Why Canaanites Buried Lamps and Bowls Under Their Homes
New study suggests the 3,000-year-old Canaanite custom was the result of Egyptian colonization in Canaan, and persisted well after the pharaohs left
A lamp deposited in a bowl at AzekahCredit: Ariel David
Ever since modern archaeologists began investigating the cities of the ancient Canaanites, one simple but peculiar find has turned up time and again, at multiple sites: a ceramic lamp concealed between two bowls that had been carefully buried beneath the floors of temples, palaces and private homes.
Foundation deposits – the technical term for artifacts purposely buried under ancient buildings – are quite common around the world and throughout history. They are generally interpreted as a propitiatory offering to the supernatural entities – gods, spirits or ancestors – that a particular culture believes have the power to protect one's dwelling. But the specific origin and meaning of the Canaanite "lamp-and-bowl" offering have eluded archaeologists for a couple of centuries.
The distinctive foundation deposits were first identified in the 1890s, in what was the first modern archaeological dig in the Levant, at Tell el-Hesi, an ancient Canaanite settlement near the city of Kiryat Gat. Scores more have since been found across Israel. Early archaeologists proposed some outlandish interpretations, including that the artifacts were meant as a symbolic substitute for child sacrifices.
A new study by Israeli archaeologists aims to shed some light, pardon the pun, on this obscure custom. The team mapped the known deposits, chronologically and geographically, and used modern scientific methods to analyze some of the ritually buried artifacts, the researchers reported Tuesday in Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University. While their conclusions are not set in stone, the researchers think they gave a pretty good shot at understanding the roots of the ritual.
The study offers a rare window into the little-known spiritual believes of the Canaanites, a culture that remains largely shrouded in mystery even though it is credited with inventing the alphabet and spawning a number of history-changing civilizations, including the ancient Israelites and the Phoenicians.
Aerial view of Tell AzekahCredit: The Lautenschläger Azekah Expedition
Serving Pharaoh
The lamp-and-bowl deposits can be dated to very specific periods, appearing initially at the very end of the Late Bronze Age, in the 13th-12th centuries B.C.E., and continuing in some spots into the Early Iron Age, up to the end of the 9th century B.C.E. This is a first important clue, as the Late Bronze Age was also the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt, when pharaohs like Ramses II ruled over a vast colonial empire that included the once-independent Canaanite city-states.
Another clue is the fact that lamp-and-bowl deposits are found mainly in settlements in the Beit Shean area, in today's northern Israel, and on the coastal strip between Jaffa and Gaza, says Prof. Ido Koch, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University and the lead author on the new study. These areas were under direct Egyptian control, and the foundation deposits are found both in Egyptian settlements and in nearby Canaanite towns that serviced the Pharaoh's empire and were more influenced by the culture of the Nile Valley, he notes.
"Collaboration with the Egyptians, service to the Egyptian empire, adoption of Egyptian iconography and gods, that's something that happens exactly in the areas where the lamp-and-bowl custom appears," Koch tells Haaretz in a phone interview.
Lamp and bowl foundation deposits at AzekahCredit: אריאל דוד
This leads the researchers to link the Canaanite ritual to similar, although not identical, foundation deposits that were common in Egypt at the time. These included a set of tools, pottery vessels as wells as amulets, such as scarabs, jewelry and inscribed bricks that were placed in the foundations of new buildings, Koch says.
The Canaanites too were not unknown to place foundation deposits in earlier periods: artifacts, weapons, jewels and even sacrificial animals, like donkeys, all served this purpose at some time and place or another. But these seem to have been sporadic and very localized customs, as opposed to the very uniform and widespread tradition of the lamp-and-bowl offering, Koch says.
The timing and location of the earliest lamp-and-bowl deposits suggests that the Canaanites borrowed something from the Egyptian tradition for their own purposes. It was not a one-to-one mirroring of the customs in the Nile Valley. The set of artifacts differed, as seemingly the purpose: the Egyptians placed the offerings in the actual foundations of new buildings, while the Canaanites buried the lamp and bowls under the floors, and seemingly conducted the ritual not just for the construction of a building, but also when it was refurbished or even when new owners settled in.
Essentially, this was an "entangled" custom that combined the traditions of the colonizer and colonized, Koch concludes.
A donkey sacrificed in Canaanite ritual, found in situ at Tell es-Safi/Gath.Credit: Richard Wiskin
Egypt falls, Gath rises
The researchers also conducted advanced testing on 11 deposits that were found in the excavation of Azekah, an ancient settlement that spanned millennia in the Elah Valley, southwest of Jerusalem. Specifically they conducted use-wear analysis to check for signs of previous use on the tools, as well as residue analysis to check if the ceramic artifacts contained specific substances the clay had absorbed.
The results show that in the Late Bronze Age heyday of this custom, the lamps and bowls didn't show any sign of wear-and-tear and didn't contain any discernible substances: the bowls were clean and the lamps showed no signs of soot. In other words, the artifacts themselves were likely the offering, rather than anything they may have contained, says Prof. Oded Lipschits, a leading Tel Aviv University archaeologist who heads the excavation at Azekah.
In later periods, when the custom was revived in the Early Iron Age, it seems that "virgin" artifacts were no longer used for the offering, but rather the custom evolved so that tools that had been previously employed for other purposes were also acceptable, the researchers found.
The fact that this Canaanite practice continued until the end of 9th century B.C.E. is particularly exciting in light of Azekah's history, Lipschits says.
Four sets of lamp-and-bowl deposits from Azekah, two (right) from the Late Bronze Age, and two (left) from the Iron AgeCredit: Sasha Flit / TAU
Azekah and the surrounding Elah Valley are probably best known as the setting of the biblical duel between David and the Philistine giant, Goliath (1 Samuel 17). In reality, researchers have found that Azekah was uninhabited in the time of King David, which would have been in the 10th century B.C.E. The Canaanite city prospered much earlier, in the Middle and Late Bronze Age, and was very much influenced in the latter period by trade and contacts with the Egyptians.
But then, in the 12th century B.C.E., came the so-called Bronze Age Collapse, a period of war and instability, possibly climate related, that brought down or greatly diminished multiple civilizations across the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Myceneans of Greece and the Hittites in Anatolia.
While the Egyptian civilization survived in the Nile Valley, the pharaohs withdrew from their colonial empire in the Levant, leaving their former Canaanite vassals to fend for themselves.
Azekah itself was destroyed around 1130 B.C.E. in a violent attack, in which much of the population was massacred. The perpetrators are unknown, but Lipschits and other scholars strongly suspect the Philistines from the nearby city of Gath, a rising power at the time, which may have ill-tolerated the presence of a prosperous neighbor like Azekah.
Lamp-and-bowl sets in a Late Bronze Age temple in AzekahCredit: Oded Lipschits
Archaeologists think the Philistines are to blame partly because Azekah remained deserted for 300 years, well into the Early Iron Age, until around 830 B.C.E. Then it was Gath's turn to be on the chopping block of history, at the hands of Hazael, the king of Aram-Damascus, who had invaded large swathes of the Levant.
Only then Azekah was rebuilt, in what is considered a brief "swansong" of Canaanite city-state culture before the entire Levant was divvied up amongst larger territorial polities, including the biblical kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
And what is supremely interesting is that after 300 years exile, when the Azekites rebuilt their town, they revived the lamp-and-bowl custom, albeit with the small changes mentioned above.
"People don't just leave their lands and disappear, so, probably, many small settlements that arose in this area after the Late Bronze Age destruction hosted this clan for 300 years," Lipschits says. "Then, when Gath was destroyed, the first building was rebuilt in Azekah at the end of the 9th century B.C.E. – and it has a foundation deposit. It means it was same population with the same customs."
Ultimately the lamp-and-bowl deposits disappeared from the foundations of new buildings in Azekah, as they did earlier in other Canaanite sites. Over the 8th century B.C.E., Azekah and the surrounding region came under the control of the Kingdom of Judah, and its capital Jerusalem. The town was destroyed again in 701 B.C.E. during the campaign of the Assyrian King Sennacherib against Judah and was then rebuilt, razed and remade several more times in the following centuries.
Sennacherib shown at the gates of Lachish, ordering its "slaughter", from Nineveh relief at the British MuseumCredit: oncenawhile
Prosperity and light
One question remains: what was the significance to the Canaanite inhabitants of the lamps and bowls they ritually interred beneath private and public buildings? We may never know: the Canaanites were the first to use the alphabet – later spread across the Mediterranean by their Phoenician descendants – but they themselves have left us only a few, fragmentary inscriptions. We can only speculate on many aspects of their spiritual life.
The lamp, ensconced in two bowls, may have some connection to Canaanite mythology, Koch suggests. Perhaps fire and light were linked to a protective domestic deity as in the case of Hestia/Vesta, the Greco-Roman hearth goddess.
Or they may have simply served as symbolic offerings for the prosperity of those living above ground, Lipschits speculates.
"The bowl symbolizes food, plenty, and the candle represents light," he says. "When you enter a new home, what more can you wish for?"
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