ARF Brownbag lunch, Oct. 5

Getting a little behind here.

On Oct. 5 Noah Kaye, an AHMA grad student presented a talk at the Archaeological Research Facility: “A hoard of Greek coins from the Black Sea coast. Doing Archaeology from the antiquities market.” Interesting conclusions about the circulation of coined silver from western Anatolia to the Black Sea (but not to Syria!) in the 2nd century BCE.

But the reason for this post is that Mr. Kaye mentioned in passing the circumstances of discovery of one of the hoards–a garden in a small town between Samsun and Trabzon. This prompted a question later (from Jun, I think) about the nature of antiquities retrieval (what we tend to call “looting”) by locals in Turkey, and local perceptions of their ancient material culture. Mr. Kaye referred that question to me but thankfully kept talking so that I didn’t have to.

I don’t think I really understood the original question posed. He cited a recent study of modern identity formation in the American southwest based on what we would call looting, but I don’t remember the title. Anyone have an idea about this?

AHMA Noon Colloquium, Oct. 3

Earlier this week Francesca Rochberg in the Near Eastern Studies department gave a talk at the first AHMA Noon Colloquium, titled “Where were the ‘Laws of Nature’ before Nature?” She presented (as part of a larger project on “natural law”) the early Mesopotamian evidence for 1. the “divine judiciary”, 2. its extension to the natural world, and 3. the case-historical tradition.

Rochberg demonstrated easily that the ancient texts (with which I’m not familiar enough to cite correctly–someone help!) speak about human divine judges in the same terms, and that people back then read natural phenomena as divine verdicts. She spoke of the human judge as a metaphor for the divine judge, and when asked about the term metaphor, conceded that it was probably inadequate. What I think is most interesting here is the possibility (which she hinted at) of the metaphor working the other way around, that the regularity of natural phenomena and therefore the “truth” of divine justice was adopted into the realm of human affairs, justifying the command of the human judge. Is is possible that there was no metaphor at all, and that even though we easily make the distinction between “human judge” and “divine judge”, the ancients only saw “judge”?

We might press this idea based on the concept of truth. In texts involving human affairs a person often asks for a “right [i.e. correct] and true decision,” which Rochberg glossed as a “just decision.” Here, I think more clearly, the regularity of the “Laws of Nature” are being mobilized to support a human decision. The metaphor could not work the other way around (i.e. justice and fairness extended to the regularity of natural phenomena), so perhaps it is evidence that what we might call scientific truth was actually extended into the social world.

So what about the “Laws of Nature” before Law?

Mining King Solomon: Steven Weitzman’s Sept. 6 talk

The lecture series got underway yesterday with Steven Weitzman’s (Stanford University) talk “Mining for Solomon,” an investigation into the history of searching for the historical Solomon and in particular for the sources of his legendary wealth.

Biblical accounts of Solomon’s reign (1 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles, plus various other books attributed to him) were for a long time the the only source of information about him, and so were subjected to intense study, but at the same time archaeology began to produce potential evidence. The stables at Megiddo, a port at Ezion-Geber, walls at Hazor  and elsewhere, and the Temple in Jerusalem were all proposed as Solomon’s, or dating to his period, although these dates are all contested. In Weitzman’s view there remains no verifiable physical evidence of Solomon, and so he focuses instead on the history of the quest for that evidence itself.

The recent discovery of large-scale 12th- to 9th-century BCE copper mines at Khirbat en-Nahas (Jordan), in what was ancient Edom, has led the excavators to propose a connection with Solomon, and Weitzman uses this discovery as a vehicle to discuss previous attempts to find the sources of Solomon’s wealth. The Bible refers to Ophir and Tarshish, which as soon as European shipbuilding and navigation advanced far enough, sent explorers searching across the globe. Christopher Columbus thought he had found Ophir in the Carribean, the Solomon Islands were named by an expedition seeking Solomon’s mines, and Francis Bacon was influenced by the whole discourse in his work The New Atlantis, itself a model for European scholarly enterprise.

Weitzman concludes with some more recent history, in particular the 19th-century transformation of what was essentially a treasure hunt into a “scientific” search through the new discipline of archaeology. He notes that Solomon’s connection with mining isn’t really attested in the Bible and can only be traced as far back as the Renaissance. His main point, as I take it, is that even modern archaeologists looking for material confirmation of a historical Solomon are participating in a tradition with a long history.

If you missed the talk, check out Steven’s new book, Solomon: The lure of wisdom here

Please post comments and questions!

Welcome to the forum!

Here it is: the Memory and Identity Working Group forum! This is where you’ll find summaries and discussions of Working Group lectures, new ideas and questions from Working Group members and others, and news items related to the study of memory and identity in Near Eastern and Mediterranean societies, past and present. This site is very much an experiment, so watch this space to see what develops…