The Oxford History of the Biblical World (5 page)

The culture of the Chalcolithic in many respects evolved from the preceding Neolithic Age. Ceramic forms developed in the earlier period continued to be used in the later, as did stone (usually flint) tools. The process of domestication continued, with olives, dates, and flax added to the repertoire of cultivated flora. Chalcolithic settlements, like those of the Neolithic, were unfortified. In Palestine the number of known sites is much larger for the Chalcolithic, and they are often found in previously unsettled regions. In part because of the expanding repertoire of food supplies, diet improved and population increased. Given the demonstrable continuities with the preceding period, earlier theories that posited migration as the source of innovations now seem unlikely.

Yet there were innovations in this period as well, some of short duration and others longer-lasting. New ceramic forms developed, often ornately painted or incised. Some are ossuaries, small receptacles for the secondary interment of bones after the flesh has decomposed. In the Neolithic, apparently only skulls were given this secondary treatment; now the entire skeletal remains of adults were gathered together, deposited in the ossuaries, and placed in burial caves. The ossuaries are usually large boxes, averaging 70 centimeters (2 feet 3 inches) long, 60 centimeters (2 feet) high, and 30 centimeters (1 foot) wide. Some are elaborately decorated, giving them the appearance of a house, with openings for doors and sometimes windows. Although not all Chalcolithic burials are of this type, secondary burial was at least widely practiced, and continued for millennia.

Since the Chalcolithic period is still prehistoric in the sense that we have no texts
to help us interpret the material culture, we know nothing about the ideas underlying secondary burial in ossuaries. Is this an attempt to give the dead a home, if only on a reduced scale? Why are architectural details of the ossuaries inconsistent with ordinary houses of the period? Why are some ossuaries shaped like animals, and some elaborately decorated with disembodied eyes? Why are some interment sites distant from settlements, and why are some corpses not given secondary burial? Our inability to answer such questions reveals how little we know of ancient peoples in this and prior and even subsequent ages. What archaeologists excavate at a site of any size is only a small fraction of what was there when it was a vibrant, flourishing entity. Moreover, much excavated material from all periods is prehistoric in precisely this sense, coming from sites and individuals that will forever remain anonymous. Even after writing was developed, the overwhelming majority of texts were produced by and for a small elite. Their social attitudes and religious beliefs and practices can only partially, and even then with difficulty, be projected to nonelite, nonurban, ordinary folk, whose social history and thinking must largely be inferred from the fragmentary survivals of their material culture.

The same sort of questions arise about another type of artifact of the Chalcolithic Age, the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines. Usually ceramic, but sometimes carved in ivory or stone, these figurines are carefully executed artistic expressions whose function and interpretation are unclear. The stone exemplars are carefully executed, portraying what seems to be a woman in an abstract violin-like shape. In the media of pottery and ivory, both males and females are portrayed more realistically, with their sexual organs rendered in explicit, sometimes exaggerated, detail. Plausibly this suggests some association with fertility ritual. The same theme is also apparent in two complete ceramic examples. One is a nude seated woman who holds on her head a large churn, a well-attested ceramic form from the period generally. The other is a ram, on whose back are three tapered cups, or cornets, another common Chalcolithic form. The torsos of both the woman and the ram are churnlike in shape. Human and animal reproduction and milk production thus seem to have been understandable preoccupations of Chalcolithic people, although the rituals in which these needs were expressed are unknowable.

Chalcolithic settlement is found throughout Palestine, from upper Galilee and the Golan Heights to the Negeb. The best-known large sites are a cluster of three in the Beer-sheba region, the source of most of the ivory figurines, and Teleilat Ghassul, just northeast of the Dead Sea. Approximately midway between them lie the sites of two major discoveries. During the systematic exploration of caves in the Judean wilderness to the west of the Dead Sea that followed the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, a large cache of copper objects was recovered from a cave on the Nahal Mishmar. Dubbed the “Cave of the Treasure,” it contained hundreds of ivory and copper objects, along with pottery, textiles, stone tools, basketry, and several burials. The large number of copper objects and their technical and artistic sophistication is unparalleled elsewhere in the same period and for centuries to come. The hoard included ten crowns, some intricately decorated with animal heads and horns, birds, and knobs. There were also more than 100 standards, many decorated with the same elements as the crowns. Copper jars and baskets, chisels and a hammer,
and more than 240 mace heads were also found. Since the lost-wax process was used in casting the objects, there are no exact duplicates among the more than 400 in the cache.

The origin and function of this trove are a mystery. There was no nearby contemporary settlement of any size. Some 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) to the north-northeast, on a terrace overlooking the Dead Sea near the prolific spring at En-gedi, are the remains of a complex of structures that has plausibly been interpreted as a Chalcolithic shrine. A screening or temenos wall separated the shrine from its immediate environment, enclosing an area of about 375 square meters (4,000 square feet). Two gates in the wall gave access to an open courtyard, and projecting inward from the wall were two large rectangular buildings of what is known as the “broadroom” type, with their entrances on the long side. The larger of the two measures 5.5 meters (18 feet) by 20 meters (65 feet), and has opposite its entrance a raised platform, flanked, as was the doorway, by benches. The isolation of the complex, the finds found within it (for example, nearly 70 percent of the pottery was cornets), and parallels to its design at other sites suggest that this was a religious center, probably used by several communities. The trove from the Cave of the Treasure may have originally belonged to this sanctuary.

Together with burial practices and figurines, the complex at En-gedi is evidence for an organized system of communal practices based on the shared belief, or hope, of a reality greater than the human, perhaps even a life after life. There is a similar complex at the important site of Megiddo (Tell el-Mutesellim), also with a temenos wall and two broadroom structures, each with a platform, or altar, opposite its entrance. The date of the original construction of this complex is disputed, whether in the Chalcolithic or the immediately succeeding Early Bronze I Age, but the interpretation of its function as religious is supported by the presence of temples in the same area at Megiddo in uninterrupted succession for over two thousand years, until the beginning of the Iron Age.

The Chalcolithic Age, then, was a brief era of both relatively peaceful existence and extraordinary artistic expression. The construction and maintenance of the public architecture and the manufacture of the copper, ivory, and ceramic artifacts must have been the primary occupation of specialized groups. The movement toward complex social organization thus continued. This was apparently an internal development, rather than the result of massive invasions from outside the region. The Chalcolithic ended mysteriously, with some of its principal sites simply abandoned and never resettled. But many of the elements of its culture continued to be used in the succeeding Early Bronze Age, suggesting continuity rather than disruption.

The phenomenon of urbanism in the Early Bronze Age throughout the Near East was not a sudden development. As populations grew, societies became more complex, resulting in ever more specialized occupations. Competition increased among villages and towns for natural resources, especially arable land and water, and one specialization that developed was military. Defensive and offensive weapons become increasingly lethal, and settlements began to be fortified with increasingly elaborate ramparts, towers, and gates.

During the apparently peaceful, artistic Chalcolithic Age in Palestine, urbanism was already developing in Mesopotamia, and shortly thereafter, in Egypt. By the beginning of the fourth millennium
BCE
, at Uruk and elsewhere in southern Mesopotamia, true cities had appeared. They are characterized by monumental public architecture that had both religious and administrative functions, by sophisticated technology in various media, and, eventually, by the use of writing. As populations increased, agriculture also became a specialized activity. No longer could each family or domestic unit supply its own food. Many of its members might pursue other occupations—soldiers, builders, priests, potters, metallurgists, administrators—and their needs would have been met by others—farmers, herders, traders.

The development of cities also brought greater cultural unity. This is evident, for example, in the homogeneity of ceramic traditions over a large region. Cities vied with each other for control of the region, with first one urban center and then another dominant. A text called the
Sumerian King List
illustrates these shifts in hegemony: “When kingship was lowered from heaven, kingship was [first] in Eridu. [In] Eridu, A-lulim [became] king and ruled 28,800 years. Alalgar ruled 36,000 years. Two kings [thus] ruled it for 64,800 years. I drop [the topic] Eridu [because] its kingship was brought to Bad-tibira. [In] Bad-tibira, En-men-lu-Ana ruled 43,200 years” (trans. A. Leo Oppenheim; p. 265 in James B. Pritchard, ed.,
Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament,
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969). This chronicle, composed late in the third millennium
BCE
, continues to list in detail five dynastic cities before “the Flood swept over [the earth].” There follows a list of postdiluvian cities and their rulers, concluding with the fall of Ur, by which time the lengths of the rulers’ reigns have become plausible.

Although at least for the early periods the names and dates in the
King List
are clearly legendary, underlying it is perhaps an authentic historical memory of the prominence of various urban centers in the third millennium and even before. The first city mentioned, Eridu, is the oldest known Mesopotamian site where the beginning of urbanism is identified, as far back as the fifth millennium
BCE
, during the Chalcolithic Age in the Levant.

In these cities, by the early fourth millennium, centralized government was monarchic. The kings of ancient Sumer, the dominant region of southern Mesopotamia for several centuries, provided the necessary coordination of the specialized occupations. They directed the maintenance of the irrigation system, and presided over the complex exchange network that distributed goods from producers to consumers. In the process they acquired immense wealth. Some of this accumulated capital went for the construction of elaborate temple complexes, which, like the public works projects of later times, provided employment for segments of a growing population. At the same time, the temples visually testified to royal power, and became the stuff of legend. The biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11.1–9) is on one level a description of the construction of a ziggurat, an enormous stepped pyramid that served as the base for a temple. Such structures are attested at cities throughout southern Mesopotamia from the third millennium into the first. The deity worshiped in the temple atop the ziggurat was the city’s most important god, whose earthly representative was the reigning king. And although temple and crown sometimes competed for power and wealth, in general religion served the political ends of the state.

A similar development took place in Egypt during approximately the same period. About 3100
BCE
the geographical unity provided by the Nile was translated into political unity, as northern and southern Egypt were united under one ruler. The third-century
BCE
Egyptian historian Manetho organized the history of his land into dynasties, a classification still followed today, and he calls the first king of the first dynasty Menes. This name does not, however, appear on ancient Egyptian monuments, and scholars generally identify Menes with Narmer, who is thus the first ruler of all Egypt. (The traditional designation
pharaoh
will not be used until centuries later.)

With unification came the beginning of Egyptian interest in the Levant as well. Narmer’s name has been found incised on pottery fragments from two sites in southern Palestine, Tell Arad and Tel Erani, during the Early Bronze I period, and an abundance of imported Egyptian pottery and other artifacts begin to occur at many sites. These discoveries may be evidence only of trade, but within a few centuries—during the dynasties of the first major division of Egyptian history, the Old Kingdom—Egypt established political dominance over this region.

During the Old Kingdom internal control was also solidified. Egyptian society was organized in a pyramid-like fashion, with the pharaoh, the son of the sun-god, at its apex, presiding over a vast bureaucracy that controlled all aspects of Egyptian life. The most familiar evidence of the success of this system is the great pyramids at Giza, constructed with enormous labor as the final resting places of the rulers of the Old Kingdom.

Up to this point we have been dealing largely with prehistory. Even subsequent eras are often prehistoric in the sense that we cannot set down any typical political history—for most of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in Palestine, for example, few names of cities or rulers are known, nor are even the language or languages that the inhabitants used. But first in Sumer, and then in Egypt, a technology is invented that will enable history in the more familiar sense to be reconstructed, that is, to be written. That technology, one of the most significant inventions of early Near Eastern civilizations, is writing itself.