Volume 67, no. 3
SEPTEMBER 2004

Husbands, Wives and Lovers in the Biblical World

ON THE COVER:
Bathsheba at her bath as David looks on. Officio della Beata Vergine, Italy, fifteenth century. Biblioteca Estense, Modena, Italy. Photo: Alinari/Art Resource, NY.

"Who's the Man?" Sex and Gender in Iron Age Musical Performance
by Theodore W. Burgh

Lie Back and Think of Judah: The Reproductive Politics of Pillar Figurines
by Ryan Byrne

Private Lives and Public Censure - Adultery in Ancient Egypt and Biblical Israel
by Pnina Galpaz-Feller

They Also Dug! Archaeologists' Wives and Their Stories
by Norma Dever

DEPARTMENTS

ARTI-FACTS

Clay Lamps Shed New Light on Daily Life in Antiquity
by Eric. C. Lapp

REVIEWS

Dan II. A Chronicle of the Excavations and the Late Bronze Age "Mycenaean" Tomb
(Barry M. Gittlen)

Danacing at the Dawn of Agriculture
(Jane Peterson)

FORUM

Introducing Archaeology in Words and Pictures: Does "Archaeology - The Comic" Deliver?
(Jeffrey Blakely, et. al.)

128 "Who's the Man?" Sex and Gender in Iron Age Musical Performance
by Theodore W. Burgh

Women and men depicted with musical instruments on Iron Age artifacts have been identified mostly on the basis of superficial examinations and preconceived ideas. The author reexamines the archaeological and textual data on ancient Israelite musical performance and reaches some surprising conclusions about gender roles, and the relationships between men and women, and how the people of ancient Palestine interpreted concepts of sex and gender.

137 Lie Back and Think of Judah: The Reproductive Politics of Pillar Figurines
by Ryan Byrne

The seemingly ubiquitous anthropomorphic "pillar" figurines of eighth and seventh century Judah have been interpreted variously as fertility goddesses and as objects concerned with the domestic cult. Here, the author proposes and additional theory - that the artifacts' distribution, method of manufacture and symbolic fecundity are best understood against the ideological emphasis on social reproduction in Judah following the Assyrian destruction of Samaria and the mass deportations of Sennacherib.

152 Private Lives and Public Censure - Adultery in Ancient Egypt and Biblical Israel
by Pnina Galpaz-Feller

In biblical Israel, the traditional view was that adultery was a violation of the covenant between the people and their god. The fact that there is no official code of law from ancient Egypt has generally not facilitated direct comparisons of this culture with biblical Israel. Also, because the severity of punishment in Egypt for adultery was generally far less than suggested by the legal codes of Babylon or biblical Israel, the assumption has always been that adulterous behavior was not publicly censured. Egyptian documents, however, clearly indicate that the act was regarded as a moral failing and a source of community discord. In that way, the perceptions of adultery known from ancient Egyptian literature parallel the attitudes represented in biblical passages dealing with adultery more than has been heretofore suggested.  The treatment of specific cases relating to the consequences of adultery in ancient Egypt, over a period of several centuries, are examined in this article in order to shed light on some of the similarities noted to the biblical traditions.

162 They Also Dug! Archaeologists' Wives and Their Stories
By Norma Dever

Providing and insider's perspective on what it's like to work on an excavation as a "Director's wife," the author offers a unique retrospective on the challenges and rewards of this difficult role. Gender roles, even in the hidebound world of archaeology, have changed significantly since the time of the women whose lives she examines. Nonetheless, it is today more important than ever to remember the, largely unacknowledged, contributions of "dig wives."