by
Damien F. Mackey
“On the
basis of my research, I would suggest that they were a people
who
migrated slowly, from the south or southwest,
into the
Central Negev of Palestine”.
Dr. Rudolph Cohen
What Dr.
Rudolph Cohen wrote here, in his article:
Home > Magazines > BAR > July/August 1983
The
Mysterious MBI People
Does the
Exodus tradition in the Bible preserve the memory of their entry into Canaan?
is an
improvement, both geographically and archaeologically, on the views of the
American rabbi-archaeologist, Nelson Glueck - who had believed that the nomadic
Middle Bronze I (MBI) people belonged to the age of the patriarch Abraham - and
of those who have identified them as the family of Abraham. Their progression
into the Negev from the S or SW is geographically opposite to that of the
Abraham-ites, who had entered the land of Canaan from the north, coming from
Haran (from the NE).
Moreover,
the MBI sites are far too substantial and widespread to represent the incipient
Abrahamic family.
Dr. Cohen
wrote:
In
his Negev surveys, Glueck found that small MBI settlements had flourished all
over the Central Negev, while the area was largely uninhabited during the prior
and following periods. …. Since Negev sites like Beer-Sheva and
Gerar figure prominently in the patriarchal narratives, Glueck concluded that
this age must have been that of the patriarchs and that the MBI people included
the patriarchal Hebrew tribes. Glueck’s hypothesis was soon adopted by Albright
in his famous and controversial essay, “Abram the Hebrew.” ….
Albright
argued in this essay that the Biblical stories concerning the patriarch had
their natural setting in the wide-ranging donkey caravans that conducted trade
in the ancient Near East in MBI, which he dated to the early second millennium
B.C.
The gross
mis-dating of Palestinian archaeology – almost a millennium too early – by W.F.
Albright and Fr. Louis-Hugues Vincent (OP), had brought the MBI people into
chronological range of Abram (Abraham).
Dr.
Cohen, while rejecting Glueck’s Abraham hypothesis, will, in his article, date
the MBI to that approximate early era, to “… 2200 B.C. to about 2000 B.C.”. Yet,
despite that, Dr. Cohen was able to convince Australian tour guide, Dr. David
Down - who had correctly dated the MBI nomads to “about 1405 BC” - that the two
were on the same page. Thus Dr. David Down (“Egal and the Exodus”):
It all started the previous year
when I talked with Dr Rudolph Cohen, then head of the Israel Antiquities
Authority, who holds the same view as I do on the identification of the Middle
Bronze I people with the Israelites who invaded Palestine under Joshua about
1405 BC.
Drs. Down and Cohen were not entirely
saying the same thing, however.
How could they have been, if one (Down) had
accepted the MBI as the Exodus Israelites according to a close biblical estimation
(1405 BC), whilst the other (Cohen) had dated those same people to half a millennium
or more earlier?
What Dr. Cohen and Egal Israel are really
saying, as one finds with deeper probing, is that the biblical Israelites are a
dim memory of the real, historical MBI people. These experienced Israeli
archaeologists never appear to have (had) any intention whatsoever of
re-adjusting the MBI to where Dr. David Down knows they actually belong, to “about
1405 BC”.
I have to say at
this stage that those archaeologists, who, using the same chronological system
as Dr. Cohen and Egal Israel, outright deny that the Exodus ever happened, that
Joshua ever existed, biblical minimisers such as emeritus professor Israel
Finkelstein and his allies, are the more logical.
They know that
there is nothing in their (albeit faulty) c. 1400 BC period that would accord
with the Joshuan Conquest of Canaan. And they are prepared to admit it -
whereas Dr. Cohen (and, presumably, Egal Israel) pushes the distant memory
line.
Let us follow Dr.
Rudolph Cohen through parts of his article, with some comments added wherever
deemed appropriate:
….
One
of the most obscure periods in the history of Palestine is the Middle Bronze I
period (commonly referred to as MBI) which extended from about 2200 B.C. to
about 2000 B.C. Who were the MBI people? We really don’t know.
Mackey’s
comment: And you are really going to have no hope of
finding out if you mis-date the MBI to c. 2000 BC.
On
the basis of my research, I would suggest that they were a people who migrated
slowly, from the south or southwest, into the Central Negev of Palestine. I
would further suggest that the dim, historical memory of their journey
powerfully influenced the Biblical author who described Israel’s entry into
Canaan. In fact, these MBI people may be the Israelites whose famous journey
from Egypt to Canaan is called the Exodus.
Mackey’s
comment: The Biblical author was influenced by a
“dim, historical memory”.
On
one thing scholars are agreed: The pottery, the settlements, and other aspects
of the material culture of the MBI people that have been uncovered over the
last 50 years differ significantly from what went before in the Early Bronze
period and from what followed in the Middle Bronze II period. The Early Bronze
Age (c. 3150 B.C.–2200 B.C.) was characterized by a flourishing urban
civilization. The same was true of the Middle Bronze Age II (c. 2000 B.C.–1550
B.C.). In MBI, however, there was a notable absence of urban settlements,
although such settlements continued to flourish on the seacoast of Lebanon and
Syria.
Mackey’s
comment: Just the scenario that one would expect
from a newly-arrived nomadic people.
….
Nelson
Glueck, the American rabbi-archaeologist, believed MBI was the age of the
patriarch Abraham.
In
his Negev surveys, Glueck found that small MBI settlements had flourished all
over the Central Negev, while the area was largely uninhabited during the prior
and following periods.2 Since Negev sites like Beer-Sheva and Gerar figure prominently in the
partriarchal narratives, Glueck concluded that this age must have been that of
the patriarchs and that the MBI people included the patriarchal Hebrew tribes.
Glueck’s hypothesis was soon adopted by Albright in his famous and
controversial essay, “Abram the Hebrew.”3 ….
….
I
have been studying the MBI sites in the Central Negev for almost two decades
now. The result of this study can, I believe, elucidate some of the outstanding
issues. My own conclusion is that the MBI culture must be differentiated from
those both preceding and following it. MBI is, in this sense, intermediate. But
I also agree with Dever that some MBI pottery types represent a continuation of
Early Bronze types. In this sense I see clear connections between the MBI and
the Early Bronze Age which preceded it. But other new aspects of MBI culture,
including burial customs and social structure, imply a new ethnic element.
Thus,
the MBI culture is also intrusive; migrating peoples who destroyed the existing
urban centers must be involved.
Mackey’s
comment: This reads like a description of the
Joshuan Conquest, the “new ethnic element”.
But
this new ethnic element was neither Amorite nor “Kurgan” peoples who supposedly
came from the north and east. In my view, the new MBI population came from the
south and the Sinai, the route of the Israelites on that journey known as the
Exodus. This is a new hypothesis published here for the first time. I think the
latest evidence supports it. Let us look at this evidence, especially the
geographic and archaeological discoveries of the last five to ten years.
Literally
hundreds of MBI sites have been surveyed in the Central Negev10; many
have been recently excavated. As a result, certain generalizations can now be
made. The MBI sites in the Central Negev were regularly established on the
summits or slopes of high hills, and sometimes on comparatively low hills.
Rarely are remains of settlements found in valleys. The sites are widely
scattered throughout the Central Negev. Nevertheless, there is a large
concentration of sites along the geomorphic line that runs from the
Kadesh-Barnea region to north of Dimona. ….
….
In
1973, I conducted three weeks of further excavations at this site. …. I was principally concerned with clarifying the
relationship between the two strata uncovered by Kochavi and with determining
whether a pre-MBI settlement had occupied the site. ….
….
We
were able to determine almost the entire settlement groundplan: it consists of
some 150 circular rooms. The basic building type is a unit comprising round and
rectangular dwelling rooms and smaller installations arranged around a common
central courtyard.
A
single room can serve as an example of the Be’er Resisim groundplan. It is
round (about ten feet across) with a central pillar that apparently supported
the roof. The roof itself was formed by spanning wooden beams radially from the
top of this pillar to the encircling walls, and then placing flat stone slabs
over the scaffolding. The slabs were covered with mud or lime. Scattered on the
floor made of small stones and beaten earth were typical MBI potsherds. Beneath
this floor-level, on the natural rock, we found sherds from the Early Bronze
Age II in a thin ash layer, again a critical finding. We found rooms like this,
with minor variations, over and over again. Between the units were open-air
enclosures used principally for food preparation, as we know from the remains
of cooking pots and animal bones, mostly sheep and goat.
Apart
from pottery, the other artifacts included grinding stones (sometimes of Aswan
granite), fragments of ostrich egg shells, Red Sea conches (and the ornaments
fashioned from them), “Canaanean” blades … and innumerable flint chips, and (in one building) a hoard of two copper
ingots and a copper dagger. Smaller individual buildings as well as cairns
(stone piles) were excavated in the area.
Mackey’s
comment: Note the Egyptian elements, Aswan granite,
ostrich shells.
….
The
basic architectural arrangement, comprising round and rectangular rooms around
a common central courtyard, repeats that found in the other two major sites and
is generally characteristic of the Middle Bronze Age I. The excavations
conducted here also confirm a general pattern I had previously noted from other
excavations I conducted at MBI sites. …. The MBI structures had been erected over the remains of EBII
settlements.
….
Who
were these MBI people? How is their culture to be understood? I would like to
suggest an answer.
….
The
MBI peoples apparently had few technical traditions of their own and adapted
those they found in use among the settled population they conquered. Naturally,
they adapted the EBII forms to their own way of life, and the result was the
characteristic MBI vessels, which recall the earlier models but employ
different techniques and decoration.
This
hypothesis, of course, contradicts the prevailing assessment, which describes
the MBI sites in the Central Negev as a movement that came from the north. It
is interesting, however, to note that this migratory drift, as I have
reconstructed it, bears a striking similarity to that of the Israelites’ flight
from Egypt to the Promised Land, as recorded in the book of Exodus. The
concentration of MBI sites in the relatively fertile district east of
Kadesh-Barnea recalls the tradition that the Israelites encamped near this
oasis for 38 of their 40 years of wandering after leaving Egypt (Deuteronomy
1:46). If the EBII communities were still flourishing in the Negev and
Sinai at the time of this MBI incursion, then the capital city of EB Arad with
its satellites in the desert no doubt formed a kind of league like that of the
Canaanite king of Arad, described in Numbers 21:1, and like that of
the Amalekites in Exodus 17:8–13. Both no doubt offered fierce
resistance to the northward-advancing MBI Israelites. The establishment of the
MBI settlements directly over the ruins of the EBII–EBIII sites in the Central
Negev is consistent with the tradition that the Israelites dwelled in the area
previously inhabited by their Amalekite foes (Deuteronomy 25:17–19). The
northeastward migration of the MBI population into Transjordan has parallels in
the Biblical recollection that the Israelites remained in Moab before crossing
the Jordan River and laying siege to Jericho (Deuteronomy 3:29). In this
connection, it is interesting to note that Early Bronze Age Jericho was
destroyed by a violent conflagration, and the site was thinly reoccupied by MBI
newcomers, who were apparently unaccustomed to urban dwellings.
In
the central and northern parts of Israel, the EBIII urban culture flourished.
The MBI invaders in the south overwhelmed this urban Canaanite civilization and
destroyed their cities but thereafter persisted in a semi-nomadic way of life.
This bears a striking similarity to the tradition of Joshua’s devastating
campaign against the Canaanite centers in central Palestine and his ban on
rebuilding some of them (e.g., Joshua 8:28).
Both
Jericho and Ai were fortified cities at the end of the Early Bronze Age.
According to the Biblical account, they were both destroyed by the Israelites;
God specifically instructed that these cities should not be rebuilt.
Interestingly
enough, after the EBIII destruction of Jericho and Ai, both cities lay in ruins
for hundreds of years.
Having
successfully taken over Palestine, the MBI tribes were profoundly influenced by
the mores of the people they conquered, and many of their artifacts and customs
have their origin in the Early Bronze Age.
I
do not necessarily mean to equate the MBI people with the Israelites, although
an ethnic identification should not automatically be ruled out. But I am
suggesting that at the very least the traditions incorporated into the
Exodus account may have a very ancient inspiration reaching back to the
MBI period. ….
Mackey’s
comment: That “dim, historical memory” again.
The
Mysterious MBI People - The BAS Library
