Did the Phoenicians build this Iron Age City of Judah?

Archaeological site of Khirbet Qeiyafa 

No other archaeological site in recent years has received so much attention as the Iron Age fortified city of Khirbet Qeiyafa located near Jerusalem, Israel, perched above the Elah Valley, a stone’s throw away from the biblical setting for the epic battle between David and Goliath. Recent analysis of the finds at this site has raised the question: Did the Phoenicians build Khirbet Qeiyafa? Here we make the case that conscripted Phoenician builders were the architects and builders of this ancient Judahite city.

First, a detailed examination of the measurements used to build the city yielded a surprising result. The builders of Khirbet Qeiyafa used the Egyptian Royal Cubit (0.525 m) and the Egyptian Royal Palm (0.075 m) in the construction of the casemate fortifications that surround the city (Hagyo-Kovacs 2012: 58). So we can ask, who was using the Egyptian Royal Cubits and Palms in the region of ancient Israel in the late Iron I – early Iron IIa period? The answer: the Phoenicians!

Close-up of Phoenician Juglet from Tel Rehov

A team of Israeli researchers made the remarkable discovery that a unique type of pottery referred to as imported Phoenician globular jugs found in sites in ancient Israel during this same time, Iron Age I-IIa were based on the Egyptian Royal cubit. The circumference of these uniquely Phoenician jugs is derived from the Egyptian Royal cubit, which was exactly equivalent to a ½ Phoenician hekat (Zapassky, Gadot, Finkelstein, and Benenson 2012). The connection between the Egyptian Royal Cubit at Khirbet Qeiyafa and the use of the Egyptian Royal Cubit in Phoenician vessels is the first prong to support the case for Phoenician builders of Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Reconstruction of Temple of Solomon

 Second, the biblical tradition indicates that both King David and King Solomon hired Phoenicians to build their monumental architecture, palaces, government buildings, and the famous Temple of Solomon (cf. 2 Sam. 5:11; 1 Kings 5:15-24). While this is a biblical argument, not archaeological, it is important regardless of whether one believes the Hebrew Bible represents actual historical narratives and facts from the Kingdom of Judah or was composed much later as part of identity formation and consolidation in the Jewish Exile in Babylon and Persia, or both.

Further, based on analysis of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by Dr. Leen Ritmeyer, the original Pre-Herodian 500 square cubit platform covered an area from the remains of the wall at the bottom of the steps at the northwestern point of the Dome of the Rock platform, 262.50 m (861 feet) east to the eastern wall, the same south to the slight bend, west and then north to the starting point. When comparing the measurements made using the metric system from the outside of the walls, the result showed that the cubit used was the Royal Egyptian cubit of 0.525 m, exactly the same Royal Egyptian cubit as found used by the architects and builders of Iron Age Khirbet Qeiyafa (Ritmeyer 2012). The collective memory represented by the biblical text indicates that the Hebrews from the Kingdom of Judah and their descendants recognized the Phoenician influence on their culture, especially architectural forms that became the hallmark of Jewish identity: the Temple of Solomon. This is the second prong.

The third and final prong in the case for Phoenician architects and builders is presented by the excavator of Khirbet Qeiyafa himself, Yosef Garfinkel, joined by Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu. Garfinkel indicated that the Phoenicians may represent the “missing link” that connects the architectural tradition of the Iron Age Kingdom of Judah to the earlier Bronze Age architectural traditions from Mesopotamia and the northern Levant (Garfinkel and Mumcuoglu 2013: 156). Such a “delegation” of Phoenician architects and builders from the city-states on the Lebanese coast, who constructed the most prominent buildings of the capital city of Jerusalem, would likely have deeply impacted the “collective memory” of the residents of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah (Garfinkel and Mumcuoglu 2013: 156).

While the research into the fascinating history of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel continues through the meticulous research of the discipline of Archaeology, we can tentatively conclude that what we see at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a massive fortified city from the late Iron I – early Iron IIa constructed by expert architects and builders, was built by the Phoenicians who represented the most advanced builders and architects in the Southern Levant during the time of the biblical Kings.

Sources:
 

Garfinkel, Y. and Mumcuoglu, M,

2013                Triglyphs and Recessed Doorframes on a Building Model from Khirbet Qeiyafa: New Light on Two Technical Terms in the Biblical Descriptions of Solomon’s Palace and Temple. IEJ 63:2. Pp. 135 – 163.

Hagyo-Kovacs, P.

2012                Urban Planning as Public Policy in Iron II Judah. M.A. Thesis. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. 14 June 2014: <http://www.rnkpublishing.com/authors/petekovacs/Hagyo-Kovacs-MA_thesis.pdf>

Ritmeyer, L.

2012                The Quest: Revealing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Carta. pp. 170-73.
[Thanks to  Joe Lauer, Brooklyn, NYC for the original authorship of this paragraph and source.]

Zapassky, E., Gadot, Y., Finkelstein, I., Benenson, I.

2012                An Ancient Relation between Units of Length and Volume Based on a Sphere. PLoS ONE 7:3. 19 September 2012:

<http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033895>

The Ancient Israelites: A Mediterranean People

A new article published in Nature Communications by Marta Costa suggests that the Ashkenazi Jewish community has "substantial" European roots and is not just of Middle Eastern origin.

The discussion of Costa's conclusions is at times heated due to the controversial nature of the subject. But with all this talk about the genetic analysis of the European roots of the Ashkenazi Jewish community we find ourselves asking again: Who were the ancient Israelites?

Before geneticists began to analyze modern and ancient populations archaeologists and anthropologists were researching these question. The findings of archaeologists for the last century have indicated the Israelites were a Mediterranean people living on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, the Israelites were distinctly similar to ancient North Africans.

The culture that immediately preceded the Israelites in the region of ancient Israel is known as the Canaanite civilization. It reached its peak during the Middle Bronze Age (circa 2000 BCE – 1550 BCE) in the Southern Levant. At this time a socio-political network of city-states ruled over the region resulting in a flourishing civilization that disseminated its cultural artifacts throughout the Fertile Crescent, reaching south to Egypt (Tel el-Dab’a/Avaris), north into Syria, and into Mesopotamia. Analysis of excavated human skeletal remains associated with the Canaanite civilization from Middle Bronze Age sites yielded an interesting result. They found that there was a distinctive skull morphology that indicated a migration of foreign populations who had settled in this region “carrying a morphology more common in the northern parts of the Levant.” These new arrivals were distinctly West Asian.

In contrast, excavated human remains found in Israel during the Iron Age – the time of the Israelite settlement and the biblical Kingdoms of Judah and Israel - exhibit features commonly associated with Mediterranean populations, “i.e. long and narrow skulls of the Mediterranean type common both in Israel and Egypt.”  Earlier analysis of the skull morphology of 1,500 skeletons found at the city of Lachish, a royal city of the Kingdom of Judah second only to Jerusalem herself, indicated the same, that the inhabitants of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were most similar to ancient Egyptians. Based on this data the biblical ancestors of the Jewish people today were a southern Mediterranean people very similar to Egyptians. The Israelites were distinctly North African.

Future research into this question is needed. As ancient skeletal remains are tested for DNA in the coming years our understanding of who the ancient Israelites were in terms of ethnic make-up and composition will become clearer. For now, there still remains some mystery.

Sources:

• Arensburg. 1997. Hazor V: An Account of the Fifth Season of Excavation, 1968. Amnon Ben-Tor, Ruhama Bonfil (editors). Jerusalem.
• Costa, et al. "A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages." Nature Communications, vol.4 no. 2543, 11 July 2013. 
• Tufnel. 1953. Lachish III: The Iron Age. London.
• Ussishkin. 2004. Renewed Archaeological Excavations at Lachish (1973-1994). Tel Aviv.

King Tut's DNA? A Pioneering study in Archaeo-genetics

Today, 17 February 2010, Zahi Hawass and his team published their findings on the DNA testing of the mummies of Pharaohs from the 18th Egyptian Dynasty as published to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA. 2010;303(7):638-647; see below for link). Hawass and his team used autosomal STRs to prove paternal lineage connections between the mummies of the Egyptian Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty. This type of paternity testing is based on the FBI's CODIS system and is used for genetic profiling, otherwise known as "genetic fingerprinting." Arlington, Virginia based private company DNA Tribes.com use this technology to determine ethno-regional genetic ancestry, like Levantine or African or Eastern European, etc.

What Hawass and his team used is autosomal DNA, which is recombining in that you inherit mutations from both your mother and father. While autosomal DNA can be used to determine sibling and parent-child relationships, it is best used to determine ones ethno-regional genetic heritage when placed into a global population database for genealogical uses.

King Tut or Tutankhamun, and his ancestors are important for a reason aside from the archaeological discoveries in his tomb. The Hebrew exodus out of Egypt is traditionally believed to have taken place under one of the Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, one of Pharoah Tutankhamun's ancestors.

All that Hawass has proven with a degree of probability is that King Tut is related to mummy KV55, which is not even known for certain to be Akhenaten. It is believed that mummy KV55 is either Akhenaten or Smenkhkare. No actual YDNA paternal lineage was established nor disproven between King Tut, mummy KV55, and the mummy of Amenhotep III, nor the mummy of Thutmose II included as part of a "control group" in this study of ancient Egyptian autosomal DNA. In total, the ancient DNA of 16 royal and nobleclass Egyptian mummies were included in the study.

In contrast, the Cohen genetic study actually proved through YDNA that a high percentage of Cohenim shared an actual paternal lineage as evidenced in both their haplogroup (J1e) and haplotype mutations, although no ancient DNA was included in the Cohen study as it was based on Cohenim alive today. Cohenim are the Jewish priestly class believed to be descended from Aaron the first Jewish Priest from the Tribe of Levi (Hebrew: Cohen), and in theory would share the YDNA of the brother of Aaron, Moses who was raised in Pharaoh's household as one of his sons, possibly during this same 18th Egyptian Dynasty. The biblical narrative indicates that Moses later rejoined the Hebrews when he became aware of his true ethnic heritage and led the Hebrew people out of Egypt as known in the biblical Book of Exodus.

While the chances of random convergence are small with autosomal STRs, it really can only establish a link between parent to child when applied to genealogy in matching mutations, but is not considered reliable for paternal lineage tracking such as with YDNA SNP haplogroups and STR haplotyping.

The question deserves asking: If Hawass and his team were able to isolate autosomal STRs could they not also have isolated YDNA haplogroups and haplotypes? The fact that they didn't publish the haplogroup(s) and haplotypes of the Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty is disappointing. Zahi Hawass has gone on record to state, "Egyptians are not Arabs and are not Africans despite the fact that Egypt is in Africa." In order to establish the Pharaohs were not Arabs nor Africans, Hawass would have to show evidence that the mummies of the Pharaohs were not found in YDNA haplogroups E or J, both associated with modern African, Arab, and Jewish populations, and also the two most common YDNA haplogroups among Egyptians today (Luis 2004).

We applaud Dr. Zahi Hawass and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities for their pioneering work and encourage them to revisit the study and publish the YDNA haplogroups and haplotypes of the 16 Egyptian mummies they tested, and continue to lead Egyptian and biblical period archaeologists into the undiscovered world of ancient DNA.

Sources:

Link to JAMA article on King Tut:
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/7/638

Luis, et al, "The Levant versus the Horn of Africa: Evidence for Bidirectional Corridors of Human Migrations," Am J Hum Genet. 2004 March; 74(3): 532–544. Available online: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182266/ [Accessed 17 Feb 2010]

Ashkenazi Jews and the the Secrets of the Canaanite Skull

Today, the three main Jewish communities are Ashkenazi from Europe, Sephardic originally from Spain, and Mizrahi from Arab lands. In Israel, Sephardic and Mizrahi identities have merged into one through mixed Sephardic-Mizrahi marriages and Israelis from these backgrounds often identity themselves as Sephardic (on this see Zohar 2005 in references below). On the whole, the Ashkenazi Jewish community has been at the fore-front of geneaological DNA testing to search for ancient connections to the Israelites, Canaanites, and other people groups of the Levant. But then "were there even Israelites to begin with as a distinct people group?," many archaeologists will ask.

During the Middle Bronze period (ca. 2000 – 1550 BCE) the Southern Levant became host to the Canaanite city states, a flourishing civilization that disseminated its cultural artifacts throughout the Fertile Crescent, reaching south to Egypt and the Hyksos rulers of Tel el-Dab’a/Avaris, all throughout Canaan, north into Syria, and into Mesopotamia.

Archaeologists and Anthropologists agree that the material cultural known today as “Canaanite” was the by-product of an influx of immigrants into the Southern Levant, which had been sparsely inhabited in the previous Intermediate Bronze Age, and likely arrived from the coastal plain of Lebanon and Syria, and the region of Tel Mishrifeh, the site of the great Royal Palace of Qatna, located in Syria’s Orontes Valley (Arensburg & Belfer-Cohen 1997: 341; Mazar 1992: 188-189).

Analysis of excavated human remains in Israel from the Chalcolithic period through to the Iron Age yielded a distinct pattern indicating that the arrival of “foreign populations [during the Middle Bronze Age] carrying a morphology more common in the northern parts of the Levant, i.e. Lebanon, Syria,” and Armenia (Arensburg 1997: 342; Guy 1938). These new arrivals were distinctly West Asian, or otherwise the biblical "Canaanites."

In contrast, during the Early Bronze and Iron Ages, excavated human remains in Israel exhibit features commonly associated with Mediterranean populations, i.e. dolichocephalic “long and narrow skulls of the Mediterranean type common both in Israel and Egypt” (Arensburg 1997: 342). The dolichocephalic Mediterranean skull morphology corresponds to the period of the Israelites.

While there are only a few human skull specimens from the Middle Bronze Age in Israel, those found at Hazor and Megiddo in MB (Middle Bronze) period tombs conform exactly to the theory of new population immigration into ancient Israel during this period followed by a new population influx during the Iron Age (Arensburg 1997: 341 – 343). While pottery alone can never directly translate into a specific people group, here we have a rare 1:1 correlation between human remains of a Northern immigrant population associated with the beginnings of Canaanite culture in the Middle Bronze, followed by a Mediterranean population during the Israelite Kingdom period in the Iron Age.

How does this relate to DNA and Global Population matching of Ashkenazi Jews to the regions of the world?

If you are Ashkenazi Jewish or have friends that have done DNA testing that are Ashkenazi, you may have heard that many Ashkenazim are clustering with Mediterranean Populations (including Southern European, North African, Levantine, and Anatolian) at this stage in autosomal DNA testing (including results from both 23andme and DNA Tribes). Geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a pioneer in population genetics and professor emeritus of Stanford University, wrote of the difficulties in correlating genetic information and skull morphology, or more accurately, that genetic information will always be far more accurate than population studies based on skull morphology (Cavalli-Sforza 1994).

Nevertheless, if the skull morphology of the Israelites during the Iron Age was distinctly that of Mediterranean populations and autosomal DNA region mapping of the Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi communities today cluster with Mediterranean populations, does it not reasonably strengthen the tradition that modern Jewish communities are among those who are descended from the people groups that occupied Israel during the Iron Age (ca. 1200 – 586 BCE), the same period when the Israelite culture was born and flourished?

Questions for future research: Can we distinguish between Israelites and Canaanites? What about Sephardic Jewish individuals (originally from Spain) and Mizrahi Jewish individuals from Arab countries? What will their DNA look like? Many questions still to be answered as geneaological DNA testing moves into adolescence as a Science.

[Originally submitted as part of an essay for Prof. Ami Mazar in the upper level seminar: Issues in Middle Bronze Age. Genetic data was added later and published to the 23andMe.com community board. Copyright 2010 Peter Hagyo-Kovacs. All rights and media reserved.]

DNA testing companies:
Global autosomal DNA testing and comparitive database: http://www.dnatribes.com (#1)
YDNA, mtDNA, autosomal DNA: http://www.familytreedna.com (#2)
YDNA, mtDNA, autosomal DNA: http://www.23andme.com (#3 but not highly recommended at this time as the database is too small to be meaningful.)

References:

Arensburg, B. and Belfer-Cohen, A. 1997. “Human Skeletal Remains from Hazor Area L.” pp. 341 – 343 in The James A. De Rothschild Expedition at Hazor – HAZOR V: An Account of the Fifth Season of Excavation, 1968. Amnon Ben-Tor, Ruhama Bonfil (editors). Jerusalem.

Cavallli-Sforza, L. Luca, Menozzi, P. Piazza, A. 1994. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton, New Jersey.

Guy, P. 1938. Megiddo Tombs: Oriental Institute Publications Vol. 33. Chicago.

Mazar, A. 1992. The Archaeology of the Land of the Bible (ca. 10000-586 B.C.E.). New York.

Zohar, Z. 2005. Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry: From the Golden Age of Spain to Modern Times. New York.