A Tablet of the Amarna Age from Gezer

Author(s): W. F. Albright
Source: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 92 (Dec., 1943), pp. 28-
30
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The American Schools of
Oriental Research
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1355270
Accessed: 06-02-2019 10:17 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The American Schools of Oriental Research, The University of Chicago Press are
collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the American
Schools of Oriental Research

This content downloaded from 128.176.12.164 on Wed, 06 Feb 2019 10:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Number 92 December 1943

A TABLET OF THE AMARNA AGE FROM GEZER

W. F. ALBRIGHT

In recent numbers of the BULLETIN I have undertaken to bring the

interpretation of the cuneiform tablets of the Late Bronze Age from
Palestine up to date by correcting old mistakes and utilizing the com-
parative material now available from surrounding countries.' Not least,
I have tried to elucidate their meaning for the history of pre-Israelite
Palestine. In this article I shall deal with a fragmentary bit of tablet
discovered by Macalister at Gezer in the winter of 1908-9 2 and examined
by R. F. Harper (then director of the American School in Jerusalem),
and Paul (Edouard) Dhorme, who published it as a Neo-Babylonian
tablet, but could not extract any connected sense.3 The mistake was
evidently due to the fact that the characters are cursive Babylonian and
were recognized as such by Harper, distinguished for many years of
work on the Assyro-Babylonian letters of the Kuyunjik collection. Since
Harper had never worked on the Amarna Tablets, he failed to notice
the significance of orthography and forms of characters. In justice to
these eminent scholars it must, however, be said that the ideogram in
line 5 could not have been identified until after Thureau-Dangin pub-
lished the first occurrence of it in a connected text twelve years later
(1921). I pointed out in 1924 that the fragment belonged to the Amarna
Age, but without dealing in detail with its contents.4 Though it is too
broken to be historically important, it is not without significance, as
we shall see. Unfortunately it was found by accident on the surface
during the excavations, and has no stratigraphical value. Following is
my transliteration and translation, based upon the photographs (en-
larged two diameters) which were published by Macalister. Several lines
can be approximately restored from parallel passages in other con-
temporary tablets; details will be explained in the notes.

1. [ ] nut M ar[ri5 .. . ] [ ] the land of the ki[ng . .]

2. [a-nu-ma (?) ] as-sum mi-nm-im [Behold (?)] why dost [thou not
[la ti-el-la-ak] come]
3. [at-ta 6 a-n]a ma-ah-ri-ia [ ] [in]to m
4. [it (?) a-nla mi-nim-ma i (!) -[ul [And (?)] w
i-mah-har (?)] 7 not [welcome (?)]
1 See Nos. 86 (pp. 28-31), 87 (pp. 32-38), 89 (pp. 7-17, 29-32).
2 Palestine Exploration Fund Quarterly Statement, 1909, p. 96 and P1.
I, 30 f., and frontispiece. The partially retouched photo on p. 30 cann
without the greatest caution, since there are numerous mistakes in inking
3 Ibid., p. 106 (also in Gezer, loc. cit.).
, Annual, IV, p. 106, n. 14.
* The traces in the photograph are unmistakable. Note that the expre
iarri, which is extremely common in the Amarna Tablets, also recurs in

of* an Egyptian
The restoredofficial found
words seem at Tell Iel-.Iesi
certain; (see BULLETIN,
have taken them fromNo. 87, p. N
Taanach, 3
8ff. (u td-mi tellakuna atta ana, mahriya), and 13 f. (u d4-mi tell
mariya), written by the Egyptian official Amenophis to the chief of
(Hrozny in Sellin, Nachlese auf dem Tell Ta,'annek, Vienna, 1905, pp. 36
The restoration is conjectured from the context. Precisely this-use of
28

This content downloaded from 128.176.12.164 on Wed, 06 Feb 2019 10:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Number 92 December 1943

5. [dluKI-ka awil rdbisa (!)

jarri]
6. [su-ku-u]n lib-ba-ka i-na dli[KI- [Pay] attention to [thy] city!
ka9 ..]
7. [i-na-an-na (?) ]aha-ka li-te (?)- [Now (?)] let them bring thy
ru (!)10o [a-na ia-'i (?) ] brother [to me(?)]
8. [i-n]a 1l Ki-id-di-im[-miKI (?) 11 in the town of Kiddim[mu (?)...]

9. [it ki-ia (?)]-am mIs.-si-ir-ti (?) 12 [And like]wise(?) Jlsirtu(?) [ ]

[. .a-nal
10. [ma-ah-r]i-ia uS (!) -.i (?) -ra (!) send into my pr[esence!]
[- (?) ]ta () ]-na-di-in a-na (?) [And(?)] thou shalt give [to (?)

11. [ih(?)]ta(!) -na-di-in [a-na (?)] [And (?)] thou shalt give [to (?)]

appears in a letter from a prince of Kumidu (KAmid el-LIz in south-central Syria),

EA 198: 18.
8 For this sign see the facsimile in the figure, traced from Macalister's en
photograph. As will be seen, it is clearly identical with the character in AO
line 8 (Revue d'Assyr., XIX, p. 105). It was explained by Thureau-Dangin (
Champollion, 1922, p. 377, n. 3) as PA-TOR, in which PA is the first elem
the normal ideogram for r4bisu, " tax-collector" (maskim), PA S KAA4. S
TOR is the normal ideogram for tarbasu, " enclosure," from the same ste
r bi4gu, we seem to have a compound ideogram originating in a kind of rebus,
of PA = aklu, adpiru, " administrator," and TtR = tarbasu. So far the cha
occurs only in two letters of Egyptian provenience.
9 This restoration seems practically certain, in view of the Accadian idiom, l
ina . . . ?aknu.
10 The traces of this character are identical with the second (and third) of the
four forms of RU listed by Schroeder as occurring in the letters from Egypt.
Since the first and third characters are thus clear, the second should be TE, and
the only visible traces agree with this reading.
11 The characters dlu, K1, ID, DI are certain in the photograph; IM is virtually
certain. I should prefer to read ina OliKI, but this leaves the following clear
characters quite unintelligible. Moreover the context seems to require the name
of a town. Dhorme has already suggested that we identify the name with that of
biblical Gittaim, then pronounced (Gitttm in Canaanite (accepted by me, Annual,
1924, p. 106, n. 14). In favor of this is the unquestionable fact that the Egyptian
scribes confused the Semitic stops constantly in the cuneiform letters of Egyptian
provenience. On this phenomenon and its explanation see my detailed remarks,
Jour. Eg. Arch., 1938, pp. 201 f. Many parallels could be cited; e.g., in the long
list of presents sent by the Egyptian to the Babylonian court (EA 14) we have
suchWhile
etc. spellings as pakudu
I doubt for pagutu
the identification ofand ,igaru
Kiddim[ for diqaru,
] with ganturu
the Gittaim for kandur4,
of Benjamin,
it is quite likely that it is the Gittham of Eusebius, between Antipatris and Jamnia,
which must be Gitta between Beth Dagon and Lydda; i.e., it must be somewhere
in the vicinity of modern Safiriyeh, about 16 km. northwest of Gezer in a straight
line. This would mean that the Egyptian official was travelling northward along
the main road from Jamnia to Ris el-'Ain and sent a letter to the prince of Gezer
demanding seven oxen (etc.) as food.
12 The final character is not clear; it looks more like TI than anything else.
Dhorme's TAR is improbable and makes no sense in the context. But the name is
otherwise unknown, unless it is the biblical 'Rser (name of an Edomite clan, Gen.

former
36: 21, alternative is more
etc.) or Y.8ser likely.of a clan of Naphtali, as suggested by Dhorme); the
(name
1 Both ana mabriya and uWsera- are common in the Taanach letters from
Amenophis.

29

This content downloaded from 128.176.12.164 on Wed, 06 Feb 2019 10:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Number 92 December 1943

12. ['a-a-snu(?)] sibitti alp

na a-la-ki- u (?)] comes (?)]
[a-na] pa-ni (!) 4-[ia (?).. ] before [m
The clue to the content and purpose of this
reading of the ideogram in line 5, which is quite
other lines it follows peremptorily that we have
Egyptian official in Palestine to the prince of
was acting as chief. The tablet thus belongs to
two tablets found by Sellin at Taanach, both o
by a certain Amenophis, who was for the time b

Gezer Tablet Louvre AD 7095

% I I
LU PA TUR
grits

prince of Taanach.15 These two letters are couched in the same language
and are in part even verbally identical with ours. I have elsewhere dated
the Taanach documents somewhat earlier than the Amarna Tablets,
perhaps in the fifteenth century.'6 Our tablet may also come from the
fifteenth century. However this may be, it was apparently written by an
Egyptian scribe, since it contains no Canaanitisms, since several signs
have the characteristic Egyptian forms, and since the spelling of the
name of a town may show peculiarities known from other letters to be
common in cuneiform documents written by Egyptian scribes. The
limestone grits in the clay of the fragment prove that it originated in
Palestine and was not sent from Egypt like the royal letters. The request
for seven oxen suggests that the Egyptian official had a small body of
troops with him and that he was planning a barbecue, possibly with
sacrificial intent.17

14 The NI is certain, having exactly the form best attested for the Egyptian letters.
1I hope to publish new translations of these letters at an early opportunity;
cf. the bibliographic indications in my Archaeology and the Religion of Israel,
p. 185, n. 9.
10 Cf. n. 15.
" It is interesting to note that the seven head of cattle recur as sacrificial animals
in the story of Balaam (Num. 23: 1, 14, 29), which refers to events of about two
centuries after our tablet.

30

This content downloaded from 128.176.12.164 on Wed, 06 Feb 2019 10:17:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms