Ancestral and chthonic cults at Tenos

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 305-329
Author(s):  
Nota Kourou
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Religious Evolution ◽  
Material Evidence

This paper presents the material evidence from two neighbouring Early Iron Age sites at Xobourgo on Tenos, identified as sacred places, and comments on their religious character and evolution. The first, conventionally named the Pro-Cyclopean Sanctuary, has a purely mortuary character. It starts in the Late Protogeometric period with an ancestral cult on a pebble platform over an empty grave, continues with a number of pyre pits inside enclosure walls, and ends up with a chthonic cult at an eschara in the Late Geometric period to be replaced by a small sacred oikos in the 7th century. The second starts as an open-air shrine, named the Pre-Thesmophorion Shrine, with an eschara and a protected place for storing pithoi, and it is turned into a Demeter sanctuary, a Thesmophorion, with a small temple in the Classical period. After considering the development and phases of both sites, it is claimed that they have similar, though not identical, cultic roles. Their different architectural and religious evolution is considered as largely dependent on social changes and historical conditions. They are compared and discussed against contemporary archaeological evidence for ancestral and chthonic cults focusing on such evidence from Tenos.

Material Culture and Making Visible: On the Portrayal of Philistine Gath in the Book of Samuel

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Book Of Samuel

Over the past twenty years our understanding of Philistine Gath's history (Tell es-Safl) has been transformed by what has been revealed through the site's early Iron Age remains. But what has received much less attention is the effect these ruins have on how we read references to the location within the Hebrew Bible. The intent of this study is to draw on the archaeological evidence produced from Tell es-Safl as an interpretive lens by which to consider the biblical portrayal of the site rendered in the book of Samuel, where the material traces of more amicable associations between Gath and highland populations invite us to reconsider the city's depiction in this ancient literary work.

Zebaoth – der Thronende

2006 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siegfried Kreuzer
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
The Political ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Development ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Hebrew Word ◽  
Basic Understanding ◽  
Administrative Center

AbstractZebaoth is the most frequent attribute for Jhwh in the Hebrew Bible. It's connotation is god's majesty and power. Yet its etymology and original meaning are still under debate. In modern research as well as in the OT, sebāot is connected with the root sābā, meaning "host". The changing identifi cations (the hosts of Israel's army, the stars as Jhwh's heavenly hosts, all of Jhwh's creation) and the modern interpretations (esp. as an abstract plural or plural of intensity) as well as the grammatical problems of the combination "Jhwh sebāot", point to the idea, that sebāot had an non-Hebrew origin and was taken over and understood in Hebrew context. The paper then takes up and advances the suggestion of M. Görg, that sebāot has an Egyptian origin, in the sense of "belonging to/owning the throne". This is explained and advanced in its linguistic development, and in relation to the political and religio-historical situation of Canaan at the turn from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age, including the archaeological evidence concerning Shilo in relation to nearby Aphek, the Egyptian administrative center at that time. So, Zebaoth designates the enthroned, powerful god in his majesty; this basic understanding is held through, though understood in the light of the Hebrew word for hosts, which were identified in different—appropriate—ways.

A Past No Longer Remembered

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pioske
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Narrative Prose

Chapter 4 examines the phenomenon of absence in the Hebrew Bible, or why certain early Iron Age locations do not appear in the stories told about this time period in the biblical writings. This study focuses on six locations from the early Iron Age that were of substantial significance during this era, but which are nevertheless not referred to in the Hebrew Bible. After surveying the archaeological evidence from these sites, it is maintained that the absence of these places from the biblical narrative was likely the outcome of Hebrew scribes not having access to information about these settlements, rather than an intentional act of suppressing what knowledge they had. This manner of forgetting was occasioned, it is argued here, because these particular locations had lost their cultural and political significance by the time in which past memories were being textualized by Hebrew scribes into stories of narrative prose.

The Early Iron Age Urban Forms of Cyprus

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Iacovou
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Urban Settlement ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Middle Bronze Age ◽  
Power Centers

This chapter examines the local conditions, traditions, and forms of urban settlement in Cyprus during the Iron Age. It explains that almost to the very end of the Middle Bronze Age, Cyprus had remained a closed rural society, though it was by then completely surrounded by Mediterranean urban states and it was only by 1100 BC that new social and economic structures started to dictate the establishment and development of new population and power centers. The archaeological evidence of 800–600 BC stands testimony to the culmination of a long process of social evolution and urbanization.

The Aegean

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-503
Author(s):  
Nikos Stampolidis
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Eastern Aegean ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Written Sources

This chapter concerns the presence of the Phoenicians and Near Easterners in the Aegean, with a special focus on the Early Iron Age and dealing sporadically with later periods. Divided into two parts, the chapter discusses first the picture that emerges from the written sources in antiquity regarding the Phoenicians (or more generally, easterners) and what we can reconstruct through the tangible, archaeological data we have today. Especially in relation to the material evidence, definitions of exotica and Phoenician artifacts are offered in a short introduction and then the chapter discusses the possible direct or indirect presence of Phoenicians in the Aegean regions, starting from Crete, the eastern Aegean, and the Cyclades, Attica and Euboea, and ending in the northern Aegean. The picture suggested by excavations and the interpretation of the finds to date show that the dynamics of the circulation of Phoenicians in the Aegean, at least in the earliest stages, passed through Cyprus and the Cypriots, as well as through Euboeans and the Cycladians.

scholarly journals The Archaeology of Cult of Ancient Israel’s Southern Neighbors and the Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Manuel Tebes
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Arid Areas ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Iron Age I ◽  
History Of

The Midianite-Kenite hypothesis, the idea that the pre-Israelite roots of Yahwism can be traced back to the areas south and southeast of Palestine, has a long pedigree in biblical scholarship. Analyses supporting this view generally agree in three main points. First, they assume that the influence of the southern cultic practices on Yahwism occurred during a restricted period of time, traditionally dated to the Early Iron Age. Second, they see the origins of Yahwism through the lenses of diffusionist perspectives, characterizing this process as a movement or migration of one or a few determined groups to Canaan. And third, adequate analyses of the archaeological evidence of the arid areas to the south of Palestine are few. In this article I will turn the interpretation of the epigraphic and archaeological evidence upside down. Instead of looking to the (mostly biblical) evidence on the origins of the cult of Yahweh and assuming its genesis lies in movements of people from the southern regions to Canaan in the Early Iron Age, I will focus attention on the history of the cultic practices in the Negev, southern Transjordan, and northern Hejaz during the entire Iron Age, and how this information is related to the religious practices known in Judah and Israel during the biblical period, shedding new light on the prehistory of the cult of Yahweh. I will evaluate the evidence not as a single, exceptional event, but as a long-term process within the several-millennia history of cultic practices and beliefs of the local peoples.

Sunlight, Divination, and the Dead in Aegean Ritual Tradition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Goodison
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Active Agent ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Ritual Practices

Study of orientation in Bronze Age Cretan buildings has revealed long-overlooked sunrise alignments at the Palace of Knossos; while the recording of dawn alignments at the Mesara-type tholos tombs has challenged previous ideas about religious belief, suggesting a new, somatic agenda for discourse about ritual practices at the tombs. This chapter highlights a long-standing Aegean tradition from the Early Iron Age until late antiquity in which the sun was perceived as an active agent facilitating processes of prophecy and communication with the dead. Taking issue with disembodied visions of knowledge and presentist templates of religion centred on worship of abstract deities, it revisits material evidence from the Mesara-type tombs, and considers whether it is possible to trace in the prehistoric era early formulations of this tradition linking sunlight with divination and the dead.

The Toumba building at Lefkandi: some methodological reflections on its plan and function

2000 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 239-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jari Pakkanen ◽  
Petra Pakkanen
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Unit Length ◽  
Building Design ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Proportional Analysis ◽  
And Function ◽  
Exceptional Character

It has been argued that a foot of c. 0.30 m was used in the design of the Early Iron Age building at Lefkandi. However, deriving the foot-unit length from the preserved measurements is not statistically valid; in this case, proportional analysis is more likely to advance understanding of the building design rather than foot-standard studies. Attempts to determine the building function using direct analogical reasoning are problematic because of the exceptional character of the Toumba building. Based on the archaeological evidence of ritualised collective gatherings, however, a transformation in the communal meaning of the monument is proposed.

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