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Unit 5:
5 The Bible’s History and Ours
Objective
To understand how modern historical study has
revolutionized our understanding of the biblical histories.
Assignment
1. Genesis 39-50; Exodus 1-16; 1 Samuel 27-31
François Champollion
2. Martin Noth, The History of Israel (2d ed., trans. P. R.
Ackroyd; New York and Evanston: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1960, 1-7.
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/heir1.jpg
3. The Babylonian Creation Epic
4. The Merneptah Inscription
5. The Beni Hasan Wall Painting
6. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser
The Great Decipherments
A
lthough the modern study of history has vastly expanded the kinds of sources the historian
uses and, to some extent, has changed the focus of
historical inquiry to require the accurate depiction of
events in the past, one thing has not changed. History, whether
written in ancient times or today, requires written texts and the
ability to read them. Archaeologists may tell us about the material
culture of a civilization and even date the destruction of cities that
are swept away by the fires of conquest and happenstance; but
archaeologists cannot give us a history of a site in the absence of
written materials in a language they can read.
From the end of the 18th century CE until the end of the
19 century CE, a series of remarkable decipherments of
previously unknown scripts and languages unlocked the history
of Mesopotamia and Egypt and made it possible for historians to
reach back to the very beginnings of the writing cultures in
Mesopotamia and Egypt. When added to the existing knowledge
of ancient tongues such as Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic,
and Coptic, these decipherments radically extended our
The Rosetta Stone: Key to Egyptian
knowledge of the ancient world.
th
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Rosetta_Stone_BW.jpeg
We can put the Great Decipherments into two
categories: (a) Egyptian Hieroglyphics and (b) Cuneiform Writing Systems. The key to Egyptian was
a single trilingual inscription discovered by French forces in 1799 in Rosetta, Egypt. When the
French were forced to cede Egypt to the British in the next century, the Rosetta Stone was an
explicit part of the bargain. For this reason, the inscribed stone is available for your viewing neither
at the Louvre in Paris or at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, but in the basement of the British
Museum in London.
The definitive decipherment of the Egyptian Hieroglyphic script that made up the top part of
the stone, was the work of François Champollion (1790-1832). The Frenchman succeeded where the
British physicist Thomas Young and the German-Danish archaeologist Zoega had failed because of
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Champollion’s knowledge of a much later form of Egyptian, Coptic, the language of the Egyptian
Christians in the Byzantine era. Therefore, In addition to being able to recognize royal names in the
hieroglyphic portion of the stone, as others had done, he added the acute observation that
hieroglyphics must have had some alphabetic signs as well. The oft repeated hieroglyphic
, Champollion thought, might correspond to the Coptic letter F /f/, which in Coptic
sign
means “he, his,” and “him.” Progress lagged, however, because of Champollion’s erroneous belief
that the hieroglyphic characters were principally mystical symbols, hiding the wisdom of the ancient
Egyptian priests—hence the element hiero- “priestly, holy” in the name. Even if one dropped the
idea of mystical meaning, the early researchers labored under the misconception that most of the
Egyptian signs stood for single words. On December 21, 1821, Champollion made a count that
showed that the number of hieroglyphic signs in the top text far exceeded the number of words in
the corresponding Greek text. At last he was able to see that the hieroglyphs could not be symbols
for individual words. There were too many of them. Painstakingly, Champollion was able to retrieve
the Egyptian alphabet first and then the phonetic equivalents and determinative meaning of other
signs. On September 27, 1822 he informed the French Academy in Paris that he had deciphered the
Egyptian hieroglyphics. 27 28
The decipherment of the Cuneiform 29 Scripts came about very differently because of the
number of languages of the Middle East that used some version of the script. The decipherment
proceeded in inverse chronological order with the most recent language (Old Persian) yielding its
secrets first, and the earliest, Sumerian, coming last. The first partially successful decipherment of a
cuneiform inscription was that of Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775-1853). Grotefend made a wager
with a friend that it would be possible to decipher the script of a language without any knowledge of
a given inscription’s content. Grotefend won—more or less. With no training in the Oriental
languages, Grotefend, a teacher of Latin and Ancient History, was able to recognize several
important features of inscriptions of Darius and his son Xerxes. He was unable, however, to go
beyond certain surface features because of his lack of knowledge of Sanskrit and Persian. His
paper, presented to a Göttingen learned society in 1802 was a major coup. Nevertheless, progress
on Cuneiform essentially ended with this presentation.
Henry Rawlinson (1810-1895) joined the Persian government in 1835 and traveled extensively
throughout the country. Rawlinson discovered the great Darius inscription at Behistun and
proceeded laboriously to copy it and to decipher it with little knowledge of the previous work of
Grotefend. In 1846 he published the entire inscription, a transcription, and translation that showed
that he had indeed deciphered the Old Persian script. Rawlinson was able to show that this language
was a cognate of the Avestic and Old Indic languages. Fortunately, the cuneiform characters were
alphabetic, so the correct identification of the Old Persian text was possible once Rawlinson
recognized the cognate languages.
The Behistun Inscription, like the Rosetta Stone, is also trilingual with Old Persian being only
one of the three. The Elamite text was syllabic, not alphabetic, a feature that slowed progress in its
decipherment. The real prize was the third language, Babylonian/Assyrian (now called Akkadian).
Already researchers knew that this language boasted a large literature based on the numbers of
inscriptions, monuments, and clay tablets written with the hundreds of cuneiform symbols that
27
There are many excellent accounts of the decipherment of Egyptian and Cuneiform. For
purposes of these pages I have relied mainly on Johannes Friedrich, Extinct Languages, trans.
Frank Gaynor (1957), 2-86.
28
On the hieroglyphs, the reader might enjoy the brief web discussion Hieroglyphics and Their
Decipherment By Marie Parsons. http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/Hieroglyphics.htm.
29
The word “cuneiform” comes from the Latin word cuneus, “wedge.” In all of the cuneiform
languages, the individual characters are made up of wedge-shaped strokes created by pressing a
stylus into a tablet of soft clay and drawing the stylus across. The tablet was then fired and the
contents made permanent. The same wedge-shaped strokes occur in inscriptions.
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comprise that language. But this task was enormously difficult. With over 300 signs and no sign to
separate words, the attempts to match proper names from the Old Persian with names in the
Akkadian were tedious. It became obvious that Akkadian, unlike the other two languages, would
often use the same sign for many different phonetic values. A modern grammar of Akkadian informs
the hapless student of the language that the symbol can have the sounds ud, ut, u tam, while
can all have th and
Akkadian was a well
all sound like su. 30 Even so, by the end of the century,
known Semitic language among scholars, and its decipherment gave them the ability to read the
annals of the kings, the Laws of Hammurabi, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Creation Story, together
with a vast array of letters, inventories, and even ancient grammars of the language.
As noted above, Akkadian is a Semitic language, a language cognate with such languages as
Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. The first cuneiform language, however, Sumerian, was from an
unknown language family, and the lack of cognates has both hobbled attempts to decipher the
language and in some cases enhanced them. Although the challenges of Sumerian are very great,
there are fewer grammatical forms than in other Mesopotamian languages, so one may often be able
to understand a passage without quite knowing how to read it. John L. Hayes correctly sums up the
situation with Sumerian in the words of Thorkild Jacobsen: “Knowledge of Sumerian is still in a
rudimentary, experimental stage.” 31 The Sumerian language may have begun to recede in favor of
Akkadian even in the time of the Sumerian Renaissance archaeologists normally call Ur III (21122004 BCE), a period of great calm and expansion of learning in central and southern Mesopotamia.
Sumerian as a liturgical and learned language, however, continued well into the Iron Age. Very
ancient Sumerian documents such as Gilgamesh and Agga 32 came to be incorporated into the
religious texts of the Babylonian priests and emerged as Akkadian myths and epics. Student
manuals helped Akkadian-speaking priests learn the ancient tongue, and these have been invaluable
to modern scholars in their attempts to decipher the tongue.
Sumerian turned out to be very important in the rapid decipherment of a new East Semitic
language, also written in cuneiform, called Eblaite since its documents come from the ancient
northern capital city of Ebla in ancient Syria. The Italian expedition to Tell Mardiq discovered over
22,000 tablets in the excavations at the site some 55 km south of Aleppo. The first publication
occurred in 1975 and showed how the Eblaite scribes used Sumerian words and phrases to
supplement their own native language.
French excavators in 1929 discovered a large cache of cuneiform tablets at Ras Shamara on
the Syrian coast that unlike its Akkadian cousin needed only 30 signs. In other words, this was an
alphabetic script as the Old Persian had been. Within a year the German Hans Bauer and the French
scholars Dhorme and Virolleaud had assigned values to
all the letters and found that the language was a
northwest Semitic language like Hebrew that could be
read very easily with a knowledge of Hebrew, Arabic,
and Aramaic. The great library of ancient Ugarit yielded
long mythological texts of the 15th-14th centuries BCE
that have greatly enhanced our understanding of the
religions of ancient Palestine, especially Baalism.
“The World’s First Alphabet”
Not quite, but this inscribed object in the museum in Damascus is an early
schoolchild’s alphabet list from Ugarit.
http://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images1/UgaritAlphabet1400.jpg
30
John Huenergard, A Grammar of Akkadian, (2d ed.; 2005), 1:70.
31
Thorkild as quoted in John L. Hayes, A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts (1990), 2.
32
ANET3 44-46. See also Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living, ANET3 46-52.
30
The History Revealed
T
he Great Decipherments made it possible to reconstruct an ancient history that was almost
unknown to modern historians. Suddenly it was possible to know the pharaohs and their
exploits from their own chronicles. New peoples like the Sumerians emerged from the soup of
antiquity to be known to us as a gleaming civilization in lower Iraq previously hidden away from us.
Further, names known to us only from Herodotos or the Bible took on substance as real people
when their own records yielded their secrets. The Hittite culture of ancient Turkey is probably the
clearest example of this category. The Hittites’ cuneiform writings in their own language revealed a
civilization that flourished from 1650 BCE until the coming of the Sea Peoples in 1200 BCE. 33
We learned about the Sea Peoples not from Herodotos, but from inscriptions and reliefs
discovered at Karnak and Medinet Hab 34 in Egypt. These monuments show that these people were a
displaced population from the Greek Islands, pushed out of their homes by the Dorian invasions.
Their descent upon the Middle East came by ship, but they invaded Egypt from three sides: from the
sea, from Palestine to the east and from Libya to the west. Mernepth, not long after his successful
invasion of Palestine, found himself almost unable to defend his own land against the invaders.
Although they were pushed back for a time, Ramses III (reigned 1186-1155 BCE), the first king of the
20th Dynasty, found the Sea Peoples even more difficult than
Merneptah had, Prominent among the tribes of the Sea Peoples
were two known as plst and tjkkr. The people the Bible calls
“Philistines” almost certainly derive their name from this word.
These Philistines were settled on the coast of Palestine by Ramses
III after successfully holding them off from capturing Egypt. Within a
century these people had ensconced themselves roughly in the area
we call the Gaza Strip and had adopted the culture of their
Palestinian neighbors. As Dtr makes clear, however, the Philistines
maintained their fierce fighting abilities and soon inflicted them on
Israel.
The third-century BCE Egyptian historian, Manetho, writing
in Greek, described a Semitic people who, for a brief time effectively
ruled Egypt from roughly 1720 BCE until 1550 BCE. 35 These people
he named the Hyksos. Ability to read Egyptian makes it clear that
these people came into the Nile Delta to farm and raise their flocks.
They influenced Egyptian policy mainly through the efforts of a
Hyksos vizier who had effective political control of the country.
Within a century the Hyksos no longer controlled any part of Upper
Egypt, and by 1550 Pharaoh Ahmose had cast them from the
Image of a warrior of the Sea Peoples,
country entirely.
Of what interest is this for students of the Bible? In
Genesis 37-50 we read about Joseph, the favored son of Jacob
(Israel), who through his arrogance found himself sold into
slavery by his brothers and taken to Egypt. This Semite from
wearing the identifying Greek feather
headdress.
Relief of Ramses III at Medinet Habu from
about 1188 BCE.
http://www touregypt net/featurestories/seapeople htm
33
The Sea Peoples, however, did not end the Hittite culture. Neo-Hittite city-states like
Carchemish in northern Syria. The Assyrians, indeed, called the area from the Euphrates River to the
northern Lebanon “the land of Hatti.” Indeed, the designation “Hatti” continued in use throughout
the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.
34
ANET3 262-263.
35
Mantheo’s assertion that the Hyksos invaded Egypt and conquered it does not find support
in the archaeological evidence.
31
Palestine rose from his slavery, so Genesis 41:37-44 informs us, to a position only second to the
pharaoh himself. Does this prove the Joseph story is “true?” 36 Of course not. It does, however,
show a historical memory, however imperfect, into which the pentateuchal authors set their story.
The ancient reader might well have understood this historical allusion.
Who were the Hebrews themselves? Do they emerge in any documents of the Bronze Age?
They have often been compared to the Hapiru (Egyptian) or Apiru (Akkadian) with some justice, even
though the fit is not perfect. We find the term used from Turkey to Iraq, from Syria to Egypt in texts
of many languages, referring, so it appears, to bandits, vandals, and displaced persons who
menaced the great cities of the Near East and often held them up to ransom. The Apiru play a
particularly important role in the relations between Egypt and its vassal kings in Palestine. 37 The
Apiru were so numerous and so dangerous that Abdu-Hepa, the king of Jerusalem wrote several
times asking the pharaoh for additional troops to fight them. The connection between the terms
Apiru/Hapiru and the name Hebrew is not easy to make, and there may be no connection.
Nevertheless, the Hebrew people of the 12th-11th centuries BCE were likely just the kind of ruffians
Abdu-Hepa described. In any event, it is fascinating to read about life in Palestine before the
Israelite state in the words of the Palestinians themselves.
Horton’s See-Saw Theory
W
e can visualize overall power relationships of the Ancient Near East like a see-saw with one
end in Mesopotamia, the fulcrum in Palestine, and the other end in Egypt. When Egypt is
stronger than the contemporary Mesopotamian power (Assyria or Babylon), then we
imagine the see-saw tilting in favor of Egypt ("Egypt the Stronger" below). When the Mesopotamian
power is stronger, then we have the situation portrayed in "Mesopotamia the Stronger" below.
Critical to our study is what happens to Palestine. In each circumstance, like a ball balanced
between two children on a see-saw, Palestine will have to roll toward the "heavy" (strong) power.
When Egypt is strong, Palestine is utterly under the sway of the Pharaohs, as during the Amarna
period. Alternately, when some Mesopotamian power is "heaviest" (strongest), Palestine rolls over
to that end.
How, then, would we ever get an independent Palestinian entity? How could David and
Solomon have an empire in the face of the great powers? The answer is that the powers weren't so
great; they were more or less evenly balanced in their weakness, the situation, indeed, which the
diagram to the left illustrates. Such a Palestinian entity could survive only so as long as Egypt is
weak and there is no great Mesopotamian power. That means that we don’t often expect to see an
independent Palestine. Indeed, that has been the case throughout history. Only when the “great
powers” decline does Palestine have any opportunity to assert itself as an independent entity or
collection of independent entities.
36
John Bright, History of Israel (2d ed.; 1959), 95, speculated that the Joseph Story has to do
with a Hyksos aristocracy, some of whose members migrated to Egypt. Albrecht Alt, “Der Herkunft
der Hyksos in neuer Sicht,” Kleine Schriften 3:72-98.on the other hand, held that the Hyksos had
migrated into Egypt, not invaded it, and that they came to power in the 18th century BCE because of
the disorders of Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period (14th-17th Dynasties).
37
Some of the Amarna Letters were discovered at Tell el-Amarna, some 300 km south of
Cairo, by a woman who happened upon several clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform. The Bedouin
tribe of which this woman was a part dug at the site and sold tablets to souvenir/antiquities
merchants until Sir Flinders Petrie opened an excavation there 1891-1892. The site was that of
Akhetaten, the capital of the pharaoh by the same name whose revisions to official Egyptian religion
estranged him from the cult at Karnak. During his reign (1350-1354 BCE) the pharaoh received
correspondence from his vassals in Palestine in Akkadian, the international language of the day.
32
Why does it work this way? The reason is that Mesopotamia and Egypt are connected by a
wide swath of arable land that goes through Syria-Lebanon, Palestine, and the northern Sinai.
Outside of this Fertile Crescent, as it is called, there is desert or the Mediterranean, neither of which
is very conducive to the movement of large armies. If you wished, for instance, to move an army
from Babylon to Memphis, you would have to go north to Haran, down through the Lebanon and into
the northern Sinai. It would be quite a trip! This feature of near eastern geography has led to the
(in-) famous Horton principle: The shortest distance between two lines in the Near East is a Fertile
Crescent.
This principle
often explains things
that to the biblical
writers themselves
were confusing. How
was it possible for the
prophets of Israel or
Judah to believe that
their nation could
remain independent
under the threats from
Assyria, Babylon,
Persia if only the tiny
Hebrew people would
keep the ancient laws?
The technical word for
a question like that is
“20-20 Hindsight.” We
shall see that a certain
religious/theological
interpretation of
history actually
allowed the ancient
Hebrew historians to
see aspects of their situation acutely, but the “big picture” eluded them.
Questions
1. Could you support or challenge my “see-saw theory” on the basis of recent events in the Middle
East?
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2. Has our knowledge of Israel’s history actually changed much as a result of the Great
Decipherments? Why or why not?
3. With 20-20 Hindsight, how would you have advised the kings of Israel and Judah about the
menaces from Mesopotamia and Persia?
34