Judaism
Jerusalem and Judah after “the Return”
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 09 February 2006
Persia in the Levant
The Jewish scriptures seem to say little about the Persian period becauae the events described are deliberately allegorized and appear as legends in imaginary periods like that of Judges. Moreover what is supposed to be Persian is placed as early as possible, on the false assumption that the Jews began to rush back to Yehud as soon as Cyrus made the declaration the bible attributes to him. Most of the events of the supposed return are therefore placed in the time of Darius the Great when they happened in the reign of Darius II.
The Persian satrapy was Abarnahara (Hebrew, Eber ha Nahar; Ebir Nari, Assyrian from at least the time of Esarhaddon) meaning “Beyond the River”, and often falsely translated when the name is plainly meant. In Aramaean, it was Kol Syria meaning “All Syria”, and this came down to Roman times as Coele Syria.
When Cyrus annexed Babylonia, he made it all into a single satrapy under the satrap, Gabaru. Herodotus says Darius the Great split the satrapy of Babylonia into two, but no other source confirms it, and several suggest otherwise. Thus three inscriptions of Darius never mention Abarnahara in the list of satrapies they give. So the split can more securely be attributed to Xerxes as a measure to weaken the Babylonian satrap after Babylonia had rebelled. Thus the repetitions of Abarnahara in Ezra-Nehemiah accurately portrays the status of the satrapy in the second half of the fifth century and not before. Herodotus does accurately describe the extent of the satrapy, saying it extended from the border of Cilicia and Syria at Poseidium in the north to Lake Sirbonis in the south, with the people of four countries mentioned on the way.
- Phœnicians
- “Syrians known as Palestinian” as far as Cadytis (Gaza)
- Arabs
- More of the Syrians
No Israelites, Jews or even Judahites are mentioned, but, if they were there at all, they must be the “Syrians known as Palestinians”, though the Palestinians were the Philistines, the two words meaning the same but differently written. At any rate, the Greeks at the time of Herodotus could not distinguish the Judahites from the Syrians, and it is likely that when Syrians are mentioned in subsequent centuries by Greeks or Romans, some of them would have been Jews.
The Persians re-opened the road from Asia to Africa (Egypt), leading to a new prosperity for those living along it. E Oren counted over 200 Persian age settlements from Suez to Gaza. The route to Egypt overflows with Greek pottery demonstrating that the Greeks had a major hand in the trade here in Sinai. Only a narrow stretch was controlled by the “kings of Arabia”, no doubt allowed access to the sea by the Persians so that they could operate the spice trade without having to pay any duties to others, and thus securing them as allies in watching over Egypt.
If the Arabs had outlets to the Mediterranean west of the Negev, they must have ruled or at least had rights of passage, through the negev. The opponent of Nehemiah, Geshem the Arabian, might have been the ruler here, if Nehemiah (Neh 2:19; 6:1,2,6) is to be credited as historic, refering as it does to the Persian period. The Arabs had been granted favours, including exemption from Persian taxes, for helping Cambyses in his conquest of Egypt. A hundred years’ later, they might easily have feared that a later shah, was turning his favour to the Jews. After 400 BC when the Egyptians declared UDI, the whole region became the Egyptian Marches and had to be fortified. The Persians seemed to see Jerusalem as an important support center for the front-line forces. Historical sources refer to Gaza as a Persian fort ruled by a man called Batis (Arrian, describing Alexander’s seige of Gaza) or Babymasis (Josephus, Antiquities 11:8:3). This latter name means the Gate of Moses, or Mazda!
Egypt
The Egyptians rebelled against the Persians several times, and specialists believe the shahs became disillusioned by Egypt, and paid it little attention. Thus traditional architecture and sculpture did not change. Egyptian civilization was assumed to have continued essentially unaffected by the Persian conquest, and the lack of Persian material evidence in Egypt was taken to corroborate the idea. Yet many Egyptian aristocrats—characterized by the Egyptologists as traitors isolated from a “nationalistic” indigenous population—worked in the imperial administration.
The force of this hypothesis led some Egyptologists into bad scientific practice, something that too many of them seem to find too easy to do. D A Aston has shown that, instead of letting sites and objects speak for themselves, they catalogued them incorrectly. In a study of funerary objects of the Persian period in Egypt [Dynasty 26, Dynasty 30, or Dynasty 27? In search of the funerary archeology of the Persian period], Aston observes:
It is hard to believe that, magically, in 525 BC a change in funerary customs suddenly resulted in nothing being buried with the deceased!
In fact, the funerary material had been falsely attributed to the Saite twenty sixth dynasty rather than to the Persian period through mistaken assumptions. As in Palestine, more objective work on Persian strata have allowed better cataloguing of Achaemenid ceramics in Egypt, and therefore better dating. Professor P Briant thinks archaeologists ought to look at the vast collections in museum reserves to correct errors, and revise catalogues and inventories.
One fascinating find was a funerary stele of the Persian period from Saqqara with, on one of its three registers, an extraordinary scene in which Egyptian and Persian conventions are mixed. It shows three figures, two standing and evidently Egyptians, the other seated in Persian dress. Each of them holds symbolic objects. Inscriptions in demotic and hieroglyphic included a reference to a son, with an Egyptian name, of a mixed marriage of an Egyptian woman, Tanofrether, and a Persian man, Artam. It suggests that the Persians, while not absent or aloof from Egyptian society, did not openly impose their own culture on it, as the Greeks did.
Galilee and the Coast
After the Babylonian devastation, it was the coastal regions up to about ten miles inland that were settled and recovered first. The settlers were mainly Phœnicians and then Greeks. The fact is that there was no economic basis for prosperity in the hills until the merchants created the demand for goods such as mutton, oil and wine in the coastal cities and settlements. So, even if Cyrus had allowed Judah any rights in the forst year of Persian rule, nothing could have happened until the economic situation had been restored.
The geographical-historic background favors a late date for the establishment of the Judaean state, as well as that of Samaria and the coastal towns during the Persian period.E Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible
The province of northern Palestine, from Assyrian times to Persion times, seems to have been Megiddo, though the city deteriorated towards the end, and some think another town such as Hazor or Acco became the capital. The only evidence for this speculation is the evident decline of Megiddo because little written material is found in Galilee. The culture of Megiddo, to judge from pottery, was the same as that of the coast—Phœnician or Canaanite—but differed somewhat from that of the Judaean hills and Samaria to the south. Eventually the city was destroyed in the mid-fourth century BC, perhaps in retribution for having joined the Phœnician revolt. A later fortress lasted until it was destroyed, presumably by the Greeks, and the city was then derelict. Jokream and other places have extensive Persian remains including store rooms yielding a wealth of artefacts.
Megiddo province had a range of Persian settlements both in the valley and on the hills. Surveys of the district of Beth Shean and of what was in the bible, Issachar, yielded Persian period artefacts at 44 and 73 sites respectively, but Hazor seems not to have been a city at this time, and the excavators at Beth Shean reported no Persian occupation. Strange then that Persian pots and figurines were described in their report, suggesting that they had overlooked what was possibly a sanctuary! A Persian fortress adapted as a dwelling was destroyed after the reign of Artaxerxes III Ochus, partially by Alexander’s armies. The central area of the mound was, however, unoccupied in the Persian era, according to Y Yadin. It was a cemetary! By the side of the fortress was a farmhouse. A substantial Persian building was unearthed at Taanach together with five Attic lekythoi and local wares.
The coast north of Carmel was part of Tyre, but south of it, according to the Eshmunezer inscription, belonged to Sidon as far as Jaffa, effectively the port of Samaria. The whole coastal strip is full of Persian period settlements, and was densely populated. A fifth century BC boat discovered off the coast had a cargo of many clay goddesses with one arm raised as if in blessing or salutation, and with the other arm held across her body. Most had Phœnician inscriptions or symbols, including the word Tanit, better known as the Carthaginian goddess, but the finds were not Carthaginian. Neutron activation analysis proved the clay was local. Another wrecked ship contained amphorae of raisin wine, but some of the amphorae were Etruscan and Greek suggesting the ship had been trading widely across the Mediterranean.
Coastal settlements were so dense that each one was visble to the next, and inland, the survey by Z Gal, shows Galilee also densely populated with a net of settlements founded about 500 BC on sites never previously occupied. The inland settlements seemed subordinate to the coastal ones in the Persian period, or dependent on them at least. The 40 towns and settlements discovered by archaeologists in this coastal region shows the importance of practical arhaeology compared with relying on historical texts like the bible. Only four, notably Jaffa and Dor, appear in any historical texts.
Acco was an important place in Persian times. A pedestal with a cartouche of Pharaoh Achoris (393-380 BC) dates the city to the Persian period, as does a cache of Tyrian coins from 364-362 BC. One building with a row of columns contained cult statuettes, and a bowl inscribed with a mention of offerings to Asherah. Many Greek objects testified to the strong Greek influence on the region in the period 500-300 BC, clearly showing that the Greeks and the Persians were not in a total stand off, as some histories seem to suggest. It also shows that the marked influence of Greek mythology on the bible, noted by some scholars, is not at all risible, as apologists have made out. The Greeks themselves knew of this coast—Jaffa (Joppa, Ezra 3:7) was where Andromeda was abandoned to the sea monster to be saved by Perseus! Excavations at Dor revealed masses of pottery, much of it Greek, the largest collection ever found in Palestine.
The Eshmunezer sarcophagus and the Periplus of pseudo-Scylax, spanning the period of about 500-350 BC, agree that the Phœnician cities retained control of the Mediterranean ports in Persian times. The sarcophagus inscription of of Eshmunezer confirms Jaffa belonged to Sidon along with Dor. An inscribed stele at Jaffa commemorated the building of a temple to Eshmun, the Sidonian god. Ostraca also testify to Eshmun being the local god. Cult objects found in Dor included clay statuettes of both local and Greek styles pertaining to the Phœnician cults of Baal and Astarte. Baal was the fertility god in particular, although the word was a title, usually translated “Lord”, that could be used of others. Christians particularly refuse to recognize that Yehouah was a Baal, and possibly, as the local fertility god, he was the Baal.
In another collection found in Dor were many statuettes of an antique Greek style. The explanation is that the site was a well established Greek temple until about 340 BC when the city was spoiled in retribution for the Phœnician rebellion. The involvement of Samaria in the Phœnician uprising in the fourth century seems certain. Interestingly, the Persians helped the cities to recover quickly, no doubt because of their commercial and naval importance. This Phœnician rebellion was around 353 BC. About the same time, Artaxerxes III deported Jews of Jericho to Horkania by the Caspian Sea. It might suggest that the Jews generally remained loyal but not the Jews of Jericho.
Many settlements and some towns in Samaria and Benjamin were rebuilt after destruction at least once in the Persian period, some as early as in the mid-fifth century. No explanation for destruction at this time is certain, but the Egyptians had rebelled (459-454 BC) and Megabyxos too in the mid-fifth century, and no one is sure what part Samaria and Judah might have played in these events. Irano-Scythian arrowheads were common in the Persian period, but already had appeared at Jerusalem and at Engedi in the destructions attributed to the Babylonian conquest. Now, the possibility that the arrows were from a punitive expedition of the shahs against Yehud has to be considered. When the Egyptians fought off the Persians around the end of the fifth century, they destroyed the Judahite colony at Elephantine set up by the Persians, yet it survived the earlier Egyptian rebellion. The colony might have been spared in the earlier event if the Judahites were on the side of the Egyptians. After the temple state had been set up by Darius II, the Jewish colonists were loyal, and to judge from the continuity of governors of the provinces after 400 BC revealed in Judahite and Samarian texts they remained loyal to the end, the Samarians even fighting the Macedonians.
In fact, destruction in the fourth century could have been by Alexander who destroyed Samaria when he seiged Tyre and the Samarians were not co-operative. He also destroyed Gaza. The Jewish high priest did not oppose Alexander and Jerusalem was saved, though possibly the population remained loyal, and suffered some spoilage of settlements. Later the civil wars of the Diadochi might also have led to destruction.
Almost every excavation testifies to the Philistine towns being substantially populated by Phœnicians. Philistia in the Persian period was ruled by Phœnicians. The city of Gat, excavated originally in 1888, revealed many Persian objects under a “Jewish stratum”! In nearby sites, apparently associated with sanctuaries, many clay figurines were found. The excavations at Ashkelon were done by W J Phythian-Adams in 1921. He made a pig’s ear of it. L Stager has tried to recover the situation more recently, though he too seems to be a biblicist. Stager found an impressive temple to Tanit Pane Baal (Phanebalos) which lasted at Askelon until Roman times. Tanit (Tanith) was Astarte in Syria, the Syrian Goddess (Syria Dea), Rat-Tanit in Egypt, the mother of Harpokrates (Horus), and so identifiable with Isis. She was the holy mother of the Canaanite Holy family of father god, mother goddess and an infant son of god. Destroyed by the Babylonians in 603 BC, Ashkelon was not rebuilt until the Persian period, and thick Persian deposits lay over the Assyrian ones. Phœnician silver coins allowed accurate dating, and a hoard of teradrachmas of Alexander the Great shows the destruction of the cities was in the Hellenistic age.
Curiously, dog burials were prominent in several of these excavations of coastal settlements like Berytus, Dor, Ashdod and Ashkelon. Plainly, Phœnicians revered their dogs, but the Jews later had an aversion to them as unclean animals. The Persians, whose purity laws the Jews mainly copied, also revered their dogs. The Jewish aversion to dogs must have been a later introduction, perhaps from the extreme monotheistic and aniconographic legalism of the Maccabees. A large dog cemetary was unearthed at Ashkelon. The animals showed no signs of sacrifice, but had been laid out ritually, on their side with their tail through their legs. 68% were puppies. The dogs were obviously highly thought of, presumably even sacred, and the absence of any sacrificial cuts does not mean they were not sacrifices, especially since so many were puppies. Doubtless the priests were skilled in nicking their carotid arteries, causing a quick death. One wonders whether, puppies had been substituted for the sacrifice of children, so that these were substitute tophets. They were not cremated, but then the Persians revered the flame too, and might have stopped cremation as well as human sacrifice.
At Tell el Hesi, near Lachish, in the fith century, a massive tower was built perhaps as a grain silo. It could be dated by everyday Attic ware of Greece, common in the Phœnician provinces of Abarnahara. These Greek wares did not extend into the fourth century.
At Tell Jemmeh, strata assigned by Sir Flinders Petrie to Psamtik I (664-610 BC) then later re-examined by G W van Beek were redated to 500 BC! In fact, the three phases of building present were all Persian, accurately datable by Greek pottery. It seems general that Philistia was ravaged by the Babylonians and not rebuilt until the time of the Persians when it became more densely populated than it had been. The Negev was the same.
Samaria and Judah
In the Persian period, it was the north and west of Samaria that thrived to judge by surveys. I Finkelstein found the south and east less settled than in the Iron Age. In places, no buildings remain, but lots of sherds and debris identifiably from the Persian period were found in plaster-lined cisterns.
Josephus (Antiquities 11:8:6) said Shechem was a colony of Sidon. A hoard of coins was dated to 345 BC, the time of the Phœnician rebellion, but not any later because there were no coins of the satrap, Mazday. Another large hoard found at Shechem did have Mazday coins, but no Tyrian coins later than 332 BC. The Samarians rebelled against Alexander and he expelled them, replacing them with Macedonians who had to live in the ruins of the city while rebuilding it. The coins therefore seem to have been stashed at the time of the revolt against the Macedonians. In rebuilding, the Greeks seem to have cleared away all of the Persian town that Alexander had wasted, though later building of the Herodian and Roman periods perhaps cleared off anything the Greeks had left. All that remains of the Persian period are pits of rubbish, below the Hellenistic layers, and datable by Greek pottery.
Ezra 4:8-10 says Samarians were the “men of Erech, Babylon and Susa”, implying they had been deported thence, apparently by Ashurbanipal, but perhaps refering to a much more recent colonization—one preceding that of the colonists of Jerusalem. The Samarian colonials perhaps considered themselves above the Judahite ones.
It seems a remarkably recurring theme that modern archaeologists find a lot more evidence of Persian period Judah than older ones, and not just in artefacts hard to date but in a plethora of well known and dated Greek pots, as well as dated objects such as coins, and local seals and bullae. At Mizpah, for example, the excavators did report a Persian layer based essentially on stratigraphy, yet later examinations of the same material yielded large numbers of obvious finds! J Zorn is certain the town existed in the Babylonian period, and continued to exist in the Persian one. At gibeon, J B Pritchard could find nothing after the end of the Jewish monarchy—the beginning of the Babylonian occupation, in other words. The Albright school, however, saw many of the finds as being Babylonian. It seems certain much of the stuff Pritchard could not date after 600 BC, is actually Persian, up to 250 years later. A root of the problem is that biblicists wanted Yehud seal impressions to be from the time of the monarchy when they were actually Persian.
Jerusalem
If Ezra-Nehemiah is to be credited, any walls in Jerusalem should be Persian, and Nehemiah 2:13-15; 3:1-32; 12:31-40 gives detailed descriptions of them for an old text. Many finds from the Persian period, especially Yehud seals, have been found on the south eastern hill, but none were stratified. Working from 1961-1967, Kathleen Kenyon showed that the Persian city existed on the SE hill alone. Before then, the walls there had been considered to be Jebusite! The Jebusites were the people who lived in Jerusalem before the biblical David decided to turf them out and grab their city. It is a meere 600 year error in dating, but typical of the biblicism disease. Kenyon’s dating was unquestionable, for part of the eastern wall was built over the quarry that had been used to provide the stones for the walls. Rubbish on it contained fifth and even fourth century pottery. This final section of the wall, the quarry being built over obviously being no longer needed, was completed in the fourth century, not many decades before the Persian empire fell to Alexander. A new excavation by Y Shiloh has confirmed Kenyon’s conclusions. Most of the Persian city disappeared in later works by the Hasmonaeans and the Herodians, but Shiloh found, among the rubble of the eastern slope, some strata of the Persian period full of Yehud seal impressions and pottery sherds and handles, with even the names of Ahazai and Hananiah, governors. There was even a fifth century Lycian coin. No Persian remains could be found on the western hill, so the Persian city dedicated in the reign of Darius II, turned out to be precisely the City of David! The archaeological efforts of Y Shiloh, N Avigad and B Mazar, all show it. David must be the Jewish guise of Darius.
South of the city at Ramat Rahel was found part of a long wall, damaged by later Byzantine construction, but of the Persian period. Several fruitful, Persian-Hellenistic spoil pits yielded a lot of valuable relics, including large numbers of seal impressions, several novel. The excavators thought this could have been the fortified palace of the Persian governor. Persian remains were found at Beth Zur, including a coin dated to 450 BC and a local coin inscribed “Hezekiah the governor”. There was a small Persian settlement near jericho. A Persian papyrus document was also found at Ketef Jericho dated to the fourth century and bearing Jewish names. A Persian settlement at Engedi is dated from Attic pottery to the fifth century. The site seems to have stopped being used a few years before the Greeks came. Engedi is rich in relics, and is clearly stratified, so helpful in interpreting other Persian sites in Yehud. At Gezer, to the western edge of Judah, Macalister found many Persian remains but no buildings. A scarab of Nepherites (399-393 BC) dated the absent Persian stratum precisely, and a lot of fifth century Attic pottery showed when it had flourished. Later more accurate archaeology revealed a Persian layer, albeit one that had been badly damaged, and indeed had no building remains at all. Other settlements were small and evidently poor. They show an attempt to resettle after the Babylonian wastage but it was only slight, unlike the dense settlement on the coast. Surveys show that the Judaean hills eventually reached the population density that they had had before the Babylonian occupation, but it was a slow process.
Hints in the bible suggest the Edomites were forced by the Arabs into the Negev (Jer 13:19; 49:7-22; Ezek 35; Obed; Mal 1:14). From Jeremiah, the biblicists date this in the Babylonian period. The question now is whether the colonists sent by the Persians pushed out the people who had settled there in the meantime. Certainly ostraca from the Persian period with Edomite names (judging by the presence of the name of the Edomite god, Qos) are found in southern Judah. Beth Zur was undoubtedly the border (1 Macc 11:65) in the second century, but so it was too in Persian times, as a line of forts shows. Geshem the Arabian is mentioned in the Persian period in Nehemiah, suggesting the Arabs ruled Idumaea. Some ostraca have been found in which theophoric names in Qos are accompanied by Arabic sacred words. Other ostraca show that taxes were being collected in the Negev. An analysis of 57 names on these fourth century ostraca turns up Qos 17 times, Bal 16, El 15, Yahu 3 and a few separate Egyptian and Babylonian names. It seems that the Negev was not Jewish in the fourth century. Indeed, documents from Wadi ed Daliyeh, north of Jericho, contains theophoric names in Qos (Edom), Sahar (Aram), Kemosh (Moab), Baal (Canaan), Nabu (Babylon) and Yahu (Judah), a very mixed population, it seems.
At Lachish, O Tufnell could not distinguish a Persian stratum, and so assigned a single layer to the dates 600 BC to 150 BC—everything after the biblical monarchy was scooped into one polychronic stratum. Within the broad layer, a few buildings were attributed specifically to the Persian period., including a palace (“the residency”), and a solar temple. Attic ware dated the residency to the decades around 400 BC. The excavators, however,left any later assessment in the dark by failing to properly record finds or the depth at which they were found, or even their relationship to the floors of the buildings. Sloppy work is typical of much biblicist archaeology. W F Albright excavated Bethel in 1934 but published no report on it until 1968. Sometimes no reports at all are ever published. History in the ground is simply trashed to no purpose. Has anyone any idea why? It would be a scandal anywhere else, but when it comes to leaving the bible unquestioned it seems to become saintly. Stern complains that these archaeologists did not even distinguish what was Hellenistic from what was Persian. Lachish is important because, if it was a Persian city destroyed by the Persians, then a lot of its previous archaology might need re-assessing. The hills around Hebron were relatively populous in Persian times, but, except for some outstanding forts and waysattions, the Negev was not. Some Persian remains have been found in the main cities of Edom such as Bozrah, but little is known about Moab. It seems to have been settled by Jews, if the bible is to be credited (Ezra 2:6; 8:4; 10:30; Neh 7:1; 3:23). Persian period seal impressions are of “Ammon”.
The only large temple of the Persian period is at Lachish (80 x 50 ft). It was oriented east-west and had a vaulted roof. J L Starkey called it a solar temple. It continued in use into the Hellenistic era. Y Aharoni showed the main entrance was at the east end, but the temple itself was not elongated east and west, but north and south, so the layout was not that imagined of the Jerusalem temple. Most of its extension was a large courtyard, that being rather like the Jerusalem temple. Several smaller temples featured a courtyard that seemed to have been where the cult was mainly practised (a bamah) al fresco, but several rooms opened to the yard, and some had benches for cult objects rather than serving as pews. One in Galilee seemed to cater for Phœnician clients, so Galille was in the Phœnician sphere in the fourth century to judge by a Tyrian coin and a Sidonian name.
At the end of the Arabah valley, by the sea, evidence of the Persian period is that the seaport there was populated by Greeks and Phœnicians. Much Attic pottery and amphorae were found, ostraca bearing Greek words, and even Greek coins. Many other ostraca had Phœnician names on them.
Complete building foundations of the Persian period are rare, partly because subsequent building in urban centers was extensive and destructive, but, where foundations can be seen, traces of the ideal orthogonal layout of the Hippodamian plan have emerged. Strata with this layout must be fifth century or later, unless the Greek planner, Hippodamas, got his idea for such cities from having seen them in Levantine Persia. Dor, for example, is set out in this way, but seems likely to be earlier than Hippodamas who flourished in the later fifth century.
Burials
Persian period burials have been found everywhere in Palestine. The consist of two principle types which appear in neighbouring lands, as might be expected when a great empire has 200 years to begin producing a common culture. Cist graves are those like the traditional tomb of Christ. In rocky places they are cut in rock, but elsewhere might be built structures like mausoleums. In the Persian idea of cleanliness, stone was needed to confine the corruption of death from the earth, so the built tombs even had stone floors. They may contain a stone, or more often a teracotta coffin—a Mesopotamian practice. The artefacts found in tombs like these are similar even in different parts of the empire. Some might even have been tombs of Persian officials or soldiers. A good example was excavated at Shechem.
The other type of tomb is the shaft tomb, and it is notably Canaanite in its associations, being found in all the Phœnician coastlands and in Cyprus. Pit graves were also still dug in the Persian period, but often the pits were stone lined.
There is one major difference between the Perian period temples and those of the Assyrian period—the surprising homogeneity of the finds. While during Assyrian period, Phœnician, Philistine, Judaean, Edomite and Ammonite cults are distinguishable because each ethnos had its own specific cult objects, during the Persian period this is no longer true. All finds at all sites throughout the country are nearly similar… though the chief deities of each people remained distinct.E Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible
Another difference is even more meaningful. Since the beginning of the Persian period, in all the territories of Judah and Samaria, there is not a single piece of evidence for any pagan cults! There are no sactuaries (except for the Jewish one in Jerusalem, and the Samarian one on Mount Gerizim), no figurines, and no remains of any other pagan cultic objects. This is in sharp contrast to the late Jewish monarchic period.E Stern, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible
In fact, like the temple at Jerusalem, the temple at Gerizim did not get going until the fourth century.
Figurines
Clay figurines are common in the Persian period as votive objects everywhere except Samaria and Judah, though they had been common 200 years before in the time of the Jewish monarchy. Many of the figurines are of deities in the Egyptian style, though sometimes with marked differences, such as the heavy eastern-style beards of the male figurines. A temple repository at Dor, hoever, was full of Greek style (western) statuettes in the archaic Greek style, the males having a pointed beard. The city was cosmopolitan with a large Greek population and a temple to serve it.
Statuettes of the Osiris, Isis and Horus type, as well as a common Hathor type were found along the coastal strip and in Galilee especially. Many Phœnicians had Egyptian names like Ebed Osiris (Slave of Osiris), the result of the long cultural influence of Egypt that the Persians seemed to have a policy of discreetly changing. Such a strong Egyptian cultural influence must have alarmed the Persians in view of their rebellious attitude. The cult set up in Samaria and Yehud could have been meant to counter the power of Egyptioan culture in the Egyptian marches.
The Phœnician goddess, Baalath Gebal, was shown on the stele of the Phœnician king Yehomelech, but she looks like Hathor. This stele is from Byblos (Gebal), 200 miles north of Jerusalem, yet the Persian king of the Persian era has what is regarded as a Jewish name because it refers to the god Yeho. On the face of it, it announces that “Yehouah is king”, though, since a Phœnician God was Melech (Moloch), it could be read as “Yehouah is Moloch”. It hints again that the Persians had given the state of Yehud and its god a privileged status in Abarnahara.
As a whole the figures were dominated by three types, a seated god with a beard, a seated goddess, and a youth., all apparently Phoenician versions of the Osiris, Isis, Horus trinity in which the god is the city and solar or sky (thunder, rain) god, the goddess his consort and earth or fertility goddess, and the youth her son. It is the archetype of the Christian holy family represented 500 years before Christ and in the very region whence the Christian god came—Galilee! The Italian scholar S Moscati wrote:
It seems evident that a triad of deities is common to all Phœnicia. The triad is composed of a protective god of the city, a goddess often his wife or companion who symbolizes the fertile earth, and a young god, somehow connected with the goddess, usually her son, whose resurrection expresses the annual cycle of vegetation. Within these limits, the names and functions of the gods vary, and the fluidity of this pantheon, where the common name prevails over the proper name, and the function over the personality, is characteristic. Another characteristic of the Phœnician triad is its flexibility from town to town.
It looks very much as if the Phœnician fertility cult evolved under the influence of Persian religion, with its new moralities and the idea of an eschatological salvation, and, by this time, also with a father god, Ahuramazda, a mother goddess, Anahita, and a son god, Mithras. Judaism was likely to have been the same, with a father god, Yehouah, a mother goddess, Asherah, and a son, variously personified as the angel of the Lord, the angel Michael, and the saviour Joshua. The Maccabees perhaps evicted the mother and the son, but the tradition remained.
An interesting artefact is a portion of a limestone bowl supported by an angel in the form of a winged youth. It is in Greek style, and dated about 500 BC, but is inscribed in a north Arabian dialect in a native script to a local Arab god. The interesting aspect is the native script used when Aramaean script was normal. It suggests that native scripts had some religious cachet. The local scripts, including Hebrew, disappeared with the dialect, and though Hebrew survived as a religious language, its corresponding script did not. The reinvented, modern Hebrew is written in Aramaean script.
The influx of Greek goods into Phœnicia and Palestine was accompanied by Greek colonization. Large numbers of Greeks settled along the coast to further Greek trade, and some Phoenican towns, perhaps moct, had large Greek minorities. To meet their tastes, large amounts of wine were imported from the Aegean, even though Palestine produced a lot of wine itself. So, there is now no doubt that 200 years before Alexander, Palestine was already heavily Hellenized, especially along the coast. Jerusalem is little more than 30 miles inland from Mezad Hashavyahu, a Greek castle, and the nearby port of Jaffa, with its large Greek population. J C Waldbaum sees a much greater Greek influence than many, except maybe Cyrus Gordon, have been ready to acknowledge.
Seals and Coins
Babylonian seals and seal impressions when found stratified are nearly always In Persian layers. Biblicists earlier had supposed them to have been from the Babylonian era. One seal was of “Yahuyishma, daughter of Shamar Shah Usur”, suggesting a Babylonian family had taken to worshipping Yehouah. It is just what would have happened if the Persian colonists were required to aet up a temple to Yehouah. On the other hand, if Jews had been exiled and were so proud of their origins and god, why would they have adopted Babylonian names? The lists in Ezra and Nehemiah imply mostly they did not. Babylonian and Persian cylinder seals, common in Babylon and Syria, have been found only twice in Palestine. Egyptian seals from the times of the twenty sixth to the twenty ninth dynasties have occasionally been found, including that of Nephrites found at Gezer. Curiously, some are found with the names of much older pharaohs impressed such as Menkaure (Men Ka Ra) and Thutmose III.
The wadi ed Daliyeh bullae were preponderantly in a Greek style, so that even the old biblicist F M Cross was obliged to observe on the “Attic Greek influences in the glyptic art of Samaria in the era before the coming of Alexander”. One of the most popular motifs was that of Hercules whom the Phœnicians saw as the equal of their god, Baal Melqart. The basis of the legends of Samson as the Judahite Hercules might therefore be illuminated.
When personal names appeared on Persian period seals they were sometimes in Aramaean, as ex0pected, but sometimes in paleo-Hebrew. Often the occupation of the owner was given too. One such title is “servant of the king” showing that this designation cannot be taken as indicating the Jewish monarchy, as it might in the absence of a proper stratigraphic date. Either it referred to the Persian king, the shahanshah, or perhaps to the god, Canaanite gods being regarded as the true king of the land. Another title on the impressions was “maidservant” but not of the king, of the pahar (governor). One seal is of “Shelomit daughter of Zerubbabel” (1 Chr 3:19).
Jerusalem seals had the letters “yrslm” inscribed in Hebrew script, each letter appearing between the points of a five pointed star. Many of these seals are not even as old as the Persian period, but date from the third and second centuries of the Hellenistic period! Aramaic Yehud seals are confined to the fourth century BC, but the Persian tradition persisted well into the Greek era:
The various Yehud seals and impressions fall into two types—one in aramaic script attributed to the Persian period, the other identical to the first but written in Hebrew script, is dated to the Hellenistic period.E Stern
N Avigad, digging in the upper city of Jerusalem, showed that it was not reoccupied until the Hellenistic period and only Hebrew seal impressions are found. It is positive evidence of the deliberate archaizing that has fooled scholars of the bible ever since. Even F M Cross seems to concur. It supports the idea that Jewish traditions were deliberately concocted in the third and second centuries by the Ptolemies and the Maccabees.
Moreover, the inscription “lmlk” cannot be assumed to indicate an object from the time of the monarchy, because “lmlk” is found at Elephantine, and so unquestionably Persian in date, and vessels found at Shiqmona, clearly stratified Persian, are marked “lmlk”. Nor are rosetter seals any guarantee of the article bearing them being monarchic. They are found in Persian layers.
The earliest Phœnician coins are 450 BC but the vast majority are after 400 BC. Most local (Palestinian) coins are also minted in the fourth century. The shah gave Biblos, Arwad, Tyre and Sidon the right to mint silver and bronze but not gold coin, and coinage of Tyre and Sidon are common indeed in Palestine.
The earliest coins in Judah have been dated to the Babylonian period, but, even if these assignments are right, they were never common until the end of the fifth century when the temple state was set up and wealth began to flow to Jerusalem. A few dozen coins have been found stamped with “Yehud”, decorated with male or female heads, the males bearded and helmeted, crowned or turbaned, falcons, lilies, and an ear! “Ear” is an unusually popular word in the bible stemming from Deuteronomy, which was the original law (Deut 29:4). The people did have to listen. The law was read out in the temple, and the people had to hear the prophets, the Persian propagandists, who traditionally began their message with the command “listen” or “hear ye”, so here is possibly a long tradition deliberately inculcated by the Persians.
According to Josephus (Against Apion), one “yhzqyh” was the high priest and friend of Ptolemy I of Egypt. He lived in Egypt around 282 BC. Coins have been found with both the Aramaean “yehud” and the Hebrew “yehudah” on them, together with the head of a Ptolemy, either Ptolemy I (305-286(BC)) or Ptolemy II (285-246 BC). So, the status of Judah had not changed from the Persian period to the Ptolemaic Egyptian one.
From Greek tradition, an owl and an olive branch also appear on Jewish coins. All are fourth century. Coins with the name of the late Persian governor “yjzqyh”, sometimes with “peha” have the Athenian owl and the Greek goddess Arethusa impressed on them. Others have the motifs of griffins, and even the crowned head of the shah. One coin identical to the “yhzqyh” coins bore instead the words “yehohanan hakohen”, or “John the Priest”. It seems the late governors of the Persian province of Judah were the priests of the post-Persian period, “yhzqyh” might have been a high priest acting as a Persian governor too, so the state of Yehud was a theocracy.
The Persian religion began aniconic, and images of Ahuramazda seem never to have been made, unless images of the shah fighting diva spirits could be interpreted as the image of god. But the ban on Jews making images must have been later than the Persian period. The assortment of images on these coins shows there could have been no ban in general. Bearded male figures on the coins look like a god, and the femals ones looks like goddesses, and simple folk could easily have thought that is what they were. All Samarian coins are from the fourth century, and many have been found in large hoards. The images on them were just as varied as the Judahite examples. Impressed names, however, include plainly Persian examples such as “bght” and “mazdy”.
Volume and dry measures named in the bible were used in the Persian period, as far as anyone can say. The kur, bat, seah and qar all occur, and the word “pym”, considered an ancient Judahite weight, also turns up on a Persian weight. Shekels are mentioned in the Wadi ed Daliyeh papyri. In a transaction of 335 BC, a slave is sold for 35 shekels of silver, but the fine for breach of contract was seven mina (420 shekels at 60 shekels to a mina)! A Samarian, according to F M Cross, also bought a slave called Yehohanan to for 30 shekels of silver, the weight in mina also being recorded. In the coastal city of Mikhmoret, a Babylonian baked clay cuneiform tablet was found recording the sale of a slave girl for 15 silver shekels. It was dated 10 Ab 525 BC, in the fifth year of Cambyses, and since the tablet probably came from Babylon, it might have come with the slave girl who was accompanying some Persian noble in Cambyses’ army aiming to conquer Egypt. The price of a slave is important because it occurs several times in the bible. It is the price of a male slave in Persian times!
At Elephantine, the earliest mention of coin is 400 BC, and two shekels were one Greek stater. 20 silver shekels (or sigloi) were one gold daric. 1 Chr 29:7 has the households of David’s kingdom giving “adarkonim” (darics) for “the service of the house of god”. Biblicists dismiss it as an anachronism, which it certainly is, and one which proves the holy book is not inerrant. But it is also a serious anachronism which shows the biblical authors were not contemporaries of the events they record. The difference is 500 years between the alleged time of David and the use of darics by the Persians. The writer, or editor, was writing 500 years after the events he purported to record as true history! Ezra uses the same word (Ezra 8:17), but also uses the word “darkemonium” (Ezra 2:69) as does Nehemiah (Neh 7:70-71).
Conclusion
The fact is that coins, bullae, seal impressions and papyri all appear in the fourth century, as many experts, even biblicists, have to concede. The conclusion of Ephraim Stern, after his massive survey of evidence in the Archaeology of the Land of the Bible III, is:
The state of Judah and the rest of the country’s provinces and major administrative units were established and became functional largely during the latter part of the Persian period.
