The Meṣad Ḥashavyahu Ostracon in its Regional, Economic, and Political Context

ABSTRACT

This article uses updated models of the 7th-century bce economy to argue that the harvesting activities reported in the Meṣad Ḥashavyahu ostracon occurred at a small grain-cultivating site located in the Judahite highlands. The distance between this farmstead and the inscription’s coastal findspot explains why the ostracon was inscribed in the first place: the harvester could not appeal his case in person. As can be detected in the complaint, the granary complex in the Judahite highlands specialised in cereal products and was conversely not designed for the cultivation of a diversity of crops for local subsistence. This economic choice likely originated in Judah’s effort to contribute its own grain surpluses to a broader regional network of trade and commerce, one which was defined by specialised zones of surplus production that originated in the wake of Sennacherib's campaign in 701 bce. Because Egypt built the fortress in which the inscription was found and moreover coerced Judah's king and people into a new system of obligatory payment (2 Kgs 23:29-35), the ostracon represents a stunning glimpse into a time when Judah’s own administration was forcing its labourers to meet the extractive demands of an external power. The commander (śar) in the fortress was the logical authority for the harvester’s case, as (1) a high-ranking figure close to both the Egyptian and Judahite powers, (2) a recipient of inland grain products, and (3) a potential keeper of important transactional documents.

KEYWORDS:

• Meṣad Ḥashavyahu
• 7th Century BCE
• Hebrew inscriptions
• writing
• Judah
• Saite Egypt
• economy
• specialised agriculture
• grain
• Soreq Valley
• 2 Kgs 23
• Pharaoh Necho
• King Jehoiakim

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Daniel Fleming, who read and advised all of this article's earliest versions. Over the course of this article's slow development, Dan has consistently offered enthusiastic encouragement and thoughtful reflection in response to its new directions, seeing its earliest drafts in a seminar in the Spring of 2017 and its development into an ASOR presentation in 2018 (‘A Fresh Reading of the Mesạd Ḥashavyahu Ostracon in its Economic Context', Denver, CO, November 15, 2018), an occasion where he generously used his research funds to buy a second plane ticket for the author’s missed flight. Thanks also goes out to the anonymous reviewers for sharpening my thinking about the long-term history of the Sharon Plain. I also want to thank Brian Donnelly-Lewis for assistance with matters of Egyptian administration, and Spencer Elliott for assistance with the evidence for written complaints. All errors, of course, remain my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As supplementary markers of group identity, the so-called Judahite pillar figurines (Kletter 1996, 94–98) and the Judahite bench tombs (Yezerski 1999; Fantalkin 2008) are also generally confined to the highlands and the Shephelah.

2 Following the earlier work of Naʾaman, Alexander Fantalkin (2001, 132–36) dated the construction of the fortress to the 620s and decisively dispelled the idea that this fortress was constructed by King Josiah of Judah. Peter James (2015) has tried to down-date the fortress to early 6th century bce. On Egyptian rule over the Levant in the late 7th century, see Redford 1992, 441–45; Lipschits 2005, 25–29; Schipper 2011, 268–90; Forshaw 2019, 124–26.

3 F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp says, ‘it is likely the ostracon was meant only to summarise the contents of the petition, perhaps as a part of the procedure for gaining admittance to a hearing before the šr’ (1994, 52).

4 Dobbs-Allsopp et al. (2005, 359–60) make similar remarks about this inscription, saying a plea is something usually carried out in oral correspondence. To be sure, although there are a number of textualized complaints in Nuzi (Maidman 2010, 81–124) and Neo-Babylonia (Holtz 2009, 100–16), these are all documentary, that is, they transcribe live proceedings. In these texts, scribes recorded complaints spoken in the midst of an assembly or perhaps in a deposition (for Neo-Babylonian descriptions, see Magdalene 2007, 55–94; for Old Babylonian period analysis, see Démare-Lafont 2005 [and primary texts in Dombradi 1996]). Because scribes recorded in-person proceedings, it is clear that these texts were not the basis from which a plaintiff actually made their case, which is why such documents do not include all components of a legal case, like for instance, a petition for remedy. The fullness of MH’s petition with a plea for action in lines 12–14, by contrast, is quite striking. This makes the text an ‘active’ and ‘live’ legal case. As such, it is most likely a substitute for an in-person hearing and cannot be regarded as a transcription of an actual proceeding. My thanks to Spencer Elliott for bringing some of these corpora to my attention and for sharing parts of his New York University dissertation on the subject.

5 We lack attestations to the nature of legal proceedings in the Iron Age southern Levant outside of the Hebrew Bible. If Brian Donnelly-Lewis (2022) is correct in his transcription and translation, only the much-earlier Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon could potentially attest to the broader societal practice of in-person hearings in the Iron Age southern Levant, particularly in cases where harvest reports were falsified.

6 To be sure, this text could potentially be a practice letter. However, this text does not match the better candidates for epistolary exercises; see, for example, Mandell 2022. For further considerations of legal texts as scribal practices, see Milstein 2021.

7 The definition of the text as a letter aligns with the widely-attested practice of Judahites using inscribed potsherds as an epistolary medium. Pardee (1978, 34) sees the text as ‘a judicial plea in epistolary form’. Furthermore, the structure and content of MH aligns with many of Rollston’s criteria for ‘Hebrew’ letter formulary (2015, 89): 1) there is a reference to the recipient, 2) the name of the sender is not automatically supplied, and 3) the closing formula is absent. Indeed, the absence of the name of the sender is also not a problem for Dobbs-Allsopp (1994, 49–55), who interprets the inscription as a ‘plea of gzl,’ a formula that usually precludes the identification of the plaintiff.

8 Talmon (1964) considered the letter to be sent from an unwalled settlement. For him, this settlement was in the territory of Judah or Simeon.

9 There has been some pushback against the notion that industry specialisation only came about after Sennacherib. Master (2009, 313) says ‘Judah’s economy was shocked and diminished by Sennacherib’s campaigns, but it was not radically altered’. Maeir, Welch and Eniukhina (2021, 131–38) point to olive oil production at Gath in Iron I and IIA as evidence that such production came before the 7th century bce. Indeed, Tell Beit Mirsim and Beth- Shemesh each had specialised olive oil production in layers before Sennacherib (i.e., Iron IIB) (Finkelstein, Gadot and Langgut 2022, 270). However, one could wonder whether these pre- Sennacherib examples truly count as the same kind of ‘industry’ as that seen later at Ekron (e.g., Eitam 2022). Diplomatically, Joshua Walton proposes that the profitability zones were a longue durée reality stimulated by the Assyrian interference (2015, 446–55) (for longue durée, see Braudel 1972; 1980, 25–54; Hodder 1987). The Assyrian pressure was only one ingredient among a variety of factors.

10 Walton (2015, 452) also addresses the problem of Ekron’s inland position and the prohibitive cost of overland transport. To be sure, there must have been some occasions where Judahite oil was exported, and this would account for the anomalous presence of Rosette handles in Gath, Gezer, and Beth-Shean (Koch and Lipschits 2013, 59), and a number of biblical texts likewise pair Judah or Jerusalem with oil export to Tyre (1 Kgs 5:25 [Eng. 15]; Ezek 21:17).

11 Faust (2018, 44–47) eventually issued a rejoinder to Younger’s critique. Important to note are the other scholars who think the Assyrians were directly involved in the configuration of the regional economy: Naʾaman 1995; Gitin 1995; Finkelstein and Naʾaman 2004; Thareani 2009; 2016; Lipschits, Sergi and Koch, 2011; Koch 2018, esp. 371–75; Lipschits 2018; 2021, 155–58.

12 Such maritime markets were even at play in the Late Bronze age, see Monroe 2009; 2015.

13 There is a debate about whether kl is the D stem of the verb *klh ‘complete’ or G stem of kāl ‘weigh.’ Either reading supports my overall thesis that the inscription refers to cereals and not fruits. For the best representative view of D stem *klh, see Pardee 1978, 41–42; Lemaire 1971, 64–68. In this view, Ruth 2:21 is the best example of this verb in action, having harvesters ‘finishing’ (D: killû) ‘the harvest’(haq-qāṣîr). If the D of *klh is read in MH, it is important to note that the harvester is listing off duties able to be “completed” daily (kymm, lines 5 and 7). As such, cereals provide the best context for this action seeing as how it is difficult to imagine the “completion” of fruit cultivation without pressing the olives or treading the grapes for their standardised liquid measurements (regarding dry versus wet measurements, see King and Stager 2000, 200). For the best representative view of G kl, see Rainey (2000, 77–78) and the comments on wkl in the Gezer Calendar in Dobbs-Allsopp et al. (2005, 162, cf. 360–61). The idea here is that kl is cognate with Akkadian kullu meaning “to hold” (a tool). This meaning can be seen in Isaiah 40:12 with the pairing of kāl with *mdd “to measure.” If in MH, kl refers to “weighing,” it could be describing the measuring that is possible in the very same day of reaping, something illustrated in Ruth 2:17 when Ruth beat out the ephah of barley she had gathered by evening. The metric for fruit produce is valued in liquid measurement and would have required longer procedures of pressing or treading that were not possible in a day’s time, let alone by a single harvester.

14 KAI, 182 line 5 reads yrḥ qṣr wkl. ‘Harvesting,’ or, qṣr is also done with barley (line 4: yrḥ qṣr šˁrm).

15 Weiss and Kislev (2004) note that the wheat from ‘Room 227’ and ‘the Counting House’ is also available in the Sharon plain. However, the environment of the Sharon plain near the Yarkon was vulnerable to swampy conditions and became a breeding ground for malaria infestation if its drainage was not controlled (Thareani 2016, 81; Gadot 2006, 23–24; 2008, 55–59; 2010, 49). One wonders if after Assyria’s invasion this area was not managed. Weiss and Kislev note that the wheat concentrations from Ashkelon’s ‘South Street’ come in tandem with other plant remains of the Judahite hill country (cf. Fantalkin 2018, 166–67).

16 Although, to be sure, there are fewer examples for coastal grain cultivation in the 7th century bce unlike earlier times with Tel Aphek in the Late Bronze Age (Gadot 2010, 54, 59; cf. Kislev and Mahler-Slasky 2009) and Aphek with ˁIzbet Sartah together in the Iron I (Finkelstein 1986, 124; Gadot 2006).

17 This reflection stems from a personal communication with K. L. Younger, Jr. at the 2018 Annual ASOR meeting about the amount of grain required to sustain any individual.

18 The word ḥṣr is attested in OB and NB contexts (see ḫaṣāru, CAD Ḫ, 130), seeming to designate a building enclosure at Ugarit (see ḥẓr in DULAT, 378). As for the word ˀsm, its meaning ‘storehouse’ or ‘granary’ is attested in Deut 28:8 and Prov 3:10 (see also DULAT, 109–10).

19 It is possible that these labourers were even moveable according to the need, much like those in the Late Bronze age corvée systems. The harvester’s usage of the narrative past to describe his activities at ḥṣr ˀsm could indicate that he has since moved on from this site by the time of writing, so: ‘your servant was at the Settlement of the Storehouse’ (hyh . ˁbdk . bḥṣr ˀsm, lines 3–4).

20 Arad no. 17 best displays how receipts can be recorded at the site of reception. The reverse side of the ostracon shows that a scribe at Arad wrote a receipt on the back of the original delivery instructions: Obverse: ‘To Naḥum: [And] now, go to the house of ˀIlyašib ben ˀAšyahu, and you shall take from there 1 (jar of) oil and send (it) to Ziph quickly and seal it with your seal’. Reverse: ‘On the 24th of the month, Naḥum delivered oil by the hand of the Kitti, 1 (jar)’. Transcription and translation from Dobbs-Allsopp, et al. 2005, 35–37.

21 Herodotus says there were three border fortresses staffed with Greek mercenaries during Psamtek’s reign — Elephantine, Tahpanhes, and Marea (Hist. 2.30). Archaeologically, these sites, along with Migdol, reveal East Greek pottery alongside southern Levantine material culture (Naʾaman 2005, 221). Herodotus also says Psamtek took control of Egypt using Ionian and Carian mercenaries (Hist. 2.152).

22 See Naʾaman 2005, 221; Lipschits 2005, 26–27, for bibliography on Phoenicia’s service to Egypt. See the theophoric element bˁl at the fortress (Naveh 1962 no. 6).

23 Thanks to Brian Donnelly-Lewis (pers. com.) for bringing these considerations and sources to my attention.

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Quinn Daniels

Quinn Daniels (Ph.D. 2023 New York University) is a visiting lecturer at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.