A Bulla of ʾӐdōnîyāhû, the One Who Is Over the House, from beneath Robinson’s Arch in Jerusalem

Abstract

The present paper publishes a new, nearly complete bulla excavated in 2013 beneath Robinson’s Arch in Jerusalem. It was first identified in 2019 during sifting of soil excavated from a Roman-era drainage channel. The bulla belonged to a Judahite government official, ‘the One Who Is Over the House’. The excavation of this bulla validates the authenticity of several other bulla bearing the same legend and clarifies both epigraphic and biblical attestations of the title ‘the One Who Is Over the House’.

Keywords:

• Adoniyahu
• the One Who Is Over the House
• הבית על אשר
• Jerusalem bulla

Notes

1 The excavation of the central drainage channel near Robinson’s Arch was conducted on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority in 2013, directed by Eli Shukron (Licence No. A-6827/2013). Assistance was provided by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Ir David Foundation (ELAD). The remains were measured and drawn by V. Essman and Y. Shmidov; photography was by V. Naikhin and C. Amit. A summary of recent excavations in this and nearby areas is provided by Geva (2019: 16–22).

2 The discovery received attention, and photographs were published in the media when the bulla was first deciphered. An article titled ‘Tiny First Temple Seal Impression Found with Name of Bible-Era Royal Steward’, by A. Borschel-Dan, appeared in the English-language daily The Times of Israel on September 9, 2019, and on September 11 of that year, the Ha ʾaretz daily published an article by M. Oster titled ‘2,600-year-old Seal Bearing Hebrew Name Found at Western Wall in Jerusalem’.

3 D.S. Vanderhooft studied the bulla between March 1 and 5, 2020 at Tel Aviv University. To check and confirm observations made via direct study, we have used photographs generously provided by C. Amit (Israel Antiquities Authority).

4 Recent publications of other excavated bullae from Jerusalem continue to support the city’s status as a centre of administrative and other literary activity. See Reich and Shukron 2009; Gadot, Goren and Lipschits 2013; Mazar and Livyatan Ben-Arie 2015; 2018; Mendel-Geberovich, Chalaf and Uziel 2020. More recent finds supplement the earlier collections made by Avigad and Sass 1997; Shoham 2000; Keel 2017: 277–513.

5 The ‘waffling’ of the papyrus fibres is a regular part of the technology for producing writing surfaces from this plant (Sukenik and Shamir 2018).

6 As noted by Avigad (1986: 18–19), the back of several related bullae are slightly convex, rather than concave, which indicates that the documents they sealed were not rolled as a tube, but folded.

7 Sealing practices are discussed in Avigad and Sass (1997: 31–38) and Brandl (2000: esp. 58–63). More recent studies of the cord and textile impressions on the reverse of bullae include Arie, Goren and Samet (2011) and Sukenik and Shamir (2018). A superb study of a slightly later bulla with attention to these practices is Brandl et al. (2019: esp. 215–220).

8 These bullae are two of an unprovenanced archive of 255 items that began to surface, in small groups, ‘at the shop of a Jerusalem antiquities dealer’ in October 1975 (Avigad 1986: 12). Nearly 200 of the bullae were purchased by Yoav Sasson for his private collection; Reuben Hecht purchased 49 of the remaining items and gifted them to the Israel Museum. The fate of several bullae that had been studied and photographed by Avigad while they were on the antiquities market is unknown. Avigad (1986) published the entirety of the archive, including both the Sasson and Israel Museum (Hecht) collections. All are republished in Avigad and Sass 1997: 167–241; siglum ‘A’, throughout. Most subsequent work on these bullae has involved close study of one or a few individual epigraphs, often focusing on the question of authenticity (e.g., Goren and Arie 2014). Although we show below that the Robinson’s Arch Adoniyahu bulla confirms the authenticity of the two ‘burnt archive’ Adoniyahu bullae (Avigad and Sass 1997: 404A, 404B), this does not necessarily confirm the authenticity of other bullae in the archive, since antiquities lots can include a mix of authentic and inauthentic material.

9 Originally published by Avigad 1986: 21, No. 1; later also Röllig 2003: 121, No. 1.16.

10 On Iron Age Hebrew and related seal scripts, see Herr 1978, with updated summary in Herr 2014. Avigad and Sass (1997: 43–45) include only very brief comments. The Iron Age Hebrew palaeography of Renz (1995a) is also relevant.

11 This transliteration of the name follows Society of Biblical Literature style, which attempts to represent Masoretic Hebrew orthography and phonology. An approximate Iron Age Hebrew phonological realisation of the name would be ʾadōnīyahū; in phonological terms, this reconstruction assumes, among other things, the preservation of phonemic vowel length (i.e., ō, not o), non-differentiation of the a vowels of which Masoretic patakh and qamets are conditioned reflexes (i.e., -yahū, not -yāhū or -yəhu), and retention of short vowels in open unaccented syllables (i.e., ʾa-, not ʾă-). Outlines of the data suggesting these and other reconstructions may be found in Bauer and Leander (1922: 231–242), or, more accessibly, Reymond (2018: 65–72, 77–79, 83–90).

12 There are three biblical individuals named Adoniyahu and/or Adoniyah: David’s son (esp. 1 Kings 1–2) and officials in Neh 10:17 and 2 Chron 17:8; neither of the latter have patronyms, and none can be identified with any Adoniyahu individuals known from epigraphic sources. Adoniyahu and its minor phonological variants (אדניו ,אדניה) occur in several epigraphic sources; the list in Renz (1995b: 57) is representative.

13 Lachish field No. 4040, formerly University College London Institute of Archaeology, but now lost (see below references). First published in Hooke 1935 with Pl. 11; later catalogued in Avigad and Sass 1997: 172 (No. 405) and Röllig 2003: 185 (No. 3.20), for example. For studies that focus on connecting this seal with biblical figures named Gedaliah, see n. 16 below.

14 The most complete discussion of the bulla’s palaeography is by Herr (1978: 91), who notes that the graphemes have expected 7th-century BCE forms but that the yod of hbyt has a very long upper horizontal and might therefore indicate a relatively late date ‘within the M[iddle] 7th c.’. However, contra, e.g., Mykytiuk’s earlier opinion (2004: 235), this palaeographic dating is to be taken as a general likelihood and not a fixed range; this is noted in Mykytiuk’s later work (2009: 103–104), following Lipschits 2005: 86, n. 186.

15 Scholars have recently documented other occurrences, both biblical (four other individuals) and epigraphic (three provenanced inscriptions from Arad and Ḥorvat ʿUza), of Gedaliah (Vanderhooft, Richey and Lipschits 2019: 56, n. 5). To those occurrences one should add the Gedaliah son of Pashḥur bulla (the same individual as named in Jer 38:1) discovered in the City of David Area G excavations; see Mazar and Livyatan Ben-Arie 2015: 307–308, No. B4.

16 Identification of this seal as that of Gedaliah son of Ahikam begins with the first edition (Hooke 1935: 196) and can be found briefly stated in numerous general studies (e.g., Layton 1990b: 637; Lipschits 2005: 86–87 [with caution]). Prior to the new bulla discovery (see above, n. 15), van der Veen (2003; 2007) supported the attribution of all known Gedaliah bullae to Gedaliah son of Ahikam; he now assigns all of these bullae to Gedaliah son of Pashḥur (van der Veen 2012).

17 These are: 1) Deutsch and Heltzer 1999: 60–62, No. 147, formerly Joseph Chaim Kaufman collection and later in the Moussaieff collection (Deutsch 2003: 61–63, No. 36); and 2) Deutsch and Heltzer 1999: 70–71, No. 6, in the Moussaieff collection.

18 IMJ 76.22.2300; editions in Avigad (1986: 22–23, No. 3); Avigad and Sass (1997: 172, No.

406 ); and Röllig (2003: 320–321, No. 14.55).

19 BM 125205. The text was discovered, removed and first published by Clermont-Ganneau (1899: I.304–313), who already hesitantly deciphered the title הבית על אשר (ibid.: I.313 n. *; similarly, Diringer 1934: 105–110, esp. 108). The earliest full decipherment is Avigad 1953. The most detailed subsequent studies with bibliography are Donner and Röllig (1968: 189, No. 191B), Renz and Röllig (1995: 261–265) and Dobbs-Allsopp et al. (2005: 507–510).

20 The most notable features include the inscriptions themselves and the presence of multiple chambers, but only two resting places (contra Avigad [1953: 151] and others, there is no evidence that this tomb’s roof formerly supported a pyramid monolith). The tomb’s architecture has been studied by Ussishkin (1986: 173–184; earlier, brief summary in Ussishkin 1970: 40–42), Weippert (1988: 632–634) and Hays (2011: 235–240). Both Hays (ibid.) and Suriano (2018: 108–112) support the attribution of the Silwan royal steward tomb to Shebna.

21 The names are certainly from the same root but are of uncertain etymology. Both are reasonably common in biblical (summary in Brown, Driver and Briggs 1907: 987) and epigraphic texts (see below). Regarding the etymology, Honeyman (1944) suggests that Hebrew ן"ׁשב, attested only in personal names, is cognate with Arabic ṯabana ‘carry before one in the fold of one’s garment’ (Lane 1863–93: 331), so that ָיהּו ְנ ׁשַב would mean ‘Yahweh has borne on his bosom’. Honeyman’s etymology seems at least as plausible as that according to which ָנא ׁשְב is a two-element PN, the first being Qal imperative m.s. ב"ׁשו ‘return’ and the second being the direct-address particle נָא (cf., e.g., Avigad and Sass 1997: 533–534; Mendel-Geberovich and Golub 2019: 53). Although this has gone unnoted in recent work, this latter etymology requires the Masoretic vocalisation to be erroneous (see, already, Albright apud Torrey 1940: 28–29, n. 1).

22 In what follows, we do not address the use of בית על (in various construct and pronominal forms) in the Joseph narratives (Gen 39:4; 41:40; 43:19), because none of these occurrences clearly involves a title and because these narratives are even more transparently literary projections than those in Kings and Isaiah; discussion is available in Fox 2000: esp. 81–82, 91–93.

23 In 1 Kgs 4:6, the relative complementiser is absent and Ahishar is called, simply, הבית על; several other officials similarly lack the relative particle in the Solomonic enumeration of officials (Fox 2000: 81, n. 1). As with many other questions of Solomonic historicity, it cannot be determined from this text whether the office existed in the 10th century BCE or was simply attributed to that period by later writers (cf. Mettinger 1971: 7; Würthwein 1977: 39–41).

24 The Göttingen Septuaginta edition of 3–4 Reigns (Vols. IV,1–2) is in preparation by Julio Trebolle Barrera and Pablo A. Torijano; fortunately, the latter has published an edition of and commentary on precisely the texts in question here: Torijano 2013. In what follows, we rely on that edition for manuscript readings.

25 Several manuscripts have different but, for the most part, phonologically and/or orthographically similar names, e.g., Vaticanus (B) αχϵιην and the more common αχισαρ ην (Torijano 2013: 64).

26 These variant readings, likely those of the Old Greek, are discussed in Torijano (2013: 69).

27 Lexical registers include Brown, Driver and Briggs 1907: 836; Koehler, Baumgartner and Stamm 1994–2000: 619; and Donner 2013: 719, the latter two with cognates noted. Up-to-date discussions of key and lock technology in the Levant and the broader ancient Middle East include Scurlock 1988; Potts 1990; Stager 2003; Fuchs 2006–2008; and Hausleiter 2006–2008.

28 The ethnographically reconstructed wooden bar key is central to Stager’s (2003: 242*) interpretation of Isa 22:22; see already Dalman 1942: 71; and Potts 1990. Greek archaeological and visual artistic evidence for similar bar keys has recently been summarised by Karatas 2019.

29 For the present context, we set aside the question of whether the office had a source or parallel in Mesopotamian or Egyptian models, as has been argued frequently (summary in Fox 2000: 90–95). The most linguistically and geographically proximate possible parallel is a Ugaritic prepositional phrase that occurs at the beginning of an economic text, RS 31.080 (KTU^1–3 4.755): ksp . d. šlm / yrmn . ʿl . bt ‘Silver which YRMN (… ?) paid (… ?)’. The parenthetical ellipses here represent two options for syntactic analysis of ʿl bt: either as 1) a prepositional phrase adnominal to the personal name YRMN, thus that individual’s title ‘over the house’, or as 2) a prepositional phrase adverbial to the verb šlm (D-stem), ‘which (YRMN) paid “upon the house”’ (various senses proposed). No other Ugaritic texts include adverbial uses of ʿl with šlm D (cf. a possible Hebrew parallel in Joel 4:4), but the content of this text—a list of individuals receiving payment—and a similar phrase in RS 17.297 (= KTU^1–3 4.290) ảrbʿm .ksp .ʿl .qrt ‘forty silver upon the house’ suggest that in such phrases the prepositional complement of ʿl denotes the institutional entity assuming the debt (compare modern English ‘on the house’). Similar interpretations may be found in Loretz (1982: esp. 124), Layton (1990b: 648, n. 71), McGeough (2011: 576 with n. 197), Tropper (2012: 560), and Vita (2015: 78). The adnominal titular interpretation is defended in detail only by Good (1979; 1983), who does not attend to the closest parallel in RS 17.297 (= KTU^1–3 4.290) noted above.