are just those that are most frequently mentioned in the Bible,the grape and the olive. (9) Vineyards and Wine-vats.-The grape is often alluded to in the Bible, and directions are given as to how one may conduct himself in a vineyard (Deut. 23:24) and as to how thoroughly one might glean his vines (Lev. 25:5). The most complete description of a vineyard is in Isa. 5: 1-8. The one feature of that description that would survive for an archæologist to discover is the wine-vat. These vats were often cut in the solid rock, and many of them have been found, both in excavating and in traveling over the country. The vats for pressing grapes and other fruits may be distinguished from olive-presses because they lack all arrangements for mechanical pressing. The grapes were trodden with the feet, and as the juice was pressed out it ran down into a deeper portion of the vat. Some of these vats are surrounded by "cup-marks" or hollow places cut in the stone in order to hold pointed-bottomed jars upright. Sometimes the cup-marks are connected with the main vat by tiny channels, through which any of the grape-juice that might drain from the outside of the jar, after the jar had been dipped in the vat, might run back; (see Fig. 87). (10) Olive-presses. Similarly, olive-presses are very numerous in Palestine. Presses were found in the stratum of the cavedwellers of Gezer. The olive industry is, accordingly, very old. Olive-presses comprised, in addition to the vat, an upright stone with a large hole in it. In this hole a beam was inserted. This beam rested on the olives which were to be pressed, extending far beyond the receptacle containing the olives, and weights were hung on the end farthest from the stone; (see Fig. 88). Palestine in ancient times, as now, was covered with olive orchards, many of which had oil-presses. Such an orchard was called a "garden." The Garden of Gethsemane, the scene of one of the most sacred incidents of the life of Christ (Matt. 26: 36; Mark 14 : 32), was an olive orchard and took its name from the oil-press. Gethsemane means "oil-press." Wine-vats and oil-presses were of various types, but into their forms there is not space to enter here'; (see Figs. 85, 86). The prominent place held by wine and oil among the agricul 1 The reader who cares to pursue the subject is referred to Macalister's Excavation of Gezer, II, 48, ff., and Sellin's Tell Taanek, 61, f.. and Bliss and Macalister's Excavations in Palestine, 18981900, pp. 193, 196, f., 208, 227, and 248. tural products of the country is indicated by the receipts for the storage of various quantities of these articles which were found at Samaria. (11) The Agricultural Calendar.-In the books of the old Testament the names applied to the months are, for the most part, names derived from Babylonia, but it appears that at Gezer they had a series of names for the months based on their agricultural year. In the stratum which contained remains from the time of the Hebrew monarchy, 1000-550 B. C., an inscription was found which, though the end was broken away, contained the following names for the months: 1. Month of ingathering. (See Exod. 23:16; 34:22.) 2. Month of sowing. 3. Month of the late [sowing ?]. 4. Month of the flax-harvest. 5. Month of the barley-harvest. (See Ruth 2:23; 2 Sam. 21:9.) 7. Month of pruning [vines]. 8. Month of summer-fruit [figs]. This calendar, beginning in October, still conforms to the agricultural pursuits of the year. It also gives us archæological evidence of the culture of flax by the ancient Israelites. (See Josh. 26; Prov. 31: 13; Hosea 2:5, 9.) (12) Domestic Animals.-The domestic animals of ancient Palestine may be traced in part by their bones found in various excavations, and in part by the pictures of them drawn in caves and tombs. The domestic animals most often mentioned in the Bible are asses, cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. Bones, pictures, or models of these were found in all the strata of Gezer.1 There seem to have been a variety of cows; the breeds varied in the different periods. No horse bones were found until the third Semitic period (1350–1000 b. c.). It was, perhaps, during that period that the horse was introduced by the Hittites, who appear to have brought it from Turkestan, where its bones have been found in much earlier strata.2 The ass was, however, the common beast of burden in Palestine, and bones of horses are rare until the Greek period. A number of figures of horses' heads with their bridles were found, as well as a horse's bit, and the picture of a horse and his rider. The pig was a 1 See Macalister, Excavation of Gezer, II, 1-15. 2 See Pumpelly, Excavations in Turkestan, Washington, 1908, p. 384, f. domesticated animal of the primitive cave-dwellers of Gezer, who appear to have offered swine in sacrifice, but pig-bones are rarely found in the Semitic strata. As swine were unclean to all Semites, this is not strange. The dog appears to have been half-domesticated, as the Bible implies, as his bones were employed for making prickers and similar tools, but no pictures or models of dogs are known to the writer. Probably they were of the half-wild pariah type. Certainly they were not held in high esteem. (See 1 Sam. 17: 43; 2 Sam. 16:9.) For illustrations, see Figs. 89-92. (13) Bees. A number of inverted jars, each pierced with a number of circular holes, were found. It seems probable that these were rude beehives. Before the Israelites settled in Palestine they knew it as "a land flowing with milk and honey" (Exod. 3: 8, 17; Num. 14:8; 16: 13, 14; Deut. 6 : 3), and their view was, we are told, shared by others (2 Kings 18: 32). It is not surprising, therefore, to find evidences of bee culture; (see Fig. 95). (14) Birds.-As to birds, it is doubtful whether they had any domesticated ones before the Babylonian Exile. A rude picture of an ostrich painted on a potsherd was found at Gezer, as well as some painted fragments of ostrich-egg shell. The ostrich is mentioned in the Old Testament (Job 39 : 13; Lam. 4 : 3), but as a wild bird. The Palestinians knew it as a bird that might be hunted. They sometimes gathered the eggs of wild birds to eat (Deut. 22:6; Isa. 1014). These were, perhaps, sometimes ostrich-eggs. The modern Arabs make a kind of omelette of ostrich-eggs. The ostrich was certainly not a domestic bird. At Gezer, too, a clay bird was found, or, rather, a small jar made in the form of a bird. The object was so realistic that holes were left in the clay wings for the insertion of feathers; (Fig. 93). The bird bears some resemblance to a duck, figures of which were found at Megiddo,' but the duck may have been wild. One clay head of a goose or swan was also found, but had the bird been domesticated there would probably have been more traces of it. (15) Hens.-The one domestic bird that can be traced in Palestine is the hen, and hens were not introduced until after the Exile. Hens seem to have been first domesticated in India. They are not mentioned in the Rig Veda, but the Aryans seem to have come into contact with them when they settled in the valley of the Ganges about 1000 B. C. The Yajur and Atharva Vedas mention the cock. 1 See Schumacher, Mutesellim, p. 89. The hen is a domesticated Bankiva fowl, which also exists in a wild state in India. From India the hen was domesticated eastward to China, and westward to Persia. There is a possible picture of a cock on a sculpture of Sennacherib, which would indicate that the bird was known in Assyria at the beginning of the seventh century before Christ. Another is pictured on some Babylonian gems from the time of Nabuna'id, about 550 b. c. Pictures of cocks, three of them somewhat doubtful, are found on Babylonian seals of the Persian period. The domesticated hen, traveling by way of the Black Sea, reached Asia Minor as early as the eighth century B. C.2 4 There is, however, no evidence of the presence of the hen in Palestine before the Greek period. Neither hen nor cock is mentioned in the Old Testament. In a tomb discovered by Peters and Thiersch in 1902, near Tell Sandahanna, the Marissa of the Seleucid period and the Moresheth-gath of Micah 1: 14, a number of cocks are pictured; (Fig. 94). The tomb, constructed about 200 B. C., contains a number of Greek inscriptions.3 In agreement with this evidence is also the fact that at Taanach there was found in a late pre-Arabic stratum the skeleton of a hen with an egg. Before New Testament times, then, the hen had become a domestic fowl in Palestine. Every one would accordingly understand the lament of Christ, "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye, would not!" (Matt. 23:37). The cock was so universally kept at this time that one of the divisions of the night was called the "cockcrowing" (Mark 13:35). It was the mark of the progress of the night afforded by the habits of the cock that was used by Jesus in predicting Peter's denial (Matt. 26: 34; Mark 14: 30; Luke 22: 34; John 13:38), and it was the recalling of this prediction by the crowing of the cock that brought Peter to repentant tears (Matt. 26:74; Mark 14: 68, 72; Luke 22: 60; John 18:27). 1 Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western Asia, p. 422, and Nos. 554, 556, 1126, and 1254. 2 See Dr. John P. Peters' article "The Cock" in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 363–396. * See Peters and Thiersch, The Painted Tombs of Marissa, London, 1905. See Sellin, Tell Taanek, 61, f. CHAPTER VIII POTTERY IMPORTANCE OF POTTERY. PRE-SEMITIC POTTERY. FIRST SEMITIC POTTERY TO 1800 B. C. POTTERY OF SECOND SEMITIC PERIOD. THIRD SEMITIC PERIOD. ISRAELITISH OR FOURTH SEMITIC PERIOD. HELLENISTIC PERIOD. 1. Importance of Pottery.-In all parts of the world the making of clay jars and receptacles is one of the earliest arts to be discovered, and Palestine was no exception to the rule. In Palestine such jars were particularly useful, as the water for each family had to be carried from the nearest spring to the house. It was natural that, in a country which had so long a history as Palestine, and over which the influences of so many diverse civilizations swept, there should be a considerable variety in the types of pottery in different periods. Indeed, it is now recognized that the differences in these types are so marked that in the absence of other criteria it is possible approximately to date a stratum of the remains of any ancient city by the type of pottery found in it. Since this is so, a brief outline of the different types is not out of place here, although these differences have little or no bearing upon the interpretation of the Bible. Only a brief statement is here attempted. who wish to study the subject more fully are referred to more extended works.1 The classifications of pottery made by the leading experts differ, as they have been written at different times and as the excavations have continually enlarged the material. The classification presented in the following pages is mainly that of Macalister, based on the work at Gezer and on previous excavations. Those 2. Pre-Semitic Pottery.-There is first, then, the pottery of the pre-Semitic cave-dwellers. This pottery is made out of clay that was in no way cleansed or refined. It was made by hand, the larger jars having been built up little by little. The vessel, after receiving such ornament as the potter desired, was usually fired, though sometimes simply sun-dried. In firing the heat was often dis 1 Especial mention may be made of the following: Petrie, Tell el-Hesy; Bliss and Macalister, Excavations in Palestine, 1898-1900, Part II; Vincent, Canaan d'après l'exploration récent, Paris, 1907, Chapter V, and Macalister, The Excavation of Gezer, II, 128-231. |