Monday, 13th February 2006
Prof. W. G. Lambert (Birmingham University)
GODS OF SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C.E. SYRIA: TEXTS AND ART
A big disappointment from archaeology in Israel and the surrounding nations has been the lack of finds directly bearing on the Bible. No archives from kings of Jerusalem or Samaria, no stone inscriptions from the same quarters and very little pictorial material from any Biblical context. The surrounding nations have provided more, though precious little, in particular the Moabite stone and the recently found pieces of the Tel Dan inscription. The Assyrians and Babylonians have left us with by far the largest quantity of written material about ancient Israel. The Israelite taboo on art may partly explain the lack of pictures but not fully. In this respect the surrounding nations have less to offer than with written material, and the Assyrians have provided most, the relief of Sennacherib's siege of Lachish being the best-known. However, the oft-repeated claim that Jehu is shown on the so-called Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III is almost certainly wrong. The prostrating figure is no doubt the envoy of Jehu and in view of the absurd depictions of animals on other panels of that monument, it is clear that the sculptor did not himself go on the expeditions but worked in Assyria so there is no guarantee that Jehu's envoy is correctly shown. Confronted with this lack of art, popular and even learned books on the Bible and biblical archaeology often print pictures of, for example, Mesopotamian objects with highly speculative captions.
There is one source for relevant ancient art freely available and little used so far. Names of gods of surrounding nations occur often in the text of the Bible but none of the background information is usually provided. The area north of Israel, which we can call Syria, has provided both written and iconographic material bearing on their gods but not from the period of the Israelite monarchy. Phoenician inscriptions are not helpful and later sources in Greek, professing to be dependent on Phoenician religion, require more critical handling than our knowledge allows. But from the second millennium B.C.E. there is much more. The Ugaritic mythological and religious texts allow the reconstruction of their pantheon with a fair amount of detail, from the second half of the second millennium, and Syrian cylinder seals from the first half in their hundreds show clearly differentiated gods and goddesses. No one familiar with this material will doubt that Baal is very commonly shown and easily identified. But what about the rest? The speaker has previously argued that the Biblical Leviathan can be identified and will pursue other deities known from the Bible in this material.
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