Tell Taʿannek

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Cult stand found by Sellin (Istanbul Archaeological Museum)

Tell Ta'annek ( Arabic تل تعنك, DMG Tall Taʿannak ) is an archaeological site in the Palestinian Territories . The place is mentioned several times in the Bible under the name Taanach (תַּעְנַך). According to the excavator Ernst Sellin , the name has "saved itself through all the ages" so that the identification of Tell with the ancient oriental place is undisputed.

location

Taanach is a Bronze Age and Iron Age city. It was on the southern edge of the fertile Jezreel plain . Taanach was strategically located, because from here it was possible to control a pass with which the Via Maris crossed the Carmel Mountains. (The city of Megiddo controlled the second and more important route of the Via Maris over the Carmel Mountains).

The Tell is a striking landscape formation. It rises about 241 meters above sea level or 40 to 50 meters above the Jezreel plain and has an egg-shaped base, the tip of which faces south. 340 meters is the average length and 160 meters is the width. In the middle of the hill there is a central plateau 0.5 to 2 meters high (150 meters long, 110 meters wide).

Settlement history

  • Early Bronze Age III: fortified regional center, several construction phases;
  • Settlement gap in the Middle Bronze Age;
  • Resettlement around 1700 BC BC as a fortified administrative center with a city prince who was subordinate to the city prince of Megiddo;
  • Early Iron Age: According to the hypothesis of a Davidic-Solomonic empire , Taanach was the administrative center of one of the Gaue Solomos in the 10th century, provided that the historical reliability of 1 Kings 4:12  EU is assumed ;
  • Destruction in the Palestine campaign of Scheschonq, 922 BC Chr .;
  • Iron Age fortified city of regional importance;
  • Reinforced in the Persian period and probably also the seat of the administration;
  • In the Hellenistic period the settlement was moved to the foot of the Tell;
  • In the Middle Ages, a small castle or residence on the Tell, as well as a monastery or hermitage.

Excavation history

Excavations by Ernst Sellin (1902–1906)

Ernst Sellin's excavation was pioneering work in the field of Palestine archeology. Sellin was not yet able to use a differentiated ceramic typology and there were no standards for the documentation of the finds. Like W. Flinders Petrie on Tell el-Hesi (1890), Sellin used the stratigraphic method and dug wide search trenches across the Tell. For the Middle Bronze Age there is an approximately 500-year-old settlement gap in Taanach that Sellin was unable to detect. This gave him the following picture of the settlement periods:

stratigraphy Beginning Findings
4b Younger Arab period Sparse settlement at the foot of Tell, today the Arab village of Ti'inik as the bearer of the ancient name.
4a Arab time Arab city with a castle that existed for 100 to 200 years, was destroyed by the Crusaders and has remained in ruins ever since.
3b Hellenistic-Roman-Byzantine period The late antique settlement Taanach was not located on Tell, but at the foot of it. The tell was used for agriculture.
3a around 800 BC Chr. North fort. Since a Greek cultural influence was recognizable, Sellin assumed that it was not the Assyrians who destroyed the city in 722, but Pharaoh Necho in 609, after which the urban settlement on Tell came to an end.
2 B around 1000 BC Chr. Ostburg and Ostfort, interpreted by Sellin as the seat of Solomon's governor (or the local representative of the northern Reich of Israel ).
2a around 1300 BC Chr Continuous development of the settlement of Stratum 1b.
1b around 1600 BC Chr. Cultural boom, Phoenician and Aegean cultural products. Ishtarwashur castle with text archive.
1a around 2000 BC Chr. Oldest settlement. Few signs for supraregional contacts of the residents (a seal cylinder with Babylonian representation and Egyptian inscription).

The small archive from Stratum 1b was an outstanding finding. It contained texts in Babylonian cuneiform, which were published by Friedrich Hrozný . Most of the tablets were found in or near a clay box. They are partly letters, partly lists. The letters concerning military support are addressed to the city prince of Taanach and come from the city prince of Megiddo and the Egyptian governor in Gaza. The lists contain personal names; the purpose of these directories is unknown.

A cult stand, Astarte figures and children's burials in clay jugs were of interest in religious history.

Excavations by Paul W. Lapp (1963–1968)

Cult stand, Iron Age I, 10th century BC BC (Israel Museum)

For the excavation of Concordia Seminary St. Louis and the American Schools of Oriental Research, Sellin's excavation report was translated into English so that the archaeologists could build on these results. With the ceramic typology and excavation technique developed in the meantime, Paul W. Lapp and his team checked Sellin's results in three campaigns in 1963, 1966 and 1968, but concentrated on the south and west of Tell; the north fort was an exception. This was in the 9th century BC. Dated. It was rebuilt in Persian times.

Sellins Straten 1a and 1b are now recognized as Early Bronze Age. This city ceased to exist before the end of the Early Bronze Age III. After a population gap of several centuries, new residents, whom Lapp identified as Hyksos , established a town in the west of Tell. As a result of continuous development, a very important late Bronze Age city emerged. Pharaoh Thutmose III destroyed them in connection with the Battle of Megiddo (1468). The city rebuilt afterwards had more modest dimensions; the western castle with the archive belonged to her.

Lapp's team found another, but better-preserved, cult stand that dates back to the 10th century.

Excavations by Albert Glock (1985)

After the excavation director's death (1970) Albert Glock continued the work of the Albright Institute. The exploration of Tell Ta'annek became his life's work. The numerous objects found by Lapp's team had to be examined, and Glock also collated the texts from the cuneiform archive in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Glock was politically active and worked at the University of Bir Zeit since 1980 , where he set up the Archaeological Institute. He advocated the thesis that Biblical archeology, with its focus on the time of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah , should be replaced by an archeology of Palestine. The excavation in 1985 was supposed to provide information about the living conditions of the people living on Tell Ta'annek since the Ottoman period.

In January 1992 Albert Glock was shot dead at close range. Israelis and Palestinians accused each other of being responsible.

This also ended the archaeological work on Tell Ta'annek.

Modern reception

After the founding of the modern state of Israel, Tell Ta'annek was outside the state territory. The ancient biblical place name was used to designate an Israeli area near the border: "Taanach district" ( Hebrew חבל תענך Chevel Taʿanach , also used in the plural: Hebrew תענכים Taʿanachim ). It is about 10 villages south of Afula in an area bounded by roads no. 60, 65 and 66. These places belong to the regional administration of Gilboa in the northern district .

Web links

literature

  • Ernst Sellin: Tell Ta'annek. Report on an excavation in Palestine undertaken with the support of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the KK Ministry of Culture and Education, together with an appendix by Dr. Friedrich Hrozný: The cuneiform texts from Ta'annek . (= Memoranda of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, phil.-hist. Class, vol. 50/4). Vienna 1904. ( online )
  • Ernst Sellin: A review on Tell Ta'annek , with an appendix by Friedrich Hrozný: The new cuneiform texts from Ta'annek. (= Memoranda of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, phil.-hist. Class, vol. 52/3). Vienna 1906. ( online )
  • Paul W. Lapp: The 1963 excavation at Tell Ta'annek (BASOR 173), 1964. pp. 4-44.
  • Paul W. Lapp: The 1966 excavation at Tell Ta'annek (BASOR 185), 1967. pp. 2-39.
  • Paul W. Lapp: The 1968 excavation at Tell Ta'annek (BASOR 195), 1969. pp. 2-39.
  • Siegfried Kreuzer (Ed.): Taanach / Tell Ta'annek: 100 years of research on archeology, history, found objects and cuneiform texts (Viennese Old Testament studies), Vienna / Frankfurt 2006. ISBN 978-3-631-55104- 2 .
  • Siegfried Kreuzer: History, language and text: studies on the Old Testament and its environment. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015. ISBN 978-3-11-041735-7 .
  • Friedrich Schipper: Ernst Sellin: a pioneer of biblical archeology in Vienna. 100 years of “gleanings on Tell Ta'annek in Palestine”. In: Forum Archaeologiae - Journal for Classical Archeology 40 / IX / 200. ( PDF )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Sellin: Tell Ta'annek , p. 9
  2. ^ Siegfried Kreuzer: History, Language and Text , p. 186.
  3. ↑ Ernst Sellin: Tell Ta'annek, p. 10
  4. ^ Siegfried Kreuzer: Taanach. Pp. 6-7 , accessed December 21, 2018 .
  5. ^ Siegfried Kreuzer: History, Language and Text, p. 199.
  6. ^ Siegfried Kreuzer: History, Language and Text, pp. 96–197.
  7. ^ Siegfried Kreuzer: Taanach. Pp. 7–8 , accessed on December 21, 2018 .
  8. ^ Pedestal for the figure of a deity
  9. ^ A b Edward Fox: The mysterious death of Dr Glock. In: The Guardian. June 2, 2001, accessed December 21, 2018 .
  10. ^ Siegfried Kreuzer: History, Language and Text , p. 207.

Coordinates: 32 ° 31 '18.6 "  N , 35 ° 13' 10.1"  E