Biblical Archaeology Review

Cuneiform denotes writing systems which use wedge-shaped signs made by pressing a stylus into soft clay tablets.

The Hebrew word here translated “scribe” is sopher, the first time it appears in the Bible. Some scholars have deleted it from their reconstruction of the original poem, others have translated it “official.”

The text of the Gezer Calendar is as follows: (as translated by W. F. Albright Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ANET), p. 320)

His two months are (olive) harvest,
His two months are planting (grain),
His two months are late planting;
His month is hoeing up of flax,
His month is harvest of barley,
His month is harvest and feasting;
His two months are vine-tending,
His month is summer fruit.

Three occupational strata were found at Izbet Sartah. The earliest, Stratum III, dates from the 12th century. Stratum II from later in the 12th century revealed the most important occupation. The Stratum II village was abandoned after the battle of Aphek-Ebenezer in about 1050 B.C. The site was unoccupied until about 1000 B.C. when it was very briefly resettled, as revealed in Stratum I. Then Izbet Sartah was abandoned forever.

Proto-Canaanite is the name scholars give to the oldest known alphabet. Presumably many Semitic languages, including Hebrew, were written in this alphabet.

A casemate wall is formed by two parallel walls connected at intervals by partition walls thus creating a line of compartment-like rooms.

This article is based partly on a translation from the Hebrew by Aryeh Finklestein.

Perhaps for symbolic reasons, the number of stairs leading to such ritual baths is typically seven.

This designation itself raises problems. We know there were many more than four villages in Upper Galilee in this period. The four villages referred to were apparently the largest—the only ones more than tiny hamlets. Roman documents do not identify the settlements to which the provincial title refers and modern scholarship has not yet successfully identified them with certainty. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to determine the size of an ancient site.