Bronze bull c. 1200 BCE
Meluhha rebus readings:
khũṭ ‘zebu’. Rebus: khũṭ ‘guild, community’; adar ḍaṅgra ‘zebu or humped bull’; rebus: aduru ‘native metal’ (Kannada); ḍhangar ‘blacksmith’ (Hindi)
Prof. Amihai Mazar, 1983, Bronze Bull Found in Israelite “High Place” from the Time of the Judges, BAR 9:05, Sep/Oct 1983 notes that the discovery was made on the summit of a hill in northern Samaria.
See Prof. Mazar's opinion at http://members.bib-arch.
I suggest an alternative interpretation of the semantics related to the zebu.
This bronze zebu is a remarkable Meluhha hieroglyph read ḍaṅgra 'bull' Rebus: ḍāṅgar, ḍhaṅgar ‘blacksmith’ (Hindi).
The possible involvement of Meluhha speakers in the two pure tin ingots with inscriptions in Indus writing found in a shipwreck in Haifa have been discussed in the context of Meluhha competence in cire perdue (lost-wax) casting. http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/01/meluhha-dhokra-art-from-5th-millennium.html
Presence of dhokra (lost-wax artisans) in Nahal (Nachal) Mishmar is stunning and points to ancient Israel-India connections from 5th millennium BCE. I had noted that the two pure tin ingots found in Haifa shipwreck had Meluhha hieroglyphs to denote tin. ranku 'antelope'; ranku 'liquid measure' Rebus: ranku 'tin (cassiterite) ore'. S. Kalyanaraman, 2010, The Bronze Age Writing System of Sarasvati Hieroglyphics as Evidenced by Two “Rosetta Stones” - Decoding Indus script as repertoire of the mints/smithy/mine-workers of Meluhha, Journal of Indo-Judaic Studies, Number 11, pp. 47-74
A surprise that these were found in a shipwreck in Haifa !
A brief account of the remarkable find is provided: Bronze Bull, c. 1200 BCE
A bronze bull statuette measuring 5” x 7” was found on the ground surface at a hilltop site near Dothan in northern Samaria. The hump-backed Zebu bull depicted, not native to the region of Israel, was portrayed in drawings and figurines from second and first millennium Mesopotamia, Anatolia (ancient Turkey), Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Egypt. A bronze figurine comparable to the Bull Site example was found in a Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1200 BCE) temple at Hazor in northern Israel. The style of casting suggests northern manufacture, perhaps in Syria...
The Bull Site sacred precinct consisted of a stone border enclosing a 70-foot diameter elliptical circle. In addition to the bull, the enclosure contained a paving or platform of flat stones to level the bedrock and beside it a large, roughly hewn stone measuring 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 1.75 feet thick. A piece of an Egyptian bronze mirror(?) and the ceramic base perhaps of an incense stand or miniature shrine lay nearby. Pottery in the vicinity dated the site to approximately 1200 BCE. Settlements in the surrounding area, all farmsteads, also dated to approximately 1200 BCE.
The Bull Site and Ancient Israel
The locale is an isolated hilltop in the central highlands near Mt. Gilboa, in the territory ascribed to the tribe of Manasseh. Both the bull figurine and the large stone, interpreted as a (reclining) standing stone (massebah) or an altar render the site cultic...
For further reading see the popular, illustrated account by A. Mazar, “Bronze Bull Found in Israelite ‘High Place’ from the Time of the Judges” BAR 9.5 (1983) 34-40 or the more technical account in “Bull Site” NEAEHL I: 266-67. Mazar responds to M. Coogan’s challenging the cultic identification in “On Cult Places and Early Israelites: A Response to Michael Coogan” BAR 14.1 (1988). For the Tel Dan plaque see A. Biran, “Two Bronze Plaques and the Hussot of Dan” IEJ 49 (1999) 54, fig. 14.
Elizabeth Bloch-Smith
Discussion
The key contextual reference about the find is that together with the zebu bronze, a massebah stone was also found.
Massebah has been used in the context of a temple in Assur, with a cuneiform inscription with the name and title of an individual suggesting its function a memorial stone. There are also intimations as on the Tukulti Ninurta I altar that the memorial stone stone therein is in the context of the divinity denoted by the leafless stalk read rebus in Meluhha, the vernacular or proto-Prākṛt (Indus writing): करंडा [karaṇḍā] A clump, chump, or block of wood. 4 The stock or fixed portion of the staff of the large leaf-covered summerhead or umbrella. करांडा [ karāṇḍā ] m C A cylindrical piece as sawn or chopped off the trunk or a bough of a tree; a clump, chump, or block. Rebus 1: fire-god: @B27990. #16671. Remo <karandi>E155 {N} ``^fire-^god''.(Munda) Rebus 2: karaḍa 'hard alloy' of arka 'copper'. See: http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2014/01/material-and-spiritual-culture-of.html
I find the following insight of David S. Maltsberger:
“Around 2500 B.C. Phoenicians established colonies in Spain and Portugal to mine the vast local supplies of copper and tin. These and other European tin supplies were shipped throughout the Ancient Near East as late as the Roman period. Roman tin mines in Britain were worked by slave labor and had shafts cutting 350 feet deep into the ground. In Palestine, the Timna copper mines came under the control of the Egyptians during the Late Bronze period. Remains of a small open-air temple dedicated to Hathor, patron goddess of miners, have been discovered. The small enclosure has a small sacred area set with masseboth , standing stones dedicated to the deity. A central shrine with small niches carved into the overhanging face of a cliff was the focal point of the sanctuary, its “holy of holies.” The entire shrine was covered with a woolen tent.” David C. Maltsberger (1991)http://www.studylight.org/dic/
See also: Sacred Stones in the Desert. By Prof. Uzi Avner. Biblical Archaeology Review May, June 2001.http://fontes.lstc.edu/~rklein/Documents/Stones.htm
I had noted that harosheth hagoyim (Judges 4:2), 'smithy of nations' is cognate with kharoṣṭī goya 'lit. blacksmith-lip guild'. kharoṣṭī was the name adopted for a writing system of ca. 5th century BCE. Meluhha hieroglyphs continue to be deployed together with this writing system on punch-marked coins.
The context is chronological evolution of mines and mining in the Fertile Crescent. The finds of masseboth in a Hathor temple seem to conirm the link of masseboth to miners' work. This seems to be consistent with my reading of Meluhha hieroglyphs are related to ores, metals, alloys and metallurgical processes.
Tukulti-Ninurta worships fire-god at the fire altar of Ashur
Artifact: Stone monument
Provenience: Assur
Period: Middle Assyrian (ca. 1400-1000 BC)
Current location: Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin Does this Tukulti Ninurta I altar show a stake together with a massebah represented by the rectangular, stone standing in the background?
The interpretation of the bronze zebu as a hieroglyph denoting the repertoire of the artisan guild is consistent with the finds of cire perdue (lost-wax) cast objects at Nahal Mishmar dated to ca. 4400 BCE.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Center
January 14, 2014