35 The Early Bronze Age Southern Levant: The Ideology of an Aniconic Reformation
Abstract
This chapter contrasts the remarkable scarcity of visual imagery during the Early Bronze Age of the southern Levant with the wealth of such imagery in the preceding period. It is proposed that this dramatic change was the result of deliberate social action, which testifies to a large-scale ideological reformation – from iconism to aniconism. It is further suggested that this reformation had long-term repercussions in the region.
Introduction
After more than 120 years of exposing southern Levantine Early Bronze Age (EBA) cultures through scientific archaeological excavations, it is now undeniably clear that artistic representations are very scarce throughout its 1700-year duration (3700–2000 BC). This situation is drastically different from the state of affairs in the region before and after the EBA, as well as during that period in adjacent areas. The goal of this study is to propose an explanation for this phenomenon, to inquire when and how it began and to consider any later repercussions.
Before attempting an explanation, it is worth noting that visual imagery encountered in archaeological excavations is generally labeled as ‘art,’ whether by archaeologists or art historians. This stems from the modern allocation of visual imageries to the realm of the aesthetic. Nevertheless, it is obvious that these representations convey different messages within the realms of religion, ideology, power relations, and more (Ross 2005: 327). For the sake of keeping up with the disciplinary jargon, however, I follow the conventional discourse and use the term ‘art’ for dealing with the main focus of this chapter – the visual imagery of the late fifth to third millennia BC.
Art during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages
The southern Levantine Chalcolithic period (ca. 4500–3700 BC) provides an extreme wealth of visual imagery (Figure 35.1). These artistic manifestations include a very rich and creative ceramic repertoire (e.g., Commenge-Pellerin 1987; 1990; Garfinkel 1999; Commenge et al. 2006a; 2006b); sculpture in clay (e.g., Commenge et al. 2006a) and stone (e.g., Epstein 1988); ivory carving and manufacture of figurines (e.g., Perrot 1959); production of highly delicate perforated flint disks (e.g., Noy 1998); fine ground-stone objects, including elaborate pedestaled fenestrated bowls (e.g., Rowan and Golden 2009: 39–41); violin-shaped figurines carved of different types of stones (Alon and Levy 1989); sophisticated copper maceheads, scepters, standards, vessels, and crowns (e.g., Bar-Adon 1971; Tadmor 1989; Tadmor et al. 1995); complex wall drawings (e.g., Mallon et al. 1934; Cameron 1981); and elaborately shaped and painted ceramic ossuaries (e.g., Perrot and Ladiray 1980; Gal et al. 1996; 1997; 1999). As stated above, although often described as ‘ancient art,’ these objects should be better understood as ‘symbolically charged artefacts … [that] … suggest an overarching, region-wide cosmology or religious framework’ (Rowan and Ilan 2007: 249).
Figure 35.1. Selected ‘art’ objects from the Southern Levant during the Chalcolithic (A–L) and Early Bronze Age (M–P): Chalcolithic – A. Ossuary, Peqi’in (after Gal et al. 1999; fig. 5); B. Ossuary, Peqi’in (after Gal et al. 1999: fig. 1); C. Clay statue, Gilat (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); D. Clay statue, Gilat (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); E. Ivory figurine, Beer-Sheva (after http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Early History – Archaeology/Beer Sheva – Prehistoric Dwelling Sites); F. Copper crown, Nahal Mishmar (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); G. Copper scepter, Nahal Mishmar (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); H. Copper scepter, Nahal Mishmar (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); I. Detail of a wall drawing, Ghassul, Jordan (after Mallon et al. 1934); J. House-idol, Golan (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); K. Violin-shaped figurine, Gilat (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); L. Basalt chalice (after http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/); Early Bronze Age – M. Grafitto from Arad (after Beck 1995, fig. 8); N. Grafitto from Megiddo (after Loud 1948, fig. 16); O. Ivory bull head, Bet-Yerah (after Beck, 1995, fig. 14); P. Clay donkey figurine, Azor (after http://www.antiquities.org.il/t/Item_en.aspx?indicator=23&CurrentPageKey=4).
The situation in the EBA is drastically different. The repertoire of three-dimensional figurative art from the entire EBA includes a few small ivory bulls’ heads (Milevski 2011: 159–60); 20–30 miniature donkey figurines (Milevski 2011: 183–88); a few clay bed-models (Beck 1995: 27–29); and a handful of crudely shaped human figurines from the Bab ed-Dhra cemetery (Schaub and Rast 1989: 274–89).
Two-dimensional art is comprised of graffiti that are probably Egyptian in origin in Megiddo (Loud 1948: 61, pls 271–82); scratching on a cave wall at Gezer (Macalister 1912, pls XLVI–XLVIII); a very schematic graffito on a stone from Arad (Beck 1995: 13); a decorated silver cup probably imported from Syro-Mesopotamia (Yeivin 1971); and some incised bone-tubes (Beck 1995: 27–29). To these should be added a collection of between 100 and 200 seal impressions on pottery, and approximately 10–20 seals (Beck 1995: 14–21; Lapp 1995). This whole corpus, if assembled, might be presented in a single medium-sized museum showroom.
When compared with the same region in the Chalcolithic, whose duration was less than half that of the EBA, and for which such a showroom might not be enough even for presenting art objects of single sites such as Nahal Mishmar(Bar-Adon 1971), Peqi’in cave (Gal et al. 1996; 1997; 1999), or Gilat (Levy 2006), the contrast is striking, and has been noted before. While investigating EBA urbanization, Kempinski (1978: 32) noted: ‘Our [i.e., southern Levantine EBA] society probably included an intellectual stratum, sufficient to enable construction of the various monumental buildings which have so far been brought to light. Only very few objects of art have been discovered.’ Twelve years later, Mazar (1990:136) commented: ‘The number and quality of art objects from Early Bronze Palestine is surprisingly low compared to their number and quality in the Chalcolithic period. The few known items, however, have a special value, as most of them represent ties with various cultural centers.’
Pirhiya Beck (1995: 32; original in Hebrew, my translation) sharpened these observations a few years later, focusing on the question of artistic continuity between the two periods:
…it seems that the claim about a continuation in religious symbolism from the Chalcolithic to the EBA should be re-examined … the real significant matter is the difference within the major themes … The ‘material-poverty’ of the EBA is thought provoking due to the role of art in a period when the city and the state crystallized in the cultural centers of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and due to its later role at Ebla in Syria. These cultures stood out in their rich and elaborate symbolic-visual assemblage which was intended for consolidating the population around the new organizational institutions created at that time. The Ghassulian culture [i.e., Chalcolithic] in various regions throughout the country excelled as well in a diverse symbolic assemblage that included burial-symbolism, but these had vanished while the Chalcolithic sites were deserted. How, then, can we see a cultural continuity between these two periods?
As these researchers have stated and restated, the rarity of artistic representations in the EBA is indeed astonishing – both in relation to the preceding period and in light of the emerging urbanization. On the latter aspect, it should be noted that ever since Childe’s (1950) The Urban Revolution, one of the affinities attributed to urbanization is increased artistic expression (Childe 1950: 15; Collon 1995: 13–14). However, as just described, although becoming urban (Kempinski 1978; Greenberg 2002), EBA southern Levantine society did not produce figures, icons, statues, or drawings in quantities known in the region prior to or after this period, or as was common in the neighboring areas – Egypt and Syro-Mesopotamia (Robins 2008; Collon 1995). Thus, unlike most research in the realm of ancient art that describes what is present in certain times and contexts, this study focuses on the absent and the silenced.
The Transformation
The contrast between the Chalcolithic and the EBA is also striking because of its abrupt occurrence. The great representational wealth of the Chalcolithic continued up to the period’s very end, e.g., in the ‘Cave of the Treasure’ or the Golan sites (Carmi et al. 1995), while the EBA ‘artistic void’ began at its immediate onset, in the early EB 1a (Yekutieli 2001). It must be added here that on the basis of radiocarbon dating, the ‘Cave of the Treasure’ was first understood as being very late within the Chalcolithic sequence (Gilead 1994: 10–11). A newer analysis suggested that the treasure and its wrapping are actually much older (Aardsma 2001; Gilead 2011). Following further discussion, however, it seems that the actual date of the hoard’s deposition is in fact problematic, as different parts of the same object provided contradictory radiocarbon readings (Davidovich 2008: 131–34). Nevertheless, since the later (post-1990) radiocarbon dates might be assumed to be more reliable than the older dates, then the latest result that gave a 2σ calibrated date of 3950–3650 Cal BC (RT-1407; Carmi and Segal 1992: 131) might serve as a terminus post quem. This hints that the actual deposition of the hoard, although still within the Chalcolithic ‘sphere,’ did not occur before the beginning of the fourth millennium BC, thus placing it in direct proximity to the Chalcolithic–EBA transition.
The change between these two periods is not only associated with the disappearance of visual arts, but is manifest as well in the abandonment of settlements and the formation of a smaller number of new ones, either in the same places or at other locations (Rowan and Golden 2009: 69–70). Concurrent with the changes, however, there is also a significant continuity between the periods, such as in various concepts and types of material culture (Braun 1989; Yekutieli 2000; 2001; Golani and Segal 2002). Thus, the idea that a totally different ethnos had arrived and destroyed the former one – the common explanatory model of half a century ago (e.g., Kenyon 1960: 84–85) – is untenable. Accordingly, during recent decades the transition between the periods has often been described as the ‘collapse’ of the Chalcolithic system and the emergence of a new order within a more or less similar indigenous context (detailed references in Levy 1995: 241–43; Rowan and Golden 2009: 69–71).
Various suggestions have been suggested to explain this ‘collapse,’ such as epidemics (Elliott 1978), climate change (Joffe 1993; Levy 1995: 241), warfare (Levy 1995: 243), weakening of the existing sociopolitical organization (Joffe 1993: 36–37; Levy 1995: 241; Bourke 2001:152), and commercialization (Joffe 1993: 37; Levy 1995: 242). No decisive evidence for any of these has ever been demonstrated.
Addressing specifically the decrease in the realm of visual imagery, Joffe (1993: 36–37) suggested that it occurred as a result of the thinning of the Chalcolithic sociopolitical and economic structures to such a degree that its elite positions were undermined together with their associated attributes. Together with Dessel and Hallote (Joffe et al. 2001: 16–17), he had also suggested that: ‘Southern Levantine Chalcolithic élites were simply too small, poorly organized, and hierarchically varied to evolve past the village level,’ and that: ‘Possessing some basic symbols, Chalcolithic élites could not apply them in ways that generated sufficient social inequality to either ensure their own continued existence or to make the jump to urbanism. These ancient symbols became impediments to breaking out of religio-social sources of power, rather than tools for reformulating socio-economic power.’ Building upon these ideas, Philip (2003: 123) further proposed that: ‘…the symbolic items characteristic of the Chalcolithic may have disappeared simply because they have become irrelevant as power was no longer invested in control of special purpose artefacts but in the ability to mobilize land and people to produce desirable staple products.’
Acknowledging the theoretical contribution of these interpretations, the next part of this study changes course to focus on an unexplored aspect of the differences between the Chalcolithic and the EBA: the decline in artisanal production of aesthetic representations. This in turn leads to a different interpretation of the cultural transformation and its repercussions.
Experiencing the Change
Reflecting upon the differences between the Chalcolithic and the EBA, straightforward observation might note the near absence of visual imagery from the latter in contrast to its intensity in the former. A more explanatory approach would go beyond observation and suggest that since these visual images represent ideas, beliefs, power, and ideology, their disappearance indicates a change in those realms. Such a change, however, might be conceptualized differently from a phenomenological perspective. As the psychologist Fred Wertz (2005: 175) remarked: ‘Phenomenology is a low-hovering, in-dwelling, meditative philosophy that glories in the concreteness of person–world relations and accords lived experience, with all its indeterminacy and ambiguity, primacy over the known.’
In our case, a phenomenological approach seeks to discern how we can imagine the difference between being in the Chalcolithic and in the EBA worlds. It questions what this difference would account for in everyday life; what would be dissimilar in everyday sounds, smells, and atmosphere; what would be different in conversations at home and in the marketplace, and which new discourse would echo at various community encounters. Approaching the situation from such a viewpoint highlights matters other than those commonly discussed. In the framework of this study, I use but a single topic to portray this point – the artisanal aspect of iconographic production.
The unique artistic richness of the Chalcolithic period was produced in artisanal workshops. Since Chalcolithic society was not so large, and since the production of its numerous ‘art’ objects consumed a great deal of energy, it may be assumed that a significant proportion of the community dealt with crafts at one level or another. This deep involvement in crafts means that besides the extensive time and energy invested in work, significant mental resources were also devoted to teaching and training new generations of artisans (thus maintaining cultural transmission), passing the secrets of their art to selected youth, discussing matters of quality, skill, pride, and the social values and identities associated with craftsmanship – such as the honor of the master, the respect due to him from his apprentices, and the ways of dealing with the rich world of materials, objects, tools, and techniques (Herzfeld 2004; Stark et al. 2008).
This extensive artisanal world witnessed an abrupt transformation at the onset of the EBA. The reality of the new ‘artless’ world meant that immense practical knowledge was lost; chains of transmission terminated; know-how, methods, and ideas became useless; and a whole set of feelings, senses, smells, and sounds was lost.
Simultaneously, because a large part of craft production was discarded, at the community level, much time and energy became available. Judging from the visible archaeological finds, EBA artisans continued manufacturing utilitarian tools and vessels. Objects beyond the worldly and the practical, however, had vanished. We may speculate that their disappearance released physical energies and changed the understanding of spiritual materiality. Since people are inherently intelligent, the mental and physical skills freed from producing and revering the various icons were directed elsewhere. Work was aimed at those directly life-sustaining goals such as agriculture, trade, storage, and architecture, while spirituality stressed the abstraction of the supernatural.
Experiencing the difference between the periods in such a phenomenological light gives it additional substance: the transformation of society’s mentalité is more clearly distinguished and felt. Another observation must be added. This ideological change was not only abrupt but long lasting as well. The Chalcolithic visual expressions vanished within the space of one century, and they remained absent for at least the next 1700 years. Since the EBA population could not have been ignorant of the idea of visual expressions – the earliest EBA communities knew of it from close connections with their Chalcolithic heritage, and the later EBA people knew of it from their neighbors – the inevitable conclusion is that EBA society deliberately refrained from iconographic representations. Society’s mind-set had been deliberately reformed.
The transformation between these two mind-sets was set in motion somewhere for reasons unknown. I would suggest that its realization occurred through deliberate social action that transferred spirituality from the visual-sensual to the abstract. The transformation was not only ideological, but also left a clear mark on everyday life, practices, and discourses. A multitude of previously indispensable crafts became unnecessary. As they vanished, the mental world bound up with them disappeared as well.
Iconoclasm
Ramon Sarró (2009: 1), an anthropologist working in rural Upper Guinea, wrote about an event that prompted his research:
In 1993 I was walking with my friend Lamin around his native village in Guinea when he pointed towards a cassava field and said: ‘And this is where our sacred wood used to be.’ ‘Used to be?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘it was here that we used to do the initiations into manhood, but Asekou, a Susu man, cleared it in 1957; he put an end to our custom.’ It was this comment that triggered my interest in the iconoclastic movement.
Lamin was a Baga man, a member of that Guinean group of coastal rice farmers who carved a series of famous objects that we in the West consider beautiful ‘African art’ … However, what to Western eyes were beautiful works of art were part and parcel of a ‘landscape of fear’ … in the perception of many young Baga men and women. These masks, sculptures and headdresses were in fact steeped in contradiction and an ambivalence common to iconic representations in Africa in general …: they could protect and heal, but they could also punish and kill … In my research on the iconoclastic movement, I made a conscious effort to listen to the voices of the iconoclasts …, as well as to the voices of those who suffered their violent attacks and who hid objects away from them.
These observations, almost as remote as possible in time and space from the fourth millennium BC Near East, and obviously connected with totally different sociopolitical contexts, are nevertheless revealing. They suggest a key for deciphering the disappearance of ‘these beautiful Chalcolithic works of art’ in the transition to the EBA and connecting this reality with specific archaeological finds. Two examples may serve to illustrate this point: the first is from the Judean Desert, and the second from the Golan.
Since the early 1970s, researchers have wondered if there was any contingent link between some Chalcolithic occurrences discovered in the Judean Desert – a deserted temple at En-Gedi, a hidden hoard of predominantly copper cult objects at the nearby ‘Cave of the Treasure,’ and the burial of 21 violently killed individuals in that cave and two adjacent ones (e.g., Bar-Adon 1971; Ussishkin 1971; Haas and Nathan 1973; Moorey 1988; Davidovich 2008). It was initially proposed that the hoard found in the Cave of the Treasure had been rescued from the En-Gedi temple by its priests who escaped either an attack by approaching enemies (Ussishkin 1971: 39; 1980: 40–41), or an epidemic (Elliott 1978: 50). Later, Goren (1995: 297) proposed that the Cave of the Treasure hoard had not originated in En-Gedi but in a different inter-regional Chalcolithic center; after further analyses, however, he again proposed a Judean Desert origin (Goren 2008). Concurrently, following a comprehensive regional analysis, Davidovich (2008: 150–60) reached the conclusion that both the Cave of the Treasure and its two adjacent caves in Nahal Mishmar were used as hideouts for refugees during the Chalcolithic period. But refugees from what?
Examining these rich data in light of Sarró’s insights and the observation regarding the abrupt cessation of ‘artisitic’ activity by the turn of the EBA allows some fine-tuning of this Judean Desert scenario. It would appear that this case, involving three caves and an abandoned cult-site in the same region, might well reflect an anti-iconic or even iconoclastic event that occurred toward the end of the Chalcolithic period. Earlier suggestions that the temple was emptied of its icons, either by arriving adversaries or by those fearing their arrival, seem entirely reasonable. Not only that, it appears that as part of an evolving ‘landscape of fear,’ the hoard hidden in the Cave of the Treasure was brought there by people who escaped similar persecution.
The best testimony for such harassment is found in the forensic report describing the burial of 21 individuals in the Cave of the Treasure and its adjacent caves (labeled Nahal Mishmar caves I, II, and III; Bar-Adon 1971). As Haas and Nathan (1973: 143; my translation from Hebrew) describe: ‘the examination of the physical injuries observed on these skeletons demonstrates that they suffered cruel blows before they arrived in the caves … the right hand of one individual was chopped off and the textile covering him was stained with blood … the cult objects’ hoard included remains of blood-stained wrappings.’ In addition, individual C4, a male of 22–25 years old, suffered a hard blow that cracked his skull (Haas and Nathan 1973: 153, fig. 14).
Injured and killed during the violent events connected with the hiding of the hoard, these refugees were buried in the caves by the same people who saved and hid the icons. Such a scenario is reminiscent of another observation related by Sarró (2009: 116) in Guinea: ‘At the time, it was strongly believed that elders kept their objects (masks, headdresses, sculptures) in the secluded woods. Maybe we should recall here a common Guinean saying …: “Children know how to run, but only elders know how to hide.”’ Thus, we may speculate that it is only due to the ingenuity of a few daring fugitives that the Chalcolithic iconographic hoard and some of its worshippers’ remains survived.
The Judean Desert case is not the only case of violent activity directly associated with the hiding or destruction of iconography at the end of the Chalcolithic period. Freikman (2011) recently noted that within Chalcolithic sites in the Golan, which according to some researchers represents one of the latest Chalcolithic cultures in the southern Levant (Carmi et al. 1995), the so-called ‘household-idols’ were intentionally damaged simultaneously with the destruction of their corresponding houses. The household-idols are large (ca. 50 cm high), cylinder-shaped figures with a shallow depression on top, made of basalt. Usually they display human faces with emphasized nose, eyes, ears, mouth, and sometimes a beard on the circumference of the block. After surveying the known corpus of basalt household idols found in the Golan and its near vicinity (n=51), Freikman (2011) reached the conclusion that about one-third of them were intentionally broken. By experimenting and studying breakage patterns, he deduced that the idols were violently smashed, with the most damage directed to their upper part – a cup-shaped depression used for libations – which is presumed to be the most important ritually. Though Freikman interpreted this iconoclastic activity as a part of a Chalcolithic ritual concerning house abandonment, I suggest that it was actually connected with the events representing the transition to the EBA.
The cases described above, coupled with the observations regarding the abrupt end of the Chalcolithic mentalité and the disappearance of visual expressions, suggest that this period ended with multiple iconoclastic events, followed by a major symbolic reformation. Although from a 6000-year distance the process seems to have been rather rapid, it is reasonable to assume that the transformation took some time. It is likely that the iconoclastic activity began in a certain place and time, and then spread at a specific rate until it encompassed all of the southern Levant. Consequently, it makes sense that while in some regions the reformation was already over, it was only reaching other areas. Hence, as already suggested many years ago (e.g., de Contenson 1961; Hennessy 1967: 9, 17, 18; Perrot 1968), and proposed again recently (Golani and Segal 2002: 150), it seems logical that, within the southern Levant, there was some temporal overlap between Chalcolithic and EBA cultures, until the total ascendancy of an EBA way of life.
Regarding the people themselves, it is likely that as the reformation expanded, the majority was converted, some were killed, and a few escaped from the region, as evidenced, for example, by the arrival of a southern Levantine population in Buto layer I in the Nile Delta, some time between the middle to latest Chalcolithic (Faltings 2002; Braun and van den Brink 2008: 644–45).
Concerning the concept of iconoclasm, which looms large at the Chalcolithic–EBA transition, it should be noted that history is saturated with such cases. One immediately thinks of much later episodes – the Byzantine (Brubaker and Haldon 2011) and Muslim iconoclasms (King 1985), or the Protestant Reformation (Philips 1973; Aston 1989; Michalski 1993; Wandel 1995). Iconoclasm, however, has very early roots (as discussed recently in the ‘Iconoclasm and Text Destruction in the Ancient Near East and Beyond’ conference, Chicago, April 2011; see now May 2012) as described here, these may be as old as the beginning of the fourth millennium BC. Noteworthy in this context, due to their extreme effects, iconoclastic events are often labeled historically as ‘revolutions,’ ‘reformations,’ or ‘reforms.’ Accordingly, and since the Chalcolithic to EBA transition witnessed a radical transformation that had repercussions of a long-ranging magnitude, I propose labeling this event ‘The EBA Aniconic Reformation.’
Aniconism: The EBA and Beyond
In writing about the exhibition ‘Iconoclash,’ Latour (2002) described several types of iconoclasts. Attempting to envisage the EBA iconoclasts’ outlook, his ‘Type A People’ come to mind (Latour 2002: 21):
…those who want to free the believers – those they deem to be believers – of their false attachments to idols of all sorts and shapes. Idols, the fragments of which are now lying on the ground, were nothing but obstacles in the path to higher virtues. They had to be destroyed … Living with them was unbearable … Type A is thus the pure form of ‘classical’ iconoclasm … Purification is their goal. The world, for A people, would be a much better place, much cleaner, much more enlightened, if only one could get rid of all mediations and if one could jump directly into contact with the original, the ideas, the true God.
The violent iconoclastic events that took place during the transition from the Chalcolithic to the EBA paved the way for a new aniconic discourse adopted by the people of southern Levantine society for centuries. A primary testimony for the persistence of the aniconic ideology is the absence of visual imagery throughout the EBA. In addition to this passive evidence, however, there is also an active indication for the endurance of the idea.
In the later part of EB 1b, Egypt had entered the southern Levant and established a colony in southwest Canaan (e.g., Brandl 1992; Yekutieli 2007). The Egyptians brought with them their material and cultural baggage that included, among other things, visual imagery such as serekhs (a rectangular enclosure representing the niched or gated façade of a palace) and other symbols incised on pottery (van den Brink and Braun 2002; Yekutieli 2002; Braun and van den Brink 2008), graffiti engraved on stones (Loud 1948: 61, pls 271–82), seal impressions (Schulman 1976; 1980; 1992), and some decorated slate palettes and figurines (Brandl 1992; Gophna 1993; Miroschedji et al. 2001). Most of these objects were discovered within the heartland of the Egyptian colony (Yekutieli 2008: fig. 2), except for the so-called Picture Pavement found in Megiddo, away from the colony, which thus represents a striking phenomenon. In my opinion, this latter case demonstrates the persistence of the aniconic ideology in the local Canaanite EBA sphere.
The Picture Pavement is a group of Egyptian style drawings incised on stone slabs that were placed within the makeup of a pavement leading into a local Canaanite temple in Megiddo (Yekutieli 2008). A few years ago, I studied these graffiti and suggested that they were Egyptian representations damaged and degraded by the local population as a symbolic resistance to the Egyptian colonizer (Yekutieli 2005; 2008). In light of the current understanding of the southern Levantine EBA culture as ideologically aniconic, however, I would propose adjusting my previous interpretation to suggest that the symbolic mutilation was not solely an act within the realm of the colonial encounter, but also in the ideological realm. The locals who were aniconic not only resisted the Egyptians as colonizers but also denounced their icons, which by their mere existence challenged aniconism. Hence, Egyptian visual representations incised on stones were collected to be defaced, scraped, and pounded, and finally to be placed as a road surface leading to the temple of the local abstract god. This was a symbolic declaration regarding the supremacy of one ideology over the other.
The opposition to the Egyptians and their iconography, I presume, continued through their retreat from southwest Canaan at the end of EB 1 (Yekutieli 2007). Interestingly, after they left, no memory of the Egyptian presence lingered into EB 2: they were silenced and erased from local memory (Yekutieli 2007: 74). Egyptian culture, which affected so many other cultures that tried to imitate its art (Higginbotham 2000; Faegersten 2003; Ashton 2004), was totally rejected in EBA southern Levantine culture. It seems that Egyptian iconography was forcefully scraped off the surface of aniconic Canaan, which preserved its non-representational philosophy throughout the EBA.
Aniconism, so it seems, continued somewhat into the following period, the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), as well. The beginning of MB 2a (2000–1800 BC; also labeled by others ‘MB 1’; Dever 1987: 149–50) is still relatively devoid of iconography, which arrived, or rather returned, later in the MBA. As Latour (2002: 17) noted, despite the fact that images attract so much hatred, and therefore are destroyed at certain times, they always return, no matter how strongly one wants to get rid of them. This ‘return’ occurred in the middle of the MBA, very much in connection with foreign input such as Egyptian scarabs (Ilan 1995: 310), Syrian figurines, Mesopotamian cylinder seals (Marcus 2003: 97), and Aegean-style frescoes (Niemeier and Niemeier 1998; Cline et al. 2011).
The return to iconism during the MBA has been noted in the archaeological literature, although not as such, but rather as a general observation about the differences between the EBA and the MBA. Philip (2003: 113–14), for example, compared temple offerings in these two periods and noted: ‘The large quantities of faunal remains recovered from the [EBA] Megiddo cult area (Wapnish and Hesse 2000; Hesse and Wapnish 2001) indicate that domestic livestock, sheep/goat in particular, were the preferred offering. When this is viewed in the light of the absence from the EBA cult installations at Megiddo and Khirbet ez-Zeraqon of the large quantities of portable artefacts so characteristic of MBA cult sites in the region (Philip 1988; Ilan 1992), it is clear that the two periods differed in the nature of the materials deemed appropriate as offerings for divinities.’
Conclusion
As a final and very cautious remark, it might be added that although iconism returned in the MBA, the aniconic belief did not necessarily disappear. Addressing a completely different matter, Finkelstein (1995) once suggested that, during the MBA, a part of the local society adopted a pastoral-nomad way of life. This part, in his view, returned to a sedentary mode at the very end of the LBA and became the core of what crystalized as the Israelite entity. Whether or not one regards these ideas as valid, it is remarkable that, at a certain stage, the early Israelites once again preached for aniconism in the same region that this ideology was first professed.
In this view, aniconism vanished and returned alternately as a counterbalance to iconic imagery. The cyclical disappearance and return of images, which Latour noticed, applies as well to its opposite phenomenon – aniconism. Accordingly the aniconic EBA Reformation might be seen not as an isolated event but as a first stage in the abstraction of faiths attested to in later Near Eastern religions. One of the tracks leading from the ideological reformation of the early fourth millennium BC had effectively shown the way to the formation of a long-lasting regional aniconic faith, which stringently declared millennia later: ‘You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth’ (Exodus 20:4).
Acknowledgments
I thank the editors for inviting me to take part in this volume, and Steve Rosen and Bernard Knapp for their most useful remarks on the manuscript.