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My Reply to I. Finkelstein and N.

Na'aman "A Response to David Ussishkin": Section "Van der Veen" (in: Antiguo Oriente 10, 2012), Peter van der Veen: July 2, 2013 In their response to David Ussishkin's second rejoinder to O. Lipschits, Israel Finkelstein and Nadav Na'aman write concerning my work: "Van der Veen: there is no merit to his complaints. Van der Veen speaks about lmlk jars that continued to be in use after the destruction of Lachish III ... The debate is whether lmlk jars were manufactured ..." I would reply to them, however, that there is no merit to what they are saying about my work. For if indeed I had meant to say "use" (i.e. of old jars) rather than "manufacture" (i.e. of newly produced jars), I would not have complained. But as I indeed meant "manufacture", and so I did already in my Ph. D. thesis1 (cf. especially Excursus 1 on the Tell Goren jar handle of an individual called "nrt"2; this at least the authors did admit3) I cannot simply accept their accusation. For those, who have carefully read my thesis, it must have become inevitably clear what I meant by "continued to be in use". Moreover, in articles, which were subsequently published, the issue of "continued manufacture" became even more apparent. Some of these (including the submission of my thesis in 20054) were written well before O. Lipschits, O. Sergi and I. Koch presented their views on the 7th century B.C. lmlk jar handles in 2010.5 Finkelstein and Na'aman also belittle other points in my work, which I find hard to accept. Hence, I decided to personally reply here by presenting what I believe to be the true situation. They state: "It seems that Lipschits received only one chapter of the thesis - a chapter which deals with pottery." (my emphasis) 1 P. G. van der Veen, The Final Phase of Iron Age IIC and the Babylonian Conquest: A Reassesssment with Special Emphasis on Names and Bureaucratic Titles on Provenanced Seals and Bullae from Israel and Jordan, unpublished PhD thesis, submitted to the University of Bristol, 2005. This thesis is currently in preparation for publication in the AOAT series of Ugarit Verlag, Mnster (scheduled to appear in 2014). 2 Excursus I, "A Jar Handle from Tel Goren", 128-136. 3 It remains troubling, however, that they continue to belittle my criticisms as they had already done previously in their letter to D. Ussishkin of "20/5/2013" (sic. 2012!). They also argue that I took the idea from George Grena. Indeed Grena presented his views in his book back in 2004. But Grena and I had been in touch since some time before his book came out, and as we both agreed that some lmlk jars continued to be produced after 701 B.C., I welcomed his opinion, as it appeared to independently add weight to my own views. It is only natural therefore that I referred to Grena's book, which should be the normal procedure in every scholarly publication. See G. M. Grena, Lmlk -- A Mystery Belonging to the King, Volume 1, 4000 Years of Writing History, Rendondo Beach CA, 2004, esp. 333-338. 4 On these see below. 5 Their first article on the subject is: O. Lipschits, O. Sergi and I. Koch, "Royal Judahite Jar Handles: Reconsidering the Chronology of the lmlk Impressions", Tel Aviv 37 (2010), 3-32.

This they have completely misunderstood, even though I already made this clear to I. Finkelstein in a personal email of June 3, 2012. Indeed, O. Lipschits acted as "external assessor" for my main and longest chapter of my thesis (it is over 100 pp. long, the bibliography not included) on the M. Litt. level back in 2003. According to British academic regulations his assessment served as the basis for my upgrade from the M.Litt. level to the full Ph.D. programme. I finally completed my thesis in 2005. In the official university document of May 27 (2003) (which is still available through Trinity College, Bristol), signed by O. Lipschits, the latter wrote the following comment on my chapter: "This chapter contains a detailed discussion in selected epigraphic finds from the end of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th centuries BCE. The epigraphic discussion is good and can be a base for a PhD thesis, the scope of the bibliography in this field is impressive, and the technique of introducing the material is clear and nice. But the ceramic discussion is not in [sic. on] the same level and needs more parallels and a better level of discussion..." (my emphasis) How then can Finkelstein and Na'aman claim: "Note that in a recent letter to Lipschits, Van der Veen apparently withdrew from his accusation that Lipschits was called upon to evaluate his thesis; it seems that Lipschits received only one chapter of the thesis - a chapter that deals with pottery"? (my emphasis) Regardless of the fact that I never claimed that Lipschits assessed the entire thesis, one can easily falsify their claims as according to them this part of the thesis was merely "a chapter that deals with pottery". As Lipschits himself clearly specified, the situation is remarkedly different: "The chapter contains a detailled discussion in selected epigraphic finds..." and "the ceramic discussion is not in [sic. on] the same level" (my emphasis). Hence the chapter dealt with epigraphy rather than with pottery. Additional discussions on pottery (and small finds!) were included, however, to provide a clear stratigraphic context for these inscriptions, i.e. seals and bullae, as I do not believe that one can date inscriptions solely by their palaeographic evidence. Epigraphy and archaeology must always go hand in hand. Even though my thesis dealt primarily with seals and bullae from the end of the Judahite monarchy (i.e. c. 600 B.C.) and hence the main focus was not on material from the Lachish III cultural horizon containing the lmlk material, I did include sections on the archaeology of the Lachish III horizon, but still it was not the main topic of my thesis. I therefore kept these to footnotes and to the slightly more detailed Excursus 1, dealing with an inscribed 2-winged jar handle from Tell Goren Stratum 5 (which is dated to the Iron Age IIC period while the site was settled no earlier than 650 B.C.). Even if "Lachish III" was not my main focus, it still belonged to the overall discussion, in which I sought to distinguish the material evidence in the Lachish archaeological horizons of Strata III and II, in order to show that the material contained within the Judahite Strata contemporary with Lachish Stratum II (e.g. City of David Str. 10, Tel Arad Str. 7/6, Tell Goren Str. 5, Beth Zur Str. 3 etc.) could be clearly separated from that of earlier levels. Even so, I decided to keep the detailed discussions on Lachish III for future publications, while currently it has become an important part of my postdoctoral research conducted at the University of Mainz.

When I started my Ph.D. thesis (still on the M.Litt level) my prime supervisor, Dr. John Bimson of Trinity College, had suggested to me to test out a theory, that had been presented by Peter J. James et al. in their volume Centuries of Darkness, which had been published back in 1991. In that book they argued that the destruction of Lachish Stratum III must be dated to 587 B.C. (i.e. similar to what W. F. Albright had previously advocated), but that in keeping with the results of the renewed archaeological excavations by D. Ussishkin the subsequent Lachish II horizon (i.e. accounting for an hiatus of several decades subsequent to the destruction of Stratum III) had to be dated later.6 In fact, they redated Iron Age IIC (including Lachish Stratum II) to the 5th cent. B.C., i.e. the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.7 All of this is clearly set out in my introduction to the thesis, which is now available on my website on academia.edu. Despite my original expectations that James et al. could well be right, I soon discovered (especially so when I attended a conference in Tel Aviv on Judah during the Neo-Babylonian Period which O. Lipschits had organized (May 29-31, 2001)) that their theory would simply not work. Even so, I still continued to experiment with part of their theory, i.e. that the city of Lachish, which was destroyed by King Sennacherib in 701 B.C. was not that of Stratum III but of Stratum IV.8 By doing so, I was forced to suggest that (while Lachish II was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C.) Lachish Stratum III (including the Assyrian siege ramp) had to have come to a sudden end sometime by the middle of the 7th century B.C. Although I first sought to link this destruction with the Scythian invasion referred to by Herodotus (I.105) 9 , I soon came to favor the idea that Lachish III must have been destroyed by the Assyrians after all, but at the time of Ashurbanipal, i.e. c. 650 B.C., when according to the Hebrew Chronicler (2 Chron 33:10-13) King Manasseh of Judah was brought in shackles to the King of Assyria, apparently after he had rebelled against his overlord.10 Although I am no longer convinced that Lachish Stratum III indeed fell this late (in fact I now much prefer a destruction by Sennacherib in 701), I still believe that many Judahite sites that were not destroyed in 701 B.C. and which belonged to the same cultural horizon as had Lachish Stratum III (e.g. City of David Stratum 12) continued to use the same pottery types that are characteristic of that same cultural horizon. Hence my use of "continued to be in use" and "were in use until" did not imply mere preservation of old pots, but surely also the manufacture of new pots made according to the old typology, which was in use in Judah already at the end of the 8th century B.C. The "old forms" therefore remained part of the Judahite pottery repertoire until at least 650 B.C. according to my theory. One point in my thesis' chapter (which was also submitted to Lipschits in 2003) actually makes it rather clear that this is what I meant by "were in use". It deals with the bulla of a certain individual named Shebanyahu [...] hmlk discovered by Y. Aharoni in an Iron Age IIC cylindrical juglet from Lachish Stratum II. While discussing if the missing part of the inscription should read "cbd" or "bn", I drew upon additional material which might shed 6 James et al., ibid., 170-180. 7 ibid., esp. 171-175. 8 ibid., esp. 178. 9 The impetus for this consideration was however the publication by S. Forsberg: Near Eastern Destruction Datings as Sources for Greek and Near Eastern Iron Age Chronology, Uppsala, 1995, esp. p. 35. 10 On the possibility of Manasseh rebelling against Assyria see especially A. F. Rainey, "Manasseh, King of Judah, in the Whirlpool of the Seventh Century B.C.E.", Tel Aviv 1 (1993), 147-164.

further light on the possible emendation. I refer in my thesis on pp. 94-97 to an unprovenanced jar handle from the Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum of Haifa University (on this also see N. Avigad/ B. Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, Jerusalem, 1997, No. 662), which probably contains the impression of a winged uraeus (as do also the official seal impressions of Samk[i] // epanyahu (WSS No. 689)) plus an inscription saying "leShebanyahu ben hammelek". G. Barkay and A. G. Vaughn have independently favored the attribution of this jar handle to the O. Tufnell's type 484 royal jar corpus.11 With some reservation I concluded in my thesis that the personage referred to could well be the same person as the one mentioned on the Lachish bulla from Lachish Stratum 2. Although I admitted that without a petrographic analysis of the clay one cannot be absolutely certain that the handle indeed had belonged to a lmlk jar, I wrote that: "As some lmlk jars (evidently those with the 2-winged sun disk symbol) continued in use after 700 B.C. (i.e. apparently as late as the reign of king Josiah [640-609 B.C.]), a date within the first three quarters of the 7th century B.C. cannot be ruled out." (p. 96) Now if the person mentioned on the jar handle indeed happened to be the same person as the one to whom the bulla belongs, it would be impossible to assume that the Reuben Hecht type 484 handle on which the inscription is found belonged to a jar that had already been produced before 701 B.C. With other words, how could the same person possibly be referred to on a jar handle from before 701 B.C. who would then experience his heyday some 60-100 years later during the reign of Josiah or even later? It is evident that my use of "continued" and "was used" really implied that the jar "was manufactured" sometime during the first three quarters of the 7th century! As I indicated to I. Finkelstein in my email of June 3, 2012, I expressed these ideas more clearly in an article from 2005 where I wrote: "Several famous stamped lammelek jar handles, especially the two-winged sun disk type, have been found at 7th century sites. Contrary to G. Barkay and A. Vaughn's suggestion that all royal stamps originated before the end of 'Lachish III' (conventionally late 8th century), evidence now increases that the two-winged type continues into the late 7th century BC (e.g., at Tel Goren V, Khirbet es Samra, H. Shilha). As all were produced at a centralized pottery, a Lachish III date nearer the second half of the 7th century seems preferable. Moreover, as Yahweh was worshipped as Sun god in Jerusalem during the early 7th century BC (2 Kings 23:11), an attribution of the solar stamps to the reign of Manasseh would seem a most attractive possibility."12

11 See G. Barkay, "A Bulla of Ishmael, the King's Son", BASOR 290/291 (1993), 111, n. 4; A. E. Vaughn, Theology, History, and Archaeology in the Chronicler's Account of Hezekiah, SBL Archaeology and Biblical Studies 4, Scholars Press, Atlanta, 212, XXXI, no. 175. The jar handle had also been identified as a lmlk jar handle by Lawrence Mykytiuk, Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E., SBL, Atlanta, 2004, 224 and n. 48. 12 P. G. van der Veen, "A Revised Chronolgy and Iron Age Archaeology - an Update", Journal of the Ancient Chronology Forum 10 (2005), 51. This article is also accessible on my website at academia.edu.

How else can this be stated more clearly? It leaves no doubt what I meant back in 2005. In 201113 I specifically wrote the following about the Tell Goren jar handle: "The seal impression depicts a 2-winged sun disk and bears a short inscription. This 2winged sun disk differs from those that are normally found on so-called royal lammelek jar handles. This type represented here is unique in the royal jar handle corpus, in that it lacks the upper rays above the central sun disk. Whereas the other 2-winged royal emblems are always associated with the inscription 'lmlk' ('belonging to the king') and in most cases also with a geogaphical name (Hebron, Zip, Sokoh, Mamshit), the sun-disk here is associated with a personal name as we shall see below. D. Parayre has shown in her in-depth study of the winged sun disks that the solar symbol shown on the Tall Jurn [= Tell Goren] jar handle belongs to a type which reflects schematic 'Assyrianizing' tendencies which seems to date squarely to the 7th century BC. ... Although the inscription has been read in different ways ('lmrt', 'lnrt', 'lmr'', 'lnr'', 'lkrt'), close examination of the original and of the plasticine impressions [ = by this author] proves positively that only 'lnrt' is to be read here..."14 (emphasis mine) In footnote 68 I added: "This author has argued on several occasions (a long discussion will also appear in his postdoctoral dissertation at Mainz University) that the vast majority of 2-winged royal jar handles as well as the prancing horse emblem belong predominantly to the first half of the 7th cent. BC (i.e. to the reign of king Manasseh)." I have mentioned these publications to I. Finkelstein and O. Lipschits. I sympathise that one cannot possibly be aware and read everything that is published on the subject, but once one knows about these and is aware of the delicacy of the matter, one may expect that the parties involved will seek to double-check the evidence properly. But what surprises me even more, is that even though Finkelstein, Na'aman and Lipschits et al have now finally agreed to at least refer to George Grena's book, they still do not cite my work (and if they mention me, they simply state that "there is no merit to his complaints"), which as a matter of fact was published prior to Lipschits et al.'s first article in Tel Aviv in 2010. In closing, already at a smaller German conference on archaeological transitions (held in Schorndorf in April 2004, which was also attended by Prof. Dr. A. Maeir and Dr. Rupert Chapman Jr), I wrote the following sentence in my manuscript for the introductory lecture:

13 Although I had written this article during the Fall of 2008 after I had presented its content in a lecture in Lisbon during the summer of that year, it was not until 2011 that the published article saw the light of day due to the tragic premature death of the journals' former editor Dr. Khaled Nashef. For a summary of my Lisbon lecture see J. A. Ramos, P. R. Davies and M. A. Travassos Valdez (eds.), From Antiquity to the Present - The 2008 European Association of Biblical Studies Lisbon Meeting, Centro de Histria da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon 2008, 45-47 (esp. 46). 14 P. G. van der Veen, "Arabian Seals and Bullae Along the Trade Routes of Judah and Edom", Journal of Epigraphy & Rock Drawings 3 (2009), 33-34.

"Also my own study of a late exempler of a lmlk type jar handle from Ein-Gedi with a similar winged sun solar disk and what appears to be the Assyrian personal name Nurt (written above it), may substantiate the Assyrian origin of this icon on local Judahite seals." This indicates that already at that time I advocated an Assyrian period (= 7th century B.C.) date for most of the jar handles with the 2-winged sun disk. This being so, this brings me to the last point that Finkelstein and Na'aman are trying to make. They argue that as I quoted Grena in footnote 632 of my Ph. D. thesis on the "issue of manufacture, ... This is not his own idea." (emphasis mine) Once again their view is based on miscomprehension. While George Grena suggested that part of the jars continued to be made after 701 B.C., he clearly indicated that this was merely for a limited time, i.e. for the remaining years of King Hezekiah's reign (p. 338 in his book). Contrary to Grena, therefore, I have always, as demonstrated above, favored a much longer duration for the production of these store jars, i.e. until c. 650 B.C. This is why the views of Lipschits et al. are so close to mine. Hence: while their views are dissimilar to Grena's they are virtually identical with mine. While my views were (at least partly) published prior to their first publication, I have also shared my theory in a series of lectures at past SBL 15 , EABS (see above) and German conferences16, in personal conversations with scholars (even on site at Ramat Rahel) and in forum discussions, for instance on the Biblical Archaeology Society website.17 To cut things short, although Grena and I have discussed this subject since a long time, my views on the longer duration were not borrowed from him! Be this as it may, let truth prevail and let evidence speak for itself. Pieter Gert van der Veen, Ph.D., Postdoctoral researcher and visiting scholar Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Leader of the Arbeitsgruppe fr Biblische Archologie/ABA 15 My views were most clearly presented in my lecture at the internatinal SBL meeting in Vienna in 2007. The title of my lecture was: "'Hezekiah or Manasseh?' - Manassehs Judah in the Light of Epigraphical and Iconographical Evidence". On this see: https://www.sblsite.org/meetings/Congresses_Abstracts.aspx?MeetingId=11. 16 A lecture on the archaeological horizon of Hezekiah's and Manasseh's reigns was delivered at the German conference of Biblical Archaeology at Schwbisch Gmnd, March 25-27 (2007) to which also Prof. Dr. Gabriel Barkay had been invited as a lecturer. For an online reference to this conference see: http://www.epoc.de/alias/pdf/aba-07-01-s006-pdf/862649. 17 Lengthy discussions, which included the extended use and production of the type 484 royal jars by this author could until recently be viewed on a discussion forum on the www.bibarch.org website, which were written in 2009 shortly after R. Deutsch's article "Tracking Down Shebnayahu, Servant of the King - How an antiquity market find solved a 42-year-old excavation puzzle", BARev 35:3 (May/June 2009), was published. As BAS changed servers, the discussions are unfortunately no longer found online. We hope to be able to make these available again shortly on my academia.edu website. The views expressed therein not only resemble those of Lipschits et al. so closely, they also were accessible online one year before they published their first article in Tel Aviv. This author was kindly reminded of these forum discussions by Mr. Michael Welch on July 2, 2013. Wells also confirmed that he himself, Grena and this author have discussed these matters since 2003.

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