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Scarabs of Sheshi at Tell El-Ajjul, Contra Kempinski

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Scarabs of Sheshi at Tell El-Ajjul, Contra Kempinski Palestine Exploration Quarterly ISSN: 0031-0328 (Print) 1743-1301 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ypeq20 Scarabs of Sheshi at Tell El-ajjul, Contra Kempinski Robert Martin Porter To cite this article: Robert Martin Porter (2016) Scarabs of Sheshi at Tell El- ajjul, Contra Kempinski, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 148:2, 133-145, DOI: 10.1080/00310328.2016.1186344 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00310328.2016.1186344 Published online: 07 Jun 2016. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 196 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=ypeq20 Palestine Exploration Quarterly, , (), – SCARABS OF SHESHI AT TELL EL-AJJUL, CONTRA KEMPINSKI R M P The find spots of eight scarabs of the Hyksos Pharaoh Sheshi from Tell el-Ajjul in southwest Palestine, excavated by Petrie, are re-examined in detail and found not to agree with the levels attributed to them by Aaron Kempinski in 1983. He argued that these scarabs related to the founding of City II, but some of them actually came from the earlier City III. This may have implications for the correct relationship between two transitions, that from Middle Bronze Age II to Late Bronze Age I in Palestine and that from Dynasty fifteen to eighteen in Egypt. An appendix considers scarabs of Pharaoh Apophis at Ajjul. Keywords: sheshi, Apophis, scarabs, Tell el-Ajjul, Kempinski, Petrie, Middle Bronze Age, Late Bronze Age . The aim of this article is to show that scarabs of the Hyksos king Sheshi (usually placed in the first half of the th dynasty, see below) came from both City III and the following City II at Tell el-Ajjul (a major ancient town about miles southwest of Gaza City). However, it was claimed by the late Aharon Kempinski in his book Syrien und Palästina (Kanaan) in der letzten Phase der Mittelbronze IIb – Zeit (– v. Chr.), that the earliest Sheshi scarabs came from the foundations of City II1. He deduced that City III was mainly contemporary with the th dynasty, ending just before the reign of Sheshi, and that City II covered the th dynasty (Hyksos period), ending with the conquest by Ahmose of the th dynasty2. Ajjul is not easy to investigate due to the poor quality of the excavation reports (see below) and this has contributed to faults in Kempinski’s analysis of the Sheshi scarab find-spots. The importance of this subject is that Kempinski’s placement of City II contemporary with the Hyksos, may have contributed to a mismatch in the relationship between Egyptian history and Levantine archaeology. By contrast, Albright () dated City II as th dynasty, not th. A related problem is whether the date of the transition from MB II to LB I3 should be placed before or after the transition from th to th dynasty. Both historical and archaeological transitions have tended to be placed c. BC but Kempinski placed the archaeological transition slightly earlier (, –; , ), and others have suggested later. However, these questions will not be considered in detail in this article4 which is mainly concerned to establish the correct find spots of the Sheshi scarabs. Brief sections on Tell el-Ajjul and Sheshi follow, then the detailed consideration of the scarab find spots, results and con- clusions, and an appendix on Apophis scarabs from Ajjul. - Petrie’s excavations of the s were published in five volumes with the title Ancient Gaza (hereafter AG plus volume number). Ajjul was probably not ancient Gaza but it may have been Sharuhen, the town to which the Hyksos leadership fled at the fall of Avaris. Address correspondence to: Robert M. Porter, Havelock Road, CR0 QQ, UK. Email: [email protected] © Palestine Exploration Fund : ./.. , , , Petrie published very promptly but his Ajjul reports were so confusing that Oren commented that they presented “a major challenge that very few scholars, if any, have managed so far to disentangle satisfactorily” (, ,n.). For multi-period sites such as this one, Sparks comments on Petrie’s “general failure throughout to properly define the floors of his rooms”, and that as a result “levelling fills, constructional fills and occupational fills tend to be severely mixed” (, ). Therefore it is usually not possible to tell whether an item relates to a building’s construction or destruction. See also the scathing comments of Stewart on his problems of trying to decide from the plans, what walls and rooms belonged to City II (, ; Sparks , ,n.)5. One also battles with Petrie’s overstretched dating system for Egyptian dynasties, his back to front th dynasty with Apophis in the middle and Sheshi at the end (see below), his attribution of imports to incorrect regions (his ‘Anatolian Style’ pottery seems to be, or at least to include, Proto White Slip from Cyprus), and uncertain compass orientations — he often approximated the sea as West (AG III, ) although its closest point is actually North-West. Nevertheless, his relation between Egyptian dynasties and the Ajjul city levels was somewhat similar to Kempinski (, ) — Petrie had City III as approximately th dynasty and City II as th. The nearest Petrie came to showing a general plan of the site with the various fields of exca- vation was in AG III, Pl. This lack was remedied in Tufnell , (replicated in Keel , ). Plans of parts of the excavations can also be found in Kempinski , Plans –; , ; and Sparks , , . The excavations produced two housing levels, City III followed by City II, separated in places by a burnt destruction (‘City I’ was only found as surface traces). There was also a series of ‘Palaces’ numbered in the opposite direction from I, the oldest, to V6. Most authors have linked Palace I to City III and Palace II to City II but some have suggested that Palace I continued into part or all of the City II period and it has also been suggested that City II should be sub-divided into two phases (e.g. Bergoffen , ). Excavations in – near the palaces have confirmed that there were various sub-divisions (Fischer ). Fischer named his strata H to H, of which H-, at least, seem to correspond to City III, and H- might correspond to City II. As an approximate guide, City III can be con- sidered as MB IIC and City II is probably late MB IIC to LB I, possibly extending to LB IIA (Fischer , Table , ). Ajjul produced an enormous quantity of scarabs ( are listed in Keel ) of which were of Maibre Sheshi (listed below). No texts of Maibre Sheshi have ever been discovered but he has far more scarabs than any other Hyksos king (Ryholt , ). His prenomen is generally accepted as Maibre although this is not quite certain because it never occurs in combination with his nomen (Keel , ). Ryholt gives a table (, ) in which Sheshi scarabs have both early and late features — of thirty-one listed features, Sheshi scarabs have twenty-four7. Sequencing of scarab designs has produced varying results: Ward (, ) and Ben-Tor (, ) put Sheshi in the mid th dynasty between Khyan at the beginning and Apophis near the end, whereas Ryholt (, 8) and Krauss (, ) have Khyan and Apophis coming after Sheshi. Sheshi has often been equated with Manetho’s Salitis/Saites who overran Egypt and was therefore placed early in the th dynasty (e.g. Hayes , ; Kempinski , ). If Sheshi was the founder of his dynasty and/or the one who conquered northern Egypt, then his name would have been famous and may have been popular with later generations. As already noted, Petrie misplaced Sheshi at the end of the th dynasty (AG IV, , ), equating him with Josephus’ final Hyksos king, Assis (AG IV, ). - . Eight9 Sheshi scarabs were found at Tell el-Ajjul and Kempinski (wrongly – see below) attrib- uted their earliest find-spots to the foundations of City II (, ). He illustrates seven of the scarabs (, Fig. B10, Nos. –, , ) and he discusses the find-spots of some of them (, , –, ). There is a further Sheshi scarab that he failed to include, which has been added below and labelled as ‘X’. Kempinski saw in royal name scarabs an ‘extraordinarily valuable help for dating their find-spots’ (, ), a comment which may well apply if the royal name scarabs are plentiful and their earliest find-spots are placed in the correct stratum. Most of these scarabs are now in the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem (see Keel for details). They all came from the town area, none from the palaces or from the cemeteries outside the tell. In the subsequent paragraphs, one for each scarab, information is given in the following order: (a) Kempinski’s number from his Fig. B, his page references (if any) and the name on the scarab, either Sheshi or his prenomen, Maibre. (b) Petrie’s details including locus and height if given (heights are above sea level in inches) — this information is written in the AG volumes around the edge of the scarab drawings (see Fig. ). (c) Tufnell’s Studies on Scarab Seals Part () page references and numbers (her system pro- duces multiple numbers for the same scarab according to its various design features). Her Part gives illustrations of the scarabs, approximately in numerical order. (d) Keel’s Corpus der Stempelsiegel-Amulette () numbers for the scarabs (from his section on Ajjul, –). His scarab dating criteria are explained in Keel . (e) Further information and discussion. (f) A conclusion, where possible, as to which City level each scarab should be attributed to. The scarab paragraphs are summarised in a results section. Note that, due to the difficulty of allocating individual pottery items to MB IIB or IIC, Kempinski (also Keel) combined both as his ‘MB IIB’, but he also refers to ‘late MB IIB’ (explained in , ) which approximates to MB IIC, i.e.
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