Alexander Jannaeus

Mennictwo dynastii Hasmoneuszy nie jest bardzo zróżnicowane. Zdecydowanie dominuje w nim jeden typ monety, różniący się tylko inskrypcją władcy, materiałem zaś jest stop miedzi. Są, wśród nich jednak rodzynki. Może to dość dziwne określenie jeśli chodzi o monety , a zwłaszcza wykonane z ołowiu. W naszym przypadku będzie to ołowiana moneta Aleksandra Jannaeusa (103 – 76 r. p.n.e.). Ten typ odkryto dość późno, bo dopiero w XIX wieku i przez bardzo długi czas uważano, że jest bardzo rzadki. Cecha ta, mogła przemawiać za tym, że nie była to do końca, sensu stricte moneta. Bo cóż to za moneta, która jest taką rzadkością. Podejrzewano, że mógłby być to żeton bądź coś w rodzaju monety próbnej. Jednakże późniejsze odkrycia na terenie Transjordanii obaliły tezę o nadzwyczajnej rzadkości tej blaszki 1. Fot.1 Ołowiana moneta Aleksandra Jannaeusa, TJC Grupa M, H476 (zdjęcie autora) Wróćmy jednak do głównego powodu niezwykłości tej monety – materiału. Ołów jest miękkim metalem, który, wydawałoby się, nie nadaje się do produkcji monet. Jego duża ścieralność powoduje, że monety szybko się niszczą, stając się nieczytelne. Czy zatem moneta Aleksandra Jannaeusa jest kompletnym ewenementem antycznej numizmatyki? Fakt, że ołowianych monet próżno by szukać w republikańskim czy cesarskim Rzymie (choć zdarzały się i tam np. żetony z ołowiu tzw. tesserae), jednak na terenach Bliskiego Wschodu już tak nie było. Możemy znaleźć sporo przykładów z Królestwa Nabateańczyków (Fot.2), Seleucidów, Numibii.

During a salvage excavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority, a mass grave containing the skeletal remains from 124 individuals, many with evidence of weapon injuries, was discovered in a water cistern outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Radiocarbon dates derived from human bone and the date of the material finds suggest the skeletal remains date to the end of the 2nd century or the beginning of the 1st century BCE. The aim of this research is to analyze the weapon injuries in order to reconstruct the nature and context of this violence. The human skeletal remains from 23 individuals recovered from the cistern were selectively retained and examined macroscopically in a laboratory setting. Silicone casts of selected weapon injuries (n = 5) were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy. Numerous examples of peri-mortem blunt- and sharp-force trauma were observed including evidence that at least 16 individuals were decapitated. The extent and nature of the observed injuries as well as the evidence of their haphazard deposition into the cistern suggest that these individuals were the victims of a massacre. As a highly visible act of violence, massacres are often used as a mechanism for social control. When contextualized, this skeletal assemblage is most likely evidence of a massacre that occurred during the reign of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus. This is the first archeological evidence for the use of socially sanctioned violence to legitimize the Hasmonean state and to maintain social control at the end of the 2nd century–early 1st century BCE.

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The history of the nine decades of the Hasmonean rule of Judea (152-63 B.C.E.) is the tale of a family whose zeal for their ancestral faith helped them survive a turbulent period of Middle Eastern history, and create an independent state amidst hostile powers. This book seeks to tell this exciting story by going beyond the accounts of the Hasmoneans in Josephus to bring together new evidence to reconstruct how the Hasmonean family transformed their kingdom into a state that lasted until the arrival of the Romans. It also explores Josephus, whose life is intertwined with the Hasmoneans through a common ancestry and his historical accounts of their rule. This book has three basic purposes:
• to compare Josephus’s accounts of the Hasmonean state with archaeological findings, numismatics, literary works, and all relevant inscriptions. 
• to show the interconnectedness between the Hasmonean state and the neighboring empires.
• to demonstrate the extent to which non-literary evidence can alter our reading of the literary records pertaining to the Hasmonean state.
This study differs from all previous books on the Hasmonean period because it is the only work to use the full array of extant data to reconstruct the relationships between the Hasmonean state and the rulers of the Seleucid and the Ptolemaic Empires, the Itureans, the Nabateans, the Parthians, the Armenians, the Cappadocians, and the Roman Republic. It accomplishes this through the use of a variety of previously unused sources, including papyrological documentation, inscriptions, archaeological evidence, numismatics, Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigrapha, and textual sources from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods. The book includes reconstructions of several previously unknown historical events that shaped the reigns of the Hasmoneans and their faith, and which helped them create an independent state. Several excursuses explore topics of relevance to the Hasmonean state including:
• the historical background of the 3rd Sibylline Oracle and the identification of its messiah.
• a new chronology of the Seleucid civil wars and how they affected the Hasmonean state and Second Temple Judaism.
• how Jewish apocalyptic beliefs led some opponents of the Hasmoneans to fight alongside the Seleucid monarch Demetrius III.
• Hyrcanus II as the “Wicked Priest” of the Qumran Texts.
The book also explores how Josephus’s political and social situation in Flavian Rome affected his accounts of the Hasmoneans and why any study of the Hasmonean state must go beyond Josephus to gain a full appreciation of this unique historical period that shaped Second Temple Judaism, and created the conditions for the rise of the Herodian dynasty and the emergence of Christianity.

Upper-division, synchronic/synoptic course on Second-Temple Jerusalem, from the late-6th c. B.C.E. to the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. It traces Jerusalem’s physical development from a small town to an important royal capital that incorporated Judaean, Hellenistic, and Roman artistic and architectural influences. This course also considers the political, social, economic, and religious divisions among its inhabitants, and follows the course of political and military alliances and conflicts with Judaea’s neighbors in regional and pan-Mediterranean venues.

Kh. El-Urmeh is situated on the top of a commanding hill in Eastern Samaria, about two kilometers south - east of the settlement of Itamar. Scholars have identified here Biblical Arumah, the city of Abimelech son of Gideon the judge.
The remains of a Hasmonean – Herodian fortress, including an impressive water supply system were studied in the past. The system includes a series of rock-cut and plastered cisterns, supplied by surface runoff water.
These cisterns, of a design familiar from Hasmonean and Herodian fortresses in the Judean Desert as well as from fortresses located in the settled parts of Judea, may have been associated with a royal fortress. Similar cisterns were recorded at Sartaba-Alexandrium, Kipros, Horqania, Doc-Dagon, Masada, Kh. El-Hamam, H. Tura, etc.
In the early '80s Hanan Eshel and Ze'ev H. Erlich documented at Kh. El-Urmeh six cisterns, of a total volume of c. 5000 cubic meters.
In this article, which is an update of the pioneering study of Eshel and Erlich, the authors present a brief documentation carried out during a tour of the site in 2009. It turned out that the site was severely damaged by unsupervised development work, quarrying and road construction made with heavy machinery by the residents of the nearby village of Beta.
These works uncovered openings to four additional cisterns, sealed until recently. The cisterns have similar characteristics. The total volume of ten cisterns is estimated at c. 15000 cubic meters.
The effort of installing the cisterns was probably due to the need to ensure year-round supply of adequate quantity of water to the residents of the fortress, located on the edge of the desert.
These findings reinforce the suggestion of Eshel and Ehrlich, who identified the fortress at Kh. El-Urmeh as a royal Judean fortress from the Second Temple period.

In this book Kenneth Atkinson adds to his already impressive body of work on the Hasmoneans, proposing that the history and theological beliefs of Jews during the period of the Hasmonean state cannot be understood without a close investigation of the histories of the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid Empires, as well as the Roman Republic. By bringing together evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls and classical sources, Atkinson offers a new reconstruction of this vital historical period, from the 2nd to the 1st centuries B.C.E., when the Hasmonean family changed the fates of their neighbors, the Roman Republic, the religion of Judaism, and created the foundation for the development of the nascent Christian faith.

The book also contains many new reconstructions of events in classical history, including the most detailed examination of Pompey the Great's assassination in light of Jewish sources. This section on his death uncovers new information that explains the discrepancies in the classical accounts of this pivotal event that shaped Middle Eastern and Roman history, and which helped end the Republic.

Table of contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
1. Introduction: The Sources and their Limitations
2. The Early Hasmonean Period: New Evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls
3. Prophetic Messianism and Hasmonean State Expansion: Dangers from the Seleucid Empire
4. The Creation of the Hasmonean Monarchy: Apocalyptic Expectations and the Dead Sea Scrolls
5. Religious Strife in the Hasmonean State: Foreign Threats, Ptolemaic Messianism, and the True Prophet
6. Military Deterrence and the Hasmonean Golden Age: The End of Days in the Dead Sea Scrolls
7. After the Loss of Sovereignty: New Light on Hasmonean and Roman History from the Dead Sea Scrolls and Classical Texts
8. A Dream Shattered: the End of the Hasmonean State and the Demise of its Neighbors
Bibliography
Index

Preview of Chapter One is available at:  https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/5ba504de713c090001a40662

Interview: If you would like to learn more about this book's background as well as my background before academia, please click on the "Interview" link at the top of the page (next to  "Books" and "Papers") for T and T Clark's recent profile of my on their blog.

Several works preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls: Daniel, Apocalypse of Weeks, Animal Apocalypse, Pesher on the Apocalypse of Weeks, Apocrypha of Jeremiah C and D, Melchizedek – present various heptadic calculations of the end of the postexilic epoch of iniquity in Israel. Particular ways of constructing relative chronology vary considerably in these writings. Nevertheless, detectable references to historical events suggest that many of these works support Hasmonean ideology of a new era begun in Israel with the rise to power of Jonathan, Simon, John Hyrcanus, and Alexander Jannaeus. The alleged anti-Hasmonean bias of the so-called Qumran writings is therefore probably a misunderstanding.