Executive Board

"This collaborative commentary on Kings explores cross-cutting aspects of Kings ranging from the analysis of its composition, historically regarded, to its transmission and reception.  Ample attention is accorded sources and figures and peoples who play a part in the book.  Concern is directed to its treatment in translation and role in later ancient literature.  While its comment does not proceed verse by verse, the volume furnishes guidance, from contributors highly qualified to advance contemporary discussion, on the book's historical background, its literary intentions and characteristics, and on themes and motifs central to its understanding, both of itself and of the world from which it arose.  It functions as a meta-commentary, offering windows into the secondary literature, but assembling data more fully than is the case in individual commentaries.

The Formation and Interpretation of Old Testament Literature series; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010.
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I was a very young graduate student when I wrote this paper, but I still believe that the thesis is important to the development of submerged terrestrial site archaeology and experimental archaeology: Lake Nasser contains submerged terrestrial sites that were documented prior to submersion. The only way to understand the affects of submersion on terrestrial sites is to study the sites in Lake Nasser. One can compare the before-submersion evidence to the after-submersion evidence to determine how submersion affects the preservation of sites. The world assumes that submersion is detrimental, and therefore when sites are threatened by submersion, we protest and hastily excavate... but, what if submersion is healthy for the long-term preservation of a site (or at least not as damaging to the site as 'salvage archaeology')? We do not currently have any data that suggests that a site buried behind a dam is destroyed - inaccessible for the foreseeable future, yes, but is it worth hasty and shoddy excavation? I don't know - my plea in this paper is that we take the experimental case of Lake Nasser to find out.

The first interim report on the PSU Mendes Expedition's excavations in Field AJ, which details a stratigraphic sequence from the Naqada III period to the Middle Kingdom. NOTE that a second report is due to be published in Delta Reports II (expected at any moment), which has significant updates to the conclusions drawn here. Much of this report is distilled from the Author's 2007 PSU dissertation.

Essays on the Social and Political Dynamics of Cosmologies in the Iron Age by Baruch Halpern

The birth of the West stems from the rejection of tradition. All our evidence for this influence comes from the Axial period, 800-400 BCE. Baruch Halpern explores the impact of changing cosmologies and social relations on cultural change in that era, especially from Mesopotamia to Israel and Greece, but extending across the Mediterranean, not least to Egypt and Italy. In this volume he shows how an explosion of international commerce and exchange, which can be understood as a Renaissance, led to the redefinition of selfhood in various cultures and to Reformation. The process inevitably precipitated an Enlightenment. This has happened over and over in human history and in academic or cultural fields. It is the basis of modernization, or Westernization, wherever it occurs, and whatever form it takes.

Forschungen zum Alten Testament; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck (2009).

This project presents a stratified archaeological sequence spanning the Early Dynastic Period and Old Kingdom at Tell er-Rub’a, Mendes, in the eastern Egyptian Delta. This sequence, excavated between 1999 and 2005, has provided the longest stratified sequence from these periods in all of Egypt.  Stratigraphic probes around the site indicate that further excavation of the sequence will go as far back as the 5th millennium BCE. This thesis presents the stratigraphic and ceramic data from this excavation and places the sequence within the historical and cultural developmental framework of the 3rd millennium.

The interpretive aspect of this sequence is viewed through the lens of Robert J. Wenke’s “First Dynastic Cycle”. The adoption of an agricultural subsistence strategy, around 4000 BCE, is the first spark of a trajectory toward the great nation-state of the Old
Kingdom which achieved its apex of power and stability the 5th Dynasty and collapsed suddenly at the end of the 6th Dynasty around 2200 BCE. This “single epoch of transformation” is a broad approach to the normally narrow focus of studying the rise and collapse of the state in Egypt. The entire development from nascent agricultural society to the collapse of the first state in the late Old Kingdom is an evolutionary process which must be assessed holistically. Thus ‘state formation’ is perhaps best seen, not merely in the final centuries of the 4th millennium, but as a lengthy process, spanning some two millennia, during which the first iteration of the Egyptian state is actualized.

Because of the stratified sequence presented in this project, Mendes provides a unique opportunity to excavate in one place the entire First Dynastic Cycle: the rise of agriculture and complex society, prehistoric period of Egypt, the formation of the state, the first 400 years of experimentation in statehood, the apex of the first successful nation state in the world, and the last hurrah before its sad decline. This archaeological sequence, therefore, will be the first to stratigraphically, and consequently ceramicly, unify prehistoric Egypt to its successor, the great state of the Old Kingdom.

This paper considers the identification of the kings in the epitomes of Manetho’s Twenty-third Dynasty and their function in the historiographical traditions of ancient Egypt. Despite the long-standing rejection of Manetho’s Twenty-third Dynasty as ahistorical, it is here argued that the names preserved in the Twenty-third Dynasty are part of an authentic historiographical tradition originating with the Kushite king, Taharka. The paper goes further to suggest specific reasons why, and an historical reconstruction of the process whereby, the Twenty-third Dynasty became integrated with other the king-list traditions. Additionally, it identifies specific functions for the as-yet unidentified names Psammous and Zet in Julius Africanus’ version of the epitome of Manetho. The argument considers the political and cultural perspective of the Kushite kings who were responsible for a strand of king-list tradition and offers some interpretations of Kushite royal practices in light of these conclusions.

Archaeologists record volumes of data at excavation sites throughout the world, and these data usually reside in a unique format declared by the individual lead excavator. This paper-and-pencil, non-uniform data, however, does not prove conducive to being centrally stored and allowing for comparisons across different years and digs. There has been a shift in recent years from recording data (per the excavations set methodology) by hand into notebooks to recording also directly into a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). Many excavations around the world have made this change because storage in an RDBMS permits excavators to record data on a day-by-day basis in a digital format that allows for querying at any time and efficient archiving. It has also opened the possibility for the archaeologist to include regional geographic data such as digital maps, satellite imagery, and survey data into their analyses.

This is a step in the right direction, but it falls half a step behind the real potential of an RDBMS and the immediate needs of the field. If one thinks about the percentage of excavation data that survives into the final report, what would one guess? 5%? 2%? Those are probably very high estimates for most cases. The material read in an archaeological site report is dependant solely on what the excavator chooses to include. We are, of course, restricted in many ways, how can we possibly include every scrap of data? We certainly recognize the theory that leaving anything out is scientifically and professionally unacceptable, but our hands are tied by practical matters such as time and money. And so, what do we really have in existing reports? Shallow publications and a severely restricted ability to compare data across sites.

Imagine a database of all archaeological localities in Egypt, in which is stored all excavation material ever and which is kept up to date from season to season. An interested researcher could perform an unlimited number of queries. For example: “display all Medum bowls from Lower Egyptian sites.” The computers response would be hundreds of pottery drawings and attribute information for all Medum bowls found to date in the Delta.

This paper addresses the need for excavation databases that can interact with one another. It discusses how we have begun to build such a database, and displays some of the its features including GIS/temporal underpinnings within the database, archaeological statistics, pottery handling, user roles, data from digs in previous seasons and missions, cost, and future possibilities. It will also address issues of data sharing and excavator privilege to data.

The annals of Shalmaneser III are the most extensive and carefully structured Assyrian annals of the 9th century BCE. Perhaps being the same genre as and more or less contemporary with the sources of the books of Samuel, the preservation of these annals may be of some use in considering and critiquing the campaigns of King David. In his recent book, David’s Secret Demons, Baruch Halpern reassess the books of Samuel based on a critical analysis critique he calls the “Tiglath-Pileser Principle” (TPP). The TPP argues that the composition of Assyrian royal annals (and Near Eastern, generally) is consistent in technique. If one understands this technique, and applies a “minimum interpretation” to the text, one can decipher the historical reality behind the rhetoric of Assyrian royal inscriptions. The recognition that 1 and 2 Samuel use Israelite versions of annals (particularly 2 Sam. 8), allows Halpern to apply the TPP in reconstructing the history from the biblical narrative. The TPP, then becomes a very powerful tool for the interpretation of certain biblical material. However, some questions remain about the methodology of the principle. How can the principle accommodate different versions of annals? How would variances between them affect the range of our interpretation of campaigns, particularly if on one version is preserved? This paper looks closely at the different versions of the Shalmaneser’s annals in order to assess the validity of the “Tiglath-Pileser Principle” and determine the repercussions of its application to the books Samuel.