« Someone Else With Abnormal Interests
Main
Alun Salt Has a Big Theological Problem »
September 3, 2007
Another Inscribed Liver Model from Hazor
Among the ancients cites in Canaan, only Taanach has produced more clay tablets than Hazor. And yet no large archive has be found anywhere in the area. If one is to be found, Hazor is among the very best candidate locations. But tablets are found, one here, another there, and today Ran Shapira reported in Haaretz the discovery of a tablet from Hazor. It is an inscribed liver model. The article reports that the style of the writing is similar to the cuneiform (not "hieroglyphics" as the article calls it) from Middle Bronze Age Mari tablets, in other words, Old Babylonian.
This is not the first inscribed liver model found at Hazor. Horowitz and Takayoshi, 66-68, describe two liver model fragments from about the same period. Exact dating is not possible. Horowitz and Oshima make an important observation about the two liver models they re-publish.
Hazor 2-3 preserve apodoses of omens without written protases, but it is clear that the apodoses relate to features present on the model.
I don't know if this is the case with the liver model found during this summer's work at Hazor, but in the case of Hazor 2 and 3, the models themselves provide the protases for the deductive omens. To use Hazor 2:a as an example, "(If one sees this on a liver then) a king will subjugate a king" with only the apodoses actually written.
Such inscribed liver models could have been used to train scribes, diviners or both. According to Horowitz and Oshima, 67, three un-inscribed liver models also come from Hazor.
Does this have anything to do with my suggestion about an echo of divination in a particular Hebrew expression? No, really not. These liver models from Hazor are of the order of a 1000 years too old to have much influence on the passages where one finds מַשְׁתִּין בְּקִיר in Hebrew. All that can be said is that the culture of divination is old and persistent in the Near East.
The Haaretz article goes on to talk about the destruction of Hazor at the end of the Bronze Age, the association of an Iron Age gate at Hazor with the building activities of Solomon and the destruction of Hazor by Tiglath Pileser III in 732 BCE. Only the last is without controversy. While no one knows who destroyed the city at the end of the Bronze Age, the "Israelites" are the weakest of several candidates. Mounting evidence for a low chronology continues to undermine the long held view that certain building activities at Hazor, Megiddo and Gezer are to be associated with Solomon. At best, one should indicate that this idea is under extreme pressure on several fronts. The article fails to make this point.
Will an archive be found next year at Hazor?
Via Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica.com
Reference:
Posted by Duane Smith at September 3, 2007 10:22 AM | Read more on Akkadian |
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.telecomtally.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2239