William H. Shea
Dr. William H. Shea, M.D., Ph.D., is on the staff of the Biblical Research Institute, Washington, DC. He formerly taught at Andrews University, Berrien Springs. MI.
Is it possible that a potsherd with very early Israelite writing on it, found at “Isbet Sartah, tells of a tragedy which-befell Israel during the period of the Judges?
Restored four-room building from the early 10th century, looking northeast. The ostracon was found in a pit from an earlier phase on the east side of this building.
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The Biblical Account
The Israelites suffered a major reverse during the period of the Judges when they lost the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines as a result of their defeat at the Battle of Ebenezer. Actually, there were two battles at Ebenezer. The first, or preliminary, battle is described in 1 Samuel 4:1–3. After suffering a defeat in this battle the Israelites decided to bring up further reinforcements. These reinforcements were not Just more troops, but they now enlisted the service of Yahweh himself. To insure His presence with them when they went into battle the second time they brought the Ark of the Covenant down from Shiloh. It had been there in the tabernacle, or portable tent shrine, since the days of the wilderness wandering.
The opposing camp of the Philistines was not unaware of these developments. When the Ark was brought down from Shiloh and into the camp of the Israelites, the shout of the welcoming Israelite troops was loud enough that it was heard in the Philistine camp, and they readily recognized its significance. Nevertheless, they resolved to “quit themselves like men” and fight courageously, even though faced by the supernatural presence of the God of the Israelites who was thought to accompany the Ark.
Unfortunately for the Israelites, God did not approve of this course of action and He left them to their own devices. His supernatural presence did not fight for them on this occasion and when left to their own military strength and tactics, the Israelites lost the second battle at Ebenezer. As a matter of fact, it was a massive defeat for the Israelites. Not only did they lose large numbers of
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troops, with the rest of the army scattered to the winds, but they also lost the Ark Itself, and the two priestly attendants who accompanied it, Hophni and Phineas, sons of Eli the high priest, were killed in the battle.
Thus the Israelites were routed; the Philistines were victorious. The Ark had been captured by the Philistines, and the two sons of Ell lay dead upon the battlefield. All of this was then reported back at Shiloh where Eli and his family awaited news from the field. The sad news of the defeat brought about a disastrous turn of events. Both Eli and the wife of Phinehas died as a result (1 Sm 4:12–22).
The Ark then began a tour, a series of travels in the land of the Philistines. It was taken first toAshdod (I Sm 5:1–8). When a plague broke out in that city it was then sent on to Gath (1 Sam 5:8–9). The same thing occurred in that Philistine city, so the residents there sent it on to Ekron. The Ekronites, too, suffered under the plague that the previous two Philistine cities had experienced, so they gave up and sent it back to the Israelites at Beth-Shemesh, along with an appropriate peace offering for Yahweh (1 Sam 5:9–12). All told, the Ark of the Covenant spent seven months in the land of the Philistines (1 Sam 6:1).
Potsherd Found With Writing on It
The question arises from this rather remarkable narrative whether any extra-biblical evidence has been found which will illuminate these events. Just such an object has been found, and it comes to us in the form of an ostracon — a broken piece of pottery with writing on it. The ostra-con was found at the site of cIsbet Sartah. This is a small, early Iron age fortress type of village in the low foothills just a few miles east of Aphek, which has been located at Ras el-cAyin. Since the biblical account of these events indicates that the Philistines were encamped at Aphek, and the Israelites were encamped at Ebenezer, it has reasonably been suggested that cIzbet Sartah was actually the site of the Israelite camp at Ebenezer. The new information available from the ostracon found at that site makes this suggestion all the more secure.
The ostracon was found during the 1976 season of excavations and it was reported, described, and presented in photograph and line drawing in the Journal Tel Aviv in 1977 (4:1–13) by its excavator, M. Kochavi, from the Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology.
What Is the “Story” on It?
The ostracon is a large sherd, in two pieces large enough to fit into the palm of an average sized person’s hand. It has five lines of text incised upon it. These lines were scratched into the sherd; theywere not written with ink upon it. This probably was fortunate, or the writing may not have survived through time and the damage that the text has suffered. The fifth line of the text was identified as an alphabet very soon after the sherd was recovered (Tel Aviv 4 [1977]: 14-27), in a study by A. Demsky. Unfortunately, however, the four lines written above the alphabetic line have resisted interpretation until recently. Some progress was made in the decipherment of these lines by A. Dotan in a study published in 1981 (Tel Aviv 8: 160–172). Dotan’s theory about this text was that it recorded the donation of some garments from one individual to another. While it has turned out that this interpretation of the text was not correct, Dotan did make some important advances in understanding elements in this text which led to its later decipherment.
I first became seriously interested in this text after Dotan’s study was
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published. It took several years of intermittent work upon it after that until the text finally yielded its secrets. But it now stands before us as a rather remarkable extra-biblical record of the events described in 1 Samuel 4–7. Lest the reader think that I simply went after this text in order to turn it into support for the biblical record, let me point out that my first interpretation of it was to take it as a donation text too, as Dotan had done before me. It was only after that first draft was written that I began to see other letters on the published photographs which led me to change my interpretation. After several more years of work this text has now become more clear.
I will not publish here the full linguistic and epigraphic discussion of the text. That was presented in the Spring 1990 issue of Andrews Universlty Seminary Studies. The reader interested in those technical details is referred to that work. What I wish to present here are simply the results of that work, put in a popular biblical perspective. To shorten this task I will only give the transcription, word division, and translation of the text, along with my own line drawing of it. The AUSS study includes the two best photographs of the text.
Transcription
Slash marks represent the break between the two halves of the ostracon. Circles around letters indicate damaged letters.
Proposed Word Divisions
Translation
1) Unto the field we came /, (unto)
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Aphek from Shiloh.
2) The Kittim took (it and) came to Azor, / (to) Dagon lord of Ashdod, (and to) Gath.
3) (It returned to) Kiriath-Jearim. 4) The companion of the foot soldiers, Hophni, came to tel/l the elders, “a horse has come (and) upon (it is my) brother for us to bury.”
Historical Comments
The first line of the text tells of the coming of the Israelites to their campsite prior to the battle with the Philistines. The second half of this. line is not as clear in the photographs as the first half. This means that the place names there are damaged but still quite possible. If the name Shiloh has been read correctly, then the text tells of the Israelites coming from that site. Since Shiloh enters the Biblical story at the point at which the Ark of the Covenant is brought to the battlefield, this implies, but does not explicitly state, that the Ark of the Covenant had been brought to the Israelite camp by the time referred to here. The word for the Ark does not appear in the text itself, but it is implied at several points in its narrative.
The word at the beginning of the second line is a very important key to the significance of the text. It was the point at which my new interpretation of this text developed, for I first noted that an aditional “T” could be read following the first one in this word. They are both quite clear in the photographs. The final letter of this word was previously read as an “N” but now, with a new and better understanding of this juncture in the alphabetic line, It should be taken as an “M” instead. Thus this word is— quite clearly— “KTTM” or Kittim.
The Kittim were originally the inhabitants of the island of Cyprus. But later on, as the use of that word developed, It came to mean any person or group of people coming to the coast of Palestine from the Mediterranean. Thus a fair and general translation for this term here might be “Sea Peoples.” This is particularly interesting because the Philistines were a part of a larger migration eastward of peoples from the western and central Mediterranean. A number of these maritime migrant groups are mentioned in the Egyptian inscriptions of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. The Philistines played a part in this larger picture of early Iron Age migrations and this was what brought them eventually to reside in southwestern Palestine, to which they gave their name.
The fact that this larger group name of Sea Peoples, rather than the Philistines specifically, is mentioned here may also imply that other Sea Peoples besides the Philistines may have been involved in this confrontation. Good candidates to have joined such a force would have been the Tjekker who lived in Dor further north on the coast of Palestine, according to the Egyptian text known as the Tale of Wen Amun. Since Dor was relatively near to the area where this action took place it would have been natural, or logical, for contingents of Tjekker troops fi’om Dor to have joined the Philistines in this confrontation with Israel.
Like 1 Samuel 5, this ostracon tells of the travels of the Ark. It also includes at least one place In its list which is not mentioned in the Biblical list, and that is the place of Azor. Azor is not mentioned in the Bible by name, but it is mentioned in an Assyrian text telling of the Palestinian campaign of Sennacherib. Sennacherib indicated that during that campaign he took Azor, along with a number of other central coastal Palestinian cities. Azor has not been excavated completely, but from the token excavations that have been carried out there (T. Dotan, The Philistines and their Material Culture, pp.
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55–57}, it is evident that the site was thoroughly Philistine in character during the early Iron Age. It functioned here, probably, as a way-station for the Philistine troops as they returned to their homeland.
The next site in Philistia that is mentioned in the second line is Ashdod. The name of that site was inscribed along the edge of the sherd. The ‘aleph and the two D’s or dalets are quite clear, only the Sh or shinis damaged. The text goes beyond naming the city; it also appears to name the god of the city, Dagon. The word for “lord,” baal, is quite clear in the text just before the name of the place. The name of the god who is the lord of Ashdod is more difficult to read but it is probable.
The fact that the god and his title as lord of that city is mention here is interesting in view of the events that transpired in his temple, according to the Biblical account. In that account it tells of the encounter between Dagon and Yahweh, and Dagon came off second best. His specific mention here makes it evident that the writer of this extra-biblical text was aware of the same encounter that is spelled out in more detail in the Biblical text.
The last place name on this line is that of Gath, written simply with the two letters gt. They curve down from the end of this line. This city is mentioned in the same place in this list that Gath occurs in the Biblical list, following Ashdod, but before Ekron. Ekron itself is not mentioned in our text. It appears to skip over that site, and the first Israelite site of Beth-Shemesh. and go directly to the Israelite site at which the Ark took up a long term residence, Kiriath-Jearim.
The name of Kiriath-Jearim occurs in the short third line. In fact, these are the only words found in that line. The interesting feature about them is that they are given in reversed order, Jearim-Kiriah instead of Kiriath-Jearim. I have puzzled over this feature for some time and the conclusion that I have come to is that they were intentionally reversed in order to indicate the movement of the Ark back in the opposite direction, back into Israelite country. Line two thus tells of the loss of the Ark and its movement through Philistia. Line three tells of its return and the reversal of its fortunes by reversing the elements in the place name.
The fourth line, the longest of the text, reverts back to the scene which took place at the battle itself. In other words, in terms of historical order, the events described in line four really belong chronologically between lines one, where they prepared for the battle, and line two, where the results of the battle are described. Here in line four, a scene from the battle itself is described. It tells of the return of Hophni to the base camp at Ebenezer while the battle was still going on. The elders who remained in camp are mentioned here. They are also mentioned in 1 Samuel 4:3 as those who wanted to have the Ark brought down from Shiloh. Hophni returned to the camp with bad news. The name of Hophni, incidentally, can be read quite clearly as hpn. The hethand pe have already been read by other scholars here and it simply remained to note that the notched vertical stroke of the nun was located above and horizontal to the pe. The -i vowel at the end of Hophni’s name was not written out here and one would not expect it to have been written out in this early script.
Hophni reports to the elders, “A horse has come and upon it is my brother for us to bury.” The mention of a horse is interesting since the Israelites did not use them in warfare until after the time of the reign of David. Thus it is likely that this horse came from the opposing party, the Sea Peoples, or the Philistines.
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Upon the horse was the body of Phinehas. Hophni does not refer to his brother byname; he only refers to him as “my brother.” As the other custodian of the Ark, it is obvious that Phinehas is the one who is meant. The more serious implication in this statement is what must have already been evident to the elders at the base camp. That is, Hophni no longer had the Ark in his custody. It had undoubtedly been captured when Phinehas fell on the battlefield, and now Hophni showed up at the camp empty-handed.
Thus this text gives us a more immediate historical and military context in which the Ark was lost. 1 Samuel 4:12–22 gives us the later, relayed news of this same event, when it was received back at Shiloh. Here we learn of it during the heat of the battle. This text also indicates to us that of the two brothers, Phinehas was the first to fall. It appears that Hophni later returned to the foray and suffered the same fate as his brother.
Conclusions
This new decipherment, translation and interpretation of the cIsbet Sartah Ostracon provides us with a remarkable new witness and testimony to the course of the events described in I Samuel 4–7. While not mentioning the Ark by name, it clearly refers to its fate when it was lost in the battle at Ebenezer, and it follows its travels through the land of Philistia until it came back to reside at the Judahite site of Kiriath-Jearim. From there David eventually took the Ark up to Jerusalem.
This fascinating text names three of the places where the Ark stopped in Philistia, and it mentions the final Judahite site to which it returned. It mentions by name Hophni, one of the two priestly brothers who were custodians of the Ark and it implies a knowledge of the other even though he is not specifically referred to. It alludes to intimate details from the very battle scene itself. Clearly, the writer of this text, whoever he may have been, had a knowledge of the course of the travels of the Ark over quite a period of time and through a series of important events in the religious and political history of Israel. This text thus ranks as of great importance as one of the earliest extra-biblical narrative texts which refers to events also mentioned in the Bible, and it also conveys the earliest mention of a Biblical character by name in an extra-biblical text.
Palaeographers have generally dated this text to the 12th century BC by the style of script in which it was written. Now that we can connect it to a specific historical event in Israel’s history, that date should be lowered to the 11th century, to ca. 1085 or 1075, to coincide with the time of the Battle of Ebenezer, for it should be taken as a contemporary witness to those events.
The text also confirms the identification of cIsbet Sartah, where it was found, as Biblical Ebenezer.