Kuntillet Ajrud

In the north-eastern corner of the Sinai peninsula, on a low and isolated hill above a broad plain of sand and gravel, lie the ruins of a small building that was occupied for only a few decades around 800 BCE. The site is known in Arabic as Kuntillet ʿAjrud, the “little hill of ʿAjrud”, and in Hebrew as Horvat Teman, the “ruin of Teman”. It was excavated in 1975 and 1976 by an expedition led by Ze’ev Meshel of Tel Aviv University, and it produced a body of inscriptions and drawings that has had an influence on the study of ancient Israelite religion out of all proportion to the modest size of the place.¹²

The most discussed of these texts are blessings written in ink on two large storage jars. One invokes “Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah”, another “Yahweh of Teman and his asherah”. These phrases, together with drawings of human and divine figures painted on the same jars, fragments of a poetic text on plaster describing a divine appearance in which the names El and Baal occur, and a number of shorter inscriptions on stone and pottery, have made Kuntillet ʿAjrud one of the principal sources for the religious life of Israel and Judah in the period of the monarchy. They are also among the earliest attestations of the divine name outside the Bible, and they bear on the history of the Hebrew language and script.³⁴⁵

This article describes the setting of the site and its excavation, the buildings and the date of their occupation, the inscriptions and drawings, and the principal interpretations that have been offered of them, especially in relation to the much debated word asherah. It also considers what the finds suggest about the people who stayed at the site, and the place of Kuntillet ʿAjrud among the other Hebrew inscriptions of the Iron Age.

The Desert Setting

Kuntillet ʿAjrud stands in the wilderness that the Bible associates with the wanderings of Israel after the exodus, between the southern Negev and the mountains of central Sinai. The hill rises above a plain crossed by an ancient route, known in later times as the Darb el-Ghazza, the “road of Gaza”, which linked the Mediterranean coast with the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea. A few wells in the plain below the hill supplied water, and in a region where water sources are rare and far apart, such a place was a natural halting point for travellers. The nearest major settlement was the fortress at Kadesh-barnea, some fifty kilometres to the north, and the site lay within reach of routes leading to Edom in the east and to Egypt in the west.⁶⁷

The region was never densely settled. Its importance lay in movement rather than in agriculture: caravans carrying goods between Arabia, the Red Sea, the coast of Palestine and the Phoenician cities passed along these routes, and the kingdoms of the Levant sought to control the stations at which such caravans watered and rested. The location of Kuntillet ʿAjrud on the border between the settled lands of Judah and the open desert of Sinai is fundamental to understanding the character of the site, which appears to have served travellers rather than a resident population.⁸⁹

The ruins had been noticed by travellers in the nineteenth century, and the English explorer Edward Henry Palmer visited and described them in 1869, but no systematic excavation took place until after 1967, when the Sinai peninsula came under Israeli control. Meshel conducted a brief survey in 1970 and excavated the site in three short seasons between 1975 and 1976. Following the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979, the peninsula was returned to Egyptian sovereignty in stages, and no further excavation has been carried out at the site by the original expedition.¹⁰¹¹

The Excavation and Its Publication

The excavation was relatively small in scale, but it was carried out under difficult conditions in a remote desert location, and its finds were rich and unexpected. The first presentation of the results was an exhibition catalogue published by the Israel Museum in 1978, in which Meshel described the buildings and the principal inscriptions and drawings. Preliminary studies of particular aspects followed in the scholarly journals, notably the detailed study of the drawings by the art historian Pirhiya Beck, published in the journal Tel Aviv in 1982.¹²¹³

The full final report did not appear for more than three decades. It was published by the Israel Exploration Society in 2012 as Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border, edited by Meshel with contributions from a number of specialists. The volume included a complete edition of the inscriptions prepared by Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Meshel, along with studies of the pottery, the textiles, the plant and animal remains and the architecture. In the long interval before the final report, scholars had worked from the preliminary publications and from photographs, and some readings that had circulated widely were revised in the final edition.¹⁴¹⁵

The long delay in publication has been noted as a factor in the history of the debate. For more than thirty years the texts were known largely through partial reproductions, and the most influential interpretations were developed before the complete material was available. The final report made it possible to evaluate the inscriptions and drawings together, in their archaeological context, and has formed the basis of most subsequent research.¹⁶¹⁷

The Buildings

The principal structure at the site, called by the excavators the main building or Building A, was a rectangular structure of stone, measuring roughly twenty-five by fifteen metres, with thick walls and corner rooms that may have risen as towers. Its single entrance on the east side led into a narrow entrance room, beyond which lay a so-called bench room: a long hall with low benches along its walls, coated with white plaster. Beyond the bench room was an open courtyard, and on either side of the courtyard lay long narrow storerooms. The walls and benches of the entrance area were plastered, and it was on this plaster that some of the inscriptions and wall paintings were found.¹⁸¹⁹

To the east of the main building were the scant remains of a second structure, Building B, which had been badly eroded, but which also yielded fragments of painted and inscribed plaster. The fragments that had fallen from the walls of this building and of the entrance to the main building included both decorative patterns and text. Their state of preservation was poor, and the reconstruction of their original arrangement remains uncertain.²⁰²¹

The architecture does not resemble that of a temple in the usual sense. There is no sanctuary room, no altar of the familiar type and no cult statue. The bench room, with its plastered walls bearing inscriptions and pictures, appears to have been the focus of activity, and the excavators suggested that it served a function related to religious observance or the presentation of offerings by travellers. The storerooms contained large storage jars, many of them inscribed with letters or names, which point to the collection and storage of provisions.²²²³

The Date of the Occupation

The site was occupied only once, for a short period, and was then abandoned. The pottery found there belongs to Iron Age II, and both its typology and radiocarbon dates obtained from organic material point to the late ninth or early eighth century BCE. There has been some debate about the precise dating. Lily Singer-Avitz argued in 2006 for a somewhat later date in the first half of the eighth century, while Liora Freud, in a reply published in 2008, defended a date around 800 BCE. The difference is small, and most scholars now place the occupation within a span of a few decades on either side of 800 BCE.²⁴²⁵

The historical significance of this date is that it falls within the period of the dynasty of Jehu in the northern kingdom of Israel, and especially within or just before the reign of Jeroboam II, when Israel was the dominant power in the region and its influence extended over Judah. The appearance of the phrase “Yahweh of Samaria” in the inscriptions, and the northern spelling of personal names, accord with this historical setting, which several scholars have connected with a period of Israelite control over the trade routes of the south.²⁶²⁷

The Storage Jars and Their Inscriptions

The most famous finds from Kuntillet ʿAjrud are two large storage jars, or pithoi, found in the bench room and the courtyard of the main building. They are known in the literature as Pithos A and Pithos B. Each stood more than a metre high, and both were covered with drawings and inscriptions in red and black ink. Analysis of the clay showed that the pithoi had been made not in the desert but in the hill country of Judah, perhaps in the region of Jerusalem, and had been carried to the site, presumably full of provisions. The drawings and inscriptions were added after the jars had been fired, by people who stayed at the site or passed through it.²⁸²⁹

Pithos A bears an inscription that begins with a formula of greeting typical of letters: “Thus says ʾ…, say to Yehalel and to Yoʿasah and to …: I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah.” The phrase rendered “Yahweh of Samaria” is written in the Hebrew consonants yhwh šmrn, in which šmrn is the name of the northern capital, attested in the same form on the Samaria ostraca and in Assyrian records. The phrase that follows, wlʾšrth, means literally “and to his asherah” or “and by his asherah”, with the possessive suffix attached to the word ʾšrh.^30313233

Pithos B carries several inscriptions, including a similar blessing: “Thus says ʾAmaryau, say to my lord: Is it well with you? I bless you by Yahweh of Teman and his asherah. May he bless you and keep you, and may he be with my lord.” The phrase “Yahweh of Teman” uses a word that in biblical Hebrew means “south” and is also the name of a region associated with Edom. Other inscriptions on Pithos B include blessing formulae, abecedaries or alphabet sequences written as writing exercises, and lists of names. The formula “may he bless you and keep you” recalls the language of the priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24, which is found in a different form on the silver amulets from Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem.³⁴³⁵³⁶

The abecedaries are of particular interest for the history of the script. Partial and complete sequences of the letters of the alphabet appear on the jars, some written several times, apparently by people practising writing. In one sequence the letter pe precedes ʿayin, an order also found in some other early Hebrew abecedaries and in the acrostic poems of the Book of Lamentations, which suggests that the order of the alphabet was not completely fixed in this period.³⁷³⁸

The Plaster Inscriptions

Fragments of texts written in ink on white plaster were found in the entrance area of the main building and among the remains of the second building. They are written in a script with features of the Phoenician script rather than the standard Hebrew script of the period, and their language has been described as Hebrew with Phoenician features, though the brevity and damage of the fragments make it difficult to define precisely.³⁹⁴⁰

The longest of the plaster fragments contains part of a poetic text describing a theophany, the appearance of a deity in the natural world. The text speaks of the shining forth of El, of mountains melting and peaks being crushed, and mentions Baal on a day of war. The fragmentary condition of the text means that its exact sense remains uncertain, and the relationship between El, Baal and Yahweh in the passage has been read in different ways. The language recalls biblical descriptions of the coming of God from the south, as in Deuteronomy 33:2, Judges 5:4–5 and Habakkuk 3:3, the last of which speaks of God coming from Teman.⁴¹⁴²⁴³

Another plaster inscription contains a blessing invoking long life for those who read it, and others preserve only a few letters. Taken together, these wall texts show that the site’s plastered walls were used for public writing intended to be seen by those who entered the building. This kind of writing on plaster is known from the inscription of Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley, which preserves a prophetic text attributed to Balaam son of Beor, written in ink on a plastered wall about a century later.⁴⁴⁴⁵

Other Inscriptions

Besides the inscriptions on the pithoi and the plaster, several dozen shorter texts were found. A large stone basin found in the entrance area bears an incised inscription: “Belonging to ʿObadyau son of ʿAdnah, blessed be he by Yahweh.” The basin may have been a dedication by this man, perhaps as an offering. Many storage jars were marked with single letters or short groups of letters incised before or after firing, which may indicate contents, quantities or ownership.⁴⁶⁴⁷

The personal names in the inscriptions are of particular interest. Many contain the theophoric element derived from the divine name, and they generally use the form -yau, written yw, which is characteristic of the northern kingdom of Israel, rather than the form -yahu, written yhw, characteristic of Judah. The same northern spelling appears on the Samaria ostraca. The combination of names in the northern form, the blessing by “Yahweh of Samaria” and pithoi made in Judah suggests that the people present at the site included Israelites and Judahites, or that the site was under the authority of the northern kingdom while drawing on supplies from Judah.⁴⁸⁴⁹⁵⁰

The Drawings

The drawings on the pithoi are among the most important surviving examples of figurative art from Iron Age Israel and Judah. On Pithos A, directly below and overlapping the inscription mentioning “Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah”, are two standing figures with grotesque faces, crowns or headdresses, and arms held close to the body, and to the right a seated figure playing a lyre. Elsewhere on the jar are a cow suckling a calf, a pair of ibexes flanking a stylised tree rising from the back of a lion, and other animals and patterns. On Pithos B is a row of figures with raised arms, apparently a procession of worshippers, together with further animals and decorative motifs.⁵¹⁵²

Pirhiya Beck identified the two standing figures on Pithos A as representations of the Egyptian god Bes, a protective deity often shown as a dwarf with a lion-like face and popular throughout the Levant in this period. The cow and calf and the tree flanked by ibexes belong to a well-known repertoire of Levantine and Phoenician art, found also on ivories from Samaria and elsewhere. Beck argued that the drawings were the work of several hands and that they had been added at different times, independently of the inscriptions.⁵³⁵⁴

The relationship between the drawings and the inscription on Pithos A is one of the central questions of interpretation. Because the words “Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah” are written above the two figures, some scholars, including William Dever, suggested that the drawings depict Yahweh and Asherah as a divine couple, or that the lyre player is Asherah. Others, following Beck, have argued that the figures are Bes images and the seated musician is an unrelated figure, and that the inscription was written over an existing drawing without reference to it. The final publication of the jars has strengthened the view that the drawings and the inscription were produced separately, though the debate continues.⁵⁵⁵⁶⁵⁷

The Meaning of Asherah

The word asherah appears about forty times in the Hebrew Bible. In most passages it refers to a cult object, apparently a wooden pole or stylised tree set up beside altars, which the prophets and the reforming kings condemned. In some passages, such as 1 Kings 18:19, where the prophets of Asherah appear alongside the prophets of Baal, and 2 Kings 23:4, which describes the removal from the temple of vessels made for Baal and Asherah during the reform of Josiah, the word appears to designate a goddess. In the texts from Ugarit, Athirat, the cognate name, is the consort of El and the mother of the gods.⁵⁸⁵⁹⁶⁰

The phrase “Yahweh and his asherah” at Kuntillet ʿAjrud, and a similar phrase in an inscription from Khirbet el-Qom near Hebron, have therefore been interpreted in two main ways. On one view, asherah here is the name of the goddess, who is presented as the consort of Yahweh. On the other, it is the cult object or symbol associated with Yahweh, through which blessing was mediated. The grammatical argument against the first view is that in biblical Hebrew a possessive suffix is not normally attached to a personal name, so that “his Asherah” would be an unusual way of referring to a goddess. Supporters of the first view reply that the word could have functioned as a title or common noun, or that ordinary grammatical conventions did not apply to divine names in this form.⁶¹⁶²⁶³

Judith Hadley, in a detailed study published in 2000, argued that the term at Kuntillet ʿAjrud refers to the wooden symbol of the goddess rather than to the goddess herself, though the symbol itself presupposed an association with a female deity. Saul Olyan had earlier argued that the asherah was a legitimate part of the cult of Yahweh in both Israel and Judah before the reforms of the late monarchy. Mark Smith has placed the texts in the context of a long process in which the attributes of other deities were absorbed into the figure of Yahweh, and in which the cult of asherah was eventually rejected. Dever, writing for a broad readership, presented the inscriptions as evidence of a popular religion that differed from the official religion represented by the biblical writers.^64656667

Whatever the precise meaning of the word, the inscriptions show that in the early eighth century people who invoked Yahweh in blessings also associated him with an asherah, in a context that does not appear to have been regarded by them as illegitimate. The biblical condemnations of the asherah belong mainly to the Deuteronomistic history and to the prophetic books, which reflect the outlook of the reforms associated with Hezekiah and Josiah. The inscriptions provide evidence of practice in an earlier period and from a different perspective.⁶⁸⁶⁹

Yahweh of Samaria and Yahweh of Teman

The phrases “Yahweh of Samaria” and “Yahweh of Teman” raise a further question about the religion of the period. They associate the god with particular places, in a way familiar from other Near Eastern religions, in which a god might be worshipped under different local forms, such as the Baal of a particular city or mountain. The Bible itself refers to Yahweh in connection with places of worship, but it does not use the construction with a place name in this way, and the Deuteronomic insistence on the oneness of Yahweh, expressed in Deuteronomy 6:4, has been read by some scholars as a response to the existence of such local manifestations.⁷⁰⁷¹

“Yahweh of Samaria” links the god to the capital of the northern kingdom and probably to a temple there, of which no remains have been found, though the Bible records that Ahab built a temple of Baal in Samaria (1 Kings 16:32). “Yahweh of Teman” connects the god with the south, and with the region that biblical poetry identifies as the place from which Yahweh came: “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran” (Habakkuk 3:3). Some scholars have connected this with the hypothesis that the worship of Yahweh originated in the southern regions of Edom, Midian or Seir, a view that remains debated. The inscriptions at least show that this association of Yahweh with the south was current in the eighth century.⁷²⁷³

The Function of the Site

The function of Kuntillet ʿAjrud has been interpreted in several ways. Meshel initially described it as a religious centre, and the final report retains this characterisation, describing a site in which religious activity accompanied the provision of travellers on the desert route. The presence of inscriptions invoking blessings, of the bench room with its plastered walls, and of the stone basin dedicated by ʿObadyau all suggest a religious dimension. Yet the absence of an altar, of a sanctuary and of the usual equipment of a temple distinguishes the site from shrines such as the one at Arad.⁷⁴⁷⁵

Other interpretations stress the site’s role as a caravan station or fort. Nadav Na’aman has argued that it was established by the kingdom of Israel to control the trade route to the Gulf of Aqaba, at a time when Israel dominated Judah, and that the religious texts and drawings reflect the activities of the officials, soldiers and travellers who stayed there. In this view, the writings on the pithoi are not the products of priests but of literate members of the personnel or of passing travellers, writing greetings, blessings and exercises.⁷⁶

Brian Schmidt, in a study published in 2016, emphasised the material and visual character of the inscriptions and drawings, arguing that they should be understood as objects whose display and handling carried meaning, and that the act of writing a blessing on a jar or wall was itself a ritual act intended to protect the site and those who stayed there. This perspective draws attention to the ways in which writing functioned in religious practice in a world where most people could not read.⁷⁷

The organic remains found at the site add to the picture. The dry desert climate preserved textiles, including linen and wool fabrics, some of them of fine quality, as well as plant remains and food. The quantity of linen textiles, which in the Bible are associated with priestly dress, has been taken by some scholars as evidence of a priestly presence, though it may simply reflect the clothing and goods of the people who passed through the site.⁷⁸⁷⁹

Language and Script

The inscriptions are written in two scripts. Most of the texts on the pithoi and the stone basin are in the Hebrew script of the period, written with a pen or brush in ink, or incised into stone. The plaster inscriptions and some of the texts on the pithoi show features of the Phoenician script, and some letters have forms which are intermediate between the two. This mixture has been explained by the presence of scribes trained in different traditions, or by the influence of the Phoenician script on Israelite writing in this period, when the kingdom of Israel had close commercial and political ties with Phoenicia.⁸⁰⁸¹

The language of most of the texts is Hebrew, showing features associated with the northern dialect, including the contracted forms seen in the theophoric names. The plaster inscriptions show some features associated with Phoenician, but their language has been described differently by different editors. Together with the Samaria ostraca, the texts are among the most important evidence for the Hebrew of the northern kingdom, which in many respects differed from the Hebrew of Judah and Jerusalem in which most of the Bible was eventually transmitted.⁸²⁸³⁸⁴

The formula of the letters on the pithoi, “Thus says X, say to Y”, is also found in the Arad and Lachish ostraca and corresponds to the formula of letters and messages in the Hebrew Bible. The blessing “may he bless you and keep you” is closely related to the priestly blessing. These parallels show that the forms of language used in the Bible were part of the ordinary written usage of the period, and that the biblical texts reflect conventions which can be traced in contemporary inscriptions.⁸⁵⁸⁶⁸⁷

Kuntillet ʿAjrud among the Hebrew Inscriptions

The number of Hebrew inscriptions surviving from the period of the monarchy is not large, and the inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud are among the most extensive and varied. They are earlier than most of the Judahite inscriptions, such as the Siloam tunnel inscription, the Lachish letters and the Arad ostraca, and are roughly contemporary with the Samaria ostraca. They differ from these in their religious content and in the combination of text and image, which is unique among the inscriptions of Israel and Judah.⁸⁸⁸⁹

The inscriptions are also among the earliest attestations of the divine name in a Hebrew text outside the Bible. The name appears earlier on the Moabite stone of Mesha, in the ninth century, where Mesha boasts of taking the vessels of Yahweh from Nebo, but that inscription is written in Moabite. At Kuntillet ʿAjrud the name appears repeatedly, in blessings and personal names, written by people for whom Yahweh was the god of their own community.⁹⁰⁹¹

Inscriptions from Khirbet el-Qom, a site near Hebron, provide the closest parallel. An inscription in a tomb there, probably from the late eighth century, invokes blessing “by Yahweh and by his asherah”, and the similarity of formula confirms that the expression was not confined to one place or region. Other inscriptions from Judah, including those on the Ketef Hinnom amulets, show that blessings invoking Yahweh were part of the religious practice of the period, although the Ketef Hinnom texts do not mention asherah.⁹²⁹³

Significance for the Study of the Bible

The inscriptions and drawings of Kuntillet ʿAjrud have influenced the study of the Bible in several ways. They have provided evidence that the religion of Israel and Judah in the eighth century was more diverse than the biblical writers, who wrote from the perspective of later reforms, were willing to acknowledge. They have shown that the divine name was invoked in association with local manifestations and with an asherah, and that such associations were not confined to marginal groups. They have illustrated the language and literary forms of the biblical texts in contemporary documents, and they have given new evidence for the history of the Hebrew alphabet.⁹⁴⁹⁵⁹⁶

At the same time, the evidence has limits. The texts are short and fragmentary, their exact meaning is often uncertain, and the site was a remote station whose occupants may not have been representative of the population of Israel and Judah as a whole. Scholarly interpretation has varied with the presuppositions of interpreters, and the popular presentation of the inscriptions as proof that “God had a wife” has gone further than the evidence supports. Careful scholarship has stressed that the inscriptions show the association of Yahweh with an asherah, but that the nature of this association cannot be determined with certainty from the texts alone.⁹⁷⁹⁸

For the history of the transmission of the biblical text, Kuntillet ʿAjrud is valuable in a different way. It shows the kinds of writing that were practised in Israel and Judah at a time when, according to many scholars, the earliest parts of the biblical literature were being composed or collected. The abecedaries show the training of writers, the letters show the conventions of correspondence, the blessings show the formulae of religious language, and the plaster texts show that poetic compositions on religious themes were written for display. These are the practices from which the written tradition of the Bible eventually grew.⁹⁹¹⁰⁰

Conclusion

Kuntillet ʿAjrud was a small and short-lived station on a desert route, occupied for a few decades around 800 BCE by people from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and abandoned without a violent destruction. Its plastered walls and great storage jars nevertheless preserved one of the richest collections of inscriptions and drawings from the period of the monarchy. The blessings by “Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah” and by “Yahweh of Teman and his asherah”, the theophany text on plaster, the dedicatory inscription on the stone basin, the abecedaries and the drawings have given scholars a view of religious life and writing practice that is otherwise largely absent from the archaeological record. Nearly fifty years after the excavation, and more than a decade after the final report, the site remains at the centre of the study of the religion of ancient Israel.^101102103

Notes

1. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
2. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai, Israel Museum Catalogue 175 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978). ↩
3. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
4. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ↩
5. Grokipedia, “Yahweh”; Grokipedia, “Baal”. ↩
6. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
7. Grokipedia, “Negev”; Grokipedia, “Edom”; Grokipedia, “Kingdom of Judah”. ↩
8. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
9. Nadav Na’aman, “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud through the Lens of Historical Research”, Ugarit-Forschungen 43 (2011). ↩
10. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
11. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai, Israel Museum Catalogue 175 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978). ↩
12. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai, Israel Museum Catalogue 175 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978). ↩
13. Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ʿAjrud)”, Tel Aviv 9 (1982), 3–68. ↩
14. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
15. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
16. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
17. Brian B. Schmidt, The Materiality of Power: Explorations in the Social History of Early Israelite Magic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). ↩
18. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
19. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai, Israel Museum Catalogue 175 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978). ↩
20. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
21. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
22. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
23. Nadav Na’aman, “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud through the Lens of Historical Research”, Ugarit-Forschungen 43 (2011). ↩
24. Lily Singer-Avitz, “The Date of Kuntillet ʿAjrud”, Tel Aviv 33 (2006), 196–228; Liora Freud, “The Date of Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Reply to Lily Singer-Avitz”, Tel Aviv 35 (2008), 169–174. ↩
25. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
26. Nadav Na’aman, “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud through the Lens of Historical Research”, Ugarit-Forschungen 43 (2011). ↩
27. Grokipedia, “Samaria”; Grokipedia, “Kingdom of Israel (Samaria)”; Grokipedia, “Jeroboam II”. ↩
28. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
29. Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ʿAjrud)”, Tel Aviv 9 (1982), 3–68. ↩
30. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
31. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ↩
32. Shmuel Ahituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
33. The Masoretes, “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel”; The Masoretes, “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib”. ↩
34. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
35. Shmuel Ahituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
36. The Masoretes, “The Deir Alla Inscription and the Balaam Text outside the Bible”; The Masoretes, “The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls”. ↩
37. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
38. Grokipedia, “Paleo-Hebrew alphabet”; The Masoretes, “The Alphabet”; The Masoretes, “Hebrew and Aramaic”. ↩
39. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
40. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
41. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
42. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
43. Grokipedia, “Yahweh”; Grokipedia, “Baal”. ↩
44. The Masoretes, “The Deir Alla Inscription and the Balaam Text outside the Bible”; The Masoretes, “The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls”. ↩
45. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
46. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
47. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ↩
48. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
49. Nadav Na’aman, “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud through the Lens of Historical Research”, Ugarit-Forschungen 43 (2011). ↩
50. The Masoretes, “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel”; The Masoretes, “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib”. ↩
51. Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ʿAjrud)”, Tel Aviv 9 (1982), 3–68. ↩
52. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998). ↩
53. Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ʿAjrud)”, Tel Aviv 9 (1982), 3–68. ↩
54. Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel, trans. Thomas H. Trapp (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998). ↩
55. Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings from Horvat Teiman (Kuntillet ʿAjrud)”, Tel Aviv 9 (1982), 3–68. ↩
56. William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). ↩
57. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
58. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
59. Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). ↩
60. Grokipedia, “Josiah”; Grokipedia, “Hezekiah”. ↩
61. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
62. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
63. Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). ↩
64. William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). ↩
65. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
66. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
67. Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). ↩
68. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
69. Grokipedia, “Josiah”; Grokipedia, “Hezekiah”. ↩
70. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
71. Grokipedia, “Yahweh”; Grokipedia, “Baal”. ↩
72. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
73. Grokipedia, “Negev”; Grokipedia, “Edom”; Grokipedia, “Kingdom of Judah”. ↩
74. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
75. The Masoretes, “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel”; The Masoretes, “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib”. ↩
76. Nadav Na’aman, “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud through the Lens of Historical Research”, Ugarit-Forschungen 43 (2011). ↩
77. Brian B. Schmidt, The Materiality of Power: Explorations in the Social History of Early Israelite Magic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). ↩
78. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
79. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud: A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on the Border of Sinai, Israel Museum Catalogue 175 (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 1978). ↩
80. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
81. Grokipedia, “Paleo-Hebrew alphabet”; The Masoretes, “The Alphabet”; The Masoretes, “Hebrew and Aramaic”. ↩
82. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ↩
83. Shmuel Ahituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
84. The Masoretes, “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel”; The Masoretes, “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib”. ↩
85. Shmuel Ahituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008). ↩
86. The Masoretes, “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel”; The Masoretes, “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib”. ↩
87. The Masoretes, “The Deir Alla Inscription and the Balaam Text outside the Bible”; The Masoretes, “The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls”. ↩
88. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ↩
89. The Masoretes, “The Samaria Ostraca and the Administration of the Kingdom of Israel”; The Masoretes, “The Arad Ostraca and the Archive of Eliashib”. ↩
90. F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, J. J. M. Roberts, C. L. Seow and R. E. Whitaker, Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). ↩
91. Grokipedia, “Yahweh”; Grokipedia, “Baal”. ↩
92. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
93. The Masoretes, “The Deir Alla Inscription and the Balaam Text outside the Bible”; The Masoretes, “The Ketef Hinnom Scrolls”. ↩
94. William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). ↩
95. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩
96. Grokipedia, “Paleo-Hebrew alphabet”; The Masoretes, “The Alphabet”; The Masoretes, “Hebrew and Aramaic”. ↩
97. Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ↩
98. Brian B. Schmidt, The Materiality of Power: Explorations in the Social History of Early Israelite Magic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). ↩
99. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
100. Grokipedia, “Paleo-Hebrew alphabet”; The Masoretes, “The Alphabet”; The Masoretes, “Hebrew and Aramaic”. ↩
101. Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah–Sinai Border (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012). ↩
102. Shmuel Ahituv, Esther Eshel and Ze’ev Meshel, “The Inscriptions”, in Meshel, Kuntillet ʿAjrud (Horvat Teman) (2012). ↩
103. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). ↩