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Aegean sanctuaries and the Levant in the Late Bronze Age
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2013
Abstract
In a recent paper by O. Negbi it was argued that certain late bronze age Aegean temples owe elements of their design to influence from the Levant. Architectural features such as corner platforms, a ‘bent-axis’ approach, and twin temples, and cultural features such as the presence of ‘smiting god’ figurines, are analysed. It is concluded that there is no evidence that Aegean shrines were built according to a Canaanite model, and that there was no Canaanite cultic influence in the Aegean during the Late Bronze Age. If anything, the reverse applied in the early Iron Age, when the influence of the Sea Peoples is seen in some cultic architecture in the Levant.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1993
Footnotes
1
This paper is the product of research conducted for my master's thesis Mycenaeans in the East? An Assessment of the Contacts between the Mycenaean World and the Southern Levant in the Late Bronze Age (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Aug. 1991). I am very grateful to my supervisor, Professor Trude Dothan, and to Dr P. R. S. Moorey, for their advice and support. I also wish to express my thanks to the director and staff of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, where I did much of my research, and to the University of Cape Town, the South African Zionist Federation Trust, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for funding. Special abbreviations:
Cult = C. Renfrew et al., The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi (London, 1985)
Mevorakh = E. Stern, Excavations at Tel Mevorakh (1973–1976), ii: The Bronze Age (Qedem, 18; Jerusalem 1984)
Negbi 1988 = O. Negbi, ‘Levantine elements in the sacred architecture of the Aegean at the close of the Bronze Age’, BSA 83 (1988), 339–57
Qasile = A. Mazar, Excavations at Tell Qasile, i: The Philistine Sanctuary: Architecture and Cult Objects (Qedem, 12; Jerusalem, 1980)
Sanctuaries = R. Hägg and N. Marinatos (eds), Sanctuaries and Cults in the Aegean Bronze Age (Stockholm, 1981)
Taylour 1970 = Lord W. Taylour, ‘New light on Mycenaean religion’, Antiquity, 44 (1970), 270–80
References
2 Negbi 1988.
3 Mevorakh, 36.
4 Qasile, 65.
5 See Qasile, 65, table 12; Mevorakh, 34, fig. 4 b.
6 Negbi 1988, 350–3.
7 Ibid. 350–2.
8 Negbi's term for the building containing the ‘Room with the Fresco’. See Negbi 1988, 341; Taylour 1970, 270.
9 Mevorakh, 4–6.
10 Negbi 1988, 353. Negbi includes other temples, such as those at Kition, in her discussion, but they have secondary relevance to our subject and are thus not dealt with here.
11 Qasile, 66–7; Mevorakh, 33 n. 29; Cult, 407–9.
12 Negbi 1988, 350.
13 Qasile, 38.
14 Negbi 1988, 349 n. 29.
15 Taylour 1970, 274; Negbi 1988, 349.
16 The large, low platform at Tel Mevorakh may possibly be better interpreted as a step.
17 But with so little to compare it with, this is not in itself remarkable.
18 Taylour 1970, 274. It appears from Taylour's plan (Ibid., figs. 1–2; my Figs. 2–3) that no clear doorway leads into the alcove, i.e. the triangular storeroom at the back; presumably it was through the main room. Could it be that the platforms served partly as steps into the alcove?
19 Negbi 1988, 351; 353.
20 Qasile, 66.
21 Aharoni, Y., Investigations at Lachish: The Sanctuary and Residency (Lachish, v; Tel Aviv, 1975), 26, figs. 6–7.Google Scholar
22 Pritchard, J. B., Sarepta: A Preliminary Report on the Iron Age (Philadelphia, 1975), 14–17 Google Scholar; 40, fig. 2.
23 Mevorakh, 5.
24 Qasile, 38.
25 Ibid. 64; Tufnell, O. et al. , The Fosse Temple (Lachish, ii; London, 1940), 20–2, 36–7, pl. 66.Google Scholar The Mesopotamian and North Syrian examples of the bent-axis approach dating to the 3rd and 2nd millennia, noted by Mazar (Qasile, 68 nn. 40–1), are rightly rejected by him as having no relevance to the Levantine bronze age temple traditions: ‘These sporadic instances in the Levant do not seem to have any relation to the Mesopotamian tradition and … this feature is foreign also to the main tradition of the cultic architecture in Palestine, where most temples were built with a direct access to the cella’ (ibid. 68).
26 Negbi 1988, 346–7.
27 Contra, Qasile, 66.
28 French, E., ‘Cult places at Mycenae’, in Sanctuaries, 41–8, at pp. 42–3, fig. 1.Google Scholar
29 Ibid. 43, fig. 2.
30 Negbi 1988, 355.
31 Cult, 372–3; Negbi 1988, 355–6.
32 Ibid. 356.
33 Ibid. 357.
34 Cult, 304–6.
35 Ibid. 302.
36 Macfarlane, C., ‘Analysis of join linkages’, Cult, 455–6.Google Scholar
37 Negbi, O., Canaanite Gods in Metal (Tel Aviv, 1976), 30 Google Scholar; Cult, 303.