Who is a Canaanite?
A Review of the Textual Evidence
ANSON F. RAINEY
Institute of Archaeology
Tel Aviv University
Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978
Israel
rainey@ccsg.tau.ac.il
In view of recent attempts to vaporize the Canaanites and to erase the land of Canaanfrom the map-principally in N. P Lemche's 1991 volume The Canaanites and their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites, a review of the crucial evidence is in order. The present study will concentrate on documents from the Late Bronze Age in particular, with some allusions to evidence from other periods, to provide an understanding of the texts within the semanticframework in which they were composed-the simple, straightforward meaning of the passages as intended by the ancient scribes.
The Contribution of the Amarna Letters
to the Debate on Jerusalem's Political
Position in the Tenth Century B.C.E.
NADAV NA'AMAN
Department of Jewish History
Tel Aviv University
Ramat Aviv 69978
Israel
Understanding of the problems involved in the excavations of multilayered highland sites and an examination of the long-range perspective are both essentialfor the correct appreciation of Jerusalem's political position in the tenth century B.C.E. No negative conclusions about Jerusalem in the Late Bronze II and Iron Age I-IIA should be drawn from the results of the excavations conducted on the Ophel Hill. A comparison between the evidence of the Amarna tablets and contemporaneous archaeological data is essentiatfor the correct evaluation of the data about Jerusalem. Investigation of the archaeological data and written sources indicates that tenth-century Jerusalem must have been a highland stronghold and the center of a kingdom, do inating large, hilly territories with many settlements, and thus was able to expand to nearby lowland territories and possibly even to the areas of neighboring kingdoms. According to 11 odern" socioarchaeological criteria, the tenth-century kingdom was a prestate, polymorphous chiefdom with Jerusalem as its center of government.
New Readings of Hezekian Official Seal Impressions
GABRIEL BARKAY
ANDREW G. VAUGHN
This article presents 23 new readings for official seal impressions found on lmlk (Lachish Type 484) jar handles. In previous Publications these seal impressions were regarded as indecipherable or were misread. The new readings presented here comprise approxiMately 15 percent of the published official seal impressions and provide essential new data useful for reexamining these impressions. In presenting these new readings, the authors adopt a paradigm setfor the publication of epigraphic cuneiform texts and adapt this paradigm for the documentation of Hebrew seals. This analysis includes epigraphically significant photographs, facsimiles, a transcription, and epigraphic commentary.
Return to BASOR 304 Table of Contents