Copyright @ 1989 by
Andrews University Press, cited with permission;.
digitally prepared for use at
THE INSCRIBED TABLETS FROM TELL DEIR cALLA
PART II.
WILLIAM H. SHEA
The Biblical Research Institute
Part I of this article furnished an introduction
to the discovery,
context, and general nature of the eleven Deir cAlla Tablets;
gave
attention to the matter of decipherment of the
script of the three
tablets that were inscribed with texts; and
discussed in some detail
the text of the first two written tablets. This
leaves for the present
study the discussion of the text of tablet III and
the integration of
the information obtainable from all three of the
inscribed tablets.
Before proceeding further, however, we first
repeat here the
transliteration and translation of
tablet I as a basis for relations
with the other two texts that follow. The
transcription and linguis-
tic comments given on the text of tablet I stand as
they were
presented in Part I of this article. Also, a new
"Table of the Letters
of the Script of Deir cAlla" appears on the next page, updating
the
listing given in Part I.
Text I: Pethor Smitten
(Deir cAlla
No. 1449)
Transliteration and
Translation
lkm / mk. / wtm.y / whm
/ mk. /ptr
(1a) "To you (have come) a smiter and a finisher,
(1b) and they (are) the smiters of Pethor."
Text II was also transliterated and translated
in Part I of this
article. It is the most difficult of the three
written tablets from Deir
*Editor's
Note: Part I of this article appeared in AUSS 27 (1989): 21-37. Part II
continues the sequential numbering of footnotes
and sections given in that earlier
portion of the study. The figure depicting the
script of Deir cAlla
is, however,
renumbered as "I" inasmuch as it
represents simply a revision of Figure I in Part I.
97
98
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
Figure 1. Revised Table of Letters of the Script of Deir cAlla
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 99
cAlla to work with because it
has suffered the most damage, having
many cracks on its written surface. These cracks
confuse the identi-
fication of the letters that
were originally written because, in some
instances, they appear to provide additional
strokes with those
letters. Since Part I of this article was
finished, further progress has
been made in distinguishing the original letters
from extraneous
marks due to damage.
While much of the epigraphic and linguistic
discussion of this
text given previously still applies, some
corrections need to be
made to it. The results of these improved readings
have been
incorporated into the
transliteration and translation of text II pre-
sented here. These new
readings also affect, the historical applica-
tion of this text. As a
basis for this new treatment of text II, a new
and more accurate line drawing of it is provided
here.
5. Text II: Pethor's Smiters
(Deir cAlla No. 1441)
Transliteration and
Translation
(1) csr
/ wywbbq / mk
(2) czwvt
/pt.’m / mk
(1) "There was a damming up and the Jabbok (became) a smiter.
(2) Mighty (shocks)
suddenly (became) a smiter."
The
Line Drawing:
Introduction
Since text II was written in boustrophedon
order, it is difficult
to determine which of its two lines should be read
first. The order
of the lines in this text have been reversed here
in comparison to
100
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
my previous treatment of them. The reasons for
this are developed
after text III has been translated and interpreted.
Analysis of the Text
of Line 1
The first word of the first line begins with a
clear occurrence of a
half-moon shaped cayin. A yod was
previously read following this cayin.
This
yod should
be rejected now. There is a vertical stroke here, but
further examination of the photographs indicates
that a triangular wedge-
shaped stroke extends to the right from its mid-shaft.
In addition, a
horizontal stroke of short length was incised
across the top of the vertical
stroke. This form resembles that of the
dog-legged-shape sade in other
early alphabets, and as utilized here that letter
contributes to the identifica-
tion of an intelligible
word.
Further examination of the photographs also
indicates that a circular
letter was incised above the head of the sade. This circle
is faint in the
published photograph, but a copy of that
photograph with its lines dark-
ened brings this circle out
more clearly. This circle is rather flat across the
bottom, it is pointed in its right lower quadrant, and
it contains a t-shaped
incision angling down towards the left within its
circle. All of this gives
this sign a head-shaped appearance, which identifies
it as a res. This res is
comparable to those that have been identified in
text III below.
In conjunction with the previously recognized cayin,
these two new
letters make up the word csr. In Hebrew this
verb means "to restrain,
retain, shut up, stop." It may function here
either as a Qal perfect or a
participle. Its subject should be taken as an
indefinite third person, for the
next word is separated off from it by a waw which serves
as a conjunction.
The
word that is connected in this way is the name of a river (see below).
Since
a river is restrained, retained, or shut up when it is dammed up, such
a damming up appears, therefore, to be that to
which reference is made
here.
This type of event is known to have happened in
this region when the
in its west bank near Damiyeh,
biblical Adam, in 1267, 1546, 1906, and
1927
A.D. If a damming up of the
with the Jabbok, then such
an obstruction would naturally have had a
similar effect upon the
The first three letters which follow the word
divider have been read
correctly previously as w-y-w. This combination may be taken as a con-
junction followed by a consonantal yod and a vocalic
waw. Thus
this
word begins with w
+ yo-. Two vertical strokes were written
following the
second waw. The first one curves downwards to the right and the
second
one curves upwards to the right, but they both look
like the same letter,
which has simply been oriented differently in the two
positions. At one
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 101
time these two letters were read as gimmels, but the gimmel in text
III has
a head that makes a 100° bend to the right,
whereas these two letters angle
only slightly at their upper and lower ends. This
suggests that these letters
differ from that gimmel. If the curved ends of
these letters were expanded
into triangular heads, as has been done with dots
for the beth
in btym of
text III, these 1etters could easily be read as beths. My
suggestion is that the
scribe of this text, working with a somewhat different
orthography than
the scribe of text III, wrote these two beths here with
this form.
At first glance, the last letter in this
word-box looks like a trefoil sign
pointing upwards. This was previously identified
as a kaph,
but closer
inspection reveals that the part of the stroke that
extends upwards to the
right also curves around and bends back towards the
left upstroke. That
makes this letter one which consists of a
quasi-circular head with a short
tail extending to the left. There are four main
letters with closed heads and
tails in the early alphabets: beth, dalet, qoph, and res. Beth, dalet, and res
have been identified elsewhere in these texts and
this letter does not look
like them; therefore, by a process of elimination
this letter should be
identified as a qoph, its first occurrence in
these texts.
From these letter identifications the word
written after the conjunction
in this word-box can be identified as ywbbq. This
corresponds rather
directly with the way in which the name of the
in the biblical text, with only two minor
variations. In the MT the beth of
this name was doubled with a dagesh, but here it appears to
have been
doubled by writing out the two letters. This was
an irregular practice not
continued in later inscriptions. Given the early
date of the alphabetic
writing of these tablets, however, experimental
irregularities like this are
only to be expected. The second variation is that
this word was written
with an o-vowel
in first position while the Massoretes pointed it
with an
a-vowel. Since this text is two
millennia older than the Massoretic point-
ing, however, the o-vowel
should be taken as more original.
The final word of this line, mk, refers
to a "smiter," and should be
identified linguistically as it was in Part I. The
proper name which
precedes it identifies that "smiter," i.e., the
dammed up and overflowed this area. Text I mentions,
but does not
identify, "smiters"
of the region. Text II reveals that the river which
overflowed after it was dammed up was one of these smiters.
Analysis of the Text
of Line 2
The first word of the second line remains the
same linguistically,
czwvt. This is the word for
"strong, mighty," with a feminine plural
ending. Previously I interpreted this word as
referring to human forces or,
more specifically, Israelite troops that came from Pithom in
time of the Exodus. Since the next word can no
longer be read as Pithom,
102
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
however, this interpretation must be abandoned.
My new reading of the
next word now indicates that these
"mighty" ones, whatever they were,
came upon Pethor
"suddenly." Text III, discussed below, indicates that
when these mighty ones came upon Pethor
so suddenly, they caused the
collapse of houses there. Since human attackers
could be fended off for a
time at least, they do not fit this description very
well. The suddenness of
the disaster and its effects suggest rather that
the mighty ones that affected
the town in this way were shock waves of an
earthquake. Given the
location of this site in the earthquake-prone
area of the
given also the archaeological evidence for
earthquakes found in the ex-
cavations, such an occurrence
here seems quite reasonable.
Three of the four letters in the next word stand
as they were read
previously. The problematic letter is the third
one. The clear portion of
this letter consists of a vertical stroke with a
triangular wedge extending to
the left from its mid-shaft. In Part I of this
article two horizontal strokes
extending to the left were also read as connected
to the superior and
inferior poles of the vertical stroke of this
letter. These additional horizon-
tal strokes should now be
discarded as not connected with this letter for
they appear to be cracks in the tablet due to
damage.
An epigraphic indicator for this revision comes
from the mem
incised
above and to the left of this letter. If a horizontal
stroke extended to the left
from the superior pole of this vertical stroke, the
right-hand downstroke of
the mem would have crossed it. This is unlikely, for this
crossing could
easily have been avoided and does not occur anywhere
else in the three
tablets. Thus the faint line here is more likely
a crack due to damage and
should not be taken as a part of the letter. The same
can be said for the
crack extending to the left from the inferior pole of
the vertical stroke.
Without these horizontal strokes, this letter
cannot be a he or heth. It
still remains, however, to establish the real
identity of this letter. If its
horizontal wedge were extended across the vertical
stroke, and the superior
and inferior margins of that wedge were separated,
it would resemble the
form of the ‘aleph
in other early alphabets. In view of that resemblance
this letter should be taken as an ‘aleph here, the first occurrence of the
‘aleph to be recognized in these texts. The third word in
this line can be
read as pt’m, "sudden, suddenly." Whatever occurred by
means of the
actions of the "mighty ones" should
have taken place "suddenly." This
suddenness strongly suggests that the "mighty
ones" are to be identified as
the shock waves of an earthquake. The description
of the disaster which
follows in text III fits well with a disaster of
this nature.
The word, mk, which means "smiter," stands at the end of this line as
it was previously read. Thus these strong shocks
which suddenly struck
Pethor constituted the second of the two smiters mentioned in text I, the
"finisher" referred to there. The reason for this
ordering of the statements
in text II is discussed further below.
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 103
The revisions I have proposed for the statements
in text II might be
summarized here as a complement to my previous
study of this text. Six
letters have now been identified more
accurately: the sade
and res in
the
first word of what is now the first line, two beths and a qoph in the
second
word of that line, and an ‘aleph in the second word of the second line. In
addition, these two lines have been reversed in
order from the way in
which they were presented previously.
The revisions now set forth provide a
transliteration and translation
indicating that the smiters
which struck Pethor were not human forces like
the troops of
nature that were unleashed against this site, first by
the nearby river and
subsequently by an earthquake. These
were the two "smiters" of text I, the
first identified there as a "smiter"
and the second as a "finisher."
6. Text III: Pethor's State
(Deir cAlla No. 1440)
Transliteration and
Translation
(1) mkk / btym / dry / ccym
(2) wcyn / ngr / mksmy / wysym
(3) zcm
(1) "The houses have fallen in heaps of
ruins,
(2) and the spring has
poured out covering them,
(3) and a curse has
been placed."
The
Line Drawing:
104
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
Introduction
This final written tablet is in mint condition.
Its writing is
very clear. The third line consists of one word
written along the
bottom edge of the tablet. Line 1 is the bottom line
on the face of
the tablet, and line 2 is the top line on the face
of the tablet. The
reason for following this order rather than the
reverse is syntactical.
The
bottom line begins without a waw, whereas the two statements
in the top line both begin with a waw. These waws should serve
as
conjunctions to join their
statements to those that have gone pre-
viously. It seems likely,
therefore, that this tablet was meant to be
read from bottom to top rather than the reverse.
Analysis of the Text
of Line 1 (Bottom Line)
The first word of the bottom line begins with a
broad v-shaped mem
and two trefoil-headed kaphs. These two kaphs have tails,
whereas the
kaph in the top line of this
text does not, an irregularity in this scribe's
writing. The second kaph is rotated 90º in comparison
to the first, another
irregularity in this text, but there
are parallels to this type of irregularity in
text II. In spite of this rotation, both of these
letters are readily recognizable
as kaphs. The Hebrew word mkk means "to fall down,
sink down, settle
in." It is used in Eccl 10:18 to refer to
houses that fall into ruins due to
neglect. But the houses here were hit suddenly
according to the second
text, so their collapse into ruins must have been
more abrupt than in the
biblical case.
The subject of this verb follows as the second
word in this line, and it
is the plural noun btym, "houses." The beth consists of
a three-point
triangular head atop a vertical unbent tail. The taw is standard in form for
this text. The yod has a dotted head. The yod is used four
other times in
this text, and the mem of the plural ending is only
one of five examples of
that letter in this text. An interesting feature of
the btym
here is the
presence of the yod, representing the i-vowel of the
plural ending -im.
The third word of this line begins with a dotted
triangular head that
has no tail. This is similar to the dalet of the
later scripts, with which it
should be identified. The second letter is taken as
representing another
occurrence of the head-shaped res. It can be compared to the res with
which ngr ends in the top
line, even though slightly different in shape.
The
most common use of dr
or dor in
Biblical Hebrew is as a reference to a
"generation." This idea is derived from the root idea of
a "cycle" or
"circuit." As a verb, dor means "to pile up,"
and the noun "dwelling
place" is also derived from this root. Anyone of
the foregoing meanings
could make sense here, but the idea of a
"circle" or "heap, pile," of ruins
fits best. The final letter of this word is a yod, which serves
as an indicator
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 105
for a construct relationship of a masculine plural
noun. This word should
thus be taken as in a construct or genitival
relationship with the word that
follows it. It is striking to see the yod of this
relationship written out here,
in contrast to the practice of scribes who wrote
later inscriptions.
The final word of this line begins with two
vertical half-moon shaped
cayins. These are followed by
another yod
and another mem.
This form
corresponds well to the biblical word for
"ruins" in the masculine plural.
In
Biblical Hebrew this word was written with one cayin and two yods,
while here it was written with two cayins
and one yod.
Presumably, these
cayins were intended to be read or pronounced with i-vowels, and the
yod here represents the i-vowel of the
plural ending.
Analysis of the Text of
Line 2 (Top Line)
The first word of the top line begins with what
is, for this text, a
normally shaped waw with a semicircular head.
This should serve as a
conjunction connecting the second thought in the
text with the first
thought written in the line below. The waw is followed
by the vertical
half-eye cayin. Next come the dotted vertical stroke of
the yod and
the wavy
vertical line of the nun. Thus we have here the word cyn. In Biblical
Hebrew
this word can mean either an "eye" or a "spring." The
latter
meaning makes better sense in the context here,
especially in conjunction
with the verbs that follow it.
The nun
which begins the second word is virtually identical to the
nun with which the first
word ends. This is followed by a gimmel with a
curved head, and then a head-shaped res. The Hebrew word ngr means "to
flow, pour, gush forth." In 2 Sam
out, and it is used for wine in Ps 75:9. As a
feminine singular perfect (or
participle) in the Niphal,
it probably was pronounced with a final a-vowel,
but that vowel was not written out here.
The broad v-shaped sign of the mem occurs twice
in the next word,
and its first occurrence is followed by standard
forms of the kaph
and
samek. The word ends with the
vertical stroke topped by a dot to make it a
yod. The kaph-samek
combination at the heart of this word provides the
root ksh, which in Biblical Hebrew commonly means "to
cover." With a
mem preformative,
this form looks like a participle in the Piel, the
con-
jugation in which this root
commonly occurs. The second mem of this
word should be taken as a masculine plural
pronominal suffix inasmuch as
a plural ending on the participle would not fit
with the gender or number
of either the preceding subject or verb. The
antecedent of this plural
pronominal suffix would most logically be the
"ruins" of the "houses"
mentioned in the preceding line.
The yod written after the pronominal suffix may represent an old
case
ending. An archaic survival of
a similar old case ending appears with the
106
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
same suffix on the same verb in the old poem of Exod 15 (v. 5; cf. v. 7).
There
this verb was used for the action of the waters that covered the
chariots of Pharaoh and his men. Here it was used
for a similar action
of a covering by waters, but in this case it was
waters from a spring
that covered ruins of the houses of a town.
Evidently the earthquake
which struck this area and toppled houses also
fractured the water table
that supplied the spring of the town, thus causing
it to pour forth in
abundance.
The initial letter of the next word is a waw, which should
be taken as
a conjunction. This is followed by a word
containing two yods
and ending
with a mem. The vertical strokes of the yods are undotted.
Between them is
a vertical bow-shaped sign of the sin/sin, which Cairus
distinguished from
the nun.
In Biblical Hebrew ysym
parses readily as a third person mascu-
line singular Qal
imperfect of sym, "to put, set,
place." It is interesting to
note that the central yod of this middle weak verb is
written out here.
This verb cannot stand alone. It needs something
to go with it--a
subject, an object, or more. The search for such
a complement leads to the
word on the edge of the tablet, its third line.
Presumably this word was
written there because there was not enough space
left on the second line of
the text written on the face of the tablet. According
to Franken's study of
the scribal methods employed in writing this text,
this was the last word
written on the tablet. It should, therefore,
complete the statement that
began with ysym.
The word written along the edge of the tablet
was zcm.
The cayin
and
the mem have been seen previously in the body of the text. The
sign that
precedes them is a vertical box-shaped letter
with a number of crossbars.
This
looks most like a heth,
but that letter does not fit well here preceding
an cayin. Cairus has
suggested that this sign should be identified as a zayin.
In
favor of that identification is the fact that some of the crossbars incline
downwards at an angle to the left, as does the
crossbar of the later zayin.
In Biblical Hebrew zcm means "to
curse." This word appears, for
example, in a speech made by Balaam of Pethor in which he described
Balak's
instructions to him (Num 23:7). Thus it seems quite appropriate to
find the same word in this text from Balaam's home
town. As a noun, this
word on the side of the tablet serves well as the
subject of the verb at the
end of the second (upper) line on the face of the
tablet. The whole phrase
wysym zcm thus translates,
"and a curse has been placed." Either the scribe
who wrote this text saw the events that had taken
place as the result of a
curse, or a curse was placed upon the site after it
was affected in this way.
Summary of Text III
The falling down of houses referred to in the
first line of this
text is interpreted here as being caused by an
earthquake, presuma-
bly the same earthquake
mentioned at the end of text II. Knocking
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 107
down the houses was the first destructive action of
this quake,
hence it was mentioned first on the tablet. The quake
also fractured
the water table of the spring at the site causing
it to overflow upon
the ruins of the fallen houses. This was the
"covering" of "them,"
i.e.,
the ruined houses mentioned in the second line of this text.
The
final line of this text refers to the curse, either that from which
these effects resulted, or that which was pronounced
upon the site
after its destruction.
7. The Language of the Texts
With the script of these texts deciphered and
their contents
translated, the language of the texts can now be
analyzed in some
detail. Even though we have only three short texts
with which to
deal, they provide a surprisingly large amount of
linguistic data,
some of it quite extraordinary for texts from so
early a date.
Six verbs occur in these three texts-two in
tablet I (nkh
and
tmm), and one of these (nkh) is used over
again in tablet II. Tablet
III
adds four more verbs (mkk, ngr, ksh and sym).
Perfects and
participles occur, but only one example of an
imperfect (ysym)
and
no infinitives or imperatives appear to be
present. Four different
conjugations are represented: the Qal, Piel, Niphal,
and Hiphil.
All
of these roots and forms are readily recognizable from Biblical
Hebrew.
Five nouns are present in these texts-the words
for "curse,"
“strong (ones)," "houses," "heaps,"
and "ruins." The first of these
is in the singular, the rest are in the plural.
One of the plurals is
feminine, and the others are masculine. One of
the masculine
plural nouns appears in a construct form. There are no recogniz-
able occurrences of the article with the nouns in
these texts, a fact
consistent with the early date of writing. All five
of these nouns are
well known in the vocabulary of Biblical Hebrew. Two
toponyms
occur, the place name of Pethor
in text I and the river name of the
Jabbok in
text II.
Three pronouns occur in these texts, two of them
independent
and one of them suffixed. The second person and
third person
plural are represented. The pronouns correspond in
form with the
forms used for similar functions in Biblical Hebrew.
The waw
used
as a conjunction appears in all three of the texts--twice
in text I,
once in text II, and twice in text III.
One of the more remarkable linguistic features
of these texts is
that they appear to be vocalized in part. The main
letter or sign
108
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
that was used for this function was the vertical
stroke of the yod,
either dotted or undotted.
This appears to have represented mainly
the i-vowel, but in one
case of a masculine plural noun in construct
it may stand for e. The most obvious vocalic use
of the yod
is in the
plural masculine ending on nouns, -ym or -im, which occurs with
three words in text III. In one instance--ysym of text III--the
second yod appears to
represent the middle weak radical of the
verbal root. In one instance, in mksmy of text III, the yod following
the pronominal suffix may represent an old case
ending that may
be compared with the related archaic forms in the
Song of the
Sea (Exod 15:5, 7).
In two instances in text II the waw appears to
have been used
to represent o-vowels.
The more obvious case of this is with the
feminine plural ending -ot. There it is accompanied by an un-
dotted vertical stroke. This appears to be an indicator
for the use of
a vowel letter rather than representing a vowel
or consonant itself.
The
other use of the waw
as a vowel letter appears in the name of
the
which representation of an a-vowel or u-vowel was
attempted.
The conclusion from these linguistic data is
that either these
tablets were written by Hebrews, or they were
written in a Trans-
jordanian dialect of Canaanite
that was very close to Biblical He-
brew. These two possibilities are examined further,
following a
discussion of the potential historical connections
of these tablets.
8. Historical Geography
The major contribution which the Deir cAlla Tablets
make to
historical geography is to locate Pethor of Num 22:5 at Tell Deir
cAlla. The reading of this
name on tablet I is reasonably clear and
direct. Locating this text as part of a series of
tablets that were
found at that site makes it more likely that this
text was written
there rather than brought from elsewhere.
In another direction, this discovery provides an
explanation
for another major find at the same site, the
eighth-century-B.C.
plaster texts from the walls of a later building.
These texts, written
in red and black ink on the plaster walls, were discovered
in 1967,15
15 See H. J. Franken, "Archaeological
Evidence Relating to the Interpretation of
the Text," in J. Hoftijzer
and G. van der Kooij, Aramaic Texts from Deir
cAlla
(
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 109
and they were published in 1976.16 They were found
in a very
fragmentary condition, and much scholarly ingenuity
has gone
into their reconstruction and study.17
The central character in combination
I, a narrative dramatic
text, is Balaam the son of Beor.
His name and patronym appear in
broken or complete form in at least four places in the
first six lines
of this text. His title is given with his name in
the first instance-
i.e., "the man who was a seer of the
gods."
There can be no
mistaking that the individual named and described
here is the same
person as the Balaam whose actions are set forth in
Num 22-24.
The
rest of combination I relates Balaam's experience. The gods
revealed themselves to him in a night dream or
vision, and in-
formed him about a coming disaster involving both a
"fire of
chastisement" and a convulsion
of nature. Combination II is even
more fragmentary and the nature of its contents is
obscure.
A. Lemaire has asked
the question, "Why were these literary,
probably religious, texts copied on the plaster
wall of a room at
Deir cAlla?"18 His answer is that
there probably was a sanctuary
nearby. This appears to be correct, but is only part
of the answer.
Now,
thanks to the Deir cAlla
Tablets, we can recognize that this
locale was where Balaam’s home sanctuary of Pethor was located.
Of
all the places in the entire Near East where his memory might
have been preserved, this location is obviously the
most likely
because of its being the very spot where he
lived and exercised his
16 See the entire report of Hoftijzer and van der Kooij mentioned in the pre-
ceding note.
17 One Ph.D. dissertation has been written
on these texts, that of Jo Ann
Hackett,
The Balaam Text from Deir
cAlla
(Chico, CA, 1984). Other studies include
A.
Caquot and A. Lemaire,
"Les textes aram'eens
de Deir cAlla,"
189-208;
B. A. Levine, "The Deir cAlla
Plaster Inscriptions," JAOS 101
(1981): 195-
205;
P. K. McCarter, "The Balaam Texts from Deir CAlla: The First Combination,
BASOR
239 (1981): 49-60; Victor Sasson, "The Book of
Oracular Visions of Balaam
from Deir cAlla," UF
17 (1985): 284-309; idem, "The Language of Rebellion in
Psalm
2 and in the Plaster Texts from Deir cAlla," AUSS
24 (1986): 147-154; J. A.
Hackett,
"The Dialect of the Plaster Text from Tell Deir cAlla," Or
53 (1984): 57-65;
A.
Lemaire, "Fragments from the Book of Balaam
Found at Deir cAlla,"
BARev 11
(1985):
26-39; J. Naveh, "The Date of the Deir cAlla Inscription
in Aramaic Script,"
IEJ 17 (1967): 256-258. On
Balaam in general, see Jo Ann Hackett, "Religious
Traditions
in Israelite
P.
D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride (
18 Lemaire, "Fragments,"
p. 38.
110
WILLIAM H.
SHEA
prophetic ministry. How appropriate, then, that a
narrative text
from him or about him should have been preserved at
this site.
The identification of Tell Deir
cAlla with Pethor
also aids in
clarifying a problem in biblical geography. In Num
23:7 Balaam
introduces his first oracle of blessing upon
that "from Aram Balak brought me, the king of
eastern mountains." This statement is
commonly assumed to be a
reference to northeastern
an impression has been found from a remark in Num
22:5, which
says that Balak called
Balaam from "the river." Since the unmodi-
fied term "the
river" is commonly used in the Bible to refer to the
referring to that river valley and that Balaam was
called from that
regIon.
In light of the new information available from
the Deir cAlla
tablets, however, the foregoing proposal
deserves reexamination.
Both
"the river" and "eastern mountains" (Num 23:7) could fit
just
as well for Pethor at
Tell Deir cAlla.
In this case, the river would be
the
eastern
The major obstacle to making such an
identification is the
reference to
to the south. A rather direct solution to this
problem lies in posit-
ing a very small and
simple, but significant, scribal error in the
transmission of the biblical text.
Two out of three of the letters in
the names of Adam and
dalet and res. These two letters were written in a
very similar
fashion in the pre-exilic Hebrew script. Dalet had a large
triangular
head and a short vertical tail, while res had a smaller
triangular
head but a longer vertical tail. In Iron-Age Hebrew,
Phoenician,
and Aramaic inscriptions these two letters are
commonly very diffi-
cult to distinguish.
My proposal for resolving this problem is that
while the origi-
nal author wrote
"Adam," a scribe later in the course of textual
transmission miscopied it as "
standing the reference or through an inability to
distinguish the
correct letter in an earlier manuscript. The
scribe who copied Deut
23:4
went even further to gloss in "Naharaim,"
i.e., "of the two
rivers," to go along with the already miscopied
"
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 111
way Pethor came to be
located in
was located near Adam by the
of the eastern
Balaam could be called from both Adam and Pethor, according
to the text, because Adam was the residential town
in the area and
Pethor was the specific site of the sanctuary there,
where Balaam
carried out his prophetic ministry. Excavations
at the latter site
have demonstrated its religio-sanctuary
nature.
9. History
Interconnections between
the Tablets
Before potential relations between these texts
and external
sources can be explored, their own internal
relations need to be
established as firmly as possible. The translations
developed above
indicate an interconnection of all three texts in
that they all dealt
with the same theme, a disaster of natural origin
which overcame
Pethor.
Within that framework these texts can be set in
order quite
readily. Text I provides a general introductory
statement about the
disaster, text II identifies the factors or
"smiters" which brought
about this destruction, and text III concludes the
series with a brief
description of the state of the site after these
"smiters" struck. The
lexical and thematic relations among the three
texts have estab-
lished this as the proper
order, and it would be difficult to alter it.
Tablet II has been the most difficult to read,
translate, and
understand. It is also the one most difficult in
regard to determin-
ing the internal order of
its own statements. Because it was written
in boustrophedon order, the tablet can be turned
in one way and
read in that order, or it can be turned upside down
and read in the
alternate order. The question here is, Which should come first, the
line with the flood or the line with the earthquake?
The tablet itself
does not appear to give a clear-cut indication of
which direction of
reading was intended, so one must go to its
connections with the
other tablets to establish the order of its
statements.
While one might suspect that the earthquake of
tablet II should
have preceded and caused the river flooding
mentioned in this text,
that order cannot be established directly from the
text. Text I refers
to two "smiters,"
an initial "smiter" and a
"finisher." Tablet II
112
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
identifies two "smiters,"
each connected with that specific word in
the singular. It is logical, therefore, to take the
two smiters identi-
fied in tablet II as the two
smiters mentioned by tablet I. Thus the
flood and earthquake of tablet II should be taken as
separate and
distinct "smiters,"
they were not seen as two phases of the same
event. In other words, the earthquake was not mentioned
here as an
indication as to why the river flooded, but was
mentioned to point
out that it too was a smiter
of Pethor.
The question of sequence remains, therefore, and
it still needs
to be determined whether the flood was the initial
smiter and the
earthquake the finisher or vice versa. Tablet III
appears to provide
the best answer to this question by describing the
final events at the
site. Its description of the final destruction there
is one of an
earthquake, not a river flood. This was the
occasion upon which
the houses fell in ruins and the spring at the site
poured out over
these ruins. The finality of this sequence of events
is emphasized in
tablet III by the mention of the curse at the end of
this tablet's
recital. Regardless of whether this curse was a
reflection back upon
the course of these destructive events or an active
imprecation at
their conclusion, this act of cursing surely was the
last event in the
sequence narrated by all three of the tablets.
Applying this information to the question with
which we are
dealing indicates that the earthquake was the
"finisher" as a smiter,
and therefore the flood of the river should be
taken as the initial
smiter of the two. Thus the
first tablet mentions the two smiters of
Pethor, the second tablet identifies them by their
nature, and the
third tablet sets them in order by indicating which
of them finished
the site off. It also describes the state of the
site after that finisher
got through with it.
The conclusion here, then, is that the first
statement on the
second tablet should be identified as the one that
deals with the
flooding by the Jabbok
and that its second statement should be
taken as the reference to the mighty shock waves
which struck
suddenly. Thus tablet II does not say that the
river was dammed up
as a result of an earthquake, nor does it say that
it was not dammed
up by an earthquake. It simply does not address
that point. If it
was dammed up by an earthquake--something which one
might
suspect on other grounds--then that shock wave
was an earlier one
of less intensity than the final one that finished
off the destruction
of the site.
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 113
By
way of conclusion to this point, these tablets may now be
translated together and in order:
Text I To
you have come a smiter and a finisher,
and they are the smiters of Pethor.
Text II There
was a damming up and the Jabbok became a smiter.
Strong and sudden
(shocks) became a smiter.
Text III The
houses fell in heaps of ruins,
and the spring poured out
covering them,
and a curse was placed.
A Potential Connection
to Biblical History
In Part I of this article a connection with
biblical history was
proposed, mainly on the basis of a misreading of
two words in the
difficult text of tablet II. It is now evident
from improved readings
for the letters in these words that the biblical
connection pro-
posed--with the Israelite conquest of
tained. That conclusion does
not mean, however, that no potential
connection between these tablets and the Bible is
available. It
simply means that to address that issue one must look
elsewhere to
determine whether such a connection is possible or
not.
The nature of the events described by these
tablets leads rather
directly to another series of events described in
the Bible. This
series, recorded in the book of Joshua, begins with
the crossing of
the
the mid-Jordan Valley, both of them thus being
located near the
geological fault that runs north and south through
that valley. It is
natural, therefore, to expect that they would
also share somewhat
similar fates whenever earthquakes struck the
region. If the epi-
center of such an earthquake was near enough to
down its thick and heavily supported and defended
walls, it could
easily have had sufficient force to knock down the
thinner walls of
houses at Tell Deir cAlla in the mid-Jordan Valley.
Josh
entrance into the city of
that occasion. Even though the Hebrew text does not
use the
specific word for earthquake here, the net effect
of what is described
can be referred to as an earthquake. Regardless of
whether this was
naturally or supernaturally induced, some sort of
quaking of the
114
WILLIAM H.
SHEA
earth is the best mechanism through which to
understand how
these walls fell. And this quake must have been one
of considerable
magnitude in order to accomplish the extent of the
destruction at
Pethor
farther north in the
the quake mentioned in the second line of the
second Deir cAlla
tablet, the effects of which are more fully described
in tablet III.
Another event took place near
struction, however, and it too
could be expected to have had direct
effects upon the region of the mid-Jordan
Valley. Josh
fically states that this
particular region was affected by a damming
up of the
river from their camp at Shittim.
The waters of the
off at ancient Adam, modern Damiyeh,
in order to make it possi-
ble for the Israelites to
cross over. The biblical text conveys the
Israelite's viewpoint and participation in these
events.
Their in-
terest was in being able to
cross over the river, something they
normally would not have been able to do at this
time. But we must
also take into account the view of the Canaanites
who lived on the
other side of this blockage, north and east of Adam.
It is reasonable
to assume that conditions were not very congenial
for them at that
time in that they most likely experienced a
considerable amount of
flooding in their settlements. That is what text
II says happened
at Pethor.
The river most important to the Israelites in
their quest to
cross from one side of the valley to the other was
the
that is the river referred to in their description
of these events. As
the river nearest to Pethor
at Tell Deir cAlla,
on the other hand, the
Jabbok was of more concern to the residents there. Any
damming
up of the
so long as the blockage was located south of the
point of their
confluence. Text II does not specifically state
that the Jabbok was
the only river dammed up at this time. It simply
says that there was
a damming up and that the Jabbok
became a smiter of Pethor
as a
result. The actual point of the blockage could just as
easily have
been on the
rences of this type suggests
that it probably was so in this case too.
The relations proposed above can now be outlined
by citing
from both sources in parallel:
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 115
Deir cAlla Tablets Joshua.
I.
To you have come a smiter and a finisher,
and they are the smiters of Pethor.
II.
There was a damming up and the Jabbok struck, = Josh
(then) strong and
sudden (shocks) struck. =
Josh
III.
The houses fell in heaps of ruins, “
“ “
the spring
poured forth covering-them, “
“ “
and a curse was
placed. =
Josh
(at
Chronology
It should be noted here that the biblical text
puts a minimum
of two weeks, and probably more time than that,
between the
crossing of the
6:20.
These brief statements on these tablets do not address
that
issue directly, they only indicate that the events
occurred in succes-
sion without indicating how
long an interval elapsed between
them.
Another aspect of the chronology involved here
is the question
of how long a period elapsed from the time these
tablets were
written when
tablets were sealed in the later destruction of
the sanctuary at
Pethor. Two main dates have
been proposed for the conquest of
in the book of Joshua. One view dates this
conquest to the end of
Late
Bronze Age I, ca. 1400 B.C., while the other dates it to the end
of Late Bronze Age II ca. 1230 B.C. My personal
preference favors
the Late Bronze Age I date,19 but the
difference between these two
dates is not a major consideration here. The date
selected simply
19 A date of 971 B.C. for the accession of
Solomon, as established by E. R. Thiele
in The
Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Grand Rapids, MI, 1965), p. 55,
by fixing Solomon's death in 931 B.C., dates the
commencement of the construction
of the temple to Solomon's fourth year, 967. I Kgs 6:1 extends 480 years back to the
time of the Exodus, and 40 years should be
subtracted from this figure to allow for
the wandering in the wilderness. These figures date
the conquest under Joshua to
late in the fifteenth century B.C. Judg
the conquest took place some 300 years before the
time of Jephthah. If Jephthah
is
dated to about 1100 B.C., the conquest would be dated
to approximately 1400 B.C., or
essentially the same time that I Kgs
6:1 would date it.
116
WILLIAM H.
SHEA
determines the length of time these tablets would
have been pre-
served in the sanctuary at Deir
cAlla. If the earlier date is correct,
then those tablets would have been preserved there
for approxi-
mately two centuries. For a
thirteenth-century conquest date, the
tablets would have been preserved there less
than a century.
A distinction between earthquakes is important
here. From his
excavations at the site, Franken determined that the
Late Bronze
Age
II sanctuary was destroyed by an earthquake.20 The
inscribed
tablets were found in this destruction level.
Obviously, the earth-
quake referred to by the tablets could not be the
earthquake that
caused the destruction in which they were sealed, or
they would
have had to be written and stored in the sanctuary
simultaneously
with that earthquake. The earthquake to which the
tablets refer
must therefore be one which hit this site sometime
earlier in the
Late Bronze Age.
Specificity
With these tablets pointing to an earthquake
antedating the
one which finally destroyed the site, the question
arises as to how
specific one can be in connecting that first
earthquake and sur-
rounding events with those that are mentioned in
the Bible in
connection with the fall of
quakes in this area at this and other times, perhaps
these tablets
refer to an earthquake and related events other than
those which
took place in the time of Joshua.
The reference to the damming up of the river
makes the course
of events much more unique and specific, however.
While there
have been many earthquakes in the
history, only a few of them have been of
sufficient strength or
The most recent work on the pottery of
presented to the annual meeting of the American
Schools of Oriental Research in
strates that the excavator,
Kathleen Kenyon, has missed indigenous Late Bronze I
pottery mixed in with the Middle Bronze IIC
pottery from the last strata of Middle
Bronze- Late Bronze Age
of the destruction of the last of those strata
down from Kenyon's date of 1550 B.C. to
Wood's date of ca. 1400 B.C.
20 H. J. Franken, "The Stratigraphic Context of the Clay Tablets Found at Deir
cAlla," PEQ 96 (1964): 73-78.
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 117
proximity to dam up the
recorded historical times this has only happened
on four occasions
since the thirteenth century A.D. It also occurred in
the time of
Joshua,
according to Josh 3:13, and now these tablets give us a
reference to such an occurrence prior to the end
of the Late Bronze
Age, i.e. in the same era in which Joshua lived
and fought.
That
connection brings these two sources close together
in time.
It should also be stressed that these tablets
take our knowledge
of this kind of phenomenon two millennia farther
back in time
than was previously the case from extra-biblical
sources. From the
damming up of the
tablets take our knowledge of this kind of
occurrence all the way
back to the Late Bronze Age. It appears that an
event of this sort-
or in any case our knowledge of such events-is a
rarity.
There is the matter, as well, of the distinctive
nature of the
sequence of the events recited by these tablets,
as translated and
interpreted above. The earthquake which caused the
destruction of
the site was not the shock wave that caused the
damming up of the
river, if it was dammed up by an earthquake at all.
Tablet I
separates those two events, and tablet III
indicates that the more
destructive quake came later. So we have here a
damming up of the
river first, and then of the more destructive quake
that damaged the
site so badly. This unique order of events is all
the more unlikely at
other times, but it just happens to fit precisely the
order of events in
the biblical record.
Thus there are four major factors which point to
a connection
between the events narrated by these tablets and
those described in
Joshua.
First, the damming up of the river along with an earth-
quake emphasizes the rarity of the events described
by the tablets.
Second,
the archaeology of the site places the events of these tablets
prior to the end of the Late Bronze Age, the same age
in which
Joshua
was active. Third, the contrast with later historical records
adds further emphasis to the rarity of these events.
And fourth, the
sequence of the events described in these tablets
is the same as the
sequence in the book of Joshua, a factor making
them even less
likely to have been replicated at some other time. The
conclusion
here, then, is that there is sufficient specificity
in the narration of
the events in these texts to connect them with
those described in
Joshua.
118
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
Authorship
A final question remains: Who was at the site of
Deir cAlla
when the tablets were written? There are two
possibilities, and they
have already been raised at the end of the
discussion of the linguis-
tic data from the tablets. Either these tablets
were written in Hebrew
by Israelites or they were written by some
non-Hebrew residents of
very close in form and content to Biblical Hebrew.
Historical
contexts can be suggested for either of these
possibilities.
An Israelite authorship could be posited from
the following
circumstances: The portion of
tribes was conquered and distributed before Joshua led
all
across the
been part of this conquest and temporary settlement.
The Trans-
jordanian tribes promised Moses,
however, that they would not
permanently settle upon the lands distributed to
them until the
Cis-Jordan tribes had inherited their lands too
(Num 32:18-20). In
fact, they were supposed to cross the
Cis-Jordan tribes in the latter's
battles of conquest. They might
very well, however, have left a small garrison
behind at this strate-
gic site, and one of the
soldiers stationed there might have written
up this account after the fall of
A non-Israelite authorship can be suggested from
another set
of circumstances: This place was Balaam' s
headquarters, and he
may not only have composed his prophetic oracles in
poetry (Num
22-24)
but may also have written them down. We cannot attribute
the writing of these tablets to Balaam himself,
however, for he was
killed before the Israelites crossed the Jordan (Num
31:8); but the
nature of the Deir cAlla site as a religious center would imply the
existence there of other literate persons or
prophets. Most likely
there was something resembling a non-Israelite school
of the proph-
ets, the staff of which
included Balaam for a time; and someone
among the other literate persons could have been
responsible for
the writing of these tablets.
Even though no final conclusion has been reached
in this
matter of authorship, it still is evident that the
texts were written in
Hebrew
or in a dialect very close to Hebrew: As translated and
interpreted above, they also indicate that their
writer had a knowl-
edge of events in the mid-Jordan Valley contemporary
with the
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 119
Israelite
crossing of the
under Joshua. They simply reflect a perspective of
someone located
elsewhere in the valley concerning the way in
which the people
there were directly affected by those same events.
I had originally intended to discuss in this
second installment
of my article the dotted, unwritten tablets, as
mentioned in Part I.
But
the study of these tablets is still in a very preliminary state,
and therefore my comments on them will be reserved
for another
occasion.
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
www.andrews.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at:
thildebrandt@gordon.edu