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Year: 2016

Learning by doing – distinguishing different hands at work in the drawings

and paintings of Kuntillet �Ajrud

Uehlinger, Christoph

Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich

ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-133187
Book Section
Accepted Version

Originally published at:

Uehlinger, Christoph (2016). Learning by doing – distinguishing different hands at work in the drawings
and paintings of Kuntillet �Ajrud. In: Finkelstein, Israel; Robin, Christian; Römer, Thomas. Alphabets,
texts and artifacts in the Ancient Near East: studies presented to Benjamin Sass. Paris: Van Dieren
éditeur, 489-511.
 LEARNING BY DOING—DISTINGUISHING
DIFFERENT HANDS AT WORK IN
THE DRAWINGS AND PAINTINGS OF
KUNTILLET >AJRUD

Christoph Uehlinger
University of Zurich

1
)B. S., Jerusalem, September 2, 1987( ?‫עוד אחד‬
489

Alphabets, Texts and Artifacts; Studies Presented to Benjamin Sass

The inscriptions, drawings and paintings discovered during three short
seasons of excavations (1975–1976) at Kuntillet >Ajrud figure among
the most heavily debated archaeological finds from the southern
Levant of the last century. The reasons these finding have been
so intensely discussed among archaeologists, epigraphers, biblical
scholars and historians are manifold, one of them and not the least
paradoxical being that reliable information and documentation on
many aspects of the findings from Kuntillet >Ajrud were difficult to
obtain over years and decades.2 Luckily, this situation has changed
with the publication of a final report coordinated by the excavator

1 Motto and date refer to my first meeting with Benny Sass, who at the time was
working on a thesaurus project for the IDAM (later the IAA) at the Rockefeller
Museum where I came to examine a Philistine-related scarab from Tell el-Far>ah
(South). Our cooperation intensified five years later when we co-edited a volume
on the iconography of Northwest Semitic inscribed seals (see below, n. 6), greatly
benefiting from the advantages of the early years of the internet. I have learned much
from Benny’s critical, incorruptible scholarship and ever since that time I have been
deeply grateful for his friendship.
The current study was finished when I came across, incidentally via Academia.edu,
an article recently published in Hebrew by Tallay Ornan (2015); my modern Hebrew
being too poor to fully interact with her article, it is my pleasure to refer more talented
readers to that piece. A fuller English version (Ornan 2016), well documented and
thoughtful, appeared at the time of editing this piece; I shall refer to it in passing. See
below, n. 15. My sincere thanks also to Irit Ziffer, who kindly responded to my questions
about the late Pirhiya Beck’s teaching at Tel Aviv University, in an email which reads like
a most sensible tribute to her teacher; and to Brian Schmidt for sharing a paper prior to
publication (Schmidt 2016).
2 If I remember correctly, Keel and Uehlinger 1992: Fig. 220 (based on separate preliminary
publications by P. Beck and Z. Meshel and on a personal visit to the Israel Museum)
was among the first combined presentations (if not the first published) showing the
position, on Pithos A, of the chariot horse fragment and its inscription in relation to the
Bes-like figures and the same inscription’s right-hand section above them.
 (Meshel et al. 2012).3 We now know more than ever many aspects
of these findings, and we can better evaluate which questions may
and should be further pursued on the basis of the published report,
and which other questions will probably remain unresolved or
unresolvable forever due to fragmentary evidence and/or limited
documentation. It is well known that the original findings themselves
cannot for various reasons be checked at present—neither the objects
returned to the Egyptian authorities in December 19944 nor the
remains left at the site.
Benny Sass, whose rayonnement as a scholar and friend this volume
celebrates, was a member of the excavation team and served as an
area supervisor during all three seasons.5 Given his long-standing
interest in both Northwest Semitic epigraphy6 and ancient Near
Eastern iconography, especially from the southern Levant,7 it may
be appropriate to share with him what remains an under-researched
question in spite of hundreds of articles and book chapters on Kuntillet
>Ajrud: How many different hands contributed to the inscriptions,
paintings and drawings found at that site, and particularly to the
paintings on the pithoi (Figs. 1–2)?8 In this article, I shall briefly
comment on spatial relations of drawings and inscriptions on the
two well-known pithoi, and their actual visibility in antiquity. I shall
then sketch a few theoretical assumptions and issues of methodology
before taking advice from the late Pirhiya Beck, whose discussion
of the Kuntillet >Ajrud paintings and drawings remains the most
authoritative to this day.9 I shall add a few observations of my own

3 This has prompted a new series of scholarly engagements with many different
aspects of the site and the findings it produced. The bibliography at the end of my
paper lists only a small part of this new momentum.
4 Unfortunately, Meshel et al. 2012 remain silent on the present whereabouts of the
materials returned to Egypt (Qantara, Ismaʽiliya, Cairo?). Cf. Schmidt 2015: 8 n. 2.
5 For visual evidence, see Meshel et al. 2012: XII–XIII, Figs. 6–8, and acknowledgments
ibid.: XV.
6 On one of the most controversial issues pertaining to Kuntillet >Ajrud, see recently
Sass 2014.
7 It is in this domain that we became close associates on the initiative of Othmar
Keel (see Sass and Uehlinger 1993 with Benny’s important contribution on the
iconography of pre-exilic Hebrew seals, ibid.: 194–256, later to be followed by the
monumental WSS [Avigad and Sass 1997]).
8 On the historical context and background of Kuntillet >Ajrud, see Na’aman 2011;
Finkelstein 2013; and Niehr 2013 (all with references to earlier literature).
9 Beck’s groundbreaking study (1982, republished 2002) was entitled “The Drawings
from Ḥorvat Teman (Kuntillet Ajrud).” Part I addressed “The Pithoi Drawings,” Part
II “The Wall Paintings.” Having stood the passage of time, the article was published
again, with a different introduction (entitled “Summary” and, I guess, written by Z.
Meshel?), minor modifications in the text and the major addition of color plates, as
Ch. 6 of the final report entitled “The Drawings and Decorative Designs” (Meshel et
al. 2012: 143–203). See now Ornan 2016 for a new, original treatment moving beyond
previous studies.
 491

Christoph Uehlinger
• Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud

Figure 1: Projection drawing of Pithos A, Meshel et al. 2012: 87, Fig. 5.24 ≅
147, Fig. 6.5 (tags added).
Figure 2: Projection drawing of Pithos B, Meshel et al. 2012: 92, Fig. 5.35 ≅
148, Fig. 6.6 (tags added).
 on selected pithoi drawings and mural paintings,10 arguing that the
overall evidence, however fragmentary it may be, clearly allows us
to distinguish between different hands, whose precise number is
however difficult if not impossible to establish. Different hands can
be postulated not only on stylistic grounds, but also because the
evidence attests to copying operations, some of which are perhaps
best understood in terms of a formal master-apprentice relation while
others may have a less formal background, implying the presence
of several draftsmen working alongside each other. I shall conclude
with a few suggestions about how best to make sense of the overall
relation between wall paintings, drawings and inscriptions, on the one
hand, and pithoi drawings and inscriptions, on the other.
493
SPACES AND OVERLAPS

Christoph Uehlinger
Considering myself hardly more than an amateur epigrapher,11 I shall
focus this paper on the paintings and drawings, discussing matters
of style, iconography and non-epigraphic craftsmanship. Our starting
point may, however, be the passing observation that the epigraphical
remains on the pithoi from Kuntillet >Ajrud alone allow the distinction
of at least a dozen different handwritings.12 Moreover, the presence
of individual words repeated once or several times on the same pithos
may well point to some sort of copying operations, an observation on
which André Lemaire built his theory, advanced as early as 1981, of a
school based at the site.13 A majority of scholars, myself included, has • Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud
remained skeptical with regard to the school hypothesis (not every
master-apprentice-relation or copying operation makes a school), but
many of Lemaire’s epigraphic observations remain valid and need

10 Terminology is tentative here, but we should differentiate between “drawings”

and “paintings” according to at least three criteria: (a) different surface (plastered
walls vs. pithoi or sherds; see already Keel and Uehlinger 1992/1998: §145), (b)
mere outline or contour drawings vs. paintings including filled-in surfaces, and (c)
monochrome, bichrome or polychrome execution.
11 Whereas the experienced epigrapher tends to see formally defined script traditions
behind any single inscription or even letter, the iconographer’s attention is first of all
captured by the visual form, shape and extension, of script, lining, layout, etc. Both
expertises need of course to take into account material surface, tools and techniques,
skills and competences as preconditions for any inscription or image to be produced.
12 I am told by Israel Finkelstein that a multidisciplinary research project will investigate
this issue in the near future.
13 See Lemaire 1981: esp. 25–32. Back in 1992, my own interpretation of the simultaneous
presence on the pithoi of letter prescripts, single words and abecedaries was that
some of the writers had put down a draft, while others showed off with their skills
and yet others would have demonstrated that they, too, had received some formal
education (Keel and Uehlinger 1992/1998: §143). In other words, I tried to make sense
of the different types of pithos inscriptions by framing them in a (admittedly somewhat
speculative) real-life situation. An alternative interpretation recently suggested by
Mandell (2012) likewise stresses a performative aspect at least some of the inscriptions.
 to be taken into account for any alternative interpretation. Before
heading off for a grand theory, however, one should start with the
basics: The ink inscriptions on pottery were written down on two
pithoi, whose size enabled them to function as “blackboards” of sorts.
These were not, however, evenly covered with inscriptions, drawings
or scribbles. As can be seen on Figs. 1–2, some inscriptions on Pithos
A clearly overlap, while others were set, it seems deliberately, into free
spaces. Weighing each individual inscription against others and against
the overall evidence, it is obvious that some “scribes” (not all of them
professionals, to be sure) cared for layout and virgin surface when
putting down their inscriptions, while others did not. Furthermore,
ink inscriptions not only overlap with other inscriptions, but some
overlap drawings (which has prompted scholars to ask whether any
such overlap, and particularly the one above the Bes-like figure AS,
was intentional or not). As for the drawings, some of them overlap
with others, too, which prompted Beck to suggest a “stratigraphy” and
even a chronological sequence of three different painters (see below).
Musing on the degree, intensity and intentionality of overlaps, I have
often wondered whether our scholarly judgment is not at times altered
and led astray by the clear-cut scientific reproduction of the epigraphic
and iconographic evidence as black-and-white line drawings. I
presume that, in contrast to Beck and others who were lucky to work
on the original artifacts, most scholars writing on Kuntillet >Ajrud
inscriptions or drawings have based their interpretations on published
black-and-white drawings. One does not have to think twice to admit
that in contrast to grayshade or color, black-and-white drawings
exaggerate the presence or absence of a trace of ink on pottery. As
a matter of fact, such renderings presuppose virtually hundreds of
options and decisions on behalf of the modern draftsperson and his or
her advisors. For sure many scholars writing on Kuntillet >Ajrud will
also have gazed at the pithoi when they were exhibited at the Israel
Museum in the 1980s and early 1990s, appreciating from a distance the
difference between line drawings and the “real thing.” But looking at
the color photographs now published in the final report helps to better
appreciate the “real evidence” and results in a different perception,
more nuanced and accounting for many different shades of red, black
or brown and gray than the standard black-and-white renderings. One
gets another sense of how the material looked when it was discovered
and a better basis to imagine (is not history informed imagination, after
all?) how it might have looked in ancient times. Consider that Kuntillet
>Ajrud is after all a rather dusty place. At the time of their discovery,
some inscriptions as a whole or parts of individual inscriptions had
faded away much more than others when they were discovered by
the excavators; it is probable that they had faded already, at least to
 some extent, in antiquity, that is by the time some of them were
partly covered by overlapping new ones. Similarly, some drawings have
clearly been incompletely preserved: Think of a conspicuously raised
lion’s tail (my BI on Fig. 2) visible just below ibex BJ (Meshel et al.
2012: 148 Fig. 6.6, 179 Fig. 6.28), a feature so fragmentary that it did
not even get a tag in Beck’s analysis. It must once, in some way or
another, have referred to a proud lion roaring to the right. If I try to
modestly make sense of this tail, either the lion was once complete
and has largely faded away; or the tail was a trial piece of a draftsman
who exercised his hand before drawing a complete roaring lion on
one of the walls. Or think of Beck’s motive AW left of the famous
Bes-like figures (best seen on the color photograph in Meshel et al.
2012: 166 Fig. 6.20a), which she understood as the remains of an ibex 495
and a garland. It probably once belonged to a garland tree with an
ibex on either side. These and other features and motifs were more

Christoph Uehlinger
complete and well visible immediately after execution; but they dried
up rapidly and may have partly faded away before further drawings or
inscriptions were charged over them. When looking at some of the
color photographs in Meshel’s report one gets a vivid sense indeed
of how the fading process must have affected individual drawings or
inscriptions.14
Close examination of the published photographs and drawings shows
that in some cases, an inscription or a drawing was placed such as to
intentionally avoid an overlap, while in other cases there was clearly
no attempt not to overlap whatever. In the latter cases, one may • Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud
ask whether the overlap was intentional or not.15 As mentioned this
question has more often than not been discussed in splendid isolation
with regard to the partly overlapping pair of Bes-like figures and the
latter’s partial overlap with one of the “Yahweh and his a/Asherah”
inscriptions. Personally, I think that the more probable alternative in
most cases of overlap is that they were unintentional. After all and

14 The best examples are from Pithos A: Meshel et al. 2012: 146 Fig. 6.3 and 158 Fig.
6.14a (note especially boar AB on the shoulder), 148 Fig. 6.7a (cow AL, possibly
unfinished), and 167 Fig. 20a (Bes-like figure AS).
15 Overlaps are also discussed, with very different explanations offered, by Ornan (2015,
2016) and Schmidt (2013, 2016). This is not the place to engage their explanations in
detail. Suffice it to point out that both consider the pithos drawings as drafts for wall
paintings. The main difference between the two approaches is that Schmidt assumes
relative coherence of images and inscriptions, that is composition, already on the
pithoi, whereas Ornan refrains from correlating inscriptions with images (except
when she relates the asherah to motifs AE–H! following an intuition first expressed by
Ruth Hestrin [1987] and supported, inter alia, by Irit Ziffer [2010]). The real originality
of Ornan’s proposal (partly taken up by Schmidt 2013) lies in the suggestion that we
should take pithos drawings and mural paintings as a “single assemblage” featuring
two main subject matters: royal activity (including ceremonial appearance, feasting,
warfare and hunt) and apotropaic, beneficial and protective “religious” motifs.
 generally speaking, if on the one hand writers and painters will have
almost naturally favored a virgin surface if easily available, they had
no particular need to avoid overlap in other cases, for four reasons: (1)
previous inscriptions or drawings had rapidly dried up or partly faded
away; (2) a new drawing or inscription would naturally be much more
visible than any earlier one and thus stand out from the surface; (3)
time and again it must have been easier just to use the closest surface
at hand rather than move what were after all quite heavy pithoi, or
move around them; (4) neither inscriptions nor drawings on the pithoi
were made for eternity. Indirect proof for the latter point is given by
the many scribbles, particularly on Pithos A. I take these scribbles,
numerous but rarely addressed in scholarly studies, to be traces of
a normal operation for anyone working with a brush: When having
been charged with ink or paint it carries too much liquid; you need to
discharge a little before drawing if you want to obtain a decent line.
Taking into account such rather practical considerations, the burden
of proof is in my view on scholars who do assume intentional
correlations (whether through overlap or in terms of copying)
between individual drawings or drawings and inscriptions, rather
than on their more skeptical colleagues who refrain from too closely
correlating drawings and inscriptions.Yet there are some examples of
overlap where to ponder on a correlation does not seem unreasonable.
I shall turn to some of them in what follows, focusing as mentioned
on non-epigraphic examples.

DISTINGUISHING HANDS

How can we distinguish hands when dealing with pictorial evidence?

This is not the place to expose a thorough and detailed methodology,16
but I should outline some of the assumptions which guide the analysis
presented below. Examining the drawings and following Beck’s
masterful description and analysis, it is clear that none of the pithoi
drawings—except perhaps the row of gesturing men on Pithos B—
are spontaneous, ad hoc inventions, nor are they creations ex nihilo by

16 One might refer to a plethora of publications on “style” and “attribution,” ranging

from connoisseurship to art history, which need to be enriched by social-historical
and anthropological perspectives. Gombrich’s classic Art and Illusion (1983 [orig.
1959]) remains helpful as theoretical background, see below n. 22. Beck herself
referred to Barasch 1977; compare, e.g., Brassat and Kohle 2003; Weissert 2009.
Closer to Levantine archaeology, see, e.g., Conkey and Hastorf 1993; Dietler and
Herbich 1998; Conkey 2013; and Feldman 2014, whose programmatic aim is to move
beyond the common concern with attributing stylistic minutiae to geographically
located workshops; and several contributions (esp. those of Silvana Di Paolo, Allison
Thomason and Francesca Onnis) in Brown and Feldman 2014. These studies rarely
address brushwork, however, which has its own constraints, very different from, say,
wood-, bone- or ivory-carving, seal-cutting, let alone metalwork.
 unskilled amateurs.17 As demonstrated by Beck, they generally follow
specific and well-established representational conventions well known
to specialists of ancient Near Eastern, especially Levantine (so-called
“Syro-Phoenician”) minor arts. If the term “professional” may seem
slightly abusive in view of the Kuntillet >Ajrud drawings, it is obvious
that the author(s) of several of these drawings, especially on Pithos A
from the northern bench-room, relied on and made use of definite
artistic knowledge and skills. He (or they) may have occasionally
executed some details in a slightly hasty or sketchy mode, for instance
in the treatment of a lion’s mane (AH). But he (or they) would also
pay considerable attention to significant details, for instance when
representing the harness of horses AA or AV. As a rule, the drawings on
Pithos A follow a middle way of sorts, showing neither carelessness nor 497
exaggerated obsession with all too many details. More important for
my argument, most drawings display a rather confident and determined

Christoph Uehlinger
brushwork; as a matter of fact, there are few traces of corrections or
second tracing. Coming from a world where learning how to draw was
not part of elementary education as in many contemporary societies,
such determined brushwork and self-confident artistry evidences an
experienced hand, which almost habitually knew, for instance, how to
render a cow and her suckling calf, both in posture and proportion
(AX); how to distinguish the attitude of a cow turning back her head
towards her calf from that of a bull walking straight with his head
slightly lowered (BR); how to distinguish the hooves, legs and thighs
of goats, horses and bovines from the rounder paws of felines; or how • Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud
to render ribs, muscles and wrinkles with a few lines soberly apposed
on the animal’s appropriate body part. Much of this must result from
skill and practice, if not habit, and cannot be accounted for in terms
of “popular art” by “untrained artists.”18
Any attempt to distinguish hands in the context of Near Eastern art and
craftsmanship that was largely traditional, conditioned by type models
and their reproduction, convention and habitual skills, should rely on
the combined observation and analysis of three sets of evidence:
1. Technical differences, e.g., in terms of brushes, paint or inks;
2. Unintentional details, which are more diagnostic for hand
differentiation and attribution than semantically relevant differences;
3. Stylistic differences.
These three criteria can be handled with reasonable precision when
the evidence allows for comparison of closely comparable artistic

17 Pace Z. Meshel’s (?) opinion that ”the pithoi were decorated spontaneously by
untrained artists” (2012: 143).
18 Pace Meshel et al. 2012: 143 (Z. Meshel?) and 198 (P. Beck).
 products: similar surface, similar genre, same motifs, etc. Still, the
first and third criteria may often be difficult to apply in practice, for
obvious reasons: A painter will generally use a set of brushes, not
just a single one, and several inks or colors (but how many brushes
would have been available in the northern benchroom?); and a skilled
artist or craftsman may well master different styles (although to train
such a competence would only be relevant in a social context that
appreciates sophistication and distinction). In the case of the paintings
and drawings from Kuntillet >Ajrud, Beck as early as 1982 suggested
distinguishing three or four hands for the pithoi drawings and an
unspecified number of artists for the mural paintings. It is to her
analysis that we now turn.

How Many Hands? Taking Stock with Pirhiya Beck

As mentioned above, any discussion of the paintings and drawings from
Kuntillet >Ajrud should start from Beck’s seminal and groundbreaking
article. That this important study was reprinted with only minimal
modifications in the final report, 30 years after its first publication, is a
tribute to its quality and exceptionally long academic half-life.19 Beck’s
study is divided into two parts, Part I dealing with the pithoi drawings,
Part II with the wall paintings. The first part is organized mainly
according to motifs (I.1 cow-and-calf motif, I.2 ibexes flanking a
tree, I.3 isolated animals, I.5 Bes figures and lyre player, I.6 procession
of worshippers, I.7 archer); four sections (I.4, entitled “The Animal
Painter,” I.8 on drawings on potsherds, I.9 which summarizes the
analysis of the pithoi drawings and I.10 on the relationship between
the pithoi drawings and the inscriptions) have a slightly different
orientation and purpose. Part II has its own introduction, a description
of the individual, very fragmentary wall paintings, and a general
summary which among other questions addresses the relation of the
wall paintings to the pithoi drawings. The latter section together with
Sections I.4 and I.9 are the most relevant for the present discussion.
As indicated by the use of the singular, Beck was of the opinion that all
animal drawings (including Bull BR) were the work of a single “Animal
Painter,” although she qualified that judgment: “Several details of the
animal drawings are shared by all of them, thus indicating that they
were all the product of the same hand—or if not the selfsame hand,
then by one or two artists with identical technique and background.”
She expressed “some doubt about the painter of Lion H and Ibex J,

19 I don’t know how much of her research on the drawings from Kuntillet >Ajrud Beck
could share at the time with her students. Raz Kletter, Tallay Ornan, and Irit Ziffer,
to name but a few colleagues who have since engaged in iconographical work, were
doctoral students after 1982, when she had turned to other projects.
although we believe [!] they were also drawn by the same hand.”20
The main argument for assuming a single artist was the observation
of strong similarities (supported by appropriate tables) in the treatment
of animal heads and foreparts. To be sure, Beck did notice a number
of differences, which she attributed to difficulties experienced by the
artist in the treatment of particular details: “Throughout our discussion
we have noted the artist’s unsuccessful struggles with the problem of
representing the forelegs and coordinating them with the hind legs.
He also had difficulties in dealing with the parts that—in keeping with
visual reality—would have been concealed from the eye of the viewer.”21
Interestingly, Beck seems to have assumed a direct relation between what
a viewer may physically recognize in reality and what he or she would
try to represent by a drawing, bypassing as it were Ernst Gombrich’s 499
famous statement on Malraux (fully supported, I would argue, by the
drawings from Kuntillet >Ajrud) that “art is born of art, not of nature”22;

Christoph Uehlinger
that is, a figurative drawing construes a picture and represents a figure
known from nature according to skills and conventions learned and
applied by the artist (or craftsman), and it is interpreted or decoded by the
viewer not on the basis of his or her physical knowledge of the “real”
(natural) object but via his or her shared knowledge of representational
conventions.23 According to Beck, differences in the treatment of

20 Beck 2002: 116 = Meshel et al. 2012: 161.

21 Beck 2002: 120 = Meshel et al. 2012: 162.

• Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud

22 Gombrich 1983: 20. “We are accustomed to looking at all images as if they were
photographs or illustrations and to interpreting them as the reflection of an actual or
imaginary reality” (ibid.: 105).
23 Gombrich spoke of a “reliance on construction rather than on imitation” (ibid.: 76), and
of “guided projection” (ibid.: 170). Cf. in a nutshell ibid.: 30 (“the artist, too, cannot
transcribe what he sees; he can only translate it into the terms of his medium”), 40 (“all
graphic techniques operate with conventional notation”), 56 (“style rules even where
the artist wishes to represent nature faithfully […]. The artist, clearly, can render only
what his tool and his medium [and his skill, C. U.] are capable of rendering”), 247 (“in
all styles the artist has to rely on a vocabulary of forms and […] it is the knowledge of
this vocabulary rather than a knowledge of things that distinguishes the skilled from
the unskilled artist”), 263 (“all representations are grounded on schemata which the
artist learns to use”), 94 (“the test of the image is not its lifelikeness but its efficacy
within a context of action”), 53 (“it is the ‘more’ or ‘less’ that counts, the relationship
between the expected and the experienced”), 78 (“styles, like languages, differ in the
sequence of articulation and in the number of questions they allow the artist to ask […].
The form of a representation cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements
of the society in which the given visual language gains currency”), 63 (“it makes no
sense to look at a motif unless one has learned how to classify and catch it within the
network of a schematic form”), 54 (“I believe the historical imagination can overstep
these barriers, that we can attune ourselves to different styles no less than we can
adjust our mental set to different media and different notations”). Note that all this
does not, in my view, require explanations in terms of cultural psychology, a concern
to Gombrich which must not be projected into the materials now being discussed. My
own interest here is exclusively in figurative “art” (i.e., brushwork) as a particular set
of acquired bodily practice, framed by both cultural and social rules and expectations
(such as theorized in terms of habitus and know-how by Pierre Bourdieu).
 details should be interpreted in terms of inferior drawing skills, or poor
assimilation of the relevant conventions by the painter: “it would seem
that all the animals on the pithoi were drawn by the same painter (with
the possible exception of the chariot horse), who repeated his ‘mistakes,’
yet managed to convey the characteristic features of each species. This
is a painter who could not have been of the first rank of artisans, and
whose efforts fall below the standard of contemporary works, such as
ivory carvings or seals, manufactured by artists of the highest ability for
the royal court.”24 In a way, Beck’s measure of quality concluded from a
few parts to the whole, and from one material genre and technique to
another; her argument based on some “inferior” features in the animal
drawings affected her evaluation of the drawings as such, which she
considered to result from relatively poor artistic abilities.
Why should Chariot horse AV be the work of possibly another painter?
The reason for Beck’s hesitating evaluation of this motif is that, while
“the joined outline of the horse’s forelegs are similar to those of the
other animals on the pithoi,” it was executed with a wider brush, a
similar one or the same thick brush as the one that served for Lyre
player AU (as well as the Bes-like figures AS and AT).25 “However,” Beck
wrote, “considering the little we have to go on, we prefer to leave the
question of the horse painter’s identity open.”26 On second thought,
it seems more than doubtful to base hand attribution on the thickness
of a brush alone, especially in the presence of contradictory evidence.
The wide brush, iconographical considerations and observations on the
drawings’ “stratigraphy” on Pithos A (“Bes” AS overlapping “Bes” AT,
Garland AW and Cow AX) and Pithos B (Worshipper Q overlapping
Bull BR) led Beck to move one step forward (her Section I.9) and
identify at least three hands at work on the pithoi, which she called
Painters A (the “Animal painter”), B and C. In her opinion, Painter
B using the wider brush did the Bes-like figures AS and AT and
Lyre player AU, and he shared with Painter A an acquaintance with
Phoenician iconography. As for Painter C, to whom Beck attributed
the procession of “worshippers” on Pithos B, he “also used a wide
brush but in a more primitive style” which reminded her of drawings
on Midianite pottery and some rock drawings from Sinai and
Arabia, representing an altogether different cultural horizon.27 That
the procession should be the result of one or several hands clearly
less experienced in the manipulation of a brush for the purpose of
figurative drawing seems indeed obvious at a single glance.

24 Beck 2002: 121 = Meshel et al. 2012: 164–165.

25 Beck 2002: 116 = Meshel et al. 2012: 161.
26 Ibid.
27 Beck 2002: 116 = Meshel et al. 2012: 182–183.
Turning to the wall paintings, recovered in a most fragmentary
state which allowed only tentative reconstructions of a few larger
compositions, Beck found it “difficult to distinguish specific features
of any significance that would enable us to identify a particular artist.”28
Considering such aspects as “sureness of line” vs. “uneven lines of
varying width,” different color schemes or the use, in one instance,
“of a black outline around the yellow leaves of the lotus blossoms in
the lowermost band,” she remained undecided “as to whether they
are of any significance in distinguishing between different painters.”29
Still, in her opinion, “the scale and execution of the murals suggests
[sic] that they were planned in advance, and painted by artists [note
the plural, C. U.] who were either commissioned or otherwise
501
retained for this purpose.”30
To sum up, Beck assumed—on admittedly tentative grounds—that

Christoph Uehlinger
the mural paintings had been executed by a limited number of
artists, who operated as itinerant craftsmen within a framework
of official planning and commission; whereas the pithoi drawings
were the work of three different painters, one of whom came
from a peripheral background (“desert art”). “In comparison to
the pithoi, the murals exhibit a higher standard of craftsmanship,
perhaps because they were planned in advance, while the pithoi
drawings were spontaneous.”31 As for the question whether

• Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud

the wall paintings were in some way or another related to the
pithoi drawings (or vice versa), Beck considered three hypotheses
without firmly opting for one of them: (a) that at least some of
the drawings on the pithoi (and on sherd Z32) could have served
as sketches for mural paintings; (b) “that the mural artists were
simply ‘keeping in practice’ by drawing on the pithoi the motifs
from their repertoires, without any intention of transferring these
specific sketches to the walls”; and (c), less probable according
to her, that the pithoi drawings were intended to illustrate the
dedications in the inscriptions, or were pictorial dedications in
their own right.33

28 Beck 2002: 159 = Meshel et al. 2012: 197.

29 Ibid.
30 Beck 2002: 160 = Meshel et al. 2012: 197.
31 Ibid.
32 See below, n. 46.
33 Ibid. One major difficulty of the latter hypothesis, which has been brought into the
discussion mainly because one of the “Yahweh and his A/asherah” inscriptions
overlaps with Bes-like figure AS, is the impossibility to understand all the pithoi
inscriptions (to be sure, not even a majority among them) as dedications.
My own evaluation of the pictorial evidence from Kuntillet >Ajrud,
more indebted to Beck’s insights than to anyone else’s, nevertheless
departs from her interpretation in three ways:
1. I doubt that the pithoi drawings can be attributed to merely three
or four hands.
2. While I recognize that most of the mural paintings required more
elaborate planning than any of the pithoi drawings, I do not think
that the difference between the two sets of evidence should be
interpreted in artificially dichotomic terms such as formal vs.
popular, planned vs. spontaneous or the like (see above, “Spaces
and Overlaps,” for considerations on representational conventions
and artistic habit). If the mural paintings did obviously require a
different kind of investment and advance planning, their artistic
quality is not too far away from that of the pithoi drawings.
3. I do not think that the features interpreted by Beck as “mistakes”
especially in the treatment of anatomic details by her “Animal
painter” should be attributed to an individual artist’s failure to
appropriately translate physical view, nor to this painter’s limited
artistic skills, but that at least some of these features are better
understood when viewed in the context of master-apprentice or
master-and-colleague relationships and copying processes.
The aim of the following section is to substantiate the latter point.

OBSERVATIONS ON PITHOI DRAWINGS

Composition AF-E-G (two ibexes flanking a tree, Fig. 3) is one of the

most discussed in the literature on Kuntillet >Ajrud because it has been
heavily mobilized (with or without Lion AH striding underneath) for
the a/Asherah discussion. For the present purpose, we can ignore this
debate—and the lion. I simply want to draw attention to a feature
already (and unsurprisingly) noticed by Beck: “Although neither ibex is
completely preserved, it is clear that they are not identical in appearance
nor in their position vis-à-vis the tree. The forelegs of the ibex at the
right touch the lower and third-from-lower lotus flowers, whereas the
forelegs of the opposite animal are drawn on either side of the lower
flower.”34 It is notable that, when describing the two ibexes, Beck
started with Ibex AG, which is anatomically more sophisticated (note
the eyebrow, the well-proportioned depiction of the animal’s left leg-
and-thigh in the foreground, the rather acute position of the right leg
in the background, and the feet resting on flowers), before describing
Ibex AF in comparative terms in relation to AG: “The head is similar, except

34 Beck 2002: 108 = Meshel et al. 2012: 155.

Figure 3: Stylized tree flanked by ibexes, AF-E-G: detail taken from Meshel et
al. 2012: 147, Fig. 6.4 (animals AA–D and AH deleted); cf. color photographs in 503
Meshel et al. 2012: 146, Fig. 6.3, and 153, Fig. 6.10.

Christoph Uehlinger
for the missing eyebrow. (…) The throat is shorter and more rounded than that
of Ibex F [sic, read G (C. U.)], and joins the neck at a more natural angle
(…).”35 The latter comment confirms Beck’s idea of images reflecting
nature in a more or less appropriate way. Unsurprisingly, Beck also noted
the somewhat strange way of representing the left animal’s shoulders,
especially the left shoulder, “which according to visual reality would
not be seen.” But it did not apparently occur to her that the differences
noted might be indications of different hands.
Let us, by way of hypothesis, examine that option further: Taking into
account that these drawings are not, in all probability, inkings of • Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud
designs that would have been previously sketched with chalk or the
like, but genuine freehand tracings, we can tentatively reconstruct the
drawing process that resulted in Ibex AF. It must have started with the
back and head (note that the neck was drawn twice), and the belly
was only drawn after the forelegs were in place. The latter are drawn
in a rather schematic, unsophisticated way, with round, non-anatomical
shoulders, legs extended straight and almost parallel, little attention
to the knees and the two feet resting “in the air” (if not meant to rest
on the same flower): Given all these incongruencies, I find it hard to
admit that Ibex AF should be the work of the same draftsman as Ibex
A
G. It seems more appropriate to hypothesize that a more experienced
hand drew Ibex AG first, followed by another hand trying to mirror
and copy the animal on the opposite side of the tree but doing so but
with more limited skills—and perhaps a habit of his own: Note that
the position of AF’s forelegs recalls Horse AA just above.36 The other
anatomical details such as the face, ears and horns, wrinkles on the

35 Ibid. (emphasis added).

36 Yet another variant of resolving the problem of forelegs can be seen with Ibex BJ.
 neck and ribs were added at the final stage of the drawing; they could
easily be (and apparently were) copied from Ibex AG as well, the only
actual “mistake” being the omission of the eyebrow.
A second example reveals more distance in skill between two different
hands: Compare Cow-and-calf AX (Fig. 4a) with Cow[-and-calf] BL
(Fig. 4b), an “evidently unfinished” drawing according to Beck,37 who
in this instance described the infelicitous version before the more
successful one. I am tempted to speculate that “composition” BL may
have remained unfinished due to its rather poor execution, which led
the painter to abandon his failed attempt; yet parts of the back may
have faded away. Beck aptly noted that the head of Cow BL was far
too small, and its neck too short, so that it “would not have been
able to make contact with a calf if such had been drawn.”38 One may
note several significant differences in the treatment of the two cows
(which, we should recall, appear on two different pithoi): compare the
treatment of the horns, the eyebrow, the wrinkles, the hooves… Beck
recognized such differences and placed style and skills of Cow-and-calf
A
X close to those of Syrian ivory carvings, that is rather high quality
craftsmanship. Yet she insisted that despite all differences “most of the
details in the execution of the heads and foreparts of the cows seem
to betray the same hand.”39 She even pushed her interpretation so far
as to “assume that the artist started with Cow BL, but since he did not
succeed in placing the head in a position that would bring it anywhere
near the calf he intended to draw, he left the picture unfinished
and moved on to the other pithos, where he was more successful
in portraying the desired motif.”40 While I sympathize with Beck’s
courage to offer such an almost midrashic, real-life scenario, I find
it difficult to accept given the too many, straightforward differences,
which would imply that the painter made tremendous progress from
only one drawing to the other. Methodologically speaking, it is of
course interesting that in a comparative analysis, one scholar may
privilege similarities, whereas another will insist on the differences. I
do not deny that AX and BL show similarities in treatment, but these
should in my view be attributed to two different painters’ shared
training background and technical habit rather than to a single hand.
My third example is again a most famous one, namely the two Bes-like
figures AS and AT (Fig. 5). Much ink has been spilled about the physical
relation of the two figures. That AS was added after AT, producing a
partial overlap especially on the level of arms and shoulders, neither

37 Beck 2002: 98 = Meshel et al. 2012: 148.

38 Beck 2002: 99 = Meshel et al. 2012: 148.
39 Beck 2002: 102 = Meshel et al. 2012: 151.
40 Ibid.
 505

Christoph Uehlinger
Figure 4a: Cow-and-calf AX, Meshel et al. 2012: 150, Fig. 6.8; cf. color
photograph ibid.: Fig. 6.8a.

• Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud

Figure 4b: Cow BL, Meshel et al. 2012: 149 Fig. 6.7; cf. color photograph ibid.:
Fig. 6.7a.

precludes nor requires that the two figures were intentionally related (in
the extreme, and put in a deliberately sloppy way to stress the absurd:
“Mr. and Mrs. Yahweh going for a walk on Sabbath morning”). Joel
LeMon and Brent Strawn have recently visualized the “stratigraphy”
of the two figures and the inscription above them, which was added
at a third stage.41 My concern here is with the figures alone. Given the
use of the same or a similar wide brush, it is reasonable to assume that

41 See LeMon and Strawn 2013: esp. 106–110.

Figure 5: Bes-like figures AS and AT, Meshel et al. 2012: 166, Fig. 6.20 (Lyre
player AU deleted); cf. color photograph ibid.: Fig. 6.20a.
Lyre player AU (and possibly Horse[-and-chariot] AV, which however
shares features with other animal depictions) were drawn within a
short period of time. But regardless of their specific identification (as
Bes, Beset, Yahweh, a/Asherah, etc.), Figures AS and AT represent two
artistic versions, if anything, of how to depict a “Bes-type,” apotropaic
hybrid. The most down-to-earth interpretation I can imagine at present
would be that someone drew Figure AT (perhaps as a sketch in view
of an ulterior task to be performed on one of the walls) in a quite
sophisticated way—as a matter of fact, many details (eyes, ears, arms,
legs, feet position…) are more finely executed than in Figure AS, which
in comparison looks crude, asymmetrical, angular and bony (if not
arthritic altogether). I find it hard to attribute both drawings to the same
hand—and in this instance enjoy the company of Beck, who doubted
“whether the two Bes figures on Pithos A (…) were drawn by the same
painter.”42 It is more plausible to consider AT as a variant to AS, sketched
by another hand drawing on a slightly different artistic tradition or
model type—and skills. As for the overlap of the two figures—quite
untypical for ancient Near Eastern art43—its significance should in my
view not be overemphasized, given the manifest differences in size and
height between the two figures. Figure AS appears to be somewhat

42 Beck 2002: 126 = Meshel et al. 2012: 169.

43 Beck 2002: 132 = Meshel et al. 2012: 173.
 squeezed into what little free space remained when it was drawn, the
surface to the left having already been occupied by Ibex-and-garland
(*Ibexes-and-tree?) AW and Cow-and-calf AX.
To sum up this section, I suggest that all three examples discussed
point to the plausible existence of different hands and a certain
communicative interchange between different draftsmen. They also
indicate differences in skills, which in two cases may reflect a gradient
between master and apprentice.

OBSERVATIONS ON PITHOI DRAWINGS AND MURAL PAINTINGS

For reasons of space I shall not go into detail in this section, which
would require a much more thorough treatment. But let me consider
briefly the relation between pithoi drawings and mural paintings. 507
The latter were restricted to Building B and to the entranceway and

Christoph Uehlinger
benchroom area of Building A. The bad state of preservation of only a
few fragments does not allow us to be affirmative beyond the fact that
a number of functionally significant walls and rooms were decorated in
a rather formal, but surprisingly varied way. Decoration ranged from
dotted surfaces44 and chequered designs45 through lotus-and-guilloche
bands46 and voluted palmettes47 to figurative scenes, among which a
figure enthroned at the entryway to the casemate fort stands out as
the most conspicuous and prominent one.48 Beck hypothesized that
a drawing on an isolated sherd (Sherd Z49) found west of Building B
(L. 161) might have been a preliminary sketch for that figure,50 which
• Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud
must have represented a person of royal status, perhaps even a king.51
For the present discussion, other items may provide even better
evidence that we should understand many motifs on the pithoi (if
perhaps not all of them) in close relation to decorated walls, rather
than take them as “pictorial dedications,” graffiti or the like. My
first example is the single quadruped on “wall painting”52 no. 12,

44 Beck 2002: 148 = Meshel et al. 2012: 187 no. 5.

45 Ibid.: no. 6.
46 Beck 2002: 150–151 = Meshel et al. 2012: 188–189 no. 7.
47 Beck 2002: 154–157 = Meshel et al. 2012: 192–194 no. 10.
48 Beck 2002: 152–154 = Meshel et al. 2012: 189–192 no. 9.
49 Beck 2002: 139–140 = Meshel et al. 2012: 180–181 with Figs. 6.30 and 30a. See now
Schmidt 2013: 58–60.
50 See above, n. 29.
51 Beck 2000: 180–181 = 2002: 218; Keel and Uehlinger 1992/1998: §145; Ziffer 2013
and 2014.
52 As a matter of fact, this piece does not qualify as a wall painting in the same sense as
the plastered fragments, since it displays four or five isolated motifs (petals of a lotus
flower, one or two animals, a human head of a figure carrying a stick, and the head
of a lion or lioness), probably trial sketches, painted directly onto the unplastered
surface of a stone of the doorjamb.
 which Beck interpreted as a goat.53 The zoological identification
may well be correct, but the anatomy and stylistic rendering of
the animal’s body is strongly reminiscent of Horse AA.54 The two
drawings should probably be attributed to the same hand. In other
words, our draftsmen did not use pithoi only as “blackboards”; at
least some of them left sketches elsewhere on (vertical) stone or
plaster surfaces as well. A second motif, the image of a goat or
ibex grazing among lotus flowers (wall painting no. 8), recalled
to Beck what she understood as an Ibex-and-garland composition
(AW). Since the latter could originally have represented a scene
of ibexes flanking a flower tree not unlike composition AF-E-G
discussed above, one may add Goat! AD and Ibex BJ to the argument
and conclude that grazing goats and/or ibexes must once have
occupied a rather prominent position at Kuntillet >Ajrud.55 Third,
on the opposite end of the scale of artistic sophistication, one might
mention the use of clustered dots to mark certain spaces (wall
painting no. 5), a feature which recalls the use of dots by people
handling a wide brush on either pithoi A and B.56 Taken together,
and considered in the light of variant drawings and copying
processes discussed above, this suggests that most of the motifs
on the pithoi, and perhaps all of them, were sketch drawings that
originally had some equivalents somewhere on the plastered and
mural paintings.

CONCLUSION

I hope to have drawn the reader’s attention to some hitherto

overlooked details and issues that may carry our understanding of
the drawings and paintings from Kuntillet >Ajrud beyond the point
reached in 1982 by Pirhiya Beck. On the basis of presently available
information, re-evaluated in the light of a “close reading” and
critical historical imagination, the most appropriate way to make
sense of the evidence seems to hypothesize that the two famous
pithoi served as “blackboards” of sorts to the artists who painted
the murals. These draftsmen definitely numbered more than three.

53 Beck 2002: 158–159 = Meshel et al. 2012: 196.

54 Beck 2002: 112 = Meshel et al. 2012: 158 with Fig. 6.14.
55 Ornan (2016: 4, 8) reminds me that I once suggested that the hoofed leg on wall
painting no. 8 belonged to a horse rather than a caprid (Keel and Uehlinger 1992:
242; 1998: 215). It is unclear how this quadruped (whose leg appears partly upside
down on the photograph in Meshel et al. 2012: 190, Fig. 6.38a) relates to the flower
fragments with which Beck associated the animal.
56 Since these dots do not follow the exact outlines of the figures to which they belong—
Bes-like figures AS and AT, Lyre player AU on Pithos A, some of the “worshippers” on
Pithos B—they have occasionally been understood as secondary additions.
 It remains that both the evidence from the pithoi and, even more,
from the wall paintings are fragmentary. Considering however that a
good deal of motifs and subject matter is positively attested in both
media, it does not seem unreasonable to hypothesize that many motifs
figuring on the pithoi—some of which refer to larger compositions
by implication—and perhaps all of them, once had their equivalents
among the mural paintings.57 If I insisted 25 years ago on the
necessary methodological distinction of pithoi drawings and mural
paintings, taking the latter as witnesses for the role of Kuntillet
>Ajrud as a state-supported outpost,58 I would now argue that the
draftsmen responsible for the murals were the same as those who
drew their sketches on the pithoi. Only the so-called “worshipper”
figures of Pithos B clearly reflect a different background. Whether 509
this difference should be interpreted in terms of a social dichotomy
(trained and skilled artists/draftsmen vs. untrained and unskilled

Christoph Uehlinger
people who left some more spontaneous marks of their presence),
different ethnic origin (e.g., Phoenicians alongside Israelites) and/
or cultural background will be left open here, but I hope that there
will be other opportunities to return to Kuntillet >Ajrud in the
future—in a context which, unlike writing for his festschrift, will
allow me to freely discuss matters with Benny again.59

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Avigad, N. and Sass, B. 1997. Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals. Jerusalem.
Barasch, M. 1977. Approaches to Art. Jerusalem (Hebrew).
Beck, P. 1982. The Drawings from Horvat Teman (Kuntillet >Ajrud). Tel Aviv 9:
3–68 (= Beck 2002: 94–170).
Beck, P. 2000. The Art of Palestine During the Iron Age II: Local Traditions and
External Influences (10th–8th centuries BCE). In: Uehlinger, C., ed. Images as
Media: Sources for the Cultural History of the Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean (First
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Beck, P. 2012. The Drawings and Decorative Designs. In: Meshel, Z. et al.,
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Border. Jerusalem: 143–204.

57 See now Ornan 2015, 2016 and above, n. 14.

58 Keel and Uehlinger 1992/1998: §§145–147.
59 Some of the observations made above have been presented on various occasions,
e.g., in academic talks at the University of Pittsburgh (November 19, 2013), where I
enjoyed the hospitality of Ron Tappy; at a retreat of the Asia and Europe research
consortium of the University of Zurich (June 3, 2014), where we discussed issues
of materiality, images and texts, and master-apprentice relations in transcultural
perspective; and at Emory University (November 17, 2015) where Joel LeMon
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Brassat, W. and Kohle, H. 2003. Methoden-Reader Kunstgeschichte. Texte zur Methodik
und Geschichte der Kunstwissenschaft. Cologne.
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Conkey, M.W. 2013. Style, Design and Function. In: Tilley, C. et al., eds. Handbook
of Material Culture, 2nd ed. London: 354–372.
Conkey, M.W. and Hastorf, C.A., eds. 1993. The Uses of Style in Archaeology (New
Directions in Archaeology). Cambridge, UK.
Dietler, M. and Herbich, I. 1998. Habitus, Techniques, Style: An Integrated
Approach to the Social Understanding of Material Culture and Boundaries.
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London: 232–263.
Feldman, M.H. 2014. Communities of Style. Portable Luxury Arts, Identity and
Collective Memory in the Iron Age Levant. Chicago.
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20 (publ. 2015): 13–26.
Gombrich, E.H. (1983 [orig. 1959]). Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of
Pictorial Representation. Oxford.
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37: 212–223.
Keel, O. and Uehlinger, C. 1992 (52001). Göttinnen, Götter und Gottessymbole.
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geschichte Kanaans und Israels aufgrund bislang
unerschlossener ikonographischer Quellen (Quaestiones disputatae 134). Freiburg,
Basel and Vienna.
Keel, O. and Uehlinger, C. 1998. Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient
Israel. Translated by: Trapp, T.T. Minneapolis and Edinburgh.
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Fribourg and Göttingen.
LeMon, J.M. and Strawn, B.A. 2013. Once More, YHWH and Company at
Kuntillet >Ajrud. Maarav 20 (publ. 2015): 83–114.
Mandell, S. 2012. “I Bless You to YHWH and His Asherah”—Writing and
Performativity at Kuntillet >Ajrud. Maarav 19: 131–162.
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on the Judah-Sinai Border. Jerusalem.
Na’aman, N. 2011. The Inscriptions of Kuntillet >Ajrud Through the Lense of
Historical Research. Ugarit-Forschungen 43 (publ. 2013): 299–324.
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20 (publ. 2015): 27–38.
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Yahweh Teman and His Asherah. The Inscriptions and Drawings from Kuntillet >Ajrud
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Christoph Uehlinger
• Distinguishing Hands at Kuntillet >Ajrud
Table of Contents

Introduction

Angelika Berlejung
New Life, New Skills and New Friends in Exile: The Loss and Rise of Capitals of the Judeans in
Babylonia

Baruch Brandl
Rakibʼil and “Kubaba of Aram” at Ördekburnu and Zincirli With Additional Observations on
Kubaba at Zincirli, Carchemish and Ugarit

Osnat Misch-Brandl
A New Perspective on the Ivory Pyxis from the Fosse Temple at Lachish

Françoise Briquel Chatonnet

Inscriptions de Prestige et Ecriture Du Quotidien : le Corpus Epigraphique en Hébreu Ancien au
Miroir de Son Contexte Ouest-Sémitique

Alexander Fantalkin
Was There a “Greek Renaissance” in 7th Century BCE Philistia?

Israel Finkelstein
Historical-Geographical Observations on the Ehud-Eglon Tale in Judges

Iwona Gajda
Un gobelet à libation de l’Arabie du Sud

Orly Goldwasser
From the Iconic to the Linear—The Egyptian Scribes of Lachish and the Modification of the Early
Alphabet in the Late Bronze Age

David Ilan
The Life and Times of an Ivory Handle of the Second Millennium BCE: A Tale of Prestige and
Demise

Othmar Keel
Unheilige „Heilige Schriften“

Axel E. Knauf
Israelite Inscriptions Published as Moabite

André Lemaire
The Kuntillet 'Ajrud Inscriptions Forty Years after Their Discovery

Aren M. Maeir & Louise A. Hitchcock

“And the Canaanite was then in the Land”? A Critical View of the “Canaanite Enclave” in Iron I
Southern Canaan

Joachim Marzahn
Betrifft: Letternstempel

Yossi Maurey & Amir S. Fink

Putting the Seal on Ma’adana: A Case of Forgery and Its Ramifications

Alan Millard
Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Their Distribution and Significance
Tallay Ornan
The Beloved, Ne’ehevet, and Other Does: Reflections on the Motif of Grazing or Browsing Wild
Horned Animals

Ronny Reich
The Jerusalem Market in the Late Second Temple Period

Christian Julien Robin & Maria Gorea

L’alphabet de Hima (Arabie séoudite)

Christopher Rollston
The Equation of Biblical Pharaoh “Shishak” with Pharaoh Ramesses II: A Philological and
Epigraphic Dismantling of Egyptologist David Rohl’s Proposal

Thomas Römer
L’énigme de 'Ashtar-Kemosh dans la Stèle de Mesha

Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault & Olivier Rouault

A View from the Bridge: Notes about the Assyrian Empire Economic System, as Seen from Tell
Masaikh (Lower Syrian Middle Euphrates Valley)

Michael Sebbane
Ceremonial and Ritual Maces in the Temples of the Ancient Near East, and the Nature of the
Hoard from Nahal Mishmar

Arie Shaus, Barak Sober, Shira Faigenbaum-Golovin, Anat Mendel-Geberovich, Eli Piasetzky, Eli Turkel
Facsimile Creation: Review of Algorithmic Approaches

Christoph Uehlinger
Learning by Doing—Distinguishing Different Hands at Work in the Drawings and Paintings of
Kuntillet 'Ajrud

Ralf-B. Wartke
Das Uruk-Kultgefäß aus technischer Sicht

Ran Zadok
Neo- and Late-Babylonian Notes