Hoarded Treasures: The Megiddo Ivories and the End of the Bronze Age

Feldman, Marian H.

doi:10.1179/007589109x12484491671130

Cited by 20 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…She suggests that the burial of precious items may have served as a gift to a deity or deities or as an act to purify the land. Thus, the ivory bowl deposited under the wall at Tell es-Safi/Gath may have been performing the same ritual function as suggested by Feldman (2009) for the Megiddo ivories, albeit on a smaller scale. Its value may have advertised the status of the giver at a time when rival factions were competing for prestige or status, as demonstrated by Mesopotamian and Egyptian kings who sometimes reburied older foundation deposits with their own (Hunt 2006, 197).…”

Section: The Biography Of the Tell Es-safi Bowlmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…Two of the authors have argued elsewhere (Hitchcock and Maeir 2014) that some of the Sea Peoples might be understood as pirate tribes who plundered the great centres of the Bronze Age before settling in various parts of the Mediterranean. Following this idea, we raise the possibility that the Tell es-Safi/Gath ivory bowl may have been part of the spoils of such activities, perhaps similar to the ivories that were strewn across a courtyard and scattered about the palace at Ugarit following its looting in c. 1185 BCE (Feldman 2009, with further references).…”

Section: An Early Iron Age Ivory Bowl 429mentioning

confidence: 93%

“…55; reproduced by permission of the Israel Exploration Society). 422 A. M. Maeir et al 25;Herrmann and Millard 2003, 394-5), as a tomb (Hachmann 1996, 225-7), or as a hoard of objects that were intentionally broken and covered with an animal skeleton as part of a termination ritual (Feldman 2009). The context of the deposition of these objects relates to the period of turmoil that marks the Bronze to Iron Age transition, and it has been suggested that one of the functions of ritual deposits within buildings was to help the inhabitants cope with periods of stress (Herva 2005, 223).…”

Section: Consumption Circulation and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is clear that the various objects in the Megiddo hoard can be dated to different phases of the Late Bronze Age (fourteenth to twelfth century BCE) (e.g. Feldman 2009, 190), even if it is most likely that they were all collected together during the twelfth century BCE (Fischer 2007;Feldman 2009). Since we are currently unaware of any exact parallels to the ivory bowls from well-dated earlier contexts, if a late twelfthcentury BCE dating for the Megiddo bowls, and hence for the original production date of the Tell es-Safi/Gath ivory bowl, is preferred, its presence in an early eleventh century BCE Philistine context may render it an heirloom.…”

Section: Consumption Circulation and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 They are mentioned very briefly by Barnett (1982, 26, n. 82), but are omitted in most descriptions of the finds from the hoard (e.g. Decamps de Mertzenfeld 1954;Kantor 1956;Fischer 2007;Feldman 2009;Novacek 2011). …”

Section: An Early Iron Age Ivory Bowl 429mentioning

confidence: 99%

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An ivory bowl from Early Iron Age Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel): manufacture, meaning and memory

et al. 2015

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In 2013, an ivory bowl was discovered in a chalky matrix in the Early Iron Age (Philistine) levels in Area A at Tell es-Safi/Gath. Conservation revealed it to be a shallow vessel with a single lug handle, decorated in the interior and on the base with an incised twelve-petal lotus-rosette surrounded by five concentric circles. Applying an object biography approach, we investigate the history and far-flung socio-cultural connections of the Tell es-Safi/Gath bowl, which is unique within Philistia. Specific reference is made to parallels in the ivory hoard from the Late Bronze/Iron Age transition (c. late twelfth century/early eleventh century BCE) palace at Megiddo, Stratum VIIA. It is proposed that the Tell es-Safi/Gath bowl was one of a set manufactured somewhere in Canaan. The vessel became separated from the set, ending up as a foundation offering at this Philistine site.

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Section: The Biography Of the Tell Es-safi Bowlmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: An Early Iron Age Ivory Bowl 429mentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Consumption Circulation and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Consumption Circulation and Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: An Early Iron Age Ivory Bowl 429mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

An ivory bowl from Early Iron Age Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel): manufacture, meaning and memory

et al. 2015

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Egyptian Connections with the Larger World

Ataç

2014

A Companion to Ancient Egyptian Art

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The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant

Greenberg¹

2019

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The fundamental instability of urban or urbanizing forms of settlement in the first half of the third millennium BCE, described in Chapter 3, set the stage for an extended period of regional, non-urban settlement trajectories that covers the entire second half of the third millennium BCE. This long process of urban retreat, which began as early as the first quarter of the third millennium in some regions, may no longer qualify for the sobriquet of collapse, but is nonetheless post-urban. That is, rather than representing a survival of a resilient, primeval village substratum to which urban society reverts at the end of EB III (as proposed by some of those who refuse urban status to any Levantine sites), it should be viewed as a response to the stresses and excesses of the urbanizing trends that had affected large parts of the Levant, and as a risk-minimizing strategy that expanded the resource base for a more dispersed population. A measure of the degree to which IBA settlement recognized previous centers is the peculiar choreography of settlement and burial near and within previously urban sites that will be detailed below. These testify to a persistence of memory and to the existence of a carefully constructed genealogy that underlies territorial claims and affinities of the inhabitants of the non-urban settlements. Similarly, persistent elements of material culture and technological style point to strong links between the urban and post-urban populations in most parts of the Levant.The prolonged urban exodus of EB III should therefore be understood as a redeployment that opened new avenues of opportunity while breaking down the cultural barriers that characterized the ossified landscape of fortified towns. As will be seen, these new opportunities did not lead to the reemergence of centralized polities or to aggregations of wealth. Rather, for the next four centuries, the southern Levant appears to have settled into a "comfort zone," from which it would be jolted only at the start of the second millennium BCEa small-scale, politically segmented, territorially flexible village society.

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Hoarded Treasures: The Megiddo Ivories and the End of the Bronze Age

Cited by 20 publications

References 17 publications

An ivory bowl from Early Iron Age Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel): manufacture, meaning and memory

An ivory bowl from Early Iron Age Tell es-Safi/Gath (Israel): manufacture, meaning and memory

Egyptian Connections with the Larger World

The Archaeology of the Bronze Age Levant

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