Has there been any change to more empathy for others and therefore less acceptance for the suffering of others from Ancient Rome till today? Or only from last 200 years? That last seems really presentist.
Because much of what follows examines religious faith, I feel I need to warn the devout believer that they may be offended. Also, I should be clear regarding my biases. I was brought up C of E that is, Protestant in England. At some stage in my education, I was told about ‘pagan’ gods and I can remember thinking how weird and rather primitive that seemed compared to the ‘sophisticated’, ‘natural’ or ‘obvious’ one God. Then, as a teenager, I can remember my mother saying she couldn’t reconcile the existence of God with all the vileness in the world. I agreed. So, I guess I was primed to seek out critiques of established religions. To use Tom Holland’s fish in water analogy[1] I want to find out just how murky that water is.
A good question to start with is, did monotheistic religion exacerbate indifference to the other or ameliorate it? As usual someone else has beaten me to it with a 500-page excavation of the historical record to assess the influence of Christianity during the last 2000 years. No doubt I will extract the odd insight from Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland (2019), relevant to my question. Having just read the last chapter first it seems it resembles Michel Onfray’s 2007 Atheist Manifesto with regard to the hidden cultural depth of Christianity’s influence in Western institutions. A blogsite called Brown Pundits made some very reasonable objections to Holland’s thesis that Christianity was the sole source of humanist values. The author, Omar Ali, from Pakistan, was understandably aggrieved that zero Eastern religions got a mention. Plus, he made a good point about slavery which Christianity was supposed to condemn yet slave owners “…had their own Biblical justification for slavery…”[2] and it took 1800 years to remedy.
When researching the myriad gods from antiquity we are informed; what they looked like; what earthly elements they were responsible for; as to their sometimes-capricious nature and their very human sexual proclivities along with the entire set of human emotions they displayed. Then, of course, what they said and who they spoke to gets a lot of coverage. It’s easy to forget that they were all deliberately invented by a priestly class thousands of years before the invention of writing, to undergird the power and prestige of the king. Although a one off ‘invention’ doesn’t quite fully explain how we got gods.
Reza Aslan’s breathless excavation of the human and hominid family to find evidence for a “…cognitive impulse to humanise the divine”[3] says more about his own religiosity than it does about a dispassionate analysis of human intellectual behaviour. That “impulse” to imagine a bearded guy in the sky who is in charge of the major earthly and celestial elements, was very quickly exploited by a priestly class. That exploitation manifested in religion whose etymology translates from the Latin religare to bind fast or together via the notion of “place an obligation on”, or “bond between humans and gods.”[4] Many gods becoming one god may seem like a change but a systematic belief system with hierarchies, temples, rituals, commandments, covenants and sacrifices, remained the means of control.
I have talked about the cultural behaviour of hunter-gatherer societies who agree to apply the ultimate sanction only after persuasion and ridicule have not worked. Since writing chapters one and two I have been alerted to a 20th century philosopher/anthropologist who died in 2015– Rene Girard. I mention his theory here because it does help to understand the purpose of gods. Girard’s idea centres on the uncontroversial observation that humans tend to want what others have. This attribute is given the socially scientific label of ‘mimetic desire’. It is a major aspect of how we learn to socialise. The obvious downside is that jealousy and rivalry can turn violent when resources become scarce. The tension can be relieved when a scapegoat is forced to absorb the blame for the group’s misfortunes. This is how rivals get reconciled and form a larger group.[5] Now, the group has to express gratitude for that original murder of the scapegoat or, to put it in Graeber’s financial terms, we now owe a debt to the original sin. The rituals of religion symbolically re-enact the original event. Thus, the function of the ritual is to purify violence which makes belief in ancestors manifest.
Perhaps after the passage of a couple of generations the elites understood that humans love a good story especially, in the absence of science, one that explains the origins of your tribe. A play by Ann Washburn set in a post-apocalyptic future, creatively illustrates how myths could be created.[6] The plot unfolds thus: Act I: In a post-catastrophe non-electric world survivors console themselves by piecing together a shared memory of an episode of the Simpsons. Gaps in memory are filled by imagination. Act II: seven years later a troop of wandering players provide connection to a mythic past by acting out classic Simpsons episodes. Act III: by the time the next generation has grown up an intense religion of musical theatre featuring a pantheon of strangely recognisable gods now forms the basis of society.[7] The portrayal of Lisa’s hair as yellow sunlight would have been familiar to worshippers of Rome’s ancient gods Mithras and Apollo who were both depicted with sunshine around the head. Of course, Christ’s and saints’ halos were similar icons. As Ann Washburn said when talking about her play; “And since we don’t really create stories from the air– since all stories, and no matter how fanciful, are in some way constructed from experiences, real or imagined– all storytelling is a remaking of our past in order to create our future.”[8]
The story of the emergence of the one God in the Levant can be characterised in different ways, depending on your particular field of expertise. If you are concerned with the literary aspect of the biblical God then his earlier incarnation centres on destruction via the flood. Later, “…in the Exodus story he shows himself to be a warrior and soon thereafter a lawgiver and liege.”[9] Whoever wrote the Old Testament relied on fusing selected traits from ancient deities.[10] If the origin of debt and financial obligation concerns you then you will ask the question why Christ is referred to as the Redeemer. For Graeber, “…the meaning of redemption is to buy something back… that had been given up in security for a loan to acquire something by paying off the debt. The very core of the Christian message, salvation itself, the sacrifice of God’s own son to rescue humanity from eternal damnation, is framed in the language of a financial transaction.”[11]
I do not propose to offer a comprehensive ledger of all the positive and negative human behaviours that derived from Judaism, Islam and Christianity for the last 2000 years. Although after reading Catherine Nixey’s Darkening Age it’s tempting to say that Christianity held back global moral, commercial and technological development by 500 years. That may sound like a harsh call but if you’ve read some bits, I quoted from Graeber and Wengrove’s account, in Chapter 2, of the utter destruction of all the interesting political forms in Meso-America, then combine with the wisdom of North American Indians’ influence on Western enlightenment thinking and observe how the commerce-hating Christians disrupted a perfectly functioning world trading system in the late 14th century,[12] then my proposition begins to sound reasonable. I fear this digression is beyond the scope of this chapter so let’s return to late Bronze Age and early Iron Age myth making from Persia to India.
In order to assess the influence of monotheism on human empathy it will become necessary to chart its connections to pantheism. It turns out the source of much of Judaic and Christian moral strictures has Zoroastrian and ancient Greek philosophical underpinnings. Just about all ‘pagan’ gods exhibited much of the nastiest of human motivations including the Hebrew god Yahweh whose origins go back to the Iron Age. According to one new theory, metallurgy was central to this new god and was worshipped throughout the Levant.[13] To foreclose any claims to the unique beneficence of the Abrahamic deity of Judaism, let us turn to a Persian god, Ahura Mazda.
The name of this deity has Vedic origins and means lord of wisdom. That’s an encouraging attribute in my book. Although the earliest surviving inscription invoking Ahura Mazda was in 509 BCE, the Elamite language of Southwest Iran has a much older lineage to Vedic scriptures. The people of Eastern Iran and northern India around 1500 BCE were culturally and linguistically almost indistinguishable. As Sreenivasaraos summarizes in a blog “…the words, grammar and syntax of the idioms (in Iran and India) sprung from the same roots.”[14] A translator of ancient Persian, J.M. Chatterji, suggested that “…the language of the Avesta (Iran) and the language of the Vedas (India) resemble very closely since they are based on a common linguistic foundation.”[15] Besides the linguistic connection, the theological and ethical connection is stark.
Scholars of ancient deontology and mythology agree that the early proto-Indo-European Vedic god Varuna and Ahura Mazda are one and the same. They both shared an affinity with sky, rivers and oceans but more importantly they asserted the primacy of moral law. In terms of mythological hierarchy, they were both keepers of the cosmic order above all other gods. Finally, they both had links to Mithra, a god of covenant, oath, justice, truth and light. It’s easy to see how these universalist injunctions and aspirations could slowly morph into monotheism. As we know, some tribes in Canaan latched on to the covenant idea via a set of moral injunctions known as the 10 Commandments. That kind of celestial authoritarianism would have been inimical to Zoroaster.
Zoroaster was a trainee priest with a named father and mother who became acquainted with Ahura Mazda aged thirty, while experiencing a spiritual awakening– a common literary trope in ancient myth making. Even though we know about his upbringing, who his grandfather was and records of his philosophical writings exist we have not reached a consensus as to when and where he lived. Even the Encyclopaedia Iranica devotes many pages to numerous scholars’ attempts to periodize the king Vishtaspa who patronized Zoroaster aged 42. I certainly do not intend to unpick the thicket of dating controversy, suffice to say that a University of London ancient Iranian academic, Mary Boyce offers anywhere between 1500 BCE to 500 BCE. The point is, these dates allow a connection to Hindu Vedic influences and they predate elevation of Yahweh to a position of oneness above all other deities. Thus, monotheism didn’t suddenly appear de novo in the late second millennium BCE. Zoroaster did not only prefigure a universal transcendent being but, and this was the truly hip idea, he said the individual was free to choose right or wrong. Regarding autonomy in moral decision-making, Zoroaster beat Kant and Mill by 2800 years! He framed morality around the human struggle between Asa and Druj. The former being creation, existence and the condition of free will; the latter being falsehood, the realm of demons and immorality. Recognising immorality is a definite ethical plus but labelling nasty behaviour as demonic would come to have catastrophic consequences for non-Christians later on. He also taught his fellow Persians how to achieve closeness to Asa. Namely, by participating ethically in life via good thoughts, words and deeds while placing less emphasis on the importance of ritual.[16]
You can understand why the Greeks liked Zoroaster – he invented philosophy after all. It’s interesting to examine the influence of the Vedic and Avestan cosmological and philosophical record on the great thinkers of Ancient Greece, because it will show a rich intellectual and spiritual underpinning for society that had no need of monotheism. By the time Pythagoras had condensed Zoroaster’s theology to the immortality of souls and Heraclitus had done the same by asserting the mutability of the universe, humans’– well, the educated elite males– intellectual capacity to be good, do good and feel good had reached a zenith. Plutarch’s nuanced assessment that “education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel” derived his symbolic language from Zoroaster.[17] It was the very pluralism and therefore acceptance of others’ beliefs during the polytheistic Classical Age that failed to prevent the emergence of one almighty god even though Zenophanes hinted at monotheism. This was tolerable until Christ claimed he was this new god’s son. Then all hell broke loose!
This was called the Axial Age for good reason. The flavour of thought shifted on a new axis from storytelling and analogy to a more analytical and reflective style.[18] This cognitive change was based on the emergence of self-discipline and selflessness. To qualify as an “Age” a similar new idea has to become influential contemporaneously in different parts of the world. That criterion was satisfied by Pythagoras, Buddha and Confucius from Greece, India and China, respectively. Graeber and Wengrow labels these new forms of thinking “speculative philosophy” and point out that their emergence is connected to the invention of metal coinage and the spread of chattel slavery across Eurasia.[19] If, according to Baumard et al, the new idea was a change in the reward orientation from a short term materialistic to a long term spiritual one, then perhaps it enabled the elites to justify enslavement with the promise of a better afterlife. Slavery and its monetization may have fallen into decline with the end of the four Axial Age empires but we know how it roared back 600 years later starting with the Iberian take-over of the Americas.
I have found it well-nigh impossible not to be drawn into the controversies regarding the origins of Judaism, so I will attempt to summarize the historical as opposed to the biblical accounts of the inexorable turn to monotheism. However you slice and dice the evidence there are some inescapable conclusions. One that points to a belief in Jewish exclusivity– partially justified– which really only had consequences for Jews and, two, the brutal application of the bifurcation of humanity by Christians into those who believed in Christ as the son of God and the Satanization of everyone else. This had the direst of consequences for non-believers.
But before we get to the Roman province of Judea in the first century CE let’s try and relate archaeology, skeletal DNA and the written record to story-telling in the Levant. It appears that the reason the origins of Judaens are so controversial is largely because rabbinical writers have eschewed historical enquiry. The only event the ancient Rabbinical writers seemed to be concerned with was “exilic time”– “… a condition of constant alertness, attuned to the longed-for moment when the Messiah would appear.”[20] What actually occurred when, where, to whom and by whom was of little interest.
Why I believe it’s important to trace the origins of the Abramaic God which led to Judaism and later Christianism[21] is because it will show how geopolitics of place were as influential as ethno-mythology. In the context of the waxing and waning of various Near Eastern empires before and during the Axial Age (800-300 BCE) it becomes easier to understand the opportunities and challenges facing semi-nomadic groups. These shifting power centres led to some Iron Age Canaanite hill people using myths of exile to form a robust cultural identity legitimately attached to the Near East. Ironically that same exilic mythology also provided comfort for the Jewish diaspora.
A few general points about what actually happened to people when grain-states succumbed to their innate fragility will help to further contextualize population movements in the near east. After a so-called ‘collapse’ power is often decentralized. Those more autonomous regional centres would have been far more amenable to absorption of foreign traders. In addition to the ecological and epidemiological reasons for early state fragility, constant competition for manpower via wars between peer polities in Mesopotamia also accelerated the shift away from central control.[22] This needs to be borne in mind when explaining the movement of populations in the Levant and Egypt from Early Bronze Age to the Iron Age. What’s very unhelpful in that explanation is the Bible. Indeed, I hope to show how utterly ahistorical the Bible is and therefore why it’s unnecessary to the explanation of the origin of monotheism and its three attendant faiths. Nevertheless, there’s no doubting the elegance, beauty and emotional resonance of the mythical stories compiled by multiple Rabbinical and other authors. Like all good myths they do rely on distant echoes from the past. As relevant as Biblical or Qur’anic stories are to the political present in the Near East my current focus is on how the transition from polytheism to monotheism affected societal morality in the last couple of millennia before the common era and a few centuries onwards.
As I described in chapter 2, those omni-directional steppe herders, so DNA analysis tells us, migrated from the Caucasus Mountains to the Southern Levant as well as the sub-continent and Europe. The indigenous Neolithic population and the newcomers formed the Canaanite culture from 3500 BCE onwards. Or did they? That a culture formed is not in doubt. What is problematic is teasing out how to name these very mobile pastoralist herders. It all depends on who’s pressing the reed into the clay and when. You can be sure that all the tablets, letters, steles and tomb inscriptions emanating from Mesopotamia or Egypt represent a city-state, agrarian, sedentary perspective which is not going to be complementary to the non-taxpaying freeloaders on the hoof. Of course, those cuneiform clay tablets from the sedentary elites were a bulky pre-papyrus form of writing and so would not have been attractive to pastoralist-warrior-traders on the move who relied on speed and manoeuvrability for raiding cities. Given that, most of the historical sources are from contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts, references to Canaanites are going to be derogatory for propagandistic purposes. In fact, we don’t even know if the Canaanites saw themselves as a single people of that name or as distinct groups with different identities. This lack of Canaanite textual sources makes new high tech analysis very valuble.
I will trace the naming lineage from Canaanite to Israelite later. Having said that it needs to be understood that there was indeed a region with recognized boarders known as Canaan. According to textual evidence in the form of cuneiform tablets and steles dated to the middle to late Bronze Age from Mesopotamia, Egypt and Canaan itself, collated by Titus Kennedy, “…the boundaries, appear to delineate the borders of Canaan …at least as far as Rapia in the south, Pella and Tell es-Sa’idiyeh in the east, and Byblos over to Labweh in the north.”[23] In terms of today’s divisions, it occupied Israel minus the upside-down triangle from Gaza to the dead Sea to Tel Aviv but including the West bank, the southern half of Lebanon, a small chunk of Syria including Damascus and a piece of Jordan. Thus, Canaan was one of several loosely bounded areas in the ‘land of the rising sun’, Levant, – from a western Mediterranean i.e., French viewpoint.
By 3500 BCE the complex polities of Sumer in the southern Mesopotamian alluvium are well established. Trade and contact with Steppe Herders along with mastering the superior properties of bronze and the invention of record keeping catalysed the launch of the first empires. The first two conditions also prevailed in the northern Levant. So, it shouldn’t be surprising for towns to emerge in the area defined as Canaan. We need to bear in mind that some of the Caucasian Steppe herders chose to take up a permanent sedentary lifestyle while a significant proportion of the population preferred to remain in the saddle. Kennedy’s thesis has some interesting insights on Canaanite demography that are useful for our purposes here. Although his work covers a later time period it is still relevant. As he states in the chapter, The nomadic population in Canaan, “…it has been hypothesized that the combined period of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages saw “the rise of enclosed nomadism…wherein tribal groups lived in the interstices between the urban sites, with seasonal migrations beyond the settled zone” (Rosen 2009: 63). What’s interesting is the increased numbers of nomads albeit “enclosed”. For it is with this latter group from whom all the naming controversies arise. Before delving into who labelled who what and when its worth drawing attention to the overall demographic conclusions of Kennedy’s. The population of Canaan steadily increased from early to late Bronze Age. There was no sudden massive demographic collapse consistent with plague, famine, genocide or mass migration. Be that as it may Canaanite populations were small compared to Egypt, Anatolia and Mesopotamia and therefore were never able to exert any kind of hegemonic control over its neighbours. These conclusions are adduced from extensive archaeological, skeletal and textual records from the period.[24] 14 different archaeological sites were examined and the bibliography was 30 pages long!
After 200 years of increasing prosperity the Canaanite city of Megiddo had become an important regional centre by 3300 BCE “…controlling fertile lands of the Jezreel valley and key international trade routes connecting the northern and southern Levant with Assyria and Mesopotamia on one end and Egypt on the other.”[25] At roughly the same time the upper and lower Nile kingdoms united, ushering in the first Egyptian Dynastic period which accelerated Canaan’s commercial ties with the southern empire. It is no coincidence that the emergence of the first wave of urban city-state formation in Canaan, including Megiddo, was intimately bound to the foundation of the Early Dynastic period in Egypt. This is not to say trade routes along the Orontes Valley north to Assyria and south east to early Mesopotamian dynasties were unimportant, it’s just that our focus seeks to contextualise Canaanite population movements to and from Egypt. Thus, it will demystify the Exodus and explain the theological connections between Egypt and Canaan.
To illuminate Levantine development from 3300 BCE to 1700 BCE it is useful to expand traditional Egyptology beyond tomb inscriptions, mummies and elite artefacts. First, Carlos Garcia’s 2014 paper uses palaeobotany, new knowledge of environmental, including hydrological, conditions of the Nile Valley to focus on one: the importance of foragers on marginal land and two: new social structures far more complex than elites and peasants. Second, Karin Sowada 2009 book explains the importance of kingship to trade and like Garcia emphasises the role of non-state actors.
Turning to Garcia, he challenged the primacy of single-minded institutional reasons for trade. Garcia not only uses a wealth of new geographical, economic and social history to critique assumed purposes for trade, but also lays bare the entire traditional edifice of Pharaonic control. Evidence points to a wealthy chunk of society whose existence has to be inferred from indirect references in archaeology and the written record. It’s worth detailing how a new complex picture of ancient Egypt is emerging because it does impact our understanding of the Levantine peoples in the same period. Essentially what is revealed is the genesis of a socially reproducing middle class whereby economic activity is integrated with all aspects of human need including status and identity. That socially variegated process occurring in Egypt required its replication in the Levant.
A primary example of this newly discovered social heterogeneity is the emergence of many classes of peasants. These new categories included “…autonomous landholders … rich peasants, … agricultural dependants … rural “entrepreneurs”.”[26] In this reappraisal of “herders, foragers and traders” religion takes a back seat. Their entrepreneurship derived from how they exploited “grazing land, salt, plants, honey, game, charcoal, fish”[27] via relations with “…the institutional sphere…” as well as “…with agriculturalists.”[28] The crucial point Garcia makes here is the complexity of those relationships “…composed of occasional conflicts, autonomy and collaboration in a general context of mutual interdependency.”
The new recognition of the economic importance of pastoralism suggests a novel way to interpret the role of ‘Asiatics’–a descriptor used by Egyptians for anyone from east of Egypt– as they settled in the eastern Nile delta area. To ‘settle’ means to commercially engage with and be socially accepted by all levels of society from the local nomarch downwards. The fact that Egyptian herders moved in the opposite direction to “…live in southern Palestine among Levantine agriculturalists,”[29] adds to the demographic complexity of early Dynastic Egypt and the Levant.
Karin Sowada’s book is a very extensive and close re-examination or reassessment of material from older excavations, the bulk of which are ceramic, to illustrate how Egypt interacted with Canaan during the Old Kingdom. Although her time line ends at MB I (Middle Bronze start) or 2055 BCE, it’s only 355 years before rulers of Levantine extraction dominated lower Egypt. Plenty of time for populations throughout the Levant and Egypt to adjust to the new climatic reversal of fortunes in 2200 BCE by leaving cities and joining pastoralists.
Egypt’s political expansion into the Levant was made possible by the unification of the Upper and Lower Nile kingdoms so that the first Dynasty could turn its attention away from internal feuding. The initial contact between Canaan and Egypt was administrative. Egypt’s purpose was to establish solid relations with local elites to enable the peaceful but profound change from subsistence to surplus agrarian economies to secure commodities in bulk.[30] Cedar from Byblos was required for temple building and later for shipbuilding which needed coniferous resin for waterproofing. The production of wine and olive oil in northern Canaan for export to Egypt was well established as early as the first dynasty towards the end of the 4th millennium. Her detailed analysis of ceramics is corroborated and augmented by Garcia. An example of a novel high-tech analysis used was Neutron Activation Analysis which could identify what ancient jars and vessels were used for. This method indicated jars found in Egypt were from Canaan. Thus, one can infer that there was a lot of trade in perishables off the state record.
The growth in scope of agricultural product required actuarial, logistical and myriad artisanal skills to benefit from this new economy. A list of Egyptian finished products, raw materials and agricultural exports illustrates the complexity of the economy. A wetland sedge made into a writing surface; papyrus was turned into books in Byblos from where the word bible is derived. The same source material and flax was also used to make rope, indispensable for measuring blocks of land as well as rigging ships and all the myriad uses in engineering projects. Linen cloth, jewellery, gold, glass and stone objects were in the mix. Unsurprisingly, surplus grain right up to Roman times was the prime agricultural export. Preserving sturgeon, salmon and catfish with salt, or curing or smoking: pickling, drying or fermenting fruit and vegetables made their way to foreign markets. Pastoralist herders would have been well able to manage the export of cattle. The wealth of Canaan, thus generated, allowed Megiddo and other towns to afford fortifications by EB II (3000-2686 BCE). The rational for those fortifications could well have been the encroaching control of early Egyptian dynastic kings into southern Canaan. Then, ironically, it was increased trade not less that led to Egyptian withdrawal from southern Canaan. As Sowada explained, the expanded quantity of goods required for “funerary monuments at Abydos” relied on the “…development of a large-scale sea-born trading network…” [31] thus avoiding southern Canaan. As I mentioned, chief among the bulk items needed was cedar from Lebanese forests to build ever larger monuments.
Besides the trading connection to Byblos and its hinterland Egypt was also theologically attached to the Ba’al at Gebal[32] cult centre there, particularly during the 6th Dynasty. By the third millennium BCE Ba’al worship as the storm and fertility god Hadad had spread from the Levant to Egypt. Its cultish characteristics derived from the prohibition on anyone except the high priest referring to him by name hence the use of the word Ba’al which simply means lord.[33] Much later we’ll see how Ba’al morphs into a theological scapegoat for Jews, Christians and Islam. But for our purposes here it might explain how a foreigner of possible Byblite extraction, 261years earlier, “…achieved a certain level of respectability and status,” as inscribed on a Gizan tomb dated 2550 BCE.[34] This piece of information illustrates how foreign involvement in Egyptian power structures predates Hyksos rule by 700 years.
The general impression I got from Karin Sowada’s research was that the Egyptian empire was never really about conquering distant lands simply to become a bigger empire. As she put it. “…Egypt’s relations with its neighbours involved more than the acquisition of products for elite consumption: its engagement had commercial, political, military and possibly also propagandistic dimensions linked to the politico-religious dynamic of Egyptian kingship.”[35] This latter aspect is hardly surprising when one recalls the complex and elaborate mummification processes and richly ornate objects on display at institutions such as the British Museum and the Chow Chak Wing of Sidney university. (Egyptian mummies, like dinosaurs have always captured the childhood imagination.) The divinity of the kings had to be materially manifested to solidify, enhance and maintain an Egyptian identity. The “politico-religious dynamic” was not as instrumental as my summary sounds – they must have actually believed in the afterlife. The usual ancient city-state nexus between the gods, their intermediaries and attendant hierarchy pertained in Egypt. However, such was the depth of their convictions and, it has to be said, political and administrative success that ensured security of supply, which was the primary purpose of foreign policy.
During all the epochal or axial shifts in human behaviour from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age the one constant human activity was the exchange of goods over long distances. There seems to have been no reversal in this most ancient driver of wealth. It needs to be born in mind; the nature of that wealth was often diplomatic prestige as well as commerce. By 6500 BCE Sumerian pottery and hence the earliest ideographic and mnemonic symbols appear which were used to facilitate the emerging trade routes between Mesopotamia and Pakistan. By the 3rd millennium analysis of plant and animal remains indicate trade extended from East Africa to China. Lapis lazuli from Badakhshan in north eastern Afghanistan was highly prized throughout the Levant, including Egypt. Archaeologically sleuthing commodities like tin and bitumen has revealed routes associated with those and other ordinary goods. The emergence of non-state pastoralists at this time, incentivised by theses trade routes, were able to leverage their particular advantages for a symbiotic relationship with the city-states. Such that the military acumen of skilled horse and chariot riders could offer protection of state trading caravans in exchange finished products or slaves.
The estimation of two million Canaanite amphorae arriving in Avaris, based on excavations, attest to “…the huge volume of trade at this locality during the Hyksos period.”[36] Many other commodities traded from the large harbour with births enough for 300 ships provided the economic basis for the foreigners’ control of Avaris. The consolidation of these non-state sanctioned trade networks realigned the authority of monarchies which adds a further dimension to the reasons for the establishment for foreign rule in Avaris by 1700 BCE. Non-state authorities such as “… village chiefs, heads of extensive patronage networks, well-off individuals…” were able to negotiate with upper and lower strata including provincial and central courts.[37] This administratively efficient system contributed not only to the success of the Hyksos but also to the continuation of Pharaonic control albeit circumscribed.
Further evidence of the presence of Asiatics – though some Egyptologists refer to them as Bedouins– in Egypt can be found on funerary reliefs of the Pharaoh Sahure, 2458-2446 BCE. The figures are depicted as emaciated for reasons which remain controversial. Similar scenes form part of the Famine Relief Causeway of Unas’s burial complex 93 years later. There’s no need to assume that ancient pharaohs were any less media savvy than today’s leaders so the interpretation that the scene “…was meant to illustrate the generosity of the sovereign in aiding famished populations,” [38]rings true. According to a piece in Academia depictions of famine relief during the Old Kingdom were a “commonly accepted trope of the era.”[39] The repetition of similar acts of pharaonic beneficence call into question their historical accuracy and point to the legitimation and support for the ideology of kingship.[40]
Much or the written record for the 6th dynasty comes from the autobiography of Weni who demonstrated social mobility, alluded to earlier in Garcia’s work, by becoming a judge, governor of the south and military leader from humble beginnings. Keen to burnish his legacy, the numbers of slain in his 5 military campaigns he conducted against the ‘Asiatic sand dwellers’ appear greatly exaggerated. He maintained favour with three pharaohs by acknowledging them as earthly deities.
Karin Sowada’s book amply demonstrates the influence of the increasingly cultish devotion to the Pharoah and his afterlife on the Levant throughout the third millennium BCE. Without the multidisciplinary archaeological techniques brought to bare on so many sites from Megiddo to Avaris by the likes of Kennedy, Garcia, Sowada, and Ariel David we would be left with the monothetic record of Weni and other tomb inscriptions.
Contemporaneously with Megiddo’s burgeoning prosperity was the Eblaite kingdom to the North whose successful trading system allowed it to assert control over much of northern and eastern Syria. “The discovery of Egyptian stone vessels in the palace complex at Ebla…”[41] attests to relations between the two. At its height, Ebla controlled no less than 60 vassal city-states stretching from Damascus in the south to Mari in the East. A hundred years after Ebla’s foundation in 2900 BCE, Mari began to assert its trading dominance from the west bank or the Euphrates. Situated as it was, midway between Byblos on the Mediterranean and the northern end of the Zargos mountain range, the location was at a convenient trading cross roads.
Thus, competition between Ebla, Mari and southern Mesopotamian cities led to their ascensions and destructions. So, 250 years after Mari was founded it was abandoned but 150 years later it re-established itself to last until it was destroyed by Hammurabi in 1760 BCE. The Eblaite kingdom lasted for 700 years until its collapse in 2300 BCE. The point to note here is that a crash, collapse or abandonment of a city did not necessarily involve large numbers of deaths. People simply moved somewhere else. I have shown how these geopolitical circumstances were relevant in the early Bronze Age and will show they became more relevant to the Canaanites’ need for a single geographically unattached deity.
Meanwhile, during the 4th Dynasty of the Old kingdom in Egypt, 2500 BCE, the early grand temple-building civilization of Canaan came crashing down. We don’t know why but it could be related to the establishment of the second Mari Kingdom dated to the same year.166 years later Sargon of Akkad, wielding his mace to good effect, engaged in much destruction, conquest and consolidation of Mesopotamia. His jurisdiction extended from Sumer, Ur and Eridu in the south to Urkish and Ninive in the northeast and on the way, he swallowed up the lucrative prize of Mari. The extent of his empire to the west varies depending on your source. The World History Encyclopedia has the kingdom of Ebla conquered and then reaching as far south as Byblos–modern day Beirut. However, the Map Archive differentiates between definite Akkadian control and probable control where everything west of Mari falls into the latter category. Amusingly, the Iraq Embassy in Washington has the Akkadian Empire encompassing the whole of Palestine!
Sargon, like any king from that period owed his position to the nexus between priests and gods. To go down in history as ‘the Great’ a king needs to accomplish more than just military conquest although without that he won’t qualify. Apart from the recently discovered mini-empire of Ebla, Sargon could only look to the last 366 years since the unification of Egypt, for administrative inspiration. Trading with the Indus valley Civilization would have been beneficial but emulating their non-hierarchical pacific society would have been anathema. He is credited with the world’s first postal service. Building roads and irrigation canals would have been standard but appreciation of conquered people’s traditions and his protection in exchange for tribute contributed to a cohesive empire. Commerce benefitted from his regulation of weights and measures. Plus, he instigated the Akkadian language, encouraged the arts and was consultative in regard to his many military campaigns. But no matter how politically talented an ancient ‘grain state’ leader was, collapse due to epidemiological challenges and catastrophic climactic shifts could not be prevented.[42]
So it was that a massive environmental event in 2200 BCE[43] causing severe aridification and drought put paid to the Akkadian dynasty. Just prior to the demise of Sargon’s empire, the Egyptian pharaoh, Pepi I– 2325-2150 BCE, mounted 5 military expeditions into Canaan as well as trading vessels with Byblos. In that 500-year period from Canaanite collapse in 2500 its revival in 2000 BCE it’s easy to imagine why, over many years, they would have sought prosperity not in collapsed Akkad but in Egypt, “…attracted by the more stable, drought-free living conditions offered by the Nile Valley…” [44]There are two historical processes at work at this time which are crucial to contextualizing the emergence of a Judaic kingdom. First emergence of large cities, including Megiddo with massive fortifications in the Levant due to increased links with Egypt. Second, large numbers of migrants to the Nile Delta from Levant gradually settle and prosper there. The first point about the re-emergence of prosperous cities in that part of the world is that they attracted the attention of powerful kings from the neighbouring empires. The second point relates to the quotidian desire of people to seek prosperity wherever they can.
The Canaanites first appear in the historical written record in 1800 BCE in a letter from a senior military official– Mut-Bisir– to an Amorite warlord named Shamshi-Adad who had got off his horse long enough to establish hegemony over much of Syria, Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia.[45] The letter stated “It is in Rahisum that the brigands and the Canaanites are situated”.[46] Rahisum was a Bronze Age city south of Qatna on the upper reaches of the Orontes River being the northeast border of Canaan which makes it a likely location for disputed territory. It is worth pausing the chronology here to explain the negative language associated with Canaanites. An author quoted by Kennedy is quite specific in that “he states that the term Canaanite was understood to essentially mean outsider or foreigner, and that Canaan as a term meant only reference to a land different from one’s own.”[47] 449 years after the first recorded reference to Canaan, a Babylonian king complained to the Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten, about the killing of Babylonian merchants. While he was at it, he was happy to recognize the supremacy of Egypt in the region by saying, “The land of Canaan is your land and its kings are your servants.”[48]
In the ancient world of early city-states those nomadic pastoralists who were beyond the fiscal grip of the central power were referred to as Habiru. (Could be an early spelling of Hebrew.) This was “…a 2nd millennium term used throughout the Fertile Crescent for people variously described as rebels, outlaws, raiders, mercenaries, bowmen, servants, slaves and labourers.”[49] These negative connotations referenced by Kennedy accord with Scott’s assertion that the notion of ‘tribes’ was an invented “administrative fiction of the state” to label what were really loose “confederacies of disparate peoples.”[50] Not among those tribes were Semites. Semitic was a term invented in the 19th century by a German and it is used today to bracket linguist lineages across northern Africa and the entire Levant including Mesopotamia.[51] One of the geographical origins was Palestine where Hebrews and others settled so eventually the term Semitic only referred to them. If the New Advent Encyclopedia’s statement: the ‘Semitic’ word kana is the origin of Canaan which figuratively meant humble, despicable and subjected, is correct, it indicates the low esteem with which the Canaanites were regarded by ancient empires. Alternatively, it could mean the perpetuation of antisemitism by a very conservative Catholic organisation.
One such loose ‘confederacy,’ alluded to by Scott above, who successfully cooperated as mercenaries were labelled Amorites, by Ur III rulers. The origin of the name is uncertain. In Hebrew its very similar to a word which means ‘talker’ but I would more likely go for the name relating to the god or place Amurru as a tribal designation for a people west of the Euphrates. Although a piece in Haaretz does make a convincing linguistic relationship between Amorite and Hebrew. Recent studies of two cuneiform tablets, discovered during Bush senior’s expulsion of Iraqis from Kuwait in 1993, dated 1800 BCE revealed a ‘language manual.’ Essentially it enabled Akkadians to translate from Amorite/Canaanite.[52] This hitherto unknown language can be easily recognized by a Hebrew speaker today. This remarkable discovery allows us to ascribe a cultural identity to a group of nomadic pastoralists who, by the nature of their non-sedentary life style, leave little archaeological trace.
The identification of the Amorites has garnered much academic attention in recent years. I guess it’s the attraction of weaving ever more complex multidisciplinary strands into a coherent picture. Included in those strands is the current fashion for identity politics. As Aaron Burke stated, “Identity is used to create social cohesion but also to create distinction (from other) in periods of military expansion.”[53] The military expansion he was referring to was that of Hammurabi. His book asserted the great temporal and geographic range of the Amorites.[54] According to Burke they had become ‘agro-pastoralist refugees’ from that often-cited 4.2KYA event. Nevertheless, not only was there an Amorite presence in Egypt attested to by Hyksos rulers having Amorite names in 1890s BCE, they had also established a dynasty in Babylon and Mari. In 1795 BCE Hammurabi, of Amorite origin totally replaced Akkadian rule throughout Mesopotamia, thus, in Scott’s terms, the ‘shadow empire’ had become the sedentary polity. Bearing in mind Scott’s assessment of the fluidity of nomadic people’s ethnic allegiances and the fact that the written record is provided by the city-states it is no surprise that there is little agreement on how to name different nomadic groups. Hence, the terms Shasu, Sutean, Habiri, Canaanite, Amorite and Hyksos were all different names for the same or related group used by various sedentary powers of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt.
So far, with regard to the Levantine presence in Egypt, I have mentioned their longevity and have analysed the role non-state actors played in the administrative success of Hyksos rule and noted the evidence for huge amount of trade between Avaris and the Levant.
To sheet home all these processes (above) with regard to Egypt and its Levantine descendants, I turn to the first ‘Intermediate Period’ 2160-2030 BCE. According to Scott a “hiatus” at the centre lead to the rise of provincial rulers– nomarchs– “…who now paid only nominal allegiance to the central court.”[55] Thus the administrative and political ground was prepared for the Levantine descendants to gain control of Egypt from Avaris. Coinciding with the break up of central power in Egypt from Intef II, onwards (2108 BCE) was the renaissance of Megiddo whose prosperity was linked to Egypt. By the time of the start of the Middle Kingdom (2030 BCE) the tomb of an Egyptian official depicts Levantine nomads bringing offerings to the dead.[56] Other archaeological evidence for a “strong Levantine presence” include “Semitic names, burial customs, architecture and weapons…”[57] Migrants from all over the Levant, were attracted to this port town founded by King Amenemhat in 1981BCE, because it had access to the Mediterranean Sea and overland routes to Syria and Palestine. Avaris welcomed these traders who “…prospered and sent word to their friends and neighbours to come join them…”[58]
And join them they did. To the extent that a hundred years later the number of Canaanite migrants to the Nile Delta had reached a critical mass such that they could take advantage of some bad decisions made by the 13th Dynasty. This was followed by famine and plague in the 14th Dynasty which presented an opportunity for the migrants to fill the power vacuum. There had been enough cultural ties between Canaanites and Egyptians for centuries before so it was natural for the ‘Asiatics’ to make treaties and forge “…contracts with various nomarchs of other regions in Lower Egypt…”[59] They were politically astute enough to appoint Egyptians to significant positions. Further evidence for cultural ties between Megiddo and Egypt has recently been deduced from “new analysis of residue on jugs and jars found under floors…of lower-class neighbourhoods…in Megiddo…” dated to the second Intermediate period. The residue is from wine which was used “…in a funerary context across different social classes.”[60] Also from the same grave site, the placement of drinking vessels close to the heads of corpses suggest strong links with Egyptians who made sure their dead had plenty to drink in the afterlife.[61] Recent evidence provided by strontium, which finds its way into humans and settles on teeth, is yet another tool that can determine where a 3723 year-old woman spent her childhood. This scientific analysis conducted on 75 skeletons at Avaris from the Hyksos period shows that “…over half of these people spent their childhoods outside the Nile Valley.”[62] The fact that most of the buried were women suggests that the local elites were matrimonially inclined to their ancestral lands.
This happy, multicultural, commercially successful portion of Egypt run from Avaris lasted 200 years. A thriving trade between Nubian south, the Egyptian centre at Thebes and Avaris was trumped by emotional hurt and identity politics which precipitated the end of Hyksos rule. Such that a misspoken directive from Apepi of Hyksos to the Theban king resulted in the latter’s defeat after attempting to march on Avaris. Of course, intergenerational dynastic honour had to be restored so the next Theban king, with the excuse of being fed up with paying taxes to the ‘foreigners’, ‘destroyed’ Avaris. A hubristic claim because the city continued to control lower Egypt for three more years.[63] Now, if we agree with a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor’s analysis of the Ahmose victory, this is where antisemitism got started.[64] Bearing in mind the animus had nothing to do with Judaism– Yahweh didn’t become the national god of Israel for another 500 years. A slow trickle of Levantine migrants entering the Nile Delta since 2000 BCE becomes a ‘foreign invasion’ in the propaganda of the founders of the New Kingdom. [65] You might have thought Egypt, after 18 dynasties, which had survived the vicissitudes of climatic and political upheavals would have had the confidence to resume profitable trade secured by a minor colonial footprint without the need for the demonization of the Hyksos. This all culminated in the wholesale destruction of Canaan at Megiddo by Thutmose III in 1457 BCE. However, it’s probably fair to say that the purpose of the Egyptian Kingdom’s military expansion at that time was similar to that of the Babylonians and Hittites. As important as the history of antisemitism is, I will only briefly revisit its origins in Ptolemaic Alexandria later. A full exploration of the phenomenon would distract from my concern for the extent of monotheism’s influence– malign or benign– on the treatment of the powerless.
So far, I have sought to provide the context within which monotheism emerged in the Levant. The point of unearthing a large mobile and ethnically diverse middle class helps us normalise the migrations and movements in and out of Egypt without having to talk about a discreet group of people from Canaan being expelled or led anywhere. Thus, the whole notion of an entire culturally united ‘people’ moving en masse as exiles or refugees simply imposes a mythological purpose to otherwise routine movements of nomadic herders and semi-sedentary pastoralists. As Ariel David concluded, skeletal remains found at Tell el-Dab’a dating to the Hyksos period, point to “…a centuries-long or even millennia-long history of migration, conflict, interdependency and cultural exchange between two regions that housed some of the earliest human civilizations.”[66]
The same intimate nexus between geography, trade, kingship (including the politics of), artisanal enterprise, non-state nomads and religion can help explain the rationale for the emergence of Judaic monotheism and the kingdom of Israel towards the end of the second millennium BCE. Chief among those factors is the “barbarian” status of the non-state nomads and their shifting identities within the expanding New Kingdom’s empire.
To analyse that non-sedentary status we need to revisit the term Habiru. Despite the Biblical Archaeology Review[67] asserting there is no linguistic connection between Habiru and Hebrew, there is ample evidence for a strong relationship between the two terms, beyond lexical similarity. However, within the origins of Judaism scholarship, the issue is contentious. We need to broaden the term Habiru to include Canaanite, Sutean and Shasu because they all crop up in various Steles, tomb inscriptions and letters throughout the second millennium. The Mari Texts from 1800-1750 BCE refer to Suteans and Habiru as bandits and outlaws when they interact with the major powers. The Memphis and Karnak Stelae of Amenhotep II (1427-1400 BCE) list the number of captives by ethnicity. So, along with “…36000 Syrians and 127 chieftains of Retenue…” we find 3600 Apiru (Egyptian spelling of Habiru) and “15200 live Shasu”.[68] The fact that a significant number of these POWs were enslaved will be crucial to understanding the revolutionary impetus for early Judaism.
Meanwhile, a couple of textual sources from Amenhotep III’s reign, 1390-1352 BCE, demonstrate the link between Shasu nomads and proto-Hebrews. The first is the inscriptions from the Soleb temple dedicated to the Egyptian god Amun-Ra. I use the term proto-Hebrew because “…the Soleb temple contain, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the earliest reference to the name yhwA around 1400 BCE,”[69] which is 375 years earlier than the emergence of Yahweh, the God of the Israelites in 1025 BCE. Titus Kennedy goes to great philological lengths to argue the case for where the bound prisoners depicted came from and who their deity was. Suffice to summarize: the Shasu nomads were a conquered people who “…would have roamed somewhere in the southern Levant, and in particular the area of either Sinai, Edom, Moab, Transjordan, or Canaan.”[70] Other inscriptions appear to reference the deity Ba’al Hadad “…who was considered king of the gods in Ugaritic and Canaanite texts…”[71] Kennedy ends his argument by saying “…the uniqueness of this name {yhwA}, its association with a nomadic group east of Egypt, and the contextual and linguistic implications that the name {must} refer to a deity rather than a specific geographic location…” However, in a chapter on the tribal exploits of Suteans inspiring the Bible, Amar Annus asserts that YHW “…denoted both the Sutean territory and the deity of their tribes.”[72]
The second source is the Amarna Letters which were 300 Cuneiform Akkadian tablets written between 13509s and 1330s BCE. They were diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru. Their time frame spans Amenhotep III and IV’s reign, the former Pharoah being known for his diplomatic skills which translate as keeping Canaanite kings sweet by giving gold. By the same token he wasn’t shy about castigating a Canaanite king for disobeying pharaonic orders. That king was Labayu who, in a letter to the Pharoah, demonstrated some chutzpah by quoting a proverb as justification for a misdemeanour. What is really more germane to our purposes is the question of whether Labayu was leader of the Habiru and ruler of Sheshem. A rival king in the area, Abdu-Hiba, ruler of Jerusalem, threatens the Pharoah to become an ally of the Habiru by saying, “Now shall we do as Lab’ayu, who gave the land of Shechem to the ‘Apiru?”[73] therefore it’s safe to conclude Labayu was the Habiru leader.
Further evidence for the growth in Habiru power at this time is attested to by the first documented leader of Amurru, Abdi-Ashirta, who asserted much control in the region by uniting the Habiru. This increasingly rebellious province of Egypt, Amurru, was located between Byblos on the Lebanese coast and Arwad, an Island just off the same coast, north of Lebanon.[74] This burgeoning power prompted Rib-Hadda to send letters (one of 58) to Amenhotep III seeking military help against these stateless outsiders. More evidence for the presence of bound Apiru captives in Egypt continue, as can be seen on the head of a ceremonial stick in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Then, 4 pharaohs later a stele at Tell er-Rataba in the Eastern Delta describe the king, Ramesses II as: “Making great slaughter in the land of the Shasu, he plunders their tells, slaying their people and building (anew) with towns bearing his name.” According to K. A. Kitchen, this latter inclusion of urban renewal indicated the semi sedentary nature of the Shasu,[75] which further complicates their nomadic status.
As well as a reputation for brigandage, the Habiru must have been known to protect runaways. 103 years earlier than Amarna Letters the son of a deposed king had to flee his home city of Halab (now Aleppo) to seek refuge amongst the Habiru in Canaan. According to an inscription he met up with other runaways coming from the north at Ammiya and stayed with them for 7 years.[76] This episode tells us something about how the Habiru thought such that they were almost proud of their outsider status. As Wolfe asserted, they had a “profound suspicion of authority.”[77] With the aid of their military prowess, the refugee from Halab became king of Alalakh. This Levantine aristocrat’s name was Idrimi whose autobiography was chiselled on a statue of him around 1465 BCE. Whether the Habiru did or did not offer sanctuary to a refugee from Aleppo does not affect the outcome. That outcome being Jewish belief in the story which inspired them to show empathy for slaves and refugees.
Although it’s another 130 years before Merneptah’s stele records the first use of the name Israel its highly probable that by the time of the Amarna letters that area in the central hill country close to Jezreel Valley was occupied by two Canaanite kingdoms– Shechem and Jerusalem. The population of the former was Habiru so we have a clear connection between an outsider class and some land that becomes Israel. The other strong connection Wolfe makes convincingly is between Habiru slaves and the foundation of Judaism. The story of Habiru slaves began earlier from the time Thutmose III (1479-1425) who defeated a coalition of Canaanite kings at the battle of Megiddo. These and other military campaigns enslaved prisoners from Canaan. A painting from the tomb of Rekhmire, a top bureaucrat to two pharaohs in the 15th century BCE, depicts slaves making bricks. Another image from the same tomb shows multi ethnic crowds lining up to pay tribute to the Pharaoh. As well as exotic animals, chariots and vast piles of food, tribute also included slaves. There are numerous other depictions of slaves during the New Kingdom’s expansive period right up until Ramesses III whose reign witnesses the start of the Bronze Age collapse. A male bearded prisoner, bound at the elbows, wearing a kilt with tassels can reliably be identified as Shasu on a relief in Ramesses III’s mortuary temple.
To bolster the connection between Canaanite and Israelite, ancient skeletal analysis reveals that “…most Arab and Jewish groups in the Levant {today} owe more than half their DNA to Canaanites…”[78] Mary Buck in her book on Canaanites used original textual and archaeological evidence to show that they were the people who grew powerful enough to create a city state and call it Israel in northern Canaan by 1200 BCE. Indeed, as Professor Amihai Mizar noted with wry amusement, in a lecture on the start of the Jewish people, the first written record of Israel is on the Merneptah Stele which was in relation to Egypt wanting to destroy it! Indeed, the animosity can be traced to an even earlier source known as the Execration Texts which mention Jerusalem for the first time in 1900 BCE. Egyptians from that period believed that if they inscribed the names of enemies on pottery then smashed them up and “excreted” (urinated) on them, then their destruction would follow.[79]
We’ve demonstrated the existence of Levantines from Canaan in Egypt either as migrants from the start of the 12th Dynasty onwards culminating with the rule of Hyksos or as prisoners resulting from Pharaonic expansion from Ahmose’s foundation of the New Kingdom in 1550 BCE. Most of the Canaanites in Egypt had been there long enough to assimilate but a few didn’t. Now we arrive at that most propitious moment in the Judaic story in 1213 BCE when a small band of Habiru slaves ‘escape’ Egypt, cross the Saini desert and join up with other Habiru in Canaan. Of course, when this happened and how many were involved is highly contentious. This is not surprising, as noted previously, people, especially of marginal status, were never going to leave much in the way of epigraphic evidence for future archaeologists. But perhaps much of that contention is fuelled by a core belief in the biblical accuracy of Judaism’s theological genesis. As Wolf shows even the desire to unearth the historical record of early Hebrews is clouded by a stubborn refusal to accept their enslaved origins. While researching the Habiru, the term ‘dimorphic structure’ has cropped up more than once. Looking into the concept via the historian M B Rowton it adds another layer of complexity to the urban pastoral divide.
Before diving into Rowton’s dimorphic thesis it might be worth pointing out the underpinning climactic factors– the drying subsequent to the 2200 BCE event– that led to the need for states to harness wider geographic areas via the skills of nomadic pastoralist herders. A millennium later a confluence of catastrophic geographical and political disasters usher in the Bronze Age collapse. Texts from Ugarit in 1185 BCE attest to a famine; pollen from core samples indicate a 300-year drought; an earthquake ‘storm’ meaning one every few years along the same faultline; invasions from ‘Sea People”; internal rebellions; international trade routes cut, all contributed to the diminishment of major powers resulting a realignment of city-states which afforded the opportunity for Israel to emerge. The propensity of zoonotic diseases, drought, flooding and famine was blamed on gods rather than anthropogenic ecocide so was no wonder that the god that emerged in such circumstances was written up as angry, vengeful and punitive in the Torah.
Essentially, Rowton, writing in the 70s, wanted to emphasise the interactions between tribal society and sedentary populations which produced a nomadism different to Bedouins.[80] He termed the phenomenon ‘enclosed nomadism.’ Also, he was at pains to utilise disciplines beyond history to inform an under researched area, namely, the changing makeup of tribal societies. In particular, how topology and ecology influenced the settlement of small towns and seasonal migrations. Rowton refers to topology as the effect of the physical environment on the history of a region whereas I would be more comfortable with geography; as in mountains, forests fertile plains and lush river valleys, grassland steppe, desert and a coastline. All of which pertain in the Levant whose geopolitics stem from sitting astride Africa and Eurasia on the south western arm of the Fertile Crescent. Another major geographical influence on agrarian economies is of course climate. In particular, rainfall, or rather the lack of it. This paucity of precipitation is the defining feature of what Rowton called the ‘zone of uncertainty’. An agro-pastoralist in the late second millennium would not have been familiar with the term ‘200 mm isohyet’ but they would have understood how to make use of varying climatic conditions. The ‘uncertain’ area sits between two lines which receive between 200 and 300 mm mean average rainfall in a year. Those two lines are called isohyets and they parallel the coast, starting about 200 kilometres south of Damascus and continue right around the Crescent. From the top of the Crescent to the Persian Gulf the lines are roughly 75-100 kilometres apart but less than 25 between Damascus and Homs. The point of all this geographic variability is that it accounts for the diversity of land use whereby sheep and goat husbandry is “…closely integrated with rain-fed cereals.”[81] In addition to the climactic and physical variability is seasonal change which gives rise to transhumance where livestock is moved to highland pastures in summer and lowlands in winter. This is the environment within which a dimorphic society functioned. It has been summarized thus: “…structured opposition between the desert and the sown with mobile pastoral and settled communities representing separate but mutually dependent components of Near Eastern economic and political systems.”[82]
The other aspect of nomad cum sedentary configurations is what Rowton termed the ‘parasocial leader’. He uses the term ‘parasocial’ to refer to the “…socially uprooted from urban society.”[83] Ruinously high interest rates in second millennium Old Babylonia guaranteed a steady flow of financial refugees to the ranks of the Habiru.[84] It also seems plausible that nomad seeking a more secure livelihood might offer their services in the urban environment, often as a mercenary.
Rowton’s explanation of how tribes disintegrate and reintegrate go a long way, in my view, to explaining the ‘lost tribes of Israel’. If, honour, piety, hospitality, courage and restraint are the cultural and ideological characteristics of tribal society, then it’s easy to imagine an individual coming up short in any one or more of those tribal virtues and forming a disgruntled splinter group.[85] Moreover, if you accept the social system of the tribe was heterarchical[86] or communal regarding how power is shared across the group, then this less rigid structure would have provided even more opportunity for autonomy to devolve down to the individual who wants out.[87]
36 years after Rowton, Szuchman, editing essays from a seminar, noted the rise of enclosed nomadism in the Negev in the early 1st millennium BCE, “…wherein tribal groups lived in the interstices between urban sites, with seasonal migrations beyond the settled zone.”[88] Whereas, some participants quoted Emanuel Marx’s critique of the utility of the term ‘pastoral nomad’ because the nomadic economy is merely “…an attenuated version of the city’s complex economic specialization and differentiation.” (Marx 2007) Daniel Flemming, at the same seminar, goes even further in the integration of pastoralism and urbanism by highlighting the Amorite king, Zimri-Lim’s archives at Mari (18th Century BCE) These show that “…mobile herders and their tribal social units were inseparable from the rule of states, integrated as equal political players, with settled and mobile communities woven together into one social fabric.” [89] Also, according to Arbuckle, Zimri-Lim identified himself as a ‘nomad-king’.[90] His royal correspondence tells us about “…his tent-dwelling kinsmen who pastured their animals in grasslands to the north.”[91]
Zimri-Lims’s assertion of tribal ancestry is mirrored at the same time by the Assyrian king Samsi-Adad in northern Iraq and Hammurabi in Babylon. These late second millennium kings attest to the need for an integrated agro-pastoral economy which could optimize yields in dryer conditions. Politically, the scene was set for the biblical Abraham, who was an Ibri which meant uprooted tribesman, to become a parasocial leader at the head of a motley crew of followers who founded a new tribe. At least the story is far more plausible if we view it through Rowton’s parasocial lens. Thus, in the Iron Age, political membership of the state “… is the result of ethnic, kinship (as in tribal) and religious factors.”[92] As we are about to find out “differences in language and religion become politically important, and are symbolically linked with descent from a common ancestor and the cult of a ‘national’ god.”[93] Although, in the Hebrews case they wisely make their god universal accessible from anywhere.
We have shown a fair bit of evidence for a clear link between the Jewish belief in empathy for slaves and the Habiru. As I have noted the scholarly consensus for Habiru denotes a social class rather than an ethnicity. Also, as Wolfe pointed out, most of the written record from Egypt to Mesopotamia only refer to these unattached nomads in derogatory terms and ‘in passing’.[94] There was a reluctance by original writers of the Tanach (Old Testament) to equate the Jewish people with social outcasts from mainstream Canaanite society, therefore there is scant mention of the term Hebrew. ‘Sons of Israel’ is the preferred term.
What piqued Wolfe’s interest was the evidence that “…escaped slaves had been accustomed to find asylum with the ’Apiru (Egyptian spelling of Habiru)…”[95] Up until 1985 most biblical scholarship just couldn’t come at the notion of equating Hebrews with bandits, slave runaways or mercenaries because that would cheapen the Hebrew narrative of ‘divine intervention in history’.[96] But even Lemche who professed to explain the environmental reasons for the Habiru becoming sedentary in the hill country of Palestine and who had no truck with the Exodus myth, was still uncomfortable with ex-brigands originating the Judaic tradition. Wolf critiques Lemche’s hypothesis thus: “{Lemche} felt compelled to invent an upper-class Canaanite ethical tradition, no evidence of whose existence he was able to cite, in order to explain the origins of Biblical religion.” He also argues that rather than an ethical tradition, early Judaism professed an egalitarian ethos.
Wolf, being a secular Jew, confidently promulgates the primacy of the outsider status of the Habiru within Hebrew identity. He even quotes a biblical reference which lends credence to the revolutionary foundation of Judaism originating from the Habiru. The quote relates to David who embraced those “…in distress…in debt…discontented…”– a long time before Jesus started blessing the ‘meek’. Bearing in mind the caveat that “…contrary to how they {Solomon and David} appear to us through Scripture, they are not necessarily part of the founding of Jerusalem or of the Israelite state, but rather figures of a cultural memory shaped by historians working in hindsight and in light of the reign of later Judahite kings…”[97] However, for the first time, archaeological evidence for the existence of David cropped up in a dig in 1993. The excavation in northern Galilee found an Aramaic inscription “…which dates to the ninth century BCE, that is to say, about a century after David was thought to have ruled Israel, includes the words Beit David (“House” or “Dynasty” of David”)[98] However, as with so much of the Bible, its historicity, though often easily refuted, is simply not germane to its purpose. The Pentateuch is the product of much politico-religious jostling for primacy between Israel and Jordan after the former’s destruction by Assyria in 722 BCE. Its purpose was to codify an ideology and establish law but above all, to inspire and consolidate the ethnicity of a distinct people.
Essential to achieving the latter is to write a ripping good yarn. This is why the author/s chose to appropriate tropes from the ancient canon. The Moses story being the foundational one. There is enough evidence to account for a small band of slaves, possibly led by a man with an Egyptian name, who escape from Egypt and join up with other Habiru in Canaan. Wolfe emphasises the importance of 3 different attributes they brought with them. Out of the 3, practise of circumcision, a ruler god and alphabetic writing, the last seems to me to be the most influential. It resulted from evolutionary processes and enabled political decisions based on identity and theology to be owned by the people. The way Seth Sanders tells it, alphabetic writing freed up script from reed-based marks that require wet clay to being able to mark an object or papyrus. However, Wolfe’s alphabet from Egypt is not the full story. Looking at a10th century map of the Near East shows that Shechem and Megiddo are equidistant from Egypt and Ugarit so it’s totally possible that the alphabet’s influence from Ugarit was as consequential, if not more so, than the one-off event of a small bunch of Canaanites escaping Egypt. Also, Ugarit was a thriving cosmopolitan city on the political margins which explains its “…vernacular creativity. Self-differentiation becomes essential in cosmopolitan circumstances.”[99] The point is not whether the major alphabetic influence came from Egypt or Ugarit but that it provided the impetus for “…a deliberate decision to write down the spoken language…” which evoked a place and a community 1700 years earlier than most of Europe.The invention of vernacular writing first at Ugarit and then Israel for the first time was one of the ways local people differentiated themselves from the old Cuneiform which was a script of empire. This is massively more important than whether Israel ever had a united monarchy because it explains why the Bible came to be so representative of a local people.
Apart from an earlier alphabetic inscription on the paw of a sphinx in 1900 BCE, the first major epic was created 600 years later in Ugarit using the alphabet. It recounted the trials and tribulations of the storm god Baal. Like all good hero stories, the protagonist suffers a series of defeats. Rather than slashing his way to victory with giant thunderbolts he builds allies and negotiates his way out of trouble. So, he wins “…power through words and acts of kin and peers…” [100]which was a new idea. One can see how the emphasis on kin must have resonated with the Bible writers obsessed with the sons of an originator patriarch. What is perhaps more important is the political implications of these new very local West Semitic narratives. Baal’s piety has a political dimension which limits the king’s behaviour. The politics of the king’s legitimacy demanded that “… the sovereign {must} take a stand in public and favourably judge the cases of the weak and wronged.”[101] Like my reference to Wolfe’s point about the Biblical David embracing the marginal of society, one could argue, this earlier demand for equal justice also had its roots in the Habiru’s outsider status. This West Semitic consultative approach to sovereignty was radically different from the Babylonian dynasty when no one dared tell Hammurabi when to be just.[102]
What particularly struck (and pleased!) me as I read Sander’s work was the many references to pastoral nomads and therefore, by inference, Habiru.
This next bit on Axial age belongs AFTER Seth’s Hebrew
While I have emphasised the contribution of myth making and religion to power, perhaps I have neglected (after listening to Karen Armstrong talking about her book; A Short History of Myths) humans’ innate desire to construct a meaningful life. They have achieved this by finding ways to relate to great unknowns like death, the creation of the earth and cosmos. For thousands of years before writing, origin stories and ancestor myths were mentally imagined and then orally handed down through the generations. The processes of intergenerational story telling may have involved changes in details but the essence morphed into rituals experienced by the group or community which created bonds between individuals. One can see here myth-recreating rituals’ dual function of cohering society and helping individuals “…to articulate a deal with our fears.”[103] For most of human existence those myths were intimately bound up with the natural world. The fact that power in the form of shamans to priests to kings was utterly enmeshed with myth and then religion does not alter the fact that belief in the gods was never an issue because their power to destroy or create was evident in natural phenomena. Therefore, in an unscientific age, power through institutional religion was possible. Even though the key Greek protagonists of the Axial Age did their best to sideline the theological in favour of the philosophical. Though Athenians understood the value of putting the suffering of the hero on stage via stories like Oedipus which functioned as catharsis for the audience. As Caroline Taggart pointed out, around 594 BCE, the Athenian propensity for rational argument and the rule of law allowed a “… firm departure from the notion that law-givers were divinely inspired…”[104]
To qualify for the term ‘Age’, major cognitive or behavioural transitions must occur within about 500 years in several dispersed locations. Hence, Siddhatta Gotama, on the Ganges plain, like his elite Greek contemporaries was affluent enough to reflect on “…the deepest structure of existence.”[105] Chiming with the Greeks, he gently suggested putting old gods to one side in contrast to the biblical laws banning graven idols. If we need the definitive analysis of the impetus for the birth of Greek philosophy, we need look no further than Graeber. His insight is always going to be related to money, given that it appears in Debt: the first 5000 years. He makes an interesting connection between the invention of coins and philosophy’s first ever concern which was with the non-spiritual world, known as materialism.
(Summarize pp .244-245 in Debt)
The ‘sons of Israel’ was invented by Tanach writers to legitimize an ethnicity to a place which did not rely on ex slave origins.
Need to interrogate “exilic” by looking at Assyrian and Babylonian history esp resettlement programs of Assyrian empire building.
Whether the Habiru did or did not offer sanctuary to a refugee from Aleppo does not affect the outcome. (Re Idrimi who teamed up with Habiru and defeated someone to become king of Alalakh) That outcome being Jewish belief in the story which inspired them to show empathy for slaves and refugees.
For a conclusion to monotheism: for the Jews it provided a mobile god to coalesce around in multiple locations; for Christian Rome it provided a means to unify the disparate people of the Roman empire.
At some stage but not here need to make the point by referring to Holland p. 136 and onwards about Christian charity how that appears to be a radical shift in empathy for the poor at the top of society but in fact it was simply a means to ensure a flame free afterlife for the rich or some perverted fetishizing of poverty by a few eccentric individuals who managed to leverage their privations for Christianity.
Look into Heraclitus
Now do Chain of Being.
[1] His idea is that Christianity’s influence is so pervasive in Western society that like water to a fish we are not aware of it.
2Omar Ali, Book review: Dominion, by Tom Holland, brownpundits.com, July 2020
2 Religion Debate with Richard Dawkins, YouTube, The Big Questions, Presented by Nicky Campbell
[3] Reza Aslan, God: A Human History of Religion, Penguin, 2018
[4] Online Etymology Dictionary
[5] Then and Now, YouTube, March 2020
[6] Mr burns, play by Ann Washburn, Belvoir St Theatre, 2017
[7] Belvoir St. archive, Notes on Mr Burns, 2017
[8] Ibid
[9] Jack Miles, God: A Biography, Reviewed in NYT by Phyllis Trible, 1995
[10] Ibid
[11] David Graeber, Debt; the First 5000 Years, 2012, (pp. 80-87)
[12] Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
[13] Ariel David, Jewish God Yahew Originated in Canaanite Vulcan, Haaretz, 2018. Here quoting Nissim Amzallag
[14] Screenivasarao, Varuna and his decline- Part Seven, WordPress.com, 2012
[15] Ibid
[16] This last piece of advice was wholeheartedly embraced by Rabbinical writers of the Torah as a means of asserting a fragile national identity – sandwiched as it was between the Assyrian-Babylonian empire to the north and Egyptian empire to the south.
[17] Road signs indicating the presence of a school in 1920s – 1960s in UK bore the image of a flaming torch.
[18] Nicholas Baumard et al, What changed during the Axial Age: cognitive styles or reward systems? Pub. Med. Communicative and Integrative biology, online 2015.
[19] Graeber and Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything, Alan Lane, 2021, p. 450
[20] Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish people, Verso,2009 (p. 66)
[21] I use this term rather than Christianity because the tightly held tenets of the early Christians resemble a rigid fundamentalist ideology that forbids any deviation rather than some benign offering of love for all humanity.
[22] James C. Scott, Against the Grain, Yale, 2017, (p. 203)
[23] Titus M. Kennedy, PhD on the demographic analysis of Late bronze Age Canaan, Uni. South Africa, 2013
[24] Ibid.
[25] Ariel David, Armageddon Time: carbon dating from early Bronze Age to Iron Age at Megiddo. (Northern Israel), Haaretz 2023
[26] Juan Carlos Garcia, Recent Developments in the Social and Economic History of Egypt, 2014, De Gruyter. Journal of Ancient and Near Eastern History
[27] Ibid
[28] Ibid
[29] Ibid
[30] Karin Sowada, Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean During the Old Kingdom: An Archaeological Perspective, Uni. Zurich, 2009 (p. 9)
[31] Ibid
[32] Gebal is the Biblical term for Byblos.
[33] Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 1999
[34] Sowada
[35] Karin Sowada, Egypt in the Eastern Mediterranean During the Old Kingdom: An Archaeological Perspective, Uni. Zurich, 2009 (p. 24)
[36] Garcia
[37] ibid
[38] Editors of the Madain Project, Famine Relief From Unas Causeway, 2023
[39] Anthony Spalinger, The Trope Issue of Old Kingdom War Reliefs, 2015, Academia.com
[40] Sowada
[41] Sowada
[42] For more detail on the fragility of the grain-state see my reference to James C. Scott’s Against the Grain in Chapter 2
[43] Google ‘4.2KY Event’ for full effects on various empires of the time.
[44] Ariel David, Archaeologists Debunk 3,000-year-old Fake News: The Hyksos Didn’t Invade Ancient Egypt. Haaretz 2020
[45] This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a Chinese proverb, “You can conquer a kingdom on horseback, but to rule it, you have to dismount.” Quoted by Scott A the G p.251
[46] Dossin, Georges, Syria, Institute Francais du Proche-Orient,1973
[47] This is Kennedy referencing Niels Peter Lemche’s The Canaanites and their Land, Bloomsbury, 1991
[48] Andrew Lawler, DNA from the Bible’s Canaanites lives on in modern Arabs and Jews, National Geographic, May 2020
[49] Luigi Turri, Geopolitics of the Orontes Valley in the Late bronze Age, Academia, 2020
[50] Scott, A the G
[51] Encyclopedia Britannica. Semites, last fact checked 9th June 2023
[52] Ofer Aderet, Connection between Amorite language and Hebrew, Haaretz, Jan. 2023
47 Aaron A. Burke, The Amorites and the Bronze Age Near East, Cambridge Uni. Press, 2021
[54] Ibid
[55] James C. Scott, Against the Grain, p.215, Yale Uni Press, 2017
[56] Ariel David, Archaeologists Debunk 3,000-year-old Fake News: The Hyksos Didn’t Invade Ancient Egypt. Haaretz 2020
[57] Ibid
[58] Joshua J. Mark, Hyksos, World History Encyclopedia, 2017
[59] Ibid
[60] Ariel David, Ancient Canaanites at Megiddo Raised a Glass to the Dead, Haaretz, May 2023.
[61] Ibid
[62] Ibid
[63] Joshua J. Mark, Hyksos, World History Encyclopedia, 2017
[64]Ariel David quoting Amnon Ben-Tor renown Near East archaeologist in Haaretz 2020
[65] Ariel David, Archaeologists Debunk 3,000-year-old Fake News: The Hyksos Didn’t Invade Ancient Egypt. Haaretz 2020
[66] Ibid
[67] Anson Rainey, Shasu or Habiru: Who Were the Early Israelites? Biblical Archaeology Review, 2008
[68] Hoffmeier, J. K. The Memphis and Karnak Stelae of Amenhotep II, (2.3). Pp. 19–22 in The Context of Scripture, Vol 2: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, ed. W.W. Hallo. Leiden: Brill.2000
[69] Titus Kennedy, The Land of the Shasu Nomads of Yahweh From Inscriptions at Soleb, scholarship, nd.
[70] Ibid
[71] Ibid
[72] Amar Annus, Sons of Seth and the South Wind, Koninklijke Brill. NV, Leiden, 1018
[73] Robert Wolfe, From Habiru to Hebrews: The Roots of the Jewish Tradition, 2009
[74] Robert Stieglitz, The city of Amurru, https://www.jstor.org/stable/545415, 1991
[75] K.A. kitchen, Some New Light on the Asiatic Wars of Ramesses II, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 50 (Dec., 1964),
[76] Luigi Turri, Geopolitics of the Orontes Valley in the Late Bronze Age, University of Verona, Academia 2020
[77] Robert Wolfe, From Habiru to Hebrews: The Roots of the Jewish Tradition, 2009
[78] Andrew Lawler, DNA from the Bible’s Canaanites lives on in modern Arabs and Jews, National Geographic, May 2020
[79] Daniel Gavron, Myth and Reality of King David’s Jerusalem, Jewish virtual library, 1996
[80] M.B. Rowton, Dimorphic Structure and the Parasocial Element, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 1977
[81] T.J. Wilkinson et al, Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC. J World Prehist 27, 43–109 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10963-014-9072-2
[82] B. S. Arbuckle and E.L. Hammer, The Rise of Pastoralism in the Ancient Near East, Journal of Archaeological Research, Sept. 2019
[83] Rowton, 1977
[84] Ibid
[85] Ibid
[86] Heterarchical: form of management or rule in which any unit can govern or be governed by others depending on circumstances.
[87] Ibid
[88] J. Szuchman, editor, Nomads, Tribes and the State in the Ancient Near East, Oriental Institute Seminars, number 5, Chicago University, 2009
[89] D. Fleming, Kingship of City and Tribe Conjoined: Zimri-Lim at Mari, ibid
[90] Arbuckle, 2019.
[91] Ibid
[92] A.H.Dani and J.P.Mohen editors, History of Humanity From the Third Millennium to the Seventh Century BC, UNESCO, 1994, (p. 136)
[93] Ibid
[94] Robert Wolfe, From Habiru to Hebrews: The Roots of the Jewish Tradition, 2009
[95] Wolf quoting William Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan.
[96] Wolf quoting Niels Lemche, Early Israel, 1985
[97] na, The City of David and Solomon, A private University in Boston, nd
[98] Carol Meyers from Duke University interviewed on Nova, August 2007.
[99] Seth Saunders, The Invention of Hebrew, Illinois Press, 2009
[100] Ibid
[101] Ibid p. 53
[102] Ibid p. 53
[103] Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth, Canongate Books, 2005
[104] Caroline Taggart, The Classics, Readers Digest, 2010, p. 57
[105] Karen Armstrong, Buddha, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2000
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