The Oxford History of the Biblical World (26 page)

When the queen of Sheba (modern Yemen, in south Arabia) visited King Solomon, she brought camel caravans loaded with aromatics, gold, and gemstones (1 Kings 10.2). Her “gifts” to the Israelite potentate of the tenth century
BCE
differ little from the tribute exacted from Sheba by the Assyrian emperor Esarhaddon three centuries later. Yautha, king of a confederation of North Arabian tribes known as the Kedarites, delivered to the Assyrian monarch 10 minas of gold, 1,000 choice gems, 50 camels, and 1,000 leather bags of aromatics of all kinds.

In the sixth century
BCE
the great Phoenician seaport of Tyre was exporting the wealth of Arabia to other parts of the Mediterranean: the Kedarites brought young bull-camels, rams, and he-goats; the Dedanites, from an oasis north of Yathrib (Medina),
traded in saddle cloths for riding; and Sheba exported gold, incense, and all kinds of gemstones (Ezek. 27.20-22).

Even later the book of Isaiah (60.6-7) anticipated that Arabia’s riches would be brought to a restored Jerusalem:

A multitude of camels shall cover you,

the young bull-camels of Midian and Ephah [a son of Midian in Gen. 25.4];

all those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense….

All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you.

Thus whether the great caravaneers of Arabia were known as Midianites (Gen. 37.28, 36; Judg. 5.10), or later as Arabs and Kedarites, or later still as Nabateans, the merchandise and produce they exported to the rest of the ancient Near East and to the Mediterranean remained basically the same.

Linkage between remote desert oases in Arabia required the camel. It was the only pack animal that could survive the long distances between watering holes in the desert oases, the vital links between the resources of southern Arabia and the wider world. W. F. Albright’s assessment, based on contemporary texts and limited faunal remains, that dromedary camels became important to the caravan trade only toward the final centuries of the second millennium
BCE
, is still valid.

In Sheba grew the best aromatics in the world. Frankincense is a white resin obtained from trees that grow in abundance on the mountainous south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in the Hadhramaut and Dhofar. It was burned as a pungent aromatic incense or as a compound in other fragrant offerings to the gods. Myrrh, harvested from bushes growing in the steppes of Punt (modern Somalia) and Sheba, was another aromatic in great demand for its use in cosmetics, perfumes, and medicines.

By the Late Bronze Age, the aromatics trade had become the most lucrative business in the ancient Near East thanks to the dromedary camel. Not only did the merchants become rich; so did the camel breeders, the escorts who provided protection for caravans through hostile territory, and the rulers who exacted tolls from caravaneers passing through their kingdoms (see 1 Kings 10.15).

As J. David Schloen has recognized, it was the disruption of this lucrative caravan trade under the aegis of the Midianites and the protection of the Israelites that sparked the battle between Canaanites and Israelites, celebrated in the Song of Deborah, when:

In the days of Shamgar ben Anat,
In the days of Jael,
Caravans and trailblazers held back,
Caravans traveled by circuitous routes,
Village tribesmen in Israel held back.
They held back until you arose, Deborah,
Until you arose, a mother in Israel.

(Judg. 5.6-7; my translation)

The heroine of the victory was Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, who drove a tent peg into the temple of the Canaanite commander Sisera (Judg. 5.24-27). In one tradition Moses’ father-in-law is identified with the Kenites (Judg. 1.16), whose descendants dwell among the Amalekites in the northern Negeb near Arad (1 Sam. 15.5-6). Moshe Kochavi has plausibly suggested that the main Amalekite center was located at Tel Masos. Apparently the Kenites and the Amalekites were part of the large confederation of Midianites, who in the twelfth century
BCE
were still on friendly terms with the Israelites. Genealogical traditions identified Kenites with Cain
(qayyan
means “metalsmith” in Aramaic) and Tubal-cain “who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools” (Gen. 4.22).

The date and distribution of “Midianite painted pottery,” also called “Hijaz painted pottery,” corroborates and clarifies some of the Midianite traditions adumbrated above. The key site is a large urban oasis known today as Qurayyah in northwestern Arabia, in the heartland of ancient Midian. The site awaits systematic excavation, but using intensive surface surveys Peter Parr has been able to provide many details about it. The citadel of this center is extremely large, encompassing about 35 hectares (86 acres), below which lies a fortified settlement of another 15 hectares (37 acres). As many as ten to twelve thousand inhabitants lived in this caravan city. Some local subsistence for the large community was provided by an elaborate system of irrigation farming utilizing seasonal floodwaters.

The most striking artifact from the survey is a beautiful painted pottery, found at Qurayyah in abundance. It is decorated with painted geometric designs (probably imitating textiles) and zoomorphic motifs, such as the desert ostrich. Pottery kilns at the site and petrographic analysis of this “Midianite painted pottery” leave no doubt that Qurayyah was a major production center for it, exporting it southeast as far as the great oasis at Tema and north as far as Amman and Hebron. Small amounts of this ware have also been found in the northern Negeb at Tel Masos and at Tell el-Farah (S), and in the foothills of Canaan at Lachish; another sherd has been found at Tawilan in Edom.

The date of this pottery and its association with copper metallurgy has been confirmed by excavations at Timna in the Wadi Arabah, 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Qurayyah. There, in an Egyptian sanctuary nestled beneath a cliff, Midianite painted pottery made up about 25 percent of the pottery assemblage. Associated objects inscribed in Egyptian dated to the thirteenth to twelfth centuries
BCE
. In its final stages the sanctuary was appropriated and rededicated by iconoclastic Midianites. Three hundred kilometers (186 miles) north of its production center Qurayyah, Midianite painted pottery has been found in quantity in the greatest copper mining district of the Bronze and Iron Ages—at Khirbet Feinan, known in the Bible as Punon (Num. 33.42), one of the stopping points of the Israelites during their desert wanderings.

Thus the distribution of Midianite painted pottery, from its production center(s) in northern Arabia (Midian) to a wide range of settlements in the Negeb, the Arabah, and beyond, fits rather nicely the locale and routes of a people known for their metalsmithing and caravaneering. The floruit of this distinctive pottery is precisely the era in which most biblical historians (quite independently of this ceramic evidence, which has only recently come to light) would date the Israelite Exodus from
Egypt, their sojourn through Midian and Transjordan, and their settlement in Canaan in the late thirteenth and twelfth centuries
BCE
.

Circumstantial evidence of time and place suggests Midianite antecedents and contributions to Yahwism. Such formal elements as the proper name
Yahweh,
his sacred mountain in Midian as the locus of Moses’ theophanies, and the prominent roles of Moses’ father-in-law (priest and sheikh of the Midianites) and his wife Zipporah provide tantalizing hints about the relationship. But until more is known about Midianite religion, these connections will remain tentative at best.

What is known, however, is that only a century before the “Mosaic era” and the advent of Yahwism, Egypt experienced a brief episode of radical monotheism during the so-called Amarna Revolution. The pharaoh Akhenaten (1352-1336
BCE
; formerly Amenhotep IV) proclaimed Aten—the luminous, numinous power of the sun disk—the sole and universal god of Egypt and its empire (including Canaan). Atenism was suppressed by succeeding pharaohs, who reinstated the traditional pantheon; nevertheless, the memory of this radical monotheism survived in some circles, and centuries later the Israelite poet who composed Psalm 104 borrowed directly from the sublime Egyptian “Hymn to the Aten.” Thus, by the latter part of the second millennium
BCE
, the Egyptians had had a brief experiment with monotheism that may have had repercussions beyond Egypt and affected other Near Eastern cultures.

In more complex societies like Egypt and Mesopotamia, whether there were one or many intracosmic deities, rulers were either the incarnated or the designated “sons” of the deity, intermediaries between heaven and earth, between the divine ruler and the ruled. The populace identified with its geographical territory and its rulers, who interceded on its behalf with the patron deities.

There is a sense in which Yahwism represents a radical break with the past and a breakthrough in the history of religions and in human consciousness. The philosopher and political scientist Eric Voegelin has analyzed this change in the following terms: the pragmatic escape of the Hebrews from Egypt becomes, at the same time, a “spiritual exodus from the cosmological form of imperial rule. The sonship of god is transferred from the pharaoh to the people of Israel in immediate existence under Yahweh”
(The Ecumenic Age,
26). It is the constitution of a “people” or “kindred” directly under the patrimonial authority of Yahweh that forges a new relationship between deity and community and a new identity for those who participate directly in this new order.

The tribes of premonarchic Israel continued to exist in various forms and permutations throughout the monarchy and even thereafter. One reason for this is that by the early Iron Age I, they were territorial entities with boundaries and rights established in part by the nature of their tribalism.

Some scholars see an egalitarian, kin-based tribal confederation being supplanted by a hierarchical state in which class displaces kin, and patronage dominates relationships. G. Ernest Wright (“The Provinces of Solomon,”
Eretz-Israel
8 [1967], 58*–68*) suggested that Solomon’s provincial system led to crosscutting kin groups by gerrymandering tribal territories in the interest of breaking up old sodalities forged through common descent (whether real or fictive) and a radical realignment based
on production and service to the king and his royal household. According to Wright, this reorganization of the countryside by Solomon (1 Kings 4.7-19) had the beneficial effect not only of replacing old kin loyalties with royal ones but also of distributing the tax burden to each provincial unit according to its proportion of the gross national product, so that each of the twelve units (“tribes” become “provinces”) was required to provide for one month’s living expenses at the king’s quarters in Jerusalem.

That such a rational system never existed in ancient Israel and that the premonarchic clan and tribal allocations remained intact are partially demonstrated by the Samaria ostraca, receipts found in the capital of the northern kingdom and dated to the eighth century
BCE
. They refer to the collection of taxes in kind of olive oil and vintage wine, which were presented to the king by the notables or clan leaders—the local elite—who commanded enough loyalty and honor to represent various clan districts from that territory still intact more than two and a half centuries after the establishment of the monarchy. This could not have occurred if the reorganization of Solomon’s kingdom had been as radical as suggested by those who believe that tribes and states cannot coexist.

Tribalism could wax and wane, sometimes depending on external circumstances and threats either from other tribes or, more often in the case of tribal Israelites, from neighboring states or alien tribal polities. At that time the symbolic systems could be reactivated and the contrast with those outside the group highlighted. Vis-à-vis the Philistines, this took the form of various contrastive rituals given the force of religious injunctions, such as circumcision and the pig taboo in food. They might assert their myth of common ancestry as a son of Jacob/Israel through genealogies. At the tribal level these function as social charters expressing allegiance through fictive kinship and the obligations that issue therefrom.

But to describe tribes as kin-based or kin-ordered groups is insufficient, especially since there are many other ties that bind these larger entities together. Notions of descent, of course, and implied kinship can be operative at the village and clan level in nontribal societies. At these lower levels, descent functions to secure property rights (in the case of Israel, landed ones) and to organize food production. On the higher and broader levels, descent as expressed in genealogies locates these smaller social units within the broader polity through the language of common ancestry. Genealogies, it must be emphasized, are charters of sociopolitical organization, not necessarily actual family trees that detail blood relations. Tribalism then becomes a political statement of group allegiance and identity. In Israel kinship expressed through common descent provided a unifying principle at the tribal level, but it was not sufficient to account for larger polities.

Commitment to the people, or kindred (Hebrew
’am),
of Yahweh ranked above individual tribal affiliation. This also required a more inclusive system of beliefs, which transcended tribal boundaries, local polities, and intermeshing economic networks. Through the revelation of Yahwism to Moses came a newly constituted people or kindred. Sanctuaries sprang up during the period of the judges at central locations in the highlands, such as Shechem and Shiloh. Through these central sanctuaries, where covenant ceremonies were celebrated (Josh. 24.1-28), religious unification was reinforced. Thus, as in early Islam, both the confederation and the monarchy of Israel
were established on religious foundations, which helped centralize authority. The political, social, and economic systems were based on beliefs informed by revelation, whether to Moses or Muhammad. During the twelfth and eleventh centuries that new entity was the tribal league; in the tenth century and later, it was the monarchy.