administration, and thus we ﬁnd the situation of the Amarna Age, just described. Later, during the thirteenth century, the Egyptian presence became more pervasive, as evi- denced especially in the archaeological data. We know of several Egyptian ‘residencies’ in the period from Seti I to Ramses III: in Tel Afeq stratum IV (including the discovery of cuneiform texts), in Beth-Shean stratum VII, and in several other sites in the extreme south: Tell el-Far‘a (south), Tel Sera‘ (stratum X), Tel Mor strata 8-7, Deir el-Balah strata 7-4, Tell Jemme (ancient Yursa) and Tell el-‘Ajjul stratum V. These fortresses, signiﬁcantly, were established to guard trade routes: the so-called ‘Horus Road’ from the Delta to Gaza, fortiﬁed by Seti I, and the transverse caravan routes to the Gulf of Aqaba and the Timna copper mines, directly exploited by Egypt during the entire Ramesside period. We will see later (§3.9) that these ﬁnal elements of Egyptian presence left traces even after the collapse of the empire. 5. Egyptian Ideology According to Egyptian religious ideology, the Pharaoh was an incarnated god and all the verbal and ceremonial imagery by which local kings ad- dressed him shows that this ideology was known and accepted. Local kings called him ‘Sun of all lands’ and ‘god’ (or rather ‘gods’, since they use the plural form, as in Hebrew ’ĕlōhîm), prostrated before him ‘seven times and seven times’, even specifying ‘seven times on the back and seven times on the belly’ (which was much harder…). They declared themselves ‘ground on which he walked’ and the ‘stool under his feet’, or ‘under his sandals’, in perfect coherence with the pharaonic iconography of the time: in the palace at el-‘Amarna, the ﬂoor of the corridor to the throne room was decorated with standardized images of vanquished enemies, so that the Pharaoh could literally walk on them; the footstool of the throne and the sandals of Tutankhamun were also decorated with images of vanquished enemies, upon which the Pharaoh trampled while walking or seated on his throne. 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 13 Figure 3. Egyptian domination in the Levant: the campaigns of Thutmoses III and the ‘provinces’ of the Amarna Age The Pharaoh required a pledge of faithfulness which was short and absolute: ‘We will never (again) rebel against His Majesty’ (ANET, 238), in payment for that sort of original sin that consisted in being a foreigner, and therefore an inferior enemy – not ‘wretched’, as is sometimes trans- lated, but rather one destined to defeat and total subjugation. The pledge was then made concrete by an annual tribute, by entertaining Egyptian messengers and caravans in transit, by providing goods on request and also 14 Israel’s History and the History of Israel (a real honour!) by providing princesses for the royal harem, together with their rich dowries. Another duty was what was called in the ‘Amarna texts ‘protecting’ the town committed to them by the Pharaoh – protecting it against external enemies, but especially keeping it in good order, ready to answer to Egyptian requests. Local kings were very worried about performing their task of ‘protecting’ (nasāru) the town, and ‘listening’ or ‘observing’ (again nasāru) Pharaoh’s word: I have heard the orders of the king, my lord and my Sun, and I am indeed protecting Megiddo, the city of the king my lord, day and night. By day I protect (it) from the ﬁelds with chariots, and by night on I protect the walls of the king my lord. But the hostility of the enemies (h`abiru) in the land is severe. May the king, my lord, take cognizance of his land (LA 88 = EA 243.8-22, from Megiddo). Whatever proceeds from the mouth of the king, my lord, I indeed observe it day and night (LA 12 = EA 326.20-24, from Ashkelon). Figure 4. Egyptian domination: forms of homage In exchange for all this, Pharaoh gave ‘life’ (Egypt, ‘nh`, ‘Amarna Akkadian balāt#u), which he retained exclusively and gracefully conceded. ‘Life’ in political terms meant the right of reigning as a vassal. But according to Egyptian ideology, it was something more concrete and precise, it was the ‘breath of life’ coming from Pharaoh’s mouth (and with his breath, his words) to the beneﬁt of those who were allowed into his presence, or to whom his messages were addressed. Perhaps the king of Tyre exaggerates 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 15 when he wishes to express his joy for having received a manifestation, though indirect (through a messenger), of Pharaoh’s ‘breath of life’: My lord is the Sun who comes forth over all lands day by day, according to the way (of being) of the Sun, his gracious father, who gives life by his sweet breath that returns as a north wind; who established the entire land in peace, by the power of his arm; who gives forth his cry in the sky like Baal, and all the land is frightened at his cry. The servant herewith writes to his lord that he heard the gracious messenger of the king who came to his servant, and the sweet breath that came forth from the mouth of the king, my lord, to his servant – his breath came back! Before the arrival of the messenger of the king, my lord, breath had not come back; my nose was blocked. Now that the breath of the king has come forth to me, I have great joy and I am very happy day by day (LA 117 = EA 147). For Egyptian subjects, ‘life’ was also admission to a redistributive system through which the Pharaoh gave the food necessary for life and, most of all, a possibility of survival after death. The latter at ﬁrst was a prerogative exclusive to the Pharaoh, but then he conceded it also to his subjects. For- eign subjects were of course excluded from the last two beneﬁts, though they made some clumsy attempts to get some ‘life’ in terms of food, and not merely words: For two years I have been short of my grain; we have no grain to eat. What can I say to my peasantry?… May the king, my lord, heed the words of his loyal servant, and may he send grain in ships in order to keep his servant and his city alive (LA 154 = EA 85, from Byblos). Pharaoh was in fact a distant god, and Palestinian kings tended to consider him rather inert and silent, and thus hard to understand and not particu- larly reliable. Palestinian kings were used to a system of political relations based on reciprocity, which had no equivalent in Egyptian ideology. They were used to being faithful servants of their lord, but expected to receive from him protection (i.e. to see their throne defended from external attacks and internal uprisings). They were used to offering tribute, but also ex- pected to be helped in case of need. They were used to answering the messages of their lord, but they also expected an answer to their own messages. But none of those things happened: the Pharaoh even showed irritation at the insistence of their approaches, and in any event did not give an answer. Most of all, he appeared absolutely indifferent to their personal fate. This ‘being silent’ or ‘keeping still/inert’ is expressed in the ‘Amarna letters by a verb (qâlu) which corresponds in its semantic ﬁeld to Hebrew dāmam. It is used in several passages, all expressing perplexity and dismay 16 Israel’s History and the History of Israel for a passive attitude, a lack of reaction that risked compromising the entire system: Behold, Turbazu was slain in the city gate of Sile, and the king kept silent/ inert. Behold, Zimrida (king) of Lachish was smitten by servants who became h`abiru! and Yaptikh-Hadda was slain in the city gate of Sile, and the king kept silent/inert! (LA 41 = EA 288, from Jerusalem). May the king, my lord, know that Gubla, the loyal maidservant of the king, is safe and sound. The hostility, however, of the enemy forces (h`abiru) against me is extremely severe. So may the king, my lord, not keep silent/ inert towards Sumur, lest everyone be joined to the enemy (h`abiru) forces (LA 132 = EA 68, from Byblos). It is not as it was once, for the lands of the king: every year Egyptian troops went out to watch the lands, while now the land of the king and (even) Sumur, your garrison, has passed to the side of the enemy (‘it became h`abiru’), yet you keep silent/inert! Send Egyptian troops in large quantities, to send away the enemy of the king from his land, and then all the lands will pass to the king. You are a great king, you cannot keep silent/inert about this! (LA 151 = EA 76, from Byblos). In fact, Pharaoh’s only interest was in controlling the whole system, since he knew that the possible usurper of a local throne would be faithful to him just like the dethroned king, who was not worth defending. Action was only taken when Egyptian control of the land was really threatened. Every year a small Egyptian regiment made a tour of Palestinian king- doms to collect tributes and other requested goods. The regiment (a few hundred soldiers) was preceded by a messenger who announced the immi- nent arrival and called for preparation of everything for welcoming the soldiers and making ready what was to be handed over. The Pharaonic message also exhorted the petty king to ‘protect’ the place that had been entrusted to him (meaning: to preserve order and efﬁciency). These mes- sages provoked replies that are quite indicative of the feelings of local kings, who proclaim the impossibility of protecting their towns and solicit the protection of their lord; or they limited their protection just up to the arrival of Egyptian soldiers, which they considered as a sort of solution to their problems. Finally, they wish the troops to use their authority to deter the enemies of the petty kings, all depicted as enemies of the Pharaoh himself. But it was all useless: the expectations of local kings, to get from the ‘distant god’ any help against the threats of the enemies, a solution to their problems, deliverance from the dangers, were left unanswered and nothing happened. Their loyalty was not enough to win protection – and this fact 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 17 caused the petty kings to have painful doubts about the correctness of their actions, the presence of malicious detractors, and the possibility of shortcomings they were unaware of. 6. The Palace and its Central Role Palestinian Late Bronze towns usually maintained the town plan and city walls constructed during the Middle Bronze, the age of maximum develop- ment of the region. The capital, surrounded by walls, was centred on the royal palace, where the king lived with his family, but it was also the seat of administration, of the archives, of the stores and of the shops of specialized craftsmen. The palace of Megiddo has been excavated (VII B), which is not very big: 1,650 m2; while the palace of Ugarit – which was thought to be the biggest and the richest in all Syria (LA 144 = EA 89), but may be taken as a model – was 5,000 m2. The palace, in short, was not only the house of the king but also the management centre of the whole kingdom, which was also in a sense the property of the king. More concretely, the dependence of the kingdom upon the king assumes two distinct forms, and the population is divided into two major catego- ries. We have the ‘king’s men’, who do not usually own a personal means of production, but work for the king and from him receive in return the necessities for their sustenance. Then there is the ‘free’ population (the ‘sons/children’ of the country), who have their own means of production and give the king a portion from their income in the form of taxes. The ‘king’s men’ are prevalent in the capital and live around the palace, while the free population prevails in the villages (including the ‘residual village’ in the capital, beyond the palace complex). These two categories differ in their judicial, political and functional aspects, but they are not economically homogeneous. The free population belongs typically to a middle class, families who own a little land and some cattle, enough to live and reproduce; but these may ﬁnd themselves, when the crops fail, obliged to borrow, unable to repay loans with interest and falling into debt-slavery. On the contrary, among the ‘king’s men’ there are strong socioeconomic disparities, from the military aristocracy of chario- teers (maryannu), clergy, scribes and ofﬁcers, to groups of craftsmen, traders, guards, down to slaves in the palace or in royal farms, working on land they do not own. All of these are legally servants of the king, but the form and the amount of their reward varies and comprises a range of different situations. Charioteers, scribes and traders can accumulate great wealth, especially in the form of lands given them by the king. Such lands 18 Israel’s History and the History of Israel are not formally their property, but are given in use and as such are con- ditional upon a service. But normally this service is inherited, and with it are the lands: and some people may be in a position to pay for exemption from the service. At this point, there is no difference (apart from the mem- ory of the origin and of the process of acquisition) between a farm given in concession and a family property. Around the royal palace ﬂourished a ‘high’ class of people who admin- istered the economic power, were related to the king and were much involved in military activity (especially in view of the endemic local con- ﬂicts that were encouraged by Pharaonic indifference). These cultivated heroic ideals of courage and boldness (as is clear from the poems recited at the Ugaritic court) and enjoyed luxury products (weapons and chariots, jewels and clothes), whether manufactured locally or imported from dis- tant lands through a tight network of commercial exchanges and cere- monial gifts between courts. The transmission of royal power followed the normal rules for inheri- tance. It was no longer a time when succession was ﬁxed from birth and did not generate any conﬂict; now (in the mid-second millennium) the norms were different: ‘there is (no difference between) ﬁrstborn and younger son’ and the succession goes to the one who has ‘honoured the parents’ – that is to say, who has deserved it. The kingdom is an indivisible unit and can pass to only one of the sons of the reigning king, who will chose his successor at the due time, but without preventing that after his own death the other sons could ask for a different solution. The texts from this period are full of disputes between brothers, usurpations (sometimes depicted as heroic deeds), and even instances of fratricide and parricide. Finally, something has to be said about the role of the temple. From archaeology we know several architectural types of thirteenth-century temples: the three-axial-room type, like that in Hazor (H XIII) with its rich stone decorations (the stelae called massēbôt in the Bible), the ‘tower’ type (migdāl), like those in Megiddo and Shechem, and others. But in the political setup just described, the temple had a marginal role, unlike what happened in Egypt and Babylon, or even in Anatolia. The priests are clas- siﬁed as ‘king’s men’; temples are buildings of modest dimensions, dedi- cated to the cult in a strict sense as houses of the god (ceremonies with the participation of the people took place outside), not involved in economic or commercial activities, but sometimes used for storing treasure. Cer- tainly the rituals that were celebrated mainly by the king (together with the queen, in the case of fertility rites) contributed to increasing his prestige in the eyes of his people, as proof of a correct relationship with the world of the gods, as well as giving him a certain connotation of sacredness. But the 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 19 political world seems to be the most ‘secular’ ever seen in the whole Near East up to that period. 7. Economic Prosperity and Commercial Exchange Within the country’s limited resources, palace cities of the fourteenth- thirteenth century are economically ﬂourishing and culturally productive. In the palaces there are scribal schools of the Babylonian type, required for the training of the scribes-administrators who use cuneiform writing and the Babylonian language, not only for external correspondence but also for internal administration and judicial texts. These schools are less important than those in Syria, and their level was clearly different between central and more marginal centres, to judge also from the quality of the Babylonian language used in the ‘Amarna letters, which are often crammed with ‘Canaanite’ glosses and anacolutha (syntactical irregularities). Scribal schools were also the locus of transmission of literary texts, and an effec- tive means for the diffusion of a court wisdom ‘style’, which left a few traces in Palestine, unlike Ugarit where we have a rich heritage. Luxury craftsmanship in jewellery and precious metals is documented from archaeology and textual data. Egypt exerted a strong stylistic and iconographic inﬂuence but itself often imported luxury goods from the vassal kingdoms of Palestine. Woollen clothes, dyed with purple or with coloured embroideries and applications, strongly contrasted with Egyptian clothes of white linen. Bronze weapons, bows, chariots and horses were produced in Palestine (as well as in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia) and were valued in Egypt. In particular, there was a great demand for glass, which Egyptians would buy in the coastal towns of Palestine (LA 2 = EA 314 from Yursa, 11 [= 323] from Ashkelon, 23 [= 331] from Lachish area, 100 [= 235, 327] from Akko, 122 [= 148] from Tyre), and that circulated as a partly-ﬁnished product in the form of small blocks that could be turned into coloured juglets and other objects. Within the so-called ‘regional system’ trade was intense, between Egypt and Anatolia, the Mediterranean Sea and Babylon, within areas having urban centers and state polities, where writing was in use, and where trade and political-diplomatic regulations could be drafted, so that the inevitable ﬁnancial and legal disputes could be solved according to agreed principles. Outside the system, on the Mediterranean routes (where Canaanite ship- ping was apparently barred between the Egyptian Delta and Cyprus or Crete) and on the caravan routes of the desert (which could not be fully exploited for the lack of technical means) such links were scarce (especially if compared with the different scenery of the end of the Iron Age). 20 Israel’s History and the History of Israel Figure 5. Commercial exchanges: above, Syrian merchants in Egypt; below Asiatic tribute to the Pharaoh Palestine was at the centre of these exchanges, crossed by caravans partly of local origin and partly travelling between Egypt and the ‘great kingdoms’ of Asia – Mitanni, Babylon and Assyria. Relations took place between one court and another, sometimes according to the rules of diplo- matic and ceremonial ‘gifts’, but mostly according to normal trading con- ventions. Most trade was in metals and clothing, which are subject to deterioration and recycling, so are seldom archaeologically attested. But from the recovery of wrecked ships, from iconographic data and from pre- served texts, we know there existed an extensive trade in copper (from Cyprus) and tin (probably from Iran) in which Palestinian palaces were also involved. Archaeological documentation is more extensive on the 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 21 importation of pottery. The abundantly produced Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery was partly imported for domestic use, as luxury tableware and as containers for aromatic oils, resins and even opium. On the other hand, the presence of large Canaanite jars in Egypt provides evidence of plentiful exports of olive oil. If we bear in mind that luxury goods were acquired, hoarded and ex- changed mainly in palaces, while at the same time agricultural land was being reduced and probably declining in population and in production, we can deduce that the advanced Canaanite culture of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries was the result of growing socioeconomic pressure exercised from ruling elites on the agrarian and pastoral population. In other words, the ‘centrality’ of the palace, though quite normal in this kind of socio-economic formation, did not maintain a balanced relation- ship with its territorial base, but rather introduced a deep instability that could not last for long. 8. Villages and Collective Bodies While the political and cultural centrality of the palace is beyond doubt, the majority of the population (about 80 percent, as stated earlier) lived in villages, relying on its own means of production: family-owned lands and ﬂocks of sheep and goats. We have quite scanty and limited archaeological and textual data on Palestinian villages of the Late Bronze Age; but for the same period, the Syrian archives of Alalakh and Ugarit can be used (with some caution) as a useful basis of comparison. The village was a settlement unit of modest dimension, but also a kin- ship unit and a decision-making body. As for dimensions, we may consider the Alalakh lists, where ‘villages’ (from an administrative point of view) were groups of houses – from a minimum of 2-3 to a maximum of 80, with an average of 25 houses (and 100 people). For Palestine, those num- bers should be realistically reduced by a third. The population is divided between a majority of ‘houses’ of ‘free’ farmers (h`upšu) and shepherds (Khaneans), and a minority of ‘king’s servants’ (who are not deﬁned as ‘son of X’, but as ‘belonging to X’), with the presence of maryannu only in larger villages. But let us try to describe means and instruments of local interaction. As for family relations, it is obvious that the mechanism of marriages and hereditary subdivision created a situation where everybody in a village – consisting, for example, of some 25 nuclear families – had family ties with all the others. This explains the tendency to consider the settlement unit 22 Israel’s History and the History of Israel (the village) as equivalent to a kinship unit (the ‘clan’, see §3.4) and to call the village by the name of an eponym (or, vice versa, to deduce the name of a presumed eponym from the name of a village). As for the bodies of self-government, the village had collegial (if not fully representative) bodies to deal with two kinds of events. In the ﬁrst place, there were quarrels or arguments within the village, and the neces- sity of managing all the social and judicial litigation: marriages and divorces, legacies and adoptions, sales of land and slaves, loans and guarantees, and so on. In the second place, the village was considered as an administrative unit by the palace, and as such had to answer to demands coming from the palace: quotas of goods to give as taxes, people to send in fulﬁllment of corvée service, additional soldiers whenever needed, searches for fugitives or ﬂeeing slaves, killing and robbing traders who crossed the territory of the village. In contrast with the ‘bureaucratic’ management of the palace, the village had a two-tiered management structure. The more select body was a council of ‘elders’ (šībūti) or ‘fathers’ (abbū), the most authoritative and ﬁrmly-established heads of families. Late Bronze texts attest some cases of councils of ﬁve elders, which was perhaps the minimum number for the legal validity of the decisions, more than the total number of the members. A judicial text from Ugarit (Ug., V, 141-143) exceptionally lists the name of the ‘elders’ of the village of Rabka, who were warrants for a transaction: ‘Babiyanu son of Yadudanu; Abdu and his son; Addunu his son-in-law; and the ‘chief-of-the-thousand’: this is not an example of democracy, but an afﬁrmation by the strongest clans who controlled the village. Then, besides this select body, there is the popular assembly, which Akkadian texts call ‘the meeting’ or simply ‘the city’, in which all free male adults probably took part, and which had to take extraordinary deci- sions. Finally, exclusively for dealings with the palace, there was an indi- vidual ofﬁcer, the ‘mayor’ (h``azānu), who was probably nominated, or at least approved, by the king, but lived in the village and was subject to all kinds of pressure, both from above and below. Within the village the governing principles were family ties, collegiality, solidarity (we see it from the lists of warrants and from the procedures for loans) and collective responsibility (arising, for example, from tacit com- plicity in the case of unpunished murders). Even if they were small, the villages were real systems, which the palace saw as administrative units and local cells of judicial responsibility, but which were in fact seen by those who lived there as large family groups owning and organizing the exploitation of an agro-pastoral domain. 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 23 The capital city, if we ignore the royal palace and the complex of the ‘king’s men’, was itself a village (though larger than others) and therefore had its own council of elders and popular assembly, which in cases of crisis expressed its own opinions and made its contribution in taking difﬁcult decisions, even in explicit contrast to the king’s will. The case of the expulsion from Byblos of the old king Rib-Adda is particularly dramatic, but gives a good example of the role that the ‘free’ population of the town could assume in critical moments: When Aziru took Sumura – it is Rib-Adda who informs Pharaoh – the people of Gubla saw this, and said: ‘How long shall we contain the son of Abdi-Ashirta? Our money is completely gone for the war.’ So they broke with me, but I killed them. They said, ‘How long can you go on killing us? Where will you get (other) people to populate the city?’ So I wrote to the (Egyptian) palace for troops, but no troops were given to me. Then the city said, ‘Abandon him. Let us join Aziru!’ I said, ‘How could I join him and abandon the king, my lord (the Pharaoh)?’ Then my brother spoke and swore to the city. They had a discussion and the lords of the city joined with the sons of Abdi-Ashirta (LA 138 = EA 78). Occasionally the assembly assumed political powers, but this happened only when the royal function was vacant, and only temporarily, while wait- ing for a new authority (see LA 194-95, 199, 273 [= EA 139-40, 100, 59]). We have already seen how, in normal villages, pastoral groups were part of the community, in order to manage the sheep-rearing using the method of the transhumance, which brought typical situations (called ‘dimorphic’ by anthropologists) where the same group lives either together or scattered over the territory, depending on the seasons. After the dras- tic distinction of the nineteenth century, with its evolutionary quality, between nomads and sedentary groups, a perhaps too uniﬁed vision nowadays prevails, implying almost that the same families were at the same time devoted to agricultural and pastoral activities. This agro-pastoral unity exists if we consider the village as a whole; but within it, the Alalakh lists show that the ‘houses’ of shepherds were clearly distinguished from those (more numerous) of the ordinary farmers – and indeed each kind of activity (transhumant or permanent) required specialization. Shepherds and farmers lived seasonally together and probably frequented together the ‘sacred’ sites, usually connected with ancient tombs of ancestors and ancient oaks, as places where the gods could appear and sacriﬁces could be offered to them on open-air altars. This typology is well-known from the patriarchal stories: the oak of Mamre (Gen. 13.18, 14.13, 18.1, 25.9- 10) with the tombs of Abraham and Sarah, then of Isaac (35.27) and 24 Israel’s History and the History of Israel Jacob (50.13); the oak of Moreh (12.6) where Yahweh appeared to Abra- ham, and others. These texts have been edited in much more recent times; but two texts from Ugarit (PRU, III, 109 and 131) mention already in the thirteenth century a place called the ‘oak of Sherdanu’ in the territory of the village of Ili-ishtama and Mati-Ilu, the only theophoric place names in the area: the ﬁrst, in particular, ‘God has listened’ (as in the Biblical place name Eshtemoa), was probably a place of oracular consultation or of some other divine manifestation. 9. ‘External’ Nomads But Late Bronze texts also mention real ‘external’ nomads, not given geo- graphical names but rather collective, perhaps tribal, ones: these are the Suteans of Akkadian texts and the Shasu of Egyptian texts. Their main area of activity was the southern and eastern steppes, on the margins of the desert; but some can be found also in the central highlands. Their presence was considered dangerous by who had to cross those territories: the palace had no authority over the external tribes – even if occasionally some were paid as guides or escorts. This is the picture painted by an Egyptian mes- senger (in the Anastasi I Papyrus, from the Ramesside period): (On the Maghara road) the sky is darkened by day and it is overgrown with cypresses and oaks and cedars which reach to the heavens. Lions are more numerous than leopards or bears, and it is surrounded by Shasu on every side of it… (Near the Megiddo pass) the narrow valley is dangerous with Shasu, hidden under the bushes. Some of them are four or ﬁve cubits from their noses to the heel, and ﬁerce of face. Their hearts are not mild, and they do not listen to wheedling (ANET, 477). Egyptians met the Shasu not only in crossing the mountains of Syria- Palestine, but also when the Shasu sought for refuge in Egypt in times of famine. Sometimes they did so following the normal procedures in use at the time and were accepted according to the ideology of the Pharaoh as dispenser of life, as we read in the report of a border ofﬁcer: We completed the crossing of the Shasu from Edom, through the fortress of Merenptah-hotep-her-Ma‘at in Soko, toward the pools of Per-Amun of Merenptah-hotep-her-Ma‘at in Soko, in order to let them live and to let their herds live in the land of His Majesty the good Sun of every country (ANET, 259, c. 1230). Sometimes the nomads try to enter in a hostile and unordered way, and in this case they are certainly killed: 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 25 Some foreigners, who did not know how to survive, came in ﬂight from their lands, hungry, compelled to live as the game in the desert’ (ANET, 251, c. 1300). The available texts (from contemporary archives or Egyptian celebrative inscriptions) all portray the palace’s point of view, considering nomads as external and indistinguishable entities: thus, they use collective terms and very seldom mention speciﬁc tribes by name. None of the names of the Israelite tribes recorded in biblical texts is attested in Palestine during the Late Bronze Age: the documentation is too scant, but perhaps those tribes did not yet exist as self-identifying units. We have, in fact, a mention of only two tribal groups, both connected with biblical terminology but not to the ‘classical’ names of the tribes. A stela by Seti I from Beth-Shean (c. 1289; ANET, 255) mentions conﬂicts between local groups, taking place in the area around Beth-Shean, and depicted as symptomatic of the inevi- table anarchy of the local population. The text mentions, besides the ‘h``abiru from Mount Yarmuti’, also a tribe of Raham. We may suppose that the members of this tribe called themselves ‘sons of Raham’ (*Banu- Raham) and that their eponymous ancestor was a ‘father of Raham’ (*Abu- Raham), that is, the name of the patriarch Abraham. Some decades later (c. 1230; LPAE, 292-95) a stela from Merenptah celebrates the triumph of the Pharaoh in one of his campaigns in Palestine, mentioning among vanquished enemies towns like Ashkelon and Gezer and regions like Canaan and Kharu: all these names are classiﬁed with the determinative sign for ‘land’. But one of them, Israel, is marked with the determinative for ‘people’ (and thus a tribal, non-sedentary group). This is the ﬁrst mention of the name, which is probably to be placed in the area of the central highlands. In fact the sequence of three place names Ashkelon- Gezer-Yenoam seems to be inserted in a sort of frame created by the two (broader) terms Canaan and Israel: and if Canaan is appropriately at the very beginning of the sequence, in the costal southern plan, the most probable setting for Israel is in the central highlands. ‘Abrahamites’ and ‘Israelites’ in the twelfth century were, then, pastoral groups active in the gaps within the Palestinian geopolitical system and, if not too turbulent, they were easily controlled by Egyptian military action. Finally, to Late Bronze Age nomads (most probably ‘external’ ones) have been attributed two sacred places sharing a similar square plan, both dated to the end of the thirteenth century: one near Amman (the airport area) and one in Deir ‘Alla. They are both placed outside the city and are mar- ginal or completely outside the area where the new horizon of ‘proto- 26 Israel’s History and the History of Israel Israelite’ villages (see §3.1) would develop. Their extra-urban collocation suggests that those sanctuaries could be places of meeting of nomadic groups; the hypothesis is plausible, but it should also be noted that the sites were abandoned at the beginning of Iron I, around 1150, and after that remained disused (as in the case of Amman) or were replaced by normal villages, with no sacred places (as in the case of Deir ‘Alla). 10. Socioeconomic Tensions The Late Bronze Age is a period of strong socioeconomic tensions, caused in particular by a process of indebtedness in the rural population and by the quite harsh attitude on this matter of the king and of palace aristoc- racy. Serious economic difﬁculties led ‘free’ farmers (the word h`upšu in the Babylonian language of Alalakh and Amarna corresponds to Hebrew hof šî, ‘free’) to acquire wheat in exchange for material pledges, especially lands, and then personal ones: wives and sons became slaves of the creditor, in a form of slavery that was supposed to be temporary (and as such did not change the free status of the subjects involved) but in fact became perma- nent because of the impossibility of paying the debt. The last stage, when the debtor himself had to become a slave, closed the cycle, because recov- ery of the debt was now impossible: in many cases the desperate debtor chose to escape. In previous times (Middle Bronze Age, c. 1900–1600) throughout the Syro-Mesopotamian area social and political solutions existed for this serious problem. The king assumed a ‘paternalistic’ attitude, issuing edicts for the remission of debts and liberation of enslaved debtors. Socio- juridical norms also tended to maintain property in the family, so that the alienation of lands to strangers was forbidden. In the mid-second millen- nium, those correctives ceased to be valid. The king issued no more edicts of remission – and these, in any case, had already been made useless in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries by clauses such as: ‘even in the event of an edict of remission this person cannot be redeemed’. The selling of land became normal, though it was necessary to use the expedient of ‘false adoptions’, in which the adoptee gave to the adopter a sum of money to acquire his possessions after his death, in place of natural heirs. More generally, the model of kingship lost its paternalistic features and assumed an entrepreneurial ﬂavour, the king and the court trying to defend their role as major creditors and beneﬁciaries of the system of debt slavery. Indebted farmers had no choice but to ﬂee, at ﬁrst in bordering states, but then (after the introduction of treaties for the capture and restitution 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 27 of fugitives between bordering states: see ANET, 531-32) towards places where the control was more difﬁcult, such as forested mountains and fringe desert steppes. There, groups of refugees could organize themselves and somehow coexist with local clans of shepherds. Such persons, uprooted from their own social context and resettled elsewhere, are called h`abiru (we have already encountered several texts where this term is attested): the word has clearly an etymological and semantic connection with most ancient attestations of the term ‘Hebrew’ (‘ibrî), before it assumed an ethnic connotation. The ‘Amarna letters contain many denunciations of the turbulent activities of the h`abiru by local kings, and the term soon lost its technical meaning of ‘fugitive’ to become a synonym of ‘enemy’, in the sense of ‘outlaw’, ‘rebel against legitimate authority’. In some cases, even kings and members of the ruling class were called h`abiru if they were forced to leave their position and run away: this proves the depreciation in the value of the term: The king of Hazor has abandoned his house and has aligned himself with the h`abiru. May the king know, about these fellows, these traitors, who will turn the land of the king into h`abiru land (LA 122 = EA 148, from Tyre). The h`abiru have raided Khazi, a city of the king, my lord, but we did battle against them, and we defeated them. Then 40 h`abiru went to Aman- khatpi (the king of a city nearby), and Aman-khatpi welcomed whoever had escaped. And they were gathered together in the city. (In so doing,) Aman-khatpi himself became a h`abiru! We heard that the h`abiru were with Aman-khatpi, so my brothers and my sons, your servants, drove by chariot to Aman-khatpi. My brothers said to Aman-khatpi, ‘Hand over the h`abiru, traitors of the king, our lord, so we can ask them whether they have captured the cities of the king, my lord, and burnt them down.’ He agreed to hand over the h`abiru, but then, during the night, he took them with him, and he ﬂed himself to the h`abiru (LA 228 = EA 185, from the Lebanese Beq‘a). But most of the h`abiru were of modest social origins, ﬂeeing more for eco- nomic than political reasons. They found refuge in bordering states (Nuzi texts, fifteenth century) or in marginal areas, where they often acted in association with nomads (Suteans), serving as mercenary troops or prac- tising banditry (see LA 210 and 271 [= EA 195 and 318]). Those ‘interface’ activities with the palace sector imply that a symbiosis between h`abiru and nomads was operating even (and maybe more so) in everyday life. The most alarmed among the Cananean kings feared that indebted farmers (h`upšu) still living in their towns could also make an alliance with the h`abiru and that bloody rebellions could occur as a result: 28 Israel’s History and the History of Israel If farmers desert, h`abiru will take the town (LA 135 = EA 74, from Byblos). What am I, who live among h`abiru, to do? If now are no provisions from the king for me, my peasantry is going to rebel (LA 187 = EA 130, from Byblos). Some cases were recalled in fear, where kings had been killed during such uprisings: The h`abiru killed Aduna, the king of Irqata…and just now the men of Ammiya have killed their lord. I am afraid (LA 136 = EA 75). I am afraid the peasantry will strike me down (LA 137 = EA 77). As for the mayors, their own cities kill them. They are like dogs, and there is no one who pursues them (i.e. the rebels) (LA 187 = EA 130, all from Byblos). It may be mentioned, in particular, the attempt made by the chief (of tribal origin) of Amurru, Abdi-Ashirta. He wanted to use this milieu of exasper- ated farmers, refugees and disbanded people to create an ambitious politi- cal project of a ‘revolutionary’ ﬂavour that would completely overthrow the system based on Egyptian presence and royal authority: All my villages – Rib-Adda king of Byblos is speaking – that are in the mountains or along the sea have become h`abiru. Left to me are Byblos and two towns. After taking Shiqata for himself, Abdi-Ashirta said to the men of Ammiya, ‘Kill your leaders and then you will be like us and at peace’. They acted according to his words, and became like h`abiru. So now Abdi- Ashirta has written to the troops: ‘Assemble in the temple of Anat, and then let us fall upon Byblos. Look, there is no one that will save it from us. Then let us drive out the kings from the country, and let the entire country become h`abiru. Let an oath be made to the entire country. Then will (our) sons and daughters be at peace forever. Should even the king come out, the entire country will be against him and what will he do to us?’ Accord- ingly, they have made an alliance among themselves and, accordingly, I am very, very afraid that there is no one who can save me from them (LA 135 = EA 74). The severe attitude of Canaanite kings towards economic matters caused a general disaffection for the palace by the population of the agro-pastoral base. If we add to this diffused tendency the damages caused by the indif- ference of the Pharaoh about local conﬂicts and quite explicit signals about recurrent famines, demographic crises and the restriction of inhabited and exploited agricultural areas, we have a picture of serious difﬁculty for Syro-Palestinian (but especially Palestinian) society towards the end of Late Bronze Age. These elements of crisis are warning signals of the ﬁnal 1. Palestine in the Late Bronze Age 29 crisis of the Bronze Age, a large-scale phenomenon that will involve in different forms most of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. A crisis of these proportions could not be solved without a reorganization that would create an equal impact. Part I A NORMAL HISTORY Chapter 2 THE TRANSITION (TWELFTH CENTURY) 1. A Multifactor Crisis Whether positively or negatively inﬂuenced by the biblical narrative, mod- ern scholars (archaeologists as well as biblical scholars) have suggested unequivocal yet strongly contrasting theories about Israel’s origins. Even when properly understood as merely one feature in the huge epochal crisis of transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age, the case of Israel continued to receive special attention and more detailed explanation. The historical process has been reconstructed several times, and here it will be sufﬁcient to recall the main theories suggested over the years. (1) The theory of a ‘military’ conquest, concentrated and destructive, inspired by the biblical account, is still asserted in some traditional circles (especially in United States and Israel), but today is considered marginal in scholarly discussion. (2) The idea of a progressive occupation, currently widespread in two vari- ants that are more complementary than mutually exclusive: the settlement of pastoral groups already present in the area and inﬁltration from desert fringe zones. (3) Finally, the so-called ‘sociological’ theory of a revolt of farmers, which totally prioritizes a process of internal development with- out external inﬂuence; after initial consent during the 70s and 80s this has been less widely accepted, sometimes for overt political reasons. The dif- ferent theories are usually set one against the other, yet all of them should be considered in creating a multifactored explanation, as required by a complex historical phenomenon. If we compare Late Bronze Age Palestinian society with that of the early Iron Age, some factors are particularly striking: (1) notable innovations in technology and living conditions, which mark a distinct cultural break and are diffused throughout the whole Near Eastern and Mediterranean area; (2) elements of continuity, especially in material culture, that make it impossible to conclude that this new situation was mostly brought about by newcomers arriving from elsewhere (while real immigrants, the Philis- tines, display cultural features perfectly coherent with their foreign origin); 2. The Transitio

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