The cover of the March/April 2008 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review bore a huge photograph of the seal that some scholars have linked with the biblical queen Jezebel. Most recently, Marjo Korpel has published both scholarly (Journal for Semitics 15/2 [2006]) and popular (BAR) articles arguing in favor of this identification. Ha’aretz also reported a brief form of Korpel’s argument in October 2007—in between the Journal of Semitics and BAR articles. As I noted in a previous post (one of several on the topic of this seal), Maarav editor Chris Rollston criticized Korpel’s argument in the wake of the Ha’aretz article, before the BAR article appeared. In response, BAR editor Hershel Shanks ran a long sidebar to Korpel’s BAR article, in which Shanks sharply criticized Rollston.

Chris’s response to Shanks’s sidebar appeared on Jim West’s web site, and I reproduced it here on Higgaion as well (and subsequently confirmed with Chris, a personal friend, that he had no objection to this). In the same post, I wrote a long analysis of some of the problems with Shanks’s criticisms; I invite you to re-read that analysis before continuing with the present post, if you want the full background to the comments I’m about to make.

Fast-forward to the May/June issue of BAR. The “Debates” section of the BAR web site includes Chris’s response to Shanks’s sidebar—the same response that I quoted in full in my February 21 post. (Referring to all these different posts and articles starts to get a little confusing.) Shanks himself responds in the May/June “Queries & Comments” section of BAR by quoting parts of Chris’s online letter, and then comments as follows:

Professor Rollston twice charges me with “condescension.” In the matter of condescension, however, he takes a backseat to no one. Indeed, it was his condescension—not to me, but to Professor Marjo Korpel, a distinguished academic at the University of Utrecht who wrote our article on Jezebel’s seal—that occasioned my BAR discussion in which Professor Rollston finds me condescending.

Professor Rollston did not simply criticize Professor Korpel; he condescendingly charged her with an absolutely baseless argument, bordering on kookiness. In his own words, her argument was not even “tenable.” Is this the kind of argumentation that academics use toward one another?

To make it absolutely clear what he thought of Korpel’s scholarship, Professor Rollston added that the Jezebel seal “must be later” than the period of the Bible’s Queen Jezebel.

I suppose if Korpel’s position were really so kooky, this kind of criticism might be OK. But when I checked out what other scholars thought about Korpel’s dating, they seemed to say it was quite reasonable. In these circumstances, Professor Rollston’s harsh words came across as condescending. I thought Professor Korpel had to be defended, especially because Professor Rollston’s dismissive ipse dixit was unaccompanied by any paleographic discussion.

In his response to me, Professor Rollston now states that “I would not be inclined to date the script [on the seal] to the ninth century.” If he had used this kind of language in his original criticism of Korpel, there would have been no need for my BAR discussion. Professor Rollston has clearly now moved; instead of calling Korpel’s argument “not … tenable” and saying the inscription “must” date later than the ninth century, he is now only “inclined” to think so.

That is certainly a legitimate argument—and made respectfully. This is the same tone properly taken by Professor Ami Mazar in the letter that follows. It is also the same kind of civil argument made by Professor Ryan Byrne in a paleographical discussion of the “Jezebel” seal in which he disagrees with her dating. Professor Byrne’s discussion appears in our Debates section at www.biblicalarchaeology.org.

Finally, I must also say that I am offended by the condescending attitude that Professor Rollston takes toward me. I have been editing this archaeology magazine, which publishes contributions by the most distinguished academics in the world, for almost 35 years. I have three degrees from the finest academic institutions in the country. I have written numerous books on Biblical archaeology, a number of them with leading academics, and edited others including textbooks widely used in first-rate academic institutions. To have Professor Rollston condescendingly refer to “a non-academic such as Hershel” is a bit much. I close with the same sentence that Professor Rollston closed with: “Surely the standard should be higher than he sets it.”

As I read Shanks’s retort, I found myself shaking my head in disbelief. Was Shanks reading the same Rollston essay—published on the American Schools of Oriental Research web site—that I had read back in October?

Follow the link below to keep reading and find out.
This post offers more content »

The Biblical Archaeology Revew has posted a new article by Ryan Byrne, this time on the יזבל or “Jezebel” seal. Last time I mentioned one of Byrne’s BAR articles, it related to the שלמת or “Shelomit” (not “Temech”) seal (see also the follow-ups here and here). Byrne offers a detailed letter-by-letter analysis. Byrne concludes (read the article to get all the details) that the paleography indicates an eighth-century or later date, and therefore rules out any connection with a ninth-century historical Jezebel. Byrne, however, demurs from Chris Rollston’s strong stand on the bet, noting (as did Michael Welch in a comment to one of my earlier posts on this topic) that the shape and size of the seal constrained the scribe’s options for the bet.

The “reconstruction” of the “missing” letters—if any—stands as an absolutely critical matter in evaluating Marjo Korpel’s (renewed) suggestion to attribute ownership of the seal to an historical Phoenician-born Israelite queen named Jezebel. The biblical writers spell Jezebel’s name איזבל, but the seal bears only the letters יזבל. Korpel suggests that the portion of the seal now missing at the top once contained the letters לא, making the entire text read לאיזבל, “belonging to Jezebel.” There’s enough space for that, but is the reconstruction correct? Here’s Byrne’s take (quoted from two separate parts of the essay):

Second, [Rollston] notes that the root zbl is common in West Semitic names from the second millennium onward. This weakens the statistical probability that the two names ’yzbl and yzbl need refer to the same person. I might also note that either name (’yzbl or yzbl) may be female or male, a fact not without statistical weight against the biblical identification. Third, he notes that Korpel’s reconstruction of the name is just that: a reconstruction of a broken seal. Is it possible that the fractured cavity originally bore additional letters? Yes, of course. Might there instead have appeared different letters or rather additional iconography? Yes, of course. For some, the cavity transforms the reader into a diviner whose vision is limited only by the imagination. For others, the cavity is a warning to proceed with caution and respect for ambiguity.

Of course, the problem lies principally in the fact that the alep is not there. The break in the seal makes it impossible to reconstruct any missing component, which need not include a letter, by the way, except by conjecture. That permits us also to imagine all manner of missing incisions (if any) in the proverbial dark matter; lacunae are very democratizing. The maxim “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” was archaeological jargon long before the former Secretary of Defense quoted it to explain the elusiveness of certain items of interest in post-war Iraq. As an archaeologist keenly aware that what we unearth only scratches the surface of a broader material culture, which has not survived unscathed, I am hardly averse to this maxim (at least for elusive artifacts). But this maxim was intended to prescribe and honor the exercise of caution, not leaps of faith and cavalier speculation at odds with the empirical patterns that distinguish what is plausible from what is wishful thinking.

For more, read Byrne’s entire article.

Last fall, Ha’aretz published an article on Marjo Korpel’s work with a particular seal inscribed with images and ancient Hebrew lettering. I discussed the seal and its interpretation in two posts back in October 2007.

The Ha’aretz article appeared in advance of a Biblical Archaeology Review article, which now has become the cover story of the March/April 2008 issue. The BAS has made the entire March/April issue available online (though for how long, no one knows).

About the first half of Marjo’s BAR article summarizes the biblical story of Jezebel, while the second half defends her reconstruction of the missing portion and her assignment of the seal to a historical Jezebel who resembles the biblical portrait. In my judgment, the BAR article does not provide much in the way of new argumentation over Marjo’s 2006 Journal of Semitics article on the same topic, though it makes the argument available to a wider audience.

In the wake of the Ha’aretz article, Chris Rollston criticized Marjo’s interpretation of the seal on several grounds. In a sidebar (follow the link and scroll down) almost as long as Marjo’s own article, BAR editor Hershel Shanks attacks Chris’s critique and, indeed, his expertise. (We’ll leave aside for a moment the humor implicit in the editor of BAR calling the editor of Maarav a “budding paleographer.”) Chris has responded as follows (posted originally on Jim West’s new blog, but I’m sure that Chris wouldn’t object to me reproducing it in full here; I’ve taken the opportunity to correct a couple of typos, in square brackets, and add some hyperlinks and formatting for easier reading):

I read with great disappointment the polemical and condescending statements of Hershel Shanks about my research in general. Here are the facts:

(1) Both Frank Cross and Joseph Naveh have sent me approving notes regarding my Maarav (2003) article on forgeries. Indeed, Naveh told me at the time that it was the best article on forgeries published to date.

(2) I have every reason to believe that Kyle McCarter regards my work very highly. I earned my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins and have a close relationship with Kyle.

(3) I did testify in the forgery trial and my testimony is a matter of public recrod. I am entirely confident that the pieces I testified about (the two famous Moussaieff Ostraca [and] the Jeho[ash] Inscription) are modern forgeries. Naveh and Cross also believe all three of these pieces to be forgeries (see IEJ for some of their articles on the subject of the Moussaieff Ostraca and the Jehoash Inscription, respectively).

(4) I do not believe that the Gezer Celendar (or the Zayit Abecedary) is (are) written in the distinctive Old Hebrew script. Naveh has said the same thing (History of the Alphabet, 1987). I believe that the Gezer Calendar (and the Tel Zayit Abecedary) are written in the Phoenician script … it was, after all, the prestige script of this period and so this comes as no surprise. I have an article that will be published in a volume on Tel Zayit (co-edited by Kyle McCarter) in which I discuss this issue. It is also something that I discuss in a forthcoming article in the Cross Fest[schrift]. In any case, there is room for scholarly disagreement on this subject.

(5) Regarding the Yzbl seal. (a) There is no patronymic. (b) There is no title. (c) Korpel restores a letter to get the reading she wants … in spite of the fact that there are other good options (see my article at www.asor.org). (d) I would not be inclined to date the script to the 9th century. (e) I am aware of no epigraphic Old Hebrew seal or bullae from a scientific expedition that was found in a 9th century context. See the comments of A. Mazar at www.asor.org in this connection as well. In addition, I have talked with Helene Sader and she has stated that she is not aware of any epigraphic Phoenician seal or bullae that can be dated to the 9th century. The earliest provenanced Aramaic epigraphic glyptics are arguably the Hamat materials (so Alan Millard, and I concur). (f) The Shema Seal from Megiddo has normally been considered 8th century, rather than 9th. See Sass-Avigad for a discussion of the literature.

The most disappointing aspect of Hershel’s statements were the condescending components of it, which were many. I am not surprised, of course. He has done the same thing to many people, including my dear friend Yuval Goren. It is regrettable that a non-academic such as Hershel uses his magazine for such purposes. Surely the standard should be higher than he sets it.

Sincerely,

Chris Rollston, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University
Editor of MAARAV, a Journal of Northwest Semitic
Nakarai Professor of Semitic Studies
Emmanuel School of Religion-A Graduate Seminary
rollstonc@esr.edu

As an aside, I wonder why Shanks harped so much on Chris’s use of the word “tenable” (in Chris’s ASOR web piece). Chris’s article included the staement, “I would not consider it tenable to argue that the script of this seal could be ninth century Old Hebrew.” As you can see from the long quotation above, Chris stands by that statement. Shanks seems to invest this word with an almost mystical quality. He titled the editorial “Is It ‘Tenable’?” and repeated the theme several times (in addition to quoting the statement I just mentioned):

If true, Rollston’s argument was devastating to Korpel’s identification of the seal: Her argument in favor of the identification is not even “tenable.” …

Apparently the late great Israeli paleographer Nahman Avigad, who originally published the seal, also felt that it could be from the ninth century, the time of Queen Jezebel. Indeed, he said so. But, according to Rollston, he was clearly wrong: It’s not even “tenable.”

Why does Shanks modify “tenable” with the adverb “even”? What does “tenable” mean in Shanks’s dictionary? In the Oxford American Dictionary, “tenable” means “able to be maintained or defended against attack or objection.” But Shanks acts as if “not tenable” means “clearly wrong,” and he acts as if that one adjective were the sum and substance of what Chris had to say on the topic. Neither holds.

Even more curiously, though, it seems to me that Shanks goes well out of his way to attack Chris for reaching a conclusion that Marjo also reaches in the BAR article itself! Note very carefully what Chris said was not tenable (that is, would not stand up to scrutiny): “I would not consider it tenable to argue that the script of this seal could be ninth century Old Hebrew.” But note what Marjo writes in the BAR article that Shanks’s “postscript” accompanies: “Finally, the form of the letters on the signet, especially the Y, is Phoenician or imitates Phoenician writing. The L also appears to be ancient Phoenician.” In other words, Marjo doesn’t think it’s ninth century Old Hebrew either, but Phoenician.

Now Chris doesn’t think the inscription is Phoenician, either. See his ASOR essay; he finds the stance of the bet diagnostic for Old Hebrew, but not ninth-century Old Hebrew. So don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to manufacture a nonexistent agreement between Chris and Marjo on the linguistic background of the seal. But neither of them argues that it’s ninth century Old Hebrew, so why is Shanks trying so hard to prove that ninth century Old Hebrew is a possibility?

By the way, I note that neither Marjo nor Shanks really deals with Chris’s serious paleographic arguments in the paragraph that lead up to the “tenability statement,” which stands at the end of a long paragraph (you’d never even realize that from Shanks’s treatment). Chris’s argument about the dating of the seal rests on four points, none of which are addressed in either the main BAR article or the sidebar. Shanks claims to have talked to half a dozen paleographers (Joseph Naveh, Stephen Pfann, K. Lawson Younger, Anson Rainey, P. Kyle McCarter, and André Lemaire). According to Shanks,

Not a single one said that the letters on this seal must be post-ninth century. The consensus was that the four letters on the seal either were, or certainly could be, from the ninth century, although perhaps, according to some, they could also be somewhat later. But that is as far as they would go.

Shanks doesn’t reveal under what circumstances these conversations occurred, or how much time each paleographer was given to study or look at the seal (presumably in photographs) before replying to Shanks’s (telephone?) inquiry. Shanks certainly does not report any specific responses to Rollston’s detailed objections. (He also doesn’t mention Amihai Mazar’s “concurring opinion.”)

I cannot claim any paleographic expertise, and cannot judge for myself whether Chris’s diagnoses of the letter forms are correct. However, I don’t know of any paleographer who has criticized any of Chris’s specific points. What we have is Shanks’s word for it that half a dozen paleographers/epigraphers declined to state categorically that the seal inscription must be Old Hebrew and must be later than the ninth century. What we don’t have is any paleographer or epigrapher saying “No, a bet that recumbent is attested in inscription X, confidently dated to the 9th century” or “No, a the vertical stroke of the zayin is just the right length for a 9th-century Old Hebrew inscription” or “no, there are good angular lameds that we an confidently date to the 9th century, over here on inscriptions Y and Z.” Thus Shanks’s conclusion—”Either Professor Rollston is the world’s greatest and most expert paleographer— or his dating of the Jezebel seal is wrong.”—does not follow from the evidence in hand (nor does it even make sense that these are the only two alternatives).

But again, I stress that Marjo doesn’t claim the inscription is ninth-century Old Hebrew. She claims that it’s ninth-century Phoenician or faux Phoenician. Chris claims that it’s Old Hebrew, but not as early as the 9th century. Let’s at least keep our stories straight.

(As an aside, I can’t help but think that Shanks’s hostility stems at least in part from Chris’s strong stand against the use of unprovenanced artifacts and his conclusions regarding certain inscriptions being forgeries—objects touted at genuine in earlier issues of BAR. I smell sour grapes.)

I think somewhere in the post above, I crossed well over the line into rambling. Please let me summarize as follows. Marjo Korpel thinks that this could be the seal of the biblical Jezebel because:

1. The iconography is royal.

2. The iconography is typically feminine.
3. The faux Egyptian iconography is typical of Phoenicia.
4. The yod and lamed resemble Phoenician exemplars.
5. In the section obliterated by the large chip at the top, the seal would have had enough room to accommodate a lamed-aleph sequence to complete the expected לאיזבל.

Chris Rollston thinks that this cannot be a genuine seal of the biblical Jezebel because:

1. The recumbent bet is diagnostic of Old Hebrew, not Phoenician.
2. The bet is too recumbent for a 9th-century inscription.
3. The length of the vertical stroke on the zayin makes this zayin more akin to 8th/7th-century zayins than to 9th/8th-century zayins.
4. The sharply angled lamed is characteristic of 8th/7th-century inscriptions, not of 9th/8th-century ones.
5. We have no way of knowing what other letters, if any, might have stood in the cracked-off space. לאיזבל is by no means the only possibility.

My apologies to both Marjo and Chris for any incompleteness in these summaries.

In my own judgment, aside from paleography, the big cracked area at the top of the seal poses Marjo’s greatest challenge. As I wrote previously,

Thus, while Marjo has made a good case for the owner of the seal to be royalty or nobility, and while reconstructing a ל in the chipped-off space is entirely reasonable, I am not really convinced that the owner of the seal was female, nor that the owner’s name was איזבל, let alone whether the owner was the biblical Jezebel, if she ever existed and used that name herself. (I have no doubt that King Ahab had one or more wives, but whether any of them were Phoenician princesses known to her contemporaries, as opposed to later critics, as “Jezebel” is quite unproven.) There’s just a bit too much question-begging here for me to feel confident in the reconstruction.

For the moment, I must still regard Marjo’s suggestion as “interesting but unproven.”

Yesterday, some of the Tanakhophile blogs and e-mail lists had a small buzz over an article in Ha’aretz anticipating the publication in Biblical Archaeology Review of an article by Marjo Korpel arguing that a particular ancient Israelite artifact was a seal belonging to the (in)famous biblical queen Jezebel. I blogged about this yesterday and provided a number of links to other bloggers’ discussions.

Last night, Marjo was kind enough to point out to me that those of us blogging and e-discussing the Ha’aretz report got so focused on the newspaper (which most of us can only access online, not in print) and the forthcoming BAR article that we overlooked Marjo’s previously-published, peer-reviewed article on this topic: “Seals of Jezebel and other women in authority,” Journal for Semitics 15/2 (2006): 349–371. Unfortunately, my library does not carry Journal for Semitics (James Wiser, if you’re reading this, let’s fix that!), but a PDF scan of the article is available on the Oudtestamentish Werkgezelschap web site.

Marjo’s discussion of the YZBL seal is on pp. 358–362. She offers six (brief) arguments in favor of connecting this seal with the biblical Jezebel.

1. The size of the signet is exceptionally large (31x22x10 mm) which points to a very wealthy owner.

2. The graceful Egypto-Phoenician style points to a very wealthy owner who apparently loved this type of art, a circumstance tallying with the fact that Jezebel was a Phoenician princess (1 Kings 16:31) who according to biblical tradition did certainly not renounce her native religion (1 Kings 18:19) and lived in a palace adorned with the well-known Samaria ivories. The form of the letters on the signet, especially the Yod, is Phoenician or imitates Phoenician writing. [fn: A. Lemaire, "Divinités égyptiennes dans l'onomastique phénicienne," in: C. Bonnet et al. (eds.), Studia Phoenicia, t. 4; Religio Phoenicia, Namur: Société des Études Classiques, 97.]

3. The winged sphinx, winged sun disk and especially the falcon are well-known symbols of royalty in Egypt.

4. The double uraeus (cobra) was a typical symbol of queens from the eighteenth dynasty onwards. Of course we might suppose that a commoner appropriated the royal iconography. This happened in Egypt itself, and we know that it also occurred in Israel, especially among people who in this way wanted to express their closeness to the throne. However, no examples of a pair of uraei are known to me, with one exception to which I shall return presently. So, independent of the name of the owner, the iconography definitely suggests a queen.

5. The flower at the bottom of the seal might be a rose or lotus, pointing to a vain lady, which Jezebel was (cf. Song 2:1 and 2 Kings 9:30). Egyptian queens were often depicted with flowers.

6. The seemingly different spelling of her name is a mistake on the part of Avigad which as far as I know nobody has noticed hitherto. Especially this latter point merits elaboration. (Korpel, pp. 359–360)

Marjo does go on to elaborate on the name, but let me comment on points 1–5 first. I do not have any formal training, nor really extensive reading, in this area of seals and epigraphy, so my judgments should be taken as those of an “informed amateur.” With that caveat, it does seem to me that Marjo’s items 1–4 do make a plausible prima facie case for a royal or at least noble owner of the signet. I’ll come back to the paleography from item 2 a bit later. Item 5 seems quite weak to me, though it might have a little weight in a cumulative case.

Item 6 is of considerable importance. The actual seal has a large chip out of it at the top. The vertical spacing of the four extant letters (יזבל) leads Korpel to postulate that two other letters (לא) stood at the top, yielding לאיזבל, “belonging to Jezebel,” in agreement with the biblical spelling of Jezebel’s name. I mentioned yesterday why I find the reconstruction of a ל plausible. Very importantly, other seals or seal impressions exist that show the ל in exactly the same pattern of distribution on the face of the seal (see the figures at the end of the PDF; the image quality is poor but unmistakable). Given this evidence and reasoning, I think the reconstruction of a ל in the broken section is not only plausible, but highly likely.

The א, however, presents more serious problems. The very idea of supplying any consonant at all between the ל and the י presupposes that such a consonant is missing, and that supposition seems to be motivated by an a priori assumption that the seal should be associated with Jezebel. In her article, Marjo addresses the issue brought up on the Biblical Studies Discussion List yesterday by Philip Davies, and she quotes the same lines from the Ugaritic Ba‘al epic to which Duane pointed yesterday. On the e-mail list, Aren Maier had mentioned a possible meaning of “Where is Zebul?”, and Marjo points to similar Hebrew personal names in the Bible—איוב, interpreted as “Where is (the divine) father?”; איכבוד, “Where is (the divine) glory?”; and איעזר, “Where is (the divine) help?”—as well as Ugaritic איבעל, “Where is Ba‘al?” Thus the form איזבל is not particularly objectionable as an ancient Phoenician name or, rather, an ancient Hebraicization of a Phoenician name.

Marjo further defends her identification with Jezebel on the basis that the question אי זבל in the Ugaritic epic is addressed to Ba‘al’s paramour Anat. She also tries to connect the Egyptian iconography with Isis and Nephtys. If these arguments be accepted, then the identification of the seal with a woman is strengthened. I must say that I do not find these arguments particularly strong; they slightly enhance the cumulative case. Finally, Korpel argues that it is unlikely for any other queen of Israel to have the theophoric זבל in her name, and in a footnote she therefore disagrees with Larry Mykytiuk, who wrote that “an ornate seal inscribed only ‘Jezebel’ did not necessarily belong to the biblical Jezebel … Perhaps it belong to another wealthy woman who happened to have the same name.”

As I have noted above, some parts of Marjo’s argument are persuasive. Others smack of begging the question of Jezebel’s historical existence, and under that name. Marjo has shown that the name איזבל is morphologically plausible. She has not shown that it is plausible for any woman to have borne it; all the comparable examples she gives are masculine names. Also, Marjo (and just about everyone else) seems to have presupposed that the זבל on the seal represents a theophoric element in the individual’s name, without having considered (in print) alternatives. (Maybe Larry did that in his book; I don’t own a copy, to my chagrin, and neither does my library, to its shame.) If the זבל element is a theophoric unit, then one must make sense of the initial י. This is quite difficult unless one supplies an additional consonant before the י, or assumes that the name is misspelled. One must then ask what additional consonant would make sense. Marjo has shown that supplying an initial א would make good sense, yielding איזבל, “Where is Zebul?” or “Where is the lofty one?” or something along those lines. I don’t know enough about Phoenician vocabulary to make a strong argument here, but just going by Hebrew vocabulary, I could also conceive of מיזבל, “Who is the lofty one?” (compare מיכאל/מישאל, “Who is like El?”) as a possibility. Marjo writes that “zbl is not an element of Hebrew personal names, where as it is attested in Canaanite names” (p. 362), but that objection (a)assumes that Jezebel is the only Phoenician or Canaanite whose seal might show up on the Israeli antiquities market—remember that the seal is unprovenanced—and (b) is just plain wrong, as a quick listing of the twelve tribes of Israel should remind anyone, not to mention the obscure character זבל, ruler of Shechem in Judges 9—at least I think the narrative in Judges presupposes Shechem to be an Israelite city.

“But wait!”, you might object. “The letters זבל in Zebulun don’t represent the theophoric element ‘Zebul.’” Precisely—and that raises the question of why we assume that the letters זבל on the seal in question represent a theophoric element “Zebul.” (There is of course the frequent plene spelling of Zebulun to consider, but nevertheless, it opens the door to the question.) As a matter of fact, it seems to me that, although as far as I know not attested anywhere, יזבל makes perfect sense as a name all by itself. Elsewhere in biblical Hebrew, the forms זְבֻל and מִזְּבֻל relate to a “lofty abode,” and specifically the “lofty abode” of the God of Israel (see 1 Kings 8:13; Isa 63:15; Hab 3:11; Ps 49:15; and so on). The theoretical Hebrew verbal root זבל thus seems to mean something like “exalt, elevate.” If so, then יזבל (“he exalts” or “he is exalted”) could be a name following the pattern of יעקב (“he ‘grasps the heel’”) and יצחק (“he laughs”)—from which, incidentally, some scholars “reconstruct” allegedly “original” names with an אל theophoric element, like יעקבאל and יצחקאל. Be that as it may, the point stands: if one simply reconstructs a lone ל in the chipped area of the יזבל seal, one need not supply any other consonants in order to form a good proper noun that has nothing to do with Jezebel.

Thus, while Marjo has made a good case for the owner of the seal to be royalty or nobility, and while reconstructing a ל in the chipped-off space is entirely reasonable, I am not really convinced that the owner of the seal was female, nor that the owner’s name was איזבל, let alone whether the owner was the biblical Jezebel, if she ever existed and used that name herself. (I have no doubt that King Ahab had one or more wives, but whether any of them were Phoenician princesses known to her contemporaries, as opposed to later critics, as “Jezebel” is quite unproven.) There’s just a bit too much question-begging here for me to feel confident in the reconstruction.

During the time when I was writing all of the above, an essay by Chris Rollston appeared on the American Schools of Oriental Research web site. I have immense respect for Chris both personally and professionally, and therefore I give serious weight to his perspectives on epigraphic matters. Chris notes, as I did above, that the root זבל is not as rare in biblical Hebrew names as Marjo’s article suggests; he also notes, as did Marjo, its attestation in Phoenician and other West Semitic names. Chris further points to the lack of any patronymic (“son of PN” or “daughter of PN”) or title as making identification of the seal’s יזבל[…] with any particular person.

Chris is a skilled epigraher (unlike me), and he finds several aspects of the script that militate against a 9th-century date (which would be required for the seal to belong to Queen Jezebel). Specifically, the stance of the beth (recumbent, or lying over on its side) suggests a later period, as does the shape of the yodh. Similarly, the shape of the zayin, specifically the vertical stroke, suggests to Chris’s eye a late 8th-century or early 7th-century script rather than a 9th-century script, and the same is true of the very angular lamedh as compared with the curvy lamedhs of the 9th-century and early 8th-century inscriptions. Following André Lemaire, Marjo suggested that the script was Phoenician-style; Chris agrees that the shapes of the yodh and the lamedh are more characteristic of Phoenician than Hebrew, but not the beth, which he considers critical. Chris anticipates the objection that the engraver had to fudge the beth because of space constraints, and he rejects this idea because other engravers did just fine within similar constraints. Thus, Chris concludes that if the seal is authentic, it must be from a later time period than that assigned in the Bible to Ahab’s wife Jezebel.

My fellow “armchair epigraphers” might want to see for themselves. Contrast the curvy lamedhs on the 9th- or 8th-century Aramaic Tel Dan stele (use Bill Schniedewind’s drawing if you need greater clarity) with the angular lamedhs on the seal shown above, and then compare both with the very angular lamedhs on the 6th-century Hebrew Lachish ostraca (letter 2 or letter 3, for example).

Further, Chris agrees that restoring a ל is reasonable, but he questions the restoration of the other consonant. The restoration of an א is convenient for Marjo’s case, but it is not really supported by any other evidence. Earlier in this post, I suggested a possible reading that restores nothing but a ל, and another that involved a מ instead of an א; in his paper, Chris suggests some other reconstructions that involve additional letters. The point is not really to put forward any one of these theses as a specific competing interpretation, but to show that there are quite a variety of possibilties that Marjo’s article does not evaluate.

Chris concludes: “Ultimately, this is an interesting proposal, but it is based on no real compelling evidence.” Given the available data and the range of possibilities, I must agree with Chris’s judgment.

Yesterday, Ha’aretz reported that Marjo Korpel will soon argue—in Biblical Archaeology Review—that artifact “IDAM 65-321″ from the Israel Museum collection was once the official seal of Israel’s most infamous queen, Jezebel. The blogosphere and e-mail lists have been abuzz with discussion of Korpel’s claim; see, for example, the comments by Jim West, Jim Davila, Todd Bolen, and Duane Smith, with my apologies to anyone I’ve left out. Jan Pieter van de Giessen actually had the story several weeks ago.

Before we go much farther, here’s a picture of the actual artifact, from the Canadian Museum of Civilization web site:

And now here’s a picture from the Universiteit Utrecht web site, showing Korpel’s proposed reconstruction at the top:

The extant inscription on the actual piece reads יזבל, but Jezebel’s name is spelled איזבל in the Tanakh—hence the need to reconstruct the missing letters. As you can see from the second photo, Korpel proposes to read לאיזבל, which would be the preposition ל (here, “belonging to”) + the proper name איזבל.

One obvious problem, of course, is the big crack in the top of the seal. What letters, if any, used to be there? On his blog, Jim West characterizes Korpel’s reconstruction as “guesswork”; on the Biblical Studies Discussion List, he went further, calling the reconstruction “pure speculation” and “impossible to verify or really even to suggest.” Caution is wise, but Jim’s pronouncements overstate the case. Duane wisely advises that we wait until Korpel’s formal article comes out to assess her claims—I don’t see how we could do otherwise! Nevertheless, I’ll make a couple of observations that will, I think, temper Jim’s dismissal of Korpel’s reconstruction without being overly credulous.

First, it is obvious that the object in question is a seal, meant for making impressions (for those of you who don’t read paleo-Hebrew, the letters are inscribed backwards, so that the impression left by pressing the seal into clay would produce forwards-facing letters—the seal itself is a mirror image of the intended end product). Based on copious evidence from other ancient Israelite and Judean seals and seal impressions, we should expect to find a ל (“belonging to”) somewhere on the seal, preceding the proper noun. This expectation is not conclusive, of course, but it is quite reasonable—and the only place a missing ל could go would be in the broken area at the top of the seal. In my opinion, doubting the ל would be like finding a busted baseball and doubting that it ever had stitches.

The second step is more difficult. Korpel’s reconstruction shows that there is room for a ל plus one other letter in the missing area. If that be so, we only have 23 possibilities for the complete inscription. It might have been ליזבל, with only the ל at the top; or it might have been לאיזבל or לביזבל or לגיזבל or … well, I hope you get the point. There are a finite number of possible readings, and the next step becomes sorting those by their plausibility, which should involve some consideration of attested names and so on.

But that brings up another point. As Jim West points out in a paragraph from Philip Davies, posted to the Biblical Studies Discussion List, there’s a good chance that איזבל is an “invented” or “distorted” name. Here’s what Philip wrote, copied from Jim’s copy:

So the letter/letters at the top of ‘Jezebel’ seal are all missing, leaving YZBL. Since ZBL is a common Phoenician theophoric element (and Y very commonly the preceding letter) what is the statistical probability that the name is ‘YZBL? Can that be worked out? More seriously, the biblical spelling is problematic. It could be a distortion intended to mean ‘Zebul is not’. Can we be sure that it is a genuine Phoenician name? What would it mean?

I do think that the probability of איזבל over against some other reconstruction (ביזבל or גיזבל or דיזבל … there are only 22 possibiities) could be worked out, given sufficient time and attention to attested patterns of Phoenician names. If I were to undertake that personally, I would have to do some homework on Phoenician names, but presumably Korpel has taken this into account (we’ll all find out when the article or more information about her argument appears). It should nevertheless be possible, in principle. As for Philip’s question about whether איזבל could be a genuine Phoenician name (or a genuine Hebraicization of a genuine Phoenician name), Aren Maeir pointed out an interesting possibility. While the biblical—nay, Masoretic—vocalization אִיזֶבֶל suggests “Zebul is not,” with another vocalization, אַיזֶבֶל, the name might suggest “Where is Zebul?” But could that be a genuine Phoenician name? Alas, I don’t know enough about Phoenician names to make that call. However, it is at least interesting that the biblical narrator names Jezebel’s father אֶתְבַּעַל—apparently another combination of a preposition with a theophoric.

I clearly do not know for sure whether the seal belonged to a woman named איזבל or somebody with some other name. I’m eager to read Korpel’s argument. However, I am certainly open to being persuaded—the reconstruction is not at all unreasonable.

Update: Please now see this guest post from Chris Rollston, on Jim West’s blog. Chris gives some important cautions. Most interesting to me was Chris’s assessment that the script is clearly younger than the 9th century, which would remove Ahab’s Jezebel from consideration. Also, as far as I know, we have no historical confirmation of Jezebel’s actual existence—Assyrian inscriptions attest to Ahab, but only the Bible attests to Jezebel, unless I have missed some important bit of information. Before anyone cites the seal itself: it is in question and cannot be used to support the existence of a historical Jezebel, for that would be a circular argument. In fact, it’s hard not to see any argument one could make here as more or less circular: attaching the seal to the biblical Jezebel begs the question of that queen’s existence, and using the seal to prove her existence is flawed because the reconstruction depends on presupposing the name איזבל on the basis of the Bible itself.

Currents in Biblical Research 5.1 (October 2006) has just appeared in electronic form; I am not sure of the timing synchronicity with the print version. Among the various articles are these two of interest to students of the Tanakh and ancient Near East:

Michael Avioz, “The Book of Kings in Recent Research (Part II)”
In the first part of my article (CBR 4.1 [2005]), I surveyed the research conducted on various, diverse aspects of the book of Kings, starting in the early 1990s and until 2004. In this article, I will focus on research dealing with the characters appearing in the book of Kings, using this classification: kings, beginning with David; prophets, especially Elijah and Elisha; and women, including Jezebel, the widow of Zarephath, and Shunammite woman. The different studies represent current trends in Bible research today: rejection of the historical reliability of the narratives, on the one hand, and, on the other, its acceptance; male voices and female voices; and diachronic methods and synchronic methods. In addition, many scholars call for multi-disciplinary methodologies that combine, for example, literary and sociological methods.

Griffin, Carl W., “Digital Imaging: Looking Toward the Future of Manuscript Research”
While microfilm has been the standard medium for manuscript photography since the 1950s, digital imaging is beginning to revolutionize manuscript research by providing broader and lower-cost access to higher-quality manuscript images. New digital imaging technologies like “multi-spectral imaging” are also capable of improving the legibility of damaged texts far beyond that achievable with conventional film. The potential of these new technologies for manuscript research may be seen with digital imaging projects focusing on such important texts as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Herculaneum papyri. For all its advantages, digital imaging poses for us further technological and archival challenges.

Since these have just become available this morning, I haven’t had time to read them, so I can’t report any further on their contents.