Given this state of affairs, Silvia Ferrara, a research fellow at the University of La Sapienza in Rome, has decided that a new approach to the study of the Cypro–Minoan script is needed.  Rather than joining those in the field who have given in to what the author calls “the frequent, and at times obstinate, urge to decipher” Cypro–Minoan, Ferrara’s contribution ”focuses on ways of understanding an undeciphered script, without attempting to decipher it” (p. 1).  This “holistic approach” to understanding an unreadable script in every way but that which may be most obvious – by reading it – includes considering “its historical, archaeological, epigraphical, and paleographical” context (preface, p. i).

Though such an approach may seem counterintuitive on the surface (after all, what point is there to studying writing if gaining an ability to read it is neither possible nor a goal?), a study of this type is actually long overdue. Writing in 1989, Thomas Palaima, an expert in Aegean scripts and prehistory, called for “a unified and standardized corpus of Cypro–Minoan inscriptions that will allow us to see the whole script and its various clases of inscriptions…in a clear historical context,” saying that “until this is done, [scholars studying Cypro–Minoan] shall continue to be plagued by piecemeal readings, guesses, and speculation.”* Ferrara’s study, a revision and initial publication of her doctoral dissertation (University College London, 2005), is an attempt to provide just that context.

CYPRO–MINOAN INSCRIPTIONS is broken up into three parts, which are subdivided into six total chapters, with the one-chapter Part Three, “Beyond Decipherment” (pp. 267–274) serving as a summation and forward-looking conclusion.  Part one, “Function, Object, and Context” (pp. 7–148), deals with the subject of literacy in Late Bronze Age Cyprus (pp. 9–42) and writing in the LC I–III (pp. 43–148) from an archaeological perspective, with special emphasis on LC IIIA, the “floruit” of Cypro–Minoan writing (p. 90).  Though constrained by the aforementioned limitations of the corpus, Ferrara uses the most current information to “frame the emergence and development of Cypro–Minoan” and “assess the geographical distribution of the script” (p. 17) in an effort to reconstruct a proposed spatial and temporal diffusion of literacy and writing on Cyprus.

While inscriptions have been found at all of the island’s key coastal cities, as well as several inland sites, the greatest number have been recovered from Enkomi, Kition, Kalavassos–Ayios Dhimitrios, and Hala Sultan Tekke on the southern and eastern shores of Cyprus (p. 21, Fig. 1.1).  Of these, Enkomi stands head and shoulders above all other sites, with 133 of the 243 total inscriptions, or 55.2%, having been found there (p. 20, Table 1.2).  Of the 133 inscriptions found there, 84 are clay boules, which, Ferrara writes, “seem to be a literacy carrier peculiarly characteristic of Enkomi” (p. 21), and though she cautions against the use of this fact as reinforcement of the frequent assumption that Enkomi occupied the pinnacle of a hierarchy of Cypriot sites in the Late Bronze Age, the author does refer to Enkomi as “the earliest user and producer of writing,” a “status [which] bears direct implications for its role in the adaptation of the script and its significance as a political strategy” (p. 27).

The author’s classification of the artifacts bearing Cypro–Minoan inscriptions is a significant contribution to the field. The overwhelming majority of previous literature as focused almost entirely on the inscribed tablets found at Enkomi and at Ugarit, despite those tablets making up merely 4.2% of the corpus, while the inscribed boules which Ferrara dedicates a portion of her discussion to make up 40.8% (pp. 27, 30). Further, it is impossible to know whether, and in what numbers, inscriptions on perishable materials were made (cf. p. 148).  The appearance of painted signs on Aegean vases in funerary deposits at Enkomi, as well as an ostrakon, demonstrate that the script could in fact be painted at times (p. 173).

While on one hand the lacuna in our knowledge created by the absence of perishable texts from the corpus could stem from a practice of not writing on such materials, on the other hand it could easily lead to a significant misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the use and distribution of Cypro–Minoan writing.   To cite a relevant example, if the inscriptions found in the Nile floodplain – which is unsuitable for the preservation of papyri – were the only evidence we possessed for Egyptian writing, it would be only natural to assume that Egyptian hieroglyphic script was used almost exclusively on rock and other permanent materials (and that hieratic and demotic, two scripts intended for ink-on-papyrus use, were almost nonexistent in ancient Egyptian scribal culture).  While many extant Cypro–Minoan inscriptions may have been administrative in nature, the number that has survived are only a small fraction of the total number of records that would likely have been required in the administration of such an economically active island as Cyprus.  Ferrara compares the island’s economic and administrative records to the Linear B tablets of Mycenaean Greece, noting that, had Linear B tablets at Pylos not been baked in the fire that consume that palatial center, they likely would not have been preserved.  The author suggests that the Cypriot economy may have been administered similarly, with its records inscribed on perishable materials or otherwise not intended for long–term preservation (p. 148).

Part Two, “Inscription and Signary” (pp. 149–264), pairs an in–depth review of the epigraphic presentation of the extant inscriptions (pp. 149–213) with a critique of the paleography, or shift in sign–shapes over time, of the Cypro–Minoan script (p. 214–264).  Ferrara’s discussion of epigraphy addresses head–on the fragmentation that seems to be inherent in the studies of this script, to which she says, “somewhat paradoxically, the material looks graphically fragmented because it is assumed to be fragmented” (p. 270).   The result of the author’s attempt to address that fragmentation is a wholesale revision of the traditional tripartite classification of Cypro–Minoan, which had been thought to accurately depict “three different subsets of inter–related, but not identical, scripts” (p. 271), referred to as CM 1, 2, and 3.  Though she acknowledges that “there was never such a thing as a single [Cypriot writing] tradition, constant and uniform throughout” (p. 213), Ferrara states that her study “came to conclude that in all likelihood [the] dissolution [of the tripartite division] represents a compelling consequence deriving from a contextual study of the script and its inscriptions,” on “paleographical…, epigraphic, statistical, geographical, and typological grounds” (p. 271).

The paleographic discussion is similarly well–laid–out, if less challenging of scholarly convention.  As the author herself notes, “the paleography of the Cypro–Minoan script admittedly deserves a monograph of its own, because the script is inordinately rich in graphic variations, segmental minutiae, and diversions from what we would be keen to recognize as ‘normalized’ signs.”  However, this study addresses several relevant paleographic questions, such as the previously insufficiently explored question of the “diachronic variability of sign-shapes,” or whether alteration in the script’s signs is a natural and inevitable process or whether “graphic conservatism [is] imposed from above” (p. 270).  While she is unable to answer that question, Ferrara successfully lays the groundwork for its further consideration, as well as for the consideration of several other questions surrounding the script, its use, uniformity, and development, and the influence of other languages and writing systems (both Aegean and Near Eastern) upon its adoption and use, as well as what phonological carry–over there may have been from the Cypro–Minoan of the Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age encoding of the Greek language in Cypriot script (pp. 272–273).

FERRARA’S STUDY BUILDS on the current momentum shift in Cypro–Minoan studies, which has moved efforts away from pure decipherment and toward the construction of ”the first fundamental grounds upon which to base…future study” (p. 1).  In doing so, the author appears to restrict her discussion to those inscriptions whose Cypro–Minoan provenience is secure, which has necessarily resulted in the omission of some potentially related inscription.  For example, no mention is made of the ostrakon and inscribed jar handles from Early Iron Age Ashkelon, which may demonstrate either the use or the appropriation of the Cypro–Minoan script by the city’s Philistine inhabitants.** However, this is not necessarily a negative; by omitting those instances which are not certain to reflect this specific script (and the still unknown language it represents),*** the author ensures that the scope of her study remains tightly focused, and that the foundation she is attempting to build for future study of the Cypro–Minoan script is solidly grounded in that which we do know for certain at the present.

While some recent academic texts have been released with what seems to be little regard on the part of the publisher for quality or durability, the quality of this volume’s printing is commensurate with its content – a plus in a volume whose price tag will likely limit the majority of its circulation to libraries, but whose utility will cause multiple students and scholars to make use of their libraries’ copies of the book.  While Cypro–Minoan Inscriptions is a resource of unquestionable value on its own, this work was designed to be used in tandem with a forthcoming second volume containing a comprehensive photographic presentation of the entire known corpus (Cypro–Minoan Inscriptions, Volume 2: Corpus, Oxford University Press).  Upon the second volume’s release, currently scheduled for November 2012, Ferrara’s comprehensive and groundbreaking study of the script will likely prove to have even greater value for students and scholars alike whose research involves either the island of Cyprus or the greater Eastern Mediterranean world as a whole in the Late Bronze Age.

Cypro–Minoan Inscriptions, Volume I: Analysis by Silvia Ferrara (ISBN 0199607575; 336 pages; $125) is published by Oxford University Press.

* T. G. Palaima, “Cypro–Minoan Scripts: Problems of Historical Context,” in Y. Duhoux, T. G. Palaima, and J. Bennett (eds.), Problems in Decipherment (Louvain–la–Neuve: Peeters, 1989), 162.
** F. M. Cross and L. E. Stager, “Cypro–Minoan Inscriptions found in Philistine Ashkelon,” Israel Exploration Journal 56:2, 129–159.
*** N. Hirschfeld, “Cypro–Minoan,” in E. H. Cline (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 379, for example, considers the evidence of the Ashkelon inscriptions in particular to be unconvincing at present.

The site in question is el–Ahwat, a 7.5–acre “city” near Nahal ‘Iron in northern Israel, and the archaeologist is the University of Haifa’s Adam Zertal.  A scholar whose previous accomplishments include the exhaustive two–volume, 1,400–page Manasseh Hill Country Survey publication (Brill, 2004, 2007), Zertal’s most recent work has the paradoxical status of being both long–awaited and almost entirely unheralded.  Since 2001, the author has written in various publications about his belief that el–Ahwat housed a community of Sherden, a ‘Sea Peoples’ group known primarily from 13th to 11th century Egyptian records (as well as from some 14th century Ugaritic texts) which are believed by some to have originated on the island of Sardinia in the central Mediterranean.

If correct, this interpretation of el–Ahwat would provide direct evidence for a number of firsts in LBA Mediterranean scholarship.  One example of many is el–Ahwat’s potential status as the first testament to direct contact between the central Mediterranean and the Levant during this period (based on current evidence, the exchange that did take place between eastern and central Mediterranean was likely facilitated by Cypriot or Mycenaean seafarers).  Another is el–Ahwat’s potential to serve as the only confirmed site of non-Philistine ‘Sea Peoples’ settlement in the Levant, while striking a blow against the prevailing scholarly views that the ‘Sea Peoples’ were largely Aegeo-Anatolian in culture and origin, and that they settled in coastal areas that allowed for access to the Mediterranean Sea.  However, Zertal’s theories about the site’s significance and its inhabitants’ origin have either been largely ignored, or viewed with a detached skepticism until the full results of the excavation were published.

With El–Ahwat: A Fortified Site from the Early Iron Age Near Nahal ‘Iron, Israel (Brill, 2011), the full results of the seven–season excavation are now available, and the site can be independently studied – as can Zertal’s theories about its inhabitants and its significance.  The methodically-organized, 27-chapter publication contains over 200 figures, and is comprised of four parts: Stratigraphy, Architecture, and Chronology; The Finds; Economy and Environment; and Conclusions.  Though each of the former three contains a valuable detailed review of finds and conclusions related to its subject matter, these portions of the work sometimes feel as though as though they are serving in large part to lay the defensive groundwork for Part Four, wherein Zertal uses the fully published site information to defend the conclusions about the site that he has been writing about for the last decade.

EL–AHWAT IS LOCATED on the flat shoulder of a ridge ¾ mi. south of the Nahal ‘Iron (Egyptian Arunah, the ancient route between Egypt and the heavily contested Jezreel Valley in northern Israel), where it overlooks the Sharon plain, the Carmel range, and the western Samarian hills.  Established on virgin soil, the view to the north, west, and south provided by el–Ahwat’s location may have provided a strategic benefit that outweighed poor resources like a lack of water sources and arable soil (pp. 25, 428).  The site has two strata, a late Roman and Byzantine period in which el–Ahwat was used as a farmstead (p. 41), and a brief (50 to 60 years in duration [p. 262]) second stratum which the excavator dates from the late 13th to the early 12th centuries based on pottery, seals and scarabs (Ch. 14; pp. 233–263, and an beautiful ivory ibex head (Ch. 16; pp. 288–294).  His terminus ante quem for the site’s inhabitation is a scarab bearing the royal title of the 20th Dynasty pharaoh Ramesses III (1183–1152 BC [p. 53]); the eight other scarabs found at the site date to the 19th Egyptian Dynasty (1298–1187 BC).  The chronology of the site will be dealt with in greater detail below.

The site yielded few restorable ceramic finds (Ch. 12), a fact which for which the excavator credits both the abandonment of el–Ahwat by its Stratum II inhabitants, and the leveling of that lower stratum for Roman-Byzantine  use (p. 181).  However, though lacking in volume, the site’s ceramic assemblage contained several forms, including bowls (open, straight-sided, and open carinated), kraters, jugs, cooking bowls and jugs, jars, beer jugs, collared-rim pithoi (which may have been used for storing water gathered from the nearest source 1/2 km. away[pp. 424, 428]), as well as chalices, one incense burner and one oil lamp.  All of the pottery at el-Ahwat has parallels in the Levant, though in Ch. 14, Baruch Brandl notes that el-Ahwat is only the third site in the Carmel Ridge where collared-rim jars have been found together with New Kingdom scarabs (p. 263).  The bell-shaped bowls (p. 186), a form associated with Late Helladic pottery and with the intrusive Philistine culture, were of the locally-made, northern Phoenician variety; likewise, the pierced loomweights found at the site (p. 200) follow in the standard Levantine tradition, rather than being of the rolled and unbaked style associated with the Cypro-Aegean Philistines and other ‘Sea Peoples’.

El–Ahwat is architecturally divided into four Areas, or “quarters,” A through E (A and B are portions of the same “quarter), with “quarter walls” running between each section.  Area A contained the city’s gate (a small, thin door mounted on a doorpost [p. 62]), a terrace with an administrative complex (Complex 100 [p. 79]), and a unique isosceles triangle-shaped “approach” to the city gate, which Zertal and chapter co-author Ron Be’eri reconstruct as having a  small opening to the outside at the base of the left leg, then allowing traffic to widen within the approach before funneling into the gated entrance at the triangle’s pinnacle (pp. 62-64).  Area C contained a 510 sq m residential complex (which chapter author Nivrit Lavie–Alon notes is “among the largest continuous quarters exposed by Israeli archaeology” [p. 124]), within which two oil presses were found in addition to valuable small finds, including several scarabs.  A furnace, possibly for iron forging (p. 383) was found in Area D, along with two free-standing corbeled-roof “huts” or silos, which chapter author Amit Romano suggests may indicate its status as “the center for an industrial craft or some sort of metal processing” (p. 157).  Due to a lack of material finds other than walls, chapter author Lavrie–Alon suggests that Area E was used as an enclosure for livestock (p. 161).

It is the architectural perimeter of the site that has most contributed to the excavator’s conclusions about its purpose and its inhabitants.  El–Ahwat is quite irregular in shape, with an “undulating” (p. 32), somewhat–ovular “city wall” encircling it in wavy fashion.  This wall contains several large rock mounds that the author refers to as “towers” despite their unclear function (p. 38) and the likelihood that few actually served as such (save perhaps T1 and T2, which sit outside the wall to the west, and T53, which is built into the eastern portion of Area D), and has built into its structure four of what Zertal identifies as “corridors” (p. 412).  In addition to these corridors, several “igloo-like stone huts” which the author identifies as “false-domed tholoi” are either free-standing constructions or are built into the wall itself (such as U409 in Tower 53 [Area D], which is entered by one of the “corridors” [p. 413]).  For Zertal, these corridors and tholoi combine with the outer wall to give el–Ahwat its greatest uniqueness and significance.

IF PARTS 1–3 OF this volume lay the groundwork for Zertal’s defense of his theories about the site, Part Four does not disappoint, as the author uses the majority of the final section to argue for Sardinian influence on, and Sherden inhabitation at, el–Ahwat.  To the author’s eye, “the plan of el–Ahwat differs from anything known elsewhere in the Levant.  Judging by its design and unique features, the architects of el–Ahwat seem to have planned the site according to a master plan based on earlier architectural traditions” (p. 28).  It is the location the author sees as being the origin of these “earlier architectural traditions,” and the conclusions he draws from it, that make el–Ahwat a controversial site, and this final report a controversial publication.

Zertal compares the site’s “undulating” wall, corridors, tholoi, inner dividing walls, and free-standing corbeled stone “huts” (U409 and U461), to the proto–nuraghe of Bronze Age Sardinia and the 13th century BC Toreenic Culture of neighboring Corsica (pp. 415–423), and suggests that this architectural style was brought to the Levant by immigrants from the central Mediterranean.  The corrid Though he has previously stipulated that a lack of other diagnostic finds, such as Sardinian pottery, means the journey was likely circuitous and time–consuming enough that it resulted in acculturation to some degree along the way, this remains an issue for Zertal’s conclusions, as the material culture of el–Ahwat is entirely Canaanite in nature (with Egyptian small finds included), blending hill country and lowland traditions in a site that, save for the meandering outer wall with its corridors, is largely typical of northern Canaan in the Iron I.  This stands in marked contrast to the Philistine material culture footprint (to date, the only known ‘Sea Peoples’ material culture), which consists not only of site architecture, but of intrusive ceramic, cultic, and domestic traditions that prove beyond doubt the presence of an intrusive culture at their major sites.

The wall itself is another question.  While it may be that Zertal is correct, and the site’s 600 m long, 6 m high, and 5 m thick wall may have served, along with its “towers,” as massive fortifications, he acknowledges that it appears to have been “built in ‘patches’ and ‘sections’” (p. 412), a possible indicator that this structure is neither as cohesive nor as temporally constrained as the author imagines it to be.  As the remains of the city wall rise above the entirety of the site’s second (Iron Age) stratum, it is possible that what appears now to be the remnant of a massive fortification was constructed as a retaining wall or terrace during the Roman-Byzantine occupation in Stratum I, and the awkward contouring of rooms to the wall lacks the appearance of planned construction.  This can particularly be seen on the western edge of Area C1, where a small unnamed and evidently unused gap appears north of W4313, and where L3328 appears to be a much larger gap between the area’s architecture and the wall.  In the western portion of Area D, “quarter wall” 3410 appears to intrude on the area’s architecture (cf. p. 47), and the unique “approach” in Area A2 seems too awkward – and too likely to have caused logjams between the outer and inner entrances – to have been a planned feature of the Iron Age city.  Further, Tel Aviv archaeologist Israel Finkelstein has pointed out that the “corridors” in the wall are comparable to well–known highland field towers used for storage and for habitation (IEJ 52: 189).

The issue of the Sherden is more theoretical in nature (their association with Sardinia is itself solely the result of linguistic resemblance), but Zertal dedicates a portion of Part Four to reviewing some of the evidence for their presence and activity in the Near East at this time.  Unfortunately, he provides an incomplete selection and a selective interpretation of that evidence, choosing to read it in the way that best supports his theory while ignoring those portions that detract from his point.  On p. 431 he references the Papyrus Harris I, which lists the Sherden among the invading ‘Sea Peoples’ defeated by Ramesses III and supposedly settled in Egyptian fortresses at home or in Canaan.  However, P. Harris I is a much later account of the Year 8 invasion, and the inscription at Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu, which was written at least twenty years earlier (and only a few years after the event itself) contains no mention of the Sherden among the sea or land invaders.

On pp. 432–433, Zertal references the Onomasticon of Amenope, an 1100 BC list of peoples and places in the Near East that mentions three Philistine cities followed by three ‘Sea Peoples’ groups (Sherden, Sikil, and Philistines), as evidence that Ramesses III had settled the Sherden to the north of Philistia and of the port city of Dor, which the contemporary Tale of Wen–Amon refers to as the “Harbor of the Sikil.”  However, the Onomasticon is a cryptic text which is filled with lacunae, and which contains almost no context regarding the orientation or ordering of its toponyms and ethnika, thus making any attempt to use it as a map of ‘Sea Peoples’ settlements a risky endeavor at best.  Any effort to securely place non–Philistine ‘Sea Peoples’ anywhere in Canaan is difficult at best, as no material culture template is currently available for the other members of this seafaring coalition.  The Sherden are no different; the centuries of evidence for their presence in Egypt are complemented by an almost total lack of evidence for their presence in Canaan, aside from three possible mentions in letters from the 14th century.

THE CHRONOLOGY OF the site, as noted above, is also problematic – a fact Zertal et al address directly.  Though the authors of this volume put the ceramic and glyptic evidence from el–Ahwat firmly in the late 13th and early 12th centuries, recent radiocarbon analysis of olive pits from the site returned a date range of 1057–952 BC, suggesting that the dates of inhabitation should be lowered by two hundred years.  Even if the early date of 1057 is considered as the final year of the site’s inhabitation, the 50–60 year duration of the site’s inhabitation proposed by Zertal et al would put el–Ahwat’s founding in the final quarter of the 12th century – at least a half century short of the author’s proposed terminus ante quem for the site.

In Ch. 3, Zertal argues that the 14C dates should be ignored on the basis of what he sees as a close correlation between the material finds and corresponding Egyptian archaeology, as the latter is firmly enough known to be impervious to radiocarbon results from a small site in central Israel.  In doing so, he rejects the possibility that the Egyptian objects found at the site, which date to the 14th–12th centuries, were brought to el–Ahwat at a later date as amulets or objects of other perceived value (though even if the site was founded in the late 13th century, some of the Egyptian objects found there would already have been a century old or more at the time of their arrival).  Instead, he argues – on the basis of continue olive cultivation in the vicinity after inhabitation had ceased – that the olive pits selected for testing “could have been introduced there at any time after the site was abandoned in the 12th century BCE” (p. 53).

El–Ahwat’s potential Sardinian connection brings with it another chronological problem.  While the construction of hybrid, “Canaanized” proto–nuraghe could have been carried out by individuals who had traveled to Sardinia in the Late Bronze II and brought that “template” back with them to the Levant, Zertal argues that the small number of sites fitting el–Ahwat’s mold makes this unlikely, writing that “this…possibility is much less plausible for the simple reason that their presence is limited to only four or five sites in 13th–12th century Canaan.  Such limited influence is better explained by ‘colonies’ of immigrants, who brought with them some of their old traditions, rather than by influence derived through trade” (p. 423).  However, proto–nuraghe of the type that Zertal suggests el–Ahwat’s fortifications were patterned after date to the 18th–16th centuries BC; following this time, in the early–middle Nuragic period, there is little evidence on Sardinia of foreign contacts.  While communication with the wider Mediterranean, including the Aegean and Cyprus, grew rapidly in the LB II, Sardinians traveling abroad at this time who sought to build settlements similar to the nuraghe of their home island would likely have constructed the corbel–vaulted nuragic type dwellings which were being made in Sardinia at that time, rather than the “false–domed tholoi” Zertal suggests were built at el–Ahwat.

Interestingly absent from this volume is any discussion of Zertal’s theory that el–Ahwat was the biblical Harosheth Haggoyim, the base of the Canaanite King Jabin’s nine–hundred–strong chariotry under the command of Sisera in the biblical story of Deborah (Judges 4–5).  In a 2010 press release, Zertal championed the possible identification of a chariot linchpin fragment from Area A3 as “[proof] that chariots belonging to high-ranking individuals were found” at el–Ahwat, despite its remote, rugged location, and as evidence “that this was Sisera’s city of residence and that it was from there that the chariots set out on their way to the battle against the Israelite tribes.”

In this site report, by contrast, the only mentions of chariots in the entire volume (by my count) were made in Ch. 17, which deals with the possible linchpin fragment.  The bronze shard in the shape of a female head, which at 2 cm high, 1.6 cm wide, and only 3 mm thick is far thinner, if only slightly smaller in surface area, than the 10 mm thick chariot linchpins from 11th- and 10th-century Ekron and Ashdod that chapter author Oren Cohen uses as comparanda.  As a result of this fragment’s relative frailty, Cohen writes, “it is difficult to establish whether the linchpin…was used for a full-scale chariot or was part of a smaller, cultic feature” (p. 300).  In all, this volume deals with Zertal’s theories about el–Ahwat’s Sardinian connection in a much more measured fashion than some of his previous publications have.  Cohen’s sober analysis of the bronze fragment fits well with the tone of a final excavation report, but it stands in sharp contrast to Zertal’s previous statements about the site and about this particular artifact.

THE FINAL PUBLICATION of the el–Ahwat excavations is valuable for its straightforward presentation of the architecture and material culture of this short-lived site.  Though several passages in the volume can be read as defenses of Zertal’s conclusions about the site’s influences and chronology, the finds are allowed to speak for themselves to a sufficient degree that scholars will be able to draw their own conclusions about el–Ahwat from the material itself, rather than simply from the excavator’s assertions (as had previously been the case with this site).

Further, whether the site truly represents an architectural link with the central Mediterranean and the first material evidence of non–Philistine ‘Sea Peoples’ settlement in the Levant or not, el–Ahwat is a unique site in many ways, not least of which are its remote location (far from water, arable soil, and traveled roads [pp. 413, 435]) and its brief Iron Age duration, which allows it to serve as a rare single-stratum snapshot of settlement (or, in Zertal’s words, a “‘time capsule’…of the period” [p. 3]).  As such, though its legacy may be that of an outside-the-mainstream argument for ‘Sea Peoples’ settlement in the Levant, and though its steep price will confine its circulation almost exclusively to research libraries, this final publication of el–Ahwat will hold great value for those studying settlement, architecture, and change in the hill country culture of Iron Age Canaan.

El–Ahwat: A Fortified Site from the Early Iron Age Near Nahal ‘Iron, Israel, edited by Adam Zertal (ISBN 978–9004176454; 485 pages; $185), is published by Brill.

Introduction

The purpose of “A Statue of a ‘Triton’ from Gaza,” by Labib Habachi, was to explore, using close observation and consideration of historical sources, whether an artifact discovered in Gaza could be a representation of Dāgôn, the biblical deity of the early Iron Age (late second millennium BC) Philistines whose temple was mentioned in Judges 16:21-23.  The object in question, a 65 cm (25.5 in.) high basalt statue of a bearded male form with a human torso and head, but with fish tails in place of human legs, was the only one of its kind ever to be “found either in Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine.”  Confiscated from a private residence in Gaza in March 1953, the object, referred to in the article as the “Massâ^cîd statue” or the “triton of Massâ^cîd,” was originally discovered in a well in the village of Massâ^cîd, approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) south of Gaza.

The author’s hypothesis was that this statue, which was dated stylistically to the Hellenistic period, was somehow connected to Philistine Dāgôn, perhaps being a Greco-Roman “rendering” of “the power of the old Oriental god Dāgôn,” or having been “set up in a Hellenistic successor of the Philistine Dāgôn temple at Gaza.”  The brief attempt was then made to support this hypothesis by invoking historical descriptions of Dāgôn and tying them, wherever possible, to the Massâ^cîd statue.  Though the author performed a detailed, if cursory, close observation of the object, the article’s discussion of the statue’s possible status as a late representation of Philistine Dāgôn suffered from a lack of objectivity, instead being colored by an apparent desire on the part of the writer to make the available historical and archaeological evidence support his desired outcome.

Methodology

The method of close observation was used to describe the Massâ^cîd statue in detail, from the “four separate curls” on its beard, to the direction of the remaining piece of left arm, to the inlaid eyes.  Three clearly labeled grayscale images of the statue – front, back, and three-quarter view – were presented along with the description.  Following this, the author ventured into the realm of interpretation, beginning with the statement that, “The question arises whether this statue could represent the…principal god of the town, Dāgôn.”

In order to test this hypothesis, the author drew on select historical mentions of Dāgôn as a Gazan deity, all of which used the Bible (specifically, Judges 16:21-23 and I Samuel 5:2-7) as their sole original source for proof of Dāgôn’s existence in Palestine. Accepting, in the absence of extrabiblical evidence, that Dāgôn did in fact exist in the early Iron Age as a Philistine deity, the author then proceeded speculate whether the triton of Massâ^cîd represented that deity in much later form.  The evidence called on to support such speculation came from a minority of scholars who, reading the deity’s name as the nominative form of the Hebrew root dāg, which means “fish,” held that Dāgôn was once portrayed in ichthyomorphic form.

Argument

As the author acknowledged, “there is almost no [existing] information as to how the god Dāgôn was shown,” as “no statue or other representation of him has yet been discovered.”  Further, rather than being a rendering of the Hebrew term for fish, a much more straightforward look at the context surrounding Philistine Dāgôn suggests that, if indeed he existed, this deity was a West Semitic version of the North Mesopotamian deity called Dāgān (the ā > ô shift is common in the transition from Middle Euphrates to West Semitic pronunciation.)  This god, whose name was a rendering of the Semitic term for “grain,” was known throughout the region from the early third millennium BC.   Such evidence, the author wrote, made it “difficult to interpret the newly discovered statue as a rendering of Dāgôn himself.”

Additional evidence for the triton of Massâ^cîd being representative of something other than a former chief deity of the region was considered in the article.  The statue’s pose, which was “not that which one would expect the cult statue of a major deity to be given,” suggested a “sea creature…forced to his knees by his opponent, his defeat closely mirrored in his face.”  Further, despite the statue’s status as the only one of its kind ever found in Palestine, the author acknowledged that several iconographic parallels to the triton of Massâ^cîd in Greek statuary were known elsewhere in the Hellenistic world.

However, having presented a strong case against his own hypothesis, the author concluded by ignoring this evidence and continuing his attempt to force the Massâ^cîd statue into the clearly ill-fitting mold – whatever shape it may have been – of association with Dāgôn.  This figure, the author wrote, “could have been adopted in Palestine during the syncretistic Greco-Roman period as a way of rendering the power of the old Oriental god Dāgôn.”  He concluded, “Perhaps the triton of Massâ^cîd was originally set up in a Hellenistic successor of the Philistine Dāgôn temple at Gaza” – a temple for which no extrabiblical evidence is known to exist.

The fact that “no similar statue has ever been found either in Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine” made the close observation and photographs of the Massâ^cîd statue contained in the article a source of valuable new information to the study of Hellenistic iconography in the Ancient Near East.  However, the author’s efforts to draw tenuous links between the Massâ^cîd statue and a Bronze and early Iron Age Semitic deity whose physical form is unknown, and whose very existence in Palestine is unattested outside of three biblical passages, was an unnecessary theoretical addition to the publication of an archaeological find.  The author’s dedication of so much space within the article to a quest to force the Massâ^cîd statue into an ill-fitting mold was unfortunate, as this find was important in its own right due to its workmanship and its status as the only one of its kind ever found in Palestine.

Conclusion

The close observation performed in the article, combined with the author’s photographs, provided the reader with a clear picture of the Massâ^cîd statue. However, the author’s attempt to associate this object with the Philistine god Dāgôn was far short of convincing.  In the absence of any extant statue or representation of Dāgôn, and of any extrabiblical evidence of this deity’s existence among the Philistines, attempting to associate any image with the supposed onetime chief deity of Gaza would have been a difficult undertaking.  This fact, combined with the tenuous etymological evidence for Dāgôn’s ichthyomorphic nature and the admitted similarities between the triton of Massâ^cîd and Greek iconography known elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, suggest that a more objective look at the evidence would have resulted in a different conclusion had the author of this article not been so determined to associate an important find with an early Iron Age deity for whose very existence there is precious little evidence.

An 8th c. BC basalt stele from Zincirli, Turkey depicting Kuttamuwa, a late-Hittite official, at his funerary banquet. This 800-pound monument is the only inscribed example from this region ever found in situ. (Photograph by Eudora Struble)

In November, archaeologists from the University of Chicago unearthed a funerary stele in Zincirli (currently Sam’al, in southeastern Turkey), capital of the late Hittite empire until the late 8th century BC.

Aside from being an outstanding example of late Hittite relief art, the 8th century Kuttamuwa stele — so named for its grave’s inhabitant — provides the first intact, in situ example of a late Hittite stele, and provides archaeologists with the earliest representation of a belief on the part of the inhabitants of Anatolia that the soul separated from the body when an individual died, and inhabited the funerary stele erected in their honor.

According to Science Daily:

The inscription reads in part: “I, Kuttamuwa, servant of Panamuwa, am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it in an eternal chamber(?) and established a feast at this chamber(?): a bull for [the storm-god] Hadad, … a ram for [the sun-god] Shamash, … and a ram for my soul that is in this stele. …”

An anthropomorphic pre-Celtic (3rd millennium BC) stele, with clothing and hunting bow, from the grave of the Petít Chasseur in Sion, Switzerland.

Zincirli is a unique site because of its pristine nature. Very little has been built on the excavation site since the Iron Age, leaving untouched artifacts in situ and close to the surface. Zincirli’s proximity — geographically, temporally, and linguistically — to Old Testament Israel makes it of further interest to researchers.

Stelai were not unique to Anatolia, nor to the early first Millennium BC, having been displayed around and above Celtic and pre-Celtic graves, like the 3rd millennium BC stele pictured at left, from the Petít Chasseur, or “Little Hunter,” in Sion, Switzerland, as far West as Britain and as late as the 2nd century.

The Petít Chasseur grave was an example of the “dolmen” grave, or single-chamber tomb replete with megalithic decoration, which was popular in the middle continent in the pre-Celtic Bell Beaker culture. The dolmen associated with the Petít Chasseur can be seen here. Note the multiple stelai — perhaps representing the deceased’s family — near the entrance of the grave, which is shaped like an arrowhead.