| In 1887, Egyptian farmers discovered a
large number of clay cuneiform tablets at the ancient site of Tell el-Amarna,
the location of Akhetaten, the capital of Egypt during the reign of
Amenophis IV (Akhenaten). The archive consisted of about 380 clay
tablets, most of which were written in Akkadian cuneiform, including 7
from Megiddo. The documents formed part of the royal correspondence of
three Pharaohs: Amenophis III, Amenophis IV and Tutankhamon. The Amarna
tablets have supplied exciting and vital information about the political
and cultural interaction between Egypt, Canaan and the rest of the
Ancient Near East during the Amarna Period (ca. 1375-1325 BCE). The
nature of Egyptian influence in Canaan during the period is still the
subject of lively debate, due in part to the complexity of the
archaeological record, which comes mainly from the 13-12th
centuries. The archaeological and the historical data point to the
existence of an Egyptian administrative system in Canaan, controlling
satellite city-states, which maintained a limited degree of autonomy.
Though the textual information has been extracted from the documents, no
attempt has been made to systematically investigate the source of the
tablets based on their raw material, i.e. the clay itself. This
investigation is essential for the reconstruction of the system of
Canaanite city-states in the Late Bronze Age.
Ancient Near Eastern cuneiform archives contain
numerous tablets of unknown origin. In cases where the name of the
sender or his domicile is missing or when the location of the city is
not clearly established, scholars can only hope to find some
paleographic, linguistic, or thematic clues to the origin of a tablet.
The investigation of the provenance of tablets through the examination
of their clay seems to be a promising complementary approach. Using both
petrographic and elemental analysis, the authors investigated most of
the archive, including those tablets assigned to Megiddo.
Various techniques are employed for analyzing the
composition of pottery and other ceramic artifacts. Basically they can
be divided into physical and chemical methods. Physical
methods identify the minerals in the clay and temper and define the
texture and fabric of the sherd. Chemical methods use diverse analytical
techniques to measure concentrations of chemical elements. Petrography
is the most commonly used physical method in pottery analyses, whereas
Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) is the most common chemical method.
Naturally, every analytical method has its advantages
and limitations. If the primary goal is to assign provenance, for
example, the quality of interpretation depends heavily on the
availability and quality of comparative materials. Best results are
achieved by combining several methods. In pottery provenance studies,
petrography is applied to a large number of items, and the results are
used to select samples for chemical analyses. This approach, however, is
less relevant for the study of clay tablets, where the number of the
examined items is limited and each item poses unique questions. For
example, tablets might have been produced from different clay types than
pottery vessels, even within a single site. In such cases, the
composition of the tablet is not likely to match any known clay source
used for the production of ceramic vessels. In fact, our study of the
Amarna tablets indeed revealed several such cases.
Petrography has the advantage of being independent, so
that when a reference pottery database is unavailable, the results can
be interpreted based on detailed geological maps. So, although
petrography does not have the accuracy of chemical analyses, it is
independent of incomplete, poorly selected, or unevenly spread databases
and reference groups. For this and other reasons, petrography was
selected as the primary method for our research on the Amarna tablets.
Megiddo is first mentioned in the textual sources
concerning the campaign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III (see
"Thutmose III and the > Aruna Pass Survey" in Revelations
No. 2). Following the Thutmose III victory, Megiddo recovered during the
Amarna Period, at which time it became an Egyptian center. From an
economic point of view, Megiddo dominated one of the richest areas of
the country, a fact that is reflected in the size and wealth of its
palaces and temple. A large number of Egyptian artifacts have been
uncovered in Stratum VIIA from the 12th century.
Megiddo must have included an Akkadian scribal school
in the Amarna Age. A fragment of a tablet containing the Epic of
Gilgamesh was found at Megiddo, which indicates that Akkadian was taught
in its scribal curriculum (literary compositions of this kind were used
only in schools). Further, the Amarna tablets from Megiddo are marked by
the quality of the clay and the excellent handwriting.
Tablet EA 365 from Biridiya, ruler of Megiddo.
Seven tablets from Megiddo were preserved in the
Amarna corres-pondence (EA 242-247, 365; see Moran, W. 1992. The
Amarna Letters), together with another letter said to have been sent
from Megiddo (EA 248).
Biridiya, the ruler of Megiddo (Magidda in his letters
to the Pharaoh), played the difficult and dangerous game of local Realpolitik,
in which the rulers of the various city-states vied with one another for
territory, property and status, while simultaneously attempting to
maintain the Pharaoh’s confidence in their loyalty to the Egyptian
Empire which governed them all. To emphasize his steadfastness, Biridiya
opened his correspondence with the standard formulaic vassal greeting,
"Say to the king, my lord and my Sun: I prostrate myself at the
feet of the king, my lord and my Sun, 7 times and 7 times" (e.g. EA
242), and he is careful to send Pharaoh his tribute of oxen, sheep,
goats and birds. He also provides the Pharaoh corvée workers, a duty,
he is quick to emphasize, which only he among all his neighbors
regularly fulfills (EA 365). Biridiya’s chief local nemesis seems to
have been Lab’ayu, the ruler of nearby Shechem, who, according to
Biridiya (EA 244), besieged Maggida, thus preventing the population from
leaving or entering, disturbing the harvest, and causing a plague.
Biridiya portrays his defense of his city as the protection of "Magidda,
the city of the king, my lord," and pleads with Pharaoh to take
notice of his plight and send him a 100-man Egyptian garrison to protect
him and Magidda. A later letter (EA 245) tells of Lab’ayu’s capture
and slaying. Since the Pharaoh had wanted Lab’ayu alive, he had been
entrusted to Surata, the ruler of Acco. Instead of shipping him to
Egypt, as he had promised Biridiya, Surata ransomed him, a trick that
greatly displeased the Pharaoh. But Biridiya claims to have had an
alibi: he had sped off to save Lab’ayu (a little hard to believe,
considering Biridiya’s enmity for Lab’ayu), but during the action
Biridiya’s horse was struck by an arrow, forcing him to mount up
behind YaÁ data, the ruler of Ta‘anach. But, before Biridiya and YaÁ
data could reach Lab’ayu and his captors, he had been killed.
EA 248, authored by YaÁ data — who humbly calls
himself "the dirt at the feet of the king" — is unique,
since its author has taken refuge with Biridiya at Magidda, because,
"everything the king, my lord, gave to his servant, the men of
Ta‘anach have made off with; they have slaughtered my oxen and driven
me away." It appears YaÁ data was hardly the Richelieu of
Canaanite Realpolitik.
The Megiddo tablets are distinguished by their bright
whitish color, a departure from the darker shades of tablets from other
Canaanite cities. Petrographic examinations of the Megiddo tablets
confirm that, mineralogically, these letters were written on marl that
was likely collected near Megiddo. Chemical analysis indicates that the
Megiddo tablets are unique in their elemental composition. In the case
of the tablets from Megiddo, the petrography served largely to confirm
their provenance, since the content of the text makes obvious that their
origin was Megiddo.
Yuval Goren, Israel Finkelstein,
Nadav Na’aman
Source: http://www.tau.ac.il/~archpubs/megiddo/revelations4.html |
