Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction by Eric H Cline

Author:Eric H Cline [Cline, Eric H]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: General, Religion, Antiquities, Antiquities & Archaeology, Archaeology, Religion - Church History, Bible, Biblical Archaeology, Biblical Biography - General, Biblical Biography
ISBN: 9780195342635
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009-08-12T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

From the Silver Amulet

Scrolls to the Dead Sea

Scrolls

In 1979, Gabriel Barkay, then a professor at Tel Aviv University, was able to illuminate the biblical account from a unique perspective, while excavating a number of tombs in Jerusalem in an area overlooking the Hinnom Valley. The tombs are located at the site of Ketef Hinnom (the ‘‘Shoulder of Hinnom’’), an Iron Age cemetery situated to the south of the King David Hotel and next to the Scottish Presbyterian Church of St. Andrew.

One of the tombs—actually a burial cave (Cave 24)—had multiple chambers. In one of the chambers (Room 25) were the remains of more than ninety-five individuals, along with more than one thousand objects. At least seven hundred of the objects were found in a single repository, left undisturbed for at least 2,500 years under one of the burial benches. Among 263 intact pots and other vessels, numerous gold objects, one hundred or more pieces of silver jewelry, arrowheads, and axeheads was a silver coin minted in the sixth century BCE on the Greek island of Kos. It is one of the earliest coins ever found in Israel, for coinage had only just been invented at the beginning of the seventh century BCE in Turkey. Even more interesting were two small amulets, each consisting of a small rolled-up strip of silver: one approximately four inches long by one inch wide; the other approximately one and a half inches 89

long by half an inch wide. It took three years of painstaking work at the Israel Museum before the strips were fully unrolled. When that was finally accomplished, it was apparent that they were inscribed with minuscule writing. One word on the longer inscription jumped out at Yaakov Meshorer, curator of numismatics at the Israel Museum: YHWH, the tetragrammaton for the Divine Name Yahweh (Lord). Later it was established that the same word, YHWH, was inscribed on the smaller piece as well.

The two inscriptions appeared to contain priestly blessings in Hebrew, similar to the Priestly Benediction found in the Bible in Numbers 6:24–26, which says: ‘‘The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace’’ (NRSV).

ology

However, it was still not clear exactly what was written on the two amulets, for the writing on them was nearly illegible, due to the Archae

ravages of time. It took the combined efforts of the members of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern Biblical

California, headed by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman, to tease out the full text of the inscriptions, using a combination of photographic and computer imaging techniques, including fiber-optic technology.

Eventually it became clear that the inscription on the smaller piece reads ‘‘May he/she be blessed by Yahweh, the warrior [or helper]

and the rebuker of [E]vil: May Yahweh bless you, keep you. May Yahweh make his face shine upon you and grant you p[ea]ce.’’ The inscription on the longer piece is similar, reading

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