Carved in clay

It seems there is lots of exciting tablet news lately! Jennifer Green at the Ottawa Citizen has been embedded with the Tell Tayinat excavation team in the Turkish Hatay covering their latest announcements about a treaty that was uncovered on the site last year. The document was composed in Akkadian (the "international" language of the Middle East at the time) and written in cuneiform on a large clay tablet that was then baked. Though this particular article is a bit dated (early April), I wanted to share it because it sums up really well the implications of this amazing find:

"Canadian archeologists in Turkey have unearthed an ancient treaty written in cuneiform that could have served as a model for the biblical description of God’s covenant with the Israelites.

The tablet, dating from about 670 BC, is a treaty between the powerful Assyrian king and his weaker vassal states, written in a highly formulaic language very similar in form and style to the story of Abraham’s covenant with God in the Hebrew Bible, says University of Toronto archeologist Timothy Harrison.

Although biblical scholarship differs, it is widely accepted that the Hebrew Bible was being assembled around the same time as this treaty, the seventh century BC."

The treaty being excavated last year at Tayinat (photo from Tayinat Archaeological Project)

Archaeologists have long recognized the large amount of "sharing" so to speak when it comes to literary traditions of the ancient Near East. The story of The Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh for example, in which Utnapishtim builds a huge wooden boat to save himself, his family, and animals, predates the biblical flood story of Noah by a thousand years. There are other examples from ancient Canaanite (people who lived in what is today Israel, Palestine, western Syria and Lebanon) myths as well with the exploits of Baal and El, god names that are also repeated in the Hebrew bible (i.e., "Old Testament").

As Tim Harrison, the director of the Tayinat Archaeological Project, rightly notes in the article this treaty did not serve as a template for the Hebrew bible. It merely reflects the very formal and diplomatic language at the time--something "official" that the Hebrews would have wanted to emulate. You can read all of Jennifer's articles about Tayinat and life on the dig over at the Ottawa Citizen online with her most recent article ("Deciding where to dig: archaeologists stake their future on it") published today.

In other tablet news, Arutz Sheva is reporting a teenie weenie sliver of a tablet has been excavated at the ancient site of Hazor located near the northern border of modern Israel. Despite its size, archaeologist have been able to read a few lines of text that contain words like "master," "slave" and "tooth." Though we are awaiting a full report of the text, it is likely a fragment of an ancient law code dating to the 18th century BCE.

What's cool about this is no law codes have ever been found in Israel until now, though texts dealing with legal issues have been uncovered in the past. This new discovery could shed some light on the relationship between biblical law and the law code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian king who compiled a few codes of law that were already floating around into his famous black stela that currently resides in the Louvre. Of course, Hammurabi (I call him "Ham" for short) was practical as well as a showman. Apart from his stela, his laws were also written down on tablets and sent throughout the kingdom and this latest find from Hazor is probably one of those.

I've included this picture of Prof. Wayne Horowitz of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology both to show the tiny tablet fragment and his amazing shirt. Oh if only I could get away with excavating in a Hawaiian shirt!

"Cutting edge" research

Sadly I cannot take credit for that title (thanks Jack Sasson!), but it just about sums up the ridiculousness in this AOL News article: "Researchers in Israel find world's first steak knives." In sum, archaeologists excavating a cave site in Israel that dates back some 200,000 years are claiming these microflakes (about the size of a quarter) had two razor-sharp edges and two dull edges making them perfect for holding in the hand and close to the mouth. Now I'm no chipped stone expert, but even I know enough about this stuff to see these flakes were either debris from tool making (tiny chips that break off as you are fashioning a spear point, for example) and/or actual micotools that could be used for cutting.

However I am much quicker to believe these tools were used to cut things "on the fly" than picture a family sitting around the camp fire daintily cutting their individual rib bones with their "steak knives." The whole point of cooking meat is to make it tender enough to cut and chew with your teeth alone. [begin sarcasm] For example, note the ease at which our ancient hominid chews the meat of a leg bone in this 1969 "classic" DC Comic [end sarcasm]. The fact these tools were found with animal bones around a hearth could just as easily be interpreted as carcasses being butchered before cooking than individual cutlery to aid in eating. Later these stone cutting tools will become helpful in the butchering of meat into smaller pieces to fit in pots for stewing.

Another thing that irks me about the article is the underestimation about the skill and craft involved in stone tool making. According to the article, "procuring this mini-cutlery was almost as easy as running out to the supermarket. An early human who needed a steak knife at dinner had only to grab a stone, often a discarded tool, and tap it just so." Tap it just so? Seriously? I thought at least some kind knowledgeable selection of the right kind of stone and then some shaping were necessary to get these tools? Again I am not a lithic expert, so maybe someone out there is and could enlighten us all?

Not to end this post on a sour note, I have some good news from the world of open access and ancient materials. Leif Isaksen at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is working together with Dr Elton Barker at The Open University and Dr Eric Kansa of the University of California-Berkeley on the "Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus" project. The GAP researchers will enable internet users worldwide to search the Google Books corpus to find books related to a geographic location and within a particular time period. The results can then be visualised on GoogleMaps or in GoogleEarth. Web widgets will make it possible for webmasters to add links to the ancient texts within their websites, enabling the public and researchers to search for them easily. Find out more at The Guardian and the University of South Hampton news briefing.

This sounds like a fabulous project and an effective and easy way to bring ancient text and other documents to the public using mediums most people are already comfortable with (Google Maps and Earth). The project begs the question though: are libraries beginning to be obsolete?

Dig Girl milestone

200 posts! (201 if you count this one). In honor of that, and because my husband was singing this song earlier today, I give you They Might Be Giant's "The Mesopotamians." Yes yes I know I have posted this before but whatever. I love this song and still want a Mesopotamians t-shirt. Do they even make those??

Adopt a Pompeii dog

This is an interesting take on cultural heritage preservation: the (C)Ave Canem Project. If you have ever been fortunate enough to visit Pompeii, you know the site is overrun with stray dogs, which is a major problem in terms of visitor safety and site cleanliness (think: dog poop and disease). This project allows you to sponsor a dog that is currently living at Pompeii, providing it with food and vaccinations, until they are adopted by someone locally. The idea makes sense because no one in their right mind is going to adopt a stay dog with a questionable health history.

This is a great alternative to simply killing all the dogs on site, though I wonder why rounding them up and caring for them in local shelters is not an option? The answer is apparent in the project website, which states the main action of the (C)Ave Canem is to "create the conditions for a positive relationship between dogs and people."

In a wise move, the stewards of Pompeii have chosen not to simply "clean up" all the icky modern problems surrounding this important heritage site to allow the ancient history to shine through. Instead they are using this issue with modern stray dogs to highlight the long-term relationship that has existed between dogs and humans, especially at Pompeii itself. The most visible example is of course the famous Cave Canem ("beware the dog") mosaic on the threshold at the House of the Tragic Poet (seen here) featuring a snarling black guard dog protecting his master's house.

Poetic Middle East

Years ago when I was a graduate student instructor for a course in the ancient and modern Middle East I asked my students to write a poem about the region based on their own experiences or what they had learned as a result of the course. My goal was to incorporate more writing into my "discussion" section and to catch them off-guard with an assignment they likely hadn't received in a college history class. More importantly, as any of you poetry writers out there know, writing verse as opposed to prose is extremely difficult: your ideas, thoughts and emotions are condensed down into a few lines. It is a wonderful exercise in focusing your thoughts, something I realized my students needed after a semester of being bombarded with tons of information. An unintentional outcome was I, as an instructor, could see what points were "getting through" to the students.

As I administered the in-class assignment some students snickered in the back, thinking I was joking. Others though were immediately deep in thought, taking the entire time I gave them to pen some beautiful verses. In looking through my files this afternoon I came across those poems. My favorites I am sharing here in their original forms (punctuation, meter, etc.). Which is your favorite and why?

Untitled #1 

Middle East

Or should I say Near East

I really didn't know you before Berkeley.

Subservient veiled women, constant war,

that is my previous perception of you,

but now my understanding goes deeper.

Now I see the veils are moral representations

I see a culture that runs deep

deep throughout history

I see intimacy with families

clashes between tradition and modernization

Pain and beauty

I see much more than desert

I know the mountain ranges of Afghanistan

the fruitful valleys of the Nile

I am intrigued

There is so much more to the

Middle East than my ignorant

Freshman mind imagined.

Struggle

 Israel is small

Fighting against large odds

A Jew's perspective

Untitled #2

Thousands flock to the peninsula

Disregarding their leader's warnings

They are unaware, and could hardly care

Because it's supposed to be theirs anyway

BOOM

It did happen to them

Does anybody think about the Egyptians?

Istanbul

I went to Turkey

but didn't eat any;

Instead,

I watched people enter a

nightclub

From where I sat

on the steps of a mosque

The new Tarkan video

blaring from a window was

temporarily

drowned out by the azan from the minaret;

But when the azan stopped,

Tarkan sang on.

Untitled #3

A place of culture and the arts

They say it is where civilization starts

A place where outsiders know little about

Where controversy roars real loud

A troubled history of foreign lands

All with some blood on their hands

A place where many hope for peace

Where else could it be but the Middle East?