VOLUME I: THE ANCIENT NEAR-EAST AS RELATED TO THE BIBLE AND THE HOLY LAND; THE BIBLE; ARCHAEOLOGY;...

World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדות

/ הרצפות הניאוליטיות של ביבלוס ויריחו BYBLOS AND JERICHO NEOLITHIC FLOORSAuthor(s): Robert North and ר. נורתSource: Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעיVOLUME I: THE ANCIENT NEAR-EAST AS RELATED TO THE BIBLE AND THE ,היהדות, כרך הHOLY LAND; THE BIBLE; ARCHAEOLOGY; THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL PERIOD OF THE FIRSTAND SECOND TEMPLES; PSEUDO-EPIGRAPHICAL LITERATURE; THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS; THENEW TESTAMENT / ;חטיבה א: המזרח הקדמון בזיקתו לעם ישראל ולארץ ישראל; מקרא... ארכיאולוגיה; תולדות עם ישראPublished by: World Union of Jewish Studies / האיגוד העולמי למדעי היהדותStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23516513 .

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BYBLOS AND JERICHO NEOLITHIC FLOORS

Robert North S.J.

Milwaukee

It was already known since 1935 that the 'Ayn es-Sul{ân settlement

near Jericho possessed highly polished plaster floors through several

levels prior to the first pottery about 4200 B.C.1 These were in the so

called 'Neolithic Sondage' inside the northwest tip of the surviving brick wall called B-D. Extensions of the same polished floors were

uncovered and studied by Miss K. M. Kenyon and Dr. A. D. Tushing ham in 1952-3 for the British and American Schools. The same cam

paigns made the completely new discovei y of pre-pottery rock house-walls

and enigmatic polished plaster a short distance below the surface in

the center of the tell, and discovered traces of plaster hitherto unnoticed

in the Sellin trench.2

We acknowledge our indebtedness for the direct part we were privi

leged to have in that northwest operation.3 There was need for an appren tice to supervise the destruction and removal of occupation-remains

including, apparently, a Temple.4 The masonry had already been recorded

and was impeding further discovery. But actually it was only by destroy

ing the floors and walls that we first came to recognize how they had

been produced. The relevant plastering was found both in and beside

the Garstang sondage. Some polished plaster found nearer the centre of

1. John Garstang, 'Jericho, Sixth Season,' Annals of Archaeology and Anthro

pology 23 (1936), p. 67-76; 'L'art néolithique de Jéricho,' Syria 16 (1935), p. 353-357.

2. Kathleen M. Kenyon, 'Excavations at Jericho, 1952,' Palestine Exploration

Quarterly 84 (1952), p. 62-82; '...1953,' 85 (1953) p. 81-95; A. Douglas Tushing

ham, *The Joint Excavations at Tell es-Sulîân,' BASOR 127 (1952), p. 5-16.

'Excavations at Old Testament Jericho,' Biblical Archaeologist 16 (1953), p. 46-67; 3. R. North, 'The 1952 Jericho-Sul(ân Excavation,' Biblica 34 (1953), p. 1-12. As

noted on p. 8, our transfer to the neolithic area was due to failure to find any artifacts

later than Early Bronze (2000 B.C.) at the topmost east-central knoll of the tell.

There if anywhere it had been hoped to track down that elusive Joshua-era pottery whose alleged selective removal by 'wind and rain' has been since pilloried by Martin

Noth, 'Hat die Bibel doch recht?' Festschrift G. Dehn, ed. W. Schneemelcher

(Neukirchen: Erziehungsverein, 1957), p. 1-22.

4. R. North, 'El nuevo "santuario" de Jericô,' Estudios Eclesâisticos 27 (1953),

p. 325-337.

35



36 ROBERT NORTH S.J.

Sultan tell was also at first thought to be flooring. In the following

(1953) season, in the centre of the tell, between the famous C and B-D

walls, our job was to dismantle the much more sharply sloping double

revetment lying east of the stone C wall. The top surface of this revet

ment was also covered with plaster in sloping steps; but it is dated to

the Middle Bronze Hyksos period and is white and much thicker and

coarser than the neolithic flooring. However, we were here adjacent to the grandiose neolithic settlement containing the sculptured skulls

and the massive tower.

Meanwhile at Byblos, Hebrew Gebal now Jebeïl on the North

Lebanese coast, M. Maurice Dunand had brought to light hard-coated

surfaces existing beneath chalcolithic burial jars. In an early publica tion, he seems to have classified these floors too, and the site's earliest

existence, as chalcolithic.5 The same early state of inquiry seems to

underlie Albright's Ençiqlopediya Miqra'it summary of the Byblos stratification.6 But in campaigns after 1950, about 150 square metres

5. Maurice Dunand, 'Rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles de Byblos en 1948

[-9],' Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth 9 (1949-50), p. 55-60 [68-73]; 'Chronologie des

plus anciennes installations de Byblos,' Revue Biblique 57 (1950), p. 583 (-603):

'Eneolithic [= chalcolithic] A, still on virgin soil... the initial installation characterized

by numerous patches surfaced with lime, habitation-floors of rectangular plan;'

but already in 'Byblos au temps du Bronze Ancien et de la conquête amorite,' RB 59

(1952), p. 82(-90), the (same) installation is dated 'from the very earliest dawn of the

Eneolithic, if not indeed even Neolithic.' In the 'Rappori... 1950,' BMB 12 (1955), p.

7-12, the text does not seem to use the word neolithic at any point, but the fine photo of

Plate vui/1 gives that name to the floors; and'Rapport... 1951,'p. 13-20, uses'neolith

ic' in the text on p. 15; the'Rapport... 1952,' p. 21-23, mentions our comparative study

on p. 21. In the 'Rapport... 1954 [-5], BMB 13 (1956), p. 73-78[-86], 'the neolithic

floors multiply.' — Note the difference of Dunand's sense of chalcolithic from that

employed in James Mellaart's Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages in the Near East

and Antolia (Beirut: Khayats, 1966), where he does not speak of neolithic floors

[see footnote 28 below], but on p. 15 dates 'Chalcolithic' from 5000 B.C., 'the equiva lent of Palestine's Middle Neolithic.' The Byblos-B houses dated by Mellaart's p. 44

to 3500-3200 B.C. are apparently a latest phase of his chalcolithic. On p. 10 he signifi

cantly claims that pottery is dated in Byblos from 5800, in Palestine (even Jericho?!)

nowhere earlier than 5500, but in Anatolia 6700!

6. William F. Albright, 'Gebal,' Ensiqlopediya Miqralt (Jerusalem: Bialik,

1954) II, p. 405; p. 403-411. Now in Robert W. Ehrich, Chronologies in Old World

Archaeology (Chicago: University, 1965; = Relative Chronologies 1954) p. 47-60,

Albright claims on p. 51 that G. Ernest Wright in the Albright Festschrift The

Bible and the Ancient Near East (Garden City: Doubleday, 1901), p. 81, was not

justified in combining Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze I into one, by a reversal of

his earlier view. (Compare Dunand's claim that certain pottery-types of Ghassul

contemporary to Byblos are really quite posterior to 3000 B.C., as both A. Mallon



BYBLOS AND JERICHO NEOLITHIC FLOORS 37

of these sols enduits were exposed and their pottery was definitely classi fied as pre-neolithic.7 It was also noted that none of the chalcolithic burials which were in jars lay on virgin soil.8 Miss Kenyon in a visit to the chantier remarked the obvious rapport established between Jericho and those areas of Byblos which must now be called neolithic. M. Dunand kindly permitted me to join his staff for a part of the 1952

campaign, and invited me to establish under his direction a detailed

comparison between his neolithic floorings and those I had helped to

dissect at Jericho.9 By a fortunate coincidence, the normally widespread

digging-operations at Jebeïl were retarded by a financial appropriations

technicality. So the effort was concentrated on having a single highly

specialized workman clear the chalcolithic burials. The skeletons had

been laid either directly on the ground, or in a tray consisting of the

lengthwise half of a big water-jar. Several samples can still be seen at the

and L. Vincent had steadfastly maintained: 'Date de l'installation IV de Teleilat

Ghassul,' Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth 9 (1949-50), p. 87-97.) Albright

in Ehrich, p. 45, further remarks that Miss Kenyon must furnish the proof of her

improbable claim that Jericho-Sultân has any chalcolithic pottery contemporaneous

to that of Jericho-'Alàyiq. See too Henri de Contenson's 'Notes on the Chronology

of Near Eastern Neolithic,' BASOR 184 (1966), p. 2-6. Now Roland de Vaux,

'Palestine during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods,' Cambridge Ancient History

(I/ix/B 5-8; 19t>6), appeals for a wholly new terminology based on agriculture rather

than pottery or metal.

7. M. Dunand, *Rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles de Byblos en 1957,' Bul

letinduMusée de Beyrouth 16 (1961), p. 70, 'neolithic layer' (p. 75, 'not eneolithic');

p. 72, charred wood from between the rock-based neolithic floors and those in apse

form lying above yielded the radiocarbon date 7000 ± 80 to H. de Vries at Groningen, but 6550 ± 200 from twelve metres farther southeast at depth 20.20 to Libby at

Chicago. From this Dunand here concludes that the middle neolithic level must date

from about 5000 and the upper level from 4600, rectifying the date 3700 with which

he was reckoning in Fouilles de Byblos II(Paris: Maisonneuve, 1954).

8. M. Dunand, 'Rapport sur les fouilles de Byblos en 1960,' Bulletin du Musée

de Beyrouth 17 (1964), p. 23; p. 26, the low walls of reddish earth which had at first

been thought to be made of bricks were in fact pisé or mud massed inside a form, some

times about a stone nucleus {'une âme en pierre'I). In 'Rapport préliminaire... 1962,'

BMB17 (1964), p. 29(-35), Dunand notes that the floors in the chalcolithic adaptations

of late neolithic installations were just earth trampled down (battue not piséel) p. 31,

the jars holding skeletons were divided into two types, according as they were smaller

or larger than 80 cm. height. In Dunand's 'Histoire d'une source,' Mélanges de

l'Université S.J. de Beyrouth 37 (1960), p. 39-52, page 40 mentions the neolithic

installation but declares uncertain its relation to the central spring which furnished

Byblos its water-supply through all the successive ages, and dried up only in recent

years.

9. R. North, Biblica xxxiv (1953), p. 9; Estudios Eclesiûsticos 27 (1953), p. 327.




chantier, with the cleared bones plastered durably into their original

position. This type of burial required no real pit sunk into occupation remains of the preceding neolithic levels. At any rate the numerous

chalcolithic interments were mostly around and among the neolithic

houses, so that from the standpoint of overall stratification the chalcoli

thic burials whose clearing I nominally supervised were interwoven

with the preceding neolithic.

The site of Byblos is one of the most unique in biblical archaeology. It was recognized by Renan; the excavation begun by Montet has been

continued annually since 1925 under Dunand's direction.10 His tech

nique differs from that of any other major excavation. Over the whole

area the earth has been shaved off in rigidly mathematical layers of 20

centimetres each, just as surgeons dissect a brain to study it in the

artificial layers which they themselves create. Materials from each

layer have been classified according to the geometric square in which

they were found; and at the completion of each vertical metre the whole

area was planned, relative depth of the existing constructions being indicated by the use of five different colours. The work of surveyor during the period of my study was done by architects Henry Pearson and Jean

Lauffray; and notably Comely Voronine, who later in our 1960 excava

tion of Ghassul performed the excavation of one trench by the Byblos

techniques.11 As is well known, the excavation has established that Phoenician

Gebl, 'the mountain,י was known to the Egyptians as Kpn, the most

important coastal centre both commercially for loading the prized Lebanon cedars, and religiously, for a world-famed sanctuary existing before 3200 B.C. Almost all the important Pharaohs, including Kheops

10. M. Dunand, Fouilles de Byblos I (Paris: Geuthner, 1932); II (Maisonneuve:

1954); Pierre Montet, Byblos et l'Égypt, quatre campagnes de fouilles à Gebeil 1921-4

(Paris: Geuthner, 1928). Other preliminary reports are found in Syria 8 (1927), p. 93-104 and consecutively. By way of synthesis Dunand has offered only the brief

guide, Bylos, son histoire, ses ruines, ses légendes (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1964) and the

suggestive rapprochement 'Byblos, Sidon, Jérusalem. Monuments apparentés des

temps achéménides,' Vêtus Testamentum Supplement 17 (Rome congress 1968), p. 64-70 [see too Maurice H. Chehab 'La Maison de Byblos' (200 A.D.) in 'Mosaï

ques du Liban,' BMB 14s (1957-9) p. 15-20], Byblos occupies only p. 157ff. of

Dunand's De VAmanus au Sinal: sites et mounments (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1953); but see E. J. Wein 1000 Jahre Byblos (Leiden: Brill, 1963); Albright as

footnote 6 above, and Jidejian footnote 13 below.

11. R. North, Ghassul 1960 Excavation Report (Analecta Biblica 14; Rome:

Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1961) p. 11, 16, and 2.




and Mycerinus, have left votive offerings in their name at the temples of Gebl. In the second millennium the city was ruled by vassals of

Egypt, from Abi mu down to the Ahiram whose tomb-inscription is momentous among our earliest Phoenician documents.12 Strangely little archaeological evidence has been found relative to the biblical era when Hiram of Tyre (I Kings v:l) brought cedars from Gebl. Greco Roman conquerors called the site Byblos; and transshipment of Egyp tian papyrus here probably accounts for the fact that the city gave us the Greek word for book and thus our modern word Bible.13 The Crusa ders restored the Phoenician name as Giblet.

12. O. Negbi, S. Moskowitz [W. Albright], "The "Foundation Deposits" or

"Offering-Deposits" of Byblos,' BASOR 184 (Dec. 1966), p. 21-26' [-35]; W. Ward, 'The Inscribed Offering-Table of Nefer-Seshem-Ra [found 1928: Montet Kimi 1,84] from Byblos,' Bulletin de Musée de Beyrouth 17 (1964),p. 37-46; p. 35 deals with the

1962 find of an Ypa-[not Yp-] shemw-abi stela. Ba'alat Gebal is not prominent in

Karl-Heinz Bernhardt, 'Aschera in Ugarit und im Alien Testament,' Mitteilung des

Instituts fiir Orientforschung 13 (1967), p. 163-174. During the Mari era of Nefer-ljatpe, Entin ruled Byblos: Albright, 'An Indirect Synchronism between Egypt and Meso

potama cir. 1730 B.C.,' BASOR 99 (1945), p. 9-18 [116 (1949), p. 12-14, The So

Called Enigmatic Inscription from Byblos'] ; Kenneth A. Kttchen, 'Byblos, Egypt, and

Mari in the Early Second Millennium B.C.,' Orientalia 36 (1967), p. 39-54; Olga

Tufnell and W. A. Ward, 'Relations between Byblos, Egypt and Mesopotamia at

the end of the Third Millennium B.C. A Study of the [2130 B.C.] Montet Jar,' Syria 43

(1966), p. 165-241 ; Albright, 'Middle Bronze Byblos princes, Montet's "Archaic

Cylinder" [Kêmi 17 (1964), p. 61-68],' BASOR 176 (1964), p. 38^16; 179 (1965), p. 38-43.

13. Nina Jidejian, Byblos through the Ages (Beirut: Deir el Machreq, 1968), p. 2, in dependence upon Hjalmar Frisk, Griechisches etymologisches Wôrterbuch (Heidel

berg: Winter, 1960). Papyrus, which was apparently an Egyptian export to the Aegean

already in Odyssey 21,391, was used for making rope rather than writing-material

according to Albright, 'Some Oriental Glosses on the Homeric Problem,' American

Journal of Archaeology 54 (1950), p. 162-176 [see now 70 (1966), p. 123-6, Keith

Branigan, 'Byblite Daggers in Cyprus and Crete'], But Albright's p. 166 claims that

the Greek words not only for papyrus but also for book (biblion) could not have come

into use later than the Mycenean age. But the Atlas popularized under Albright's aegis

gives this quite different link between book and Byblos : 'Even our word "Bible" i s to be

traced back to Canaan, for the Greeks learned so much about writing [!] and writing

materials from the Canaanites that their word for "book" (biblion, whence "Bible")

was derived from the name of the Syrian [? not 'Canaanite'] city, Byblos': G. Ernest

Wright and Floyd V. Filson, Historical Atlas to the Bible: (Philadelphia: West

minster, 1956), p. 33. In fact it is true ihat the whole of our Greco-Latin culture is

transmitted in the Phoenician alphabet, of which Byblos affords perhaps the earliest

samples: Dunand, Byblia Grammata (Beirut, 1945); Sebastien Ronzevalle, 'L'alpha

bet du sarcophage d'Ahiram,' Mélanges de l'Université S.J. de Beyrouth 12 (1927),

p. 1-40; Ëduard (־־Paul) Dhorme, 'Déchiffrement des inscriptions pseudo-hiéro




Description of the Flooring Areas. The region of Byblos which is

centered at the coordinates x99750 and yl00250 is just southwest of the

Roman colonnade, and north-northeast of the laboratory-building

surviving precariously at its pre-excavation level. The terrain here

consists of the sandstone which forms by the hardening of dunes, in a

period sometimes as brief as a single year. The floors, called in French

sol enduit or surfaced ground, in places rest directly on the grotesque sandstone formations. But more generally a dirt fill intervenes, and in

some cases there are found superposed floors, as many as three sépara ted by some 40 cm. of earth.

The floors found actually preserved at Byblos have an average area of

2-3 metres square. Though none is complete, all are sufficiently delimi

ted to indicate that their original form was rectangular rather than

circular. As at Jericho, the floors are so distinctive that they could not

possibly escape the attention of even the most inexperienced digger. At

Jericho the attention is caught chiefly by the extraordinary colouring, fineness, and polish of the rather fragile material. But at Byblos the

material, which for colouring and coarseness blends somewhat with the

surrounding soil, is of a rock-like haidness suited to arrest the probing pick almost without damage to its own surface. In the Jericho neolithic

sondage, the only floors which were preserved were perfectly preserved. A merely apparent exception is afforded by those cases where the top

surface had been scraped off in antiquity, leaving the bulk of the flooring intact. But at Byblos great masses of the flooring had settled slightly, leaving cracks, sumps and general deterioration of the surface, which none the less was just as hard as its undamaged vicinity.

Hospital Corners could be said to form the chief point of resemblance between the Byblos and Jericho floors. Where the floor is intended to meet the rising wall, it abandons its horizontality and begins to curve

gracefully upward. Many of the Jericho walls are preserved, continuing uninterrupted the curve of the floor; these are especially graceful at the corners where three planes join. At Byblos the curve is clearly indicated; although, strangely, no vestige has been discovered either of a vertical

glyphiques de Byblos,' and Rene Dussaud, 'L'origine de l'alphabet et son évolution

première d'après les découvertes deByblos,' Syria 25 (1948), p. 1-35; 36-52; Albright, 'The Phoenician Inscriptions of the Tenth Century B.C. from Byblos,' Journal of the American Oriental Society 67 (1947), p. 153-160; Malachi Martin, 'Revision and Reclassification of the Proto-Byblian Signs, Orientalia 31 (1962), p. 250-271, 339-363; 30 (1961) 46-78.




wall or of any kind of post or support. The excavator conjectures that

rustic willow-boughs formed a kind of tent-like covering.

Roof posts would normally be expected to leave their traces in the floor. In this connection it may be opportune to allude to the relevance

of Ghassul. This mother-site of Near East chalcolithic is located across

the Jordan River from Jericho, at a distance of only some fifteen miles.

Miss Kenyon has recently given expression to her surprise that the

occupation-period uniquely conspicuous there is totally unrepresented at Tell es-Sultân. 'Ghassul pottery has some affinities with that of

Jericho... but many highly individual forms found at Ghassul are not

found at Jericho... It may be that Ghassul belongs mainly to a period when there was a gap in occupation at Jericho... The present weight of

evidence does suggest that the Ghassulians were newcomers from outside

Palestine, and the fact that near-by Jericho shows only slight evidence

of connection with them may support the idea of a gap there covering most of the period of occupation at Ghassul (before 3500).'14

At Byblos, on the other hand, the neolithic period is intimately mixed up with chalcolithic remains, though the parallels of Byblos

pottery to Ghassul alleged by Dunand may leave one somewhat hesitant.

At any rate, our point is that the neolithic roof-post correlation with

floors is there the diametric opposite of what we encountered in 1960 at

chalcolithic Ghassul. There we found numerous conspicuous plastered

holes, which to Père de Vaux, in a visit there, seemed definitely intended

for roof-supports. But there was no trace of flooring either beside them

or at any other point of our excavation. Earnest search revealed no

trace at all of the flooring which must have stood in relation to the

numerous substantial walls we cleared. We can and must affirm as the

most adequate hypothesis that the simple earth, without any kind of

surfacing, was felt to serve adequately for a floor: as indeed it does very

cleanly, coolly, and comfortably in many adobe houses near Jericho

today.15 Excavator Diana Kirkbride in a visit to our dig expressed the

conviction that only an earthquake could explain the jumble of walls

14. Kathleen M. Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land (London: Benn, 1960),

p. 70. Mellaart's Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Ages (Beirut, 1966), p. 21, claims that

from Abu Habil we have evidence that the pottery characteristic of Jericho ix and of

Tell Shuna (not Shunat Nimrin near Ghassul, but ten miles south of Lake Tiberias,

p. 74) eventually developed into Ghassulian. (His p. 36 interprets as elephants [compar

ing Perrot, 'Atiqôt 3] the 'spook-masks' found near both the 'Star' and 'Tiger'

frescoes of Ghassul.)

15. R. North, Ghassul I960 Excavation Report (Rome, 1961), p. 21.




lying flat where floors should be. But she will remember that we both

were working at Jericho in 1952 when the trench directed by Basil

Hennessy afforded conclusive proof that the brick walls claimed by

Garstang to have been catastrophically destroyed by 'the earthquake called "Joshua's trumpets'" were in fact a normal everyday sequence of

collapse-and-repair. However, in 1966 Hennessy himself made a sound

ing at Ghassul and feels convinced that he has there isolated traces of

no less than six successive earthquakes.16 Neolithic Buildings. The Byblos floors are all in close proximity to

walls of coarse unfashioned rock, but those walls pertain invariably to the posterior occupation. At Jericho the polished floors of the north

sondage are nowhere near any rock constructions; the walls are carefully fashioned of various types of sun-dried bricks readily distinguishable. It was our own privilege to discover by chance the clear distinction

between what seemed to be the homogeneous mud of the walls, and the

quite individual bricks which had been carefully laid within them. The

most interesting feature of the bricks is the very clear finger imprints made to facilitate reception of the mortar. An almost identical feature

had already been noted by Mallon at Ghassul.17 At Jericho, unlike the

neolithic occupation areas of the north sondage, the centre of the tell is

dense with neolithic walls made of unhewn rock instead of brick. But

no relation has been established between these walls and any of the

plaster patches, nor indeed (so far as I have learned) to any private

dwellings.

Composition of the Floors. Chemical analysis of the floor-material will

doubtless someday be made available in the excavators' publications. The Jericho floors, from their firmness and polish, give the impression of lime. The location near the Dead Sea has suggested gypsum as

the base of the plaster. None the less, its perfection at a time when

pottery had not yet been invented remains a mystery. The plaster, despite its tenaciously resistant surface, is quite soft. It can easily be shaved

away with a knife, or even with a finger-nail when the protective polished crust has been broken. When attacked, it tends to fall away in powdery

heaps rather than in rocky chunks of definite size and shape. The Jericho flooring is about 6 cm. thick, and is more or less homoge

16. J. Basil Hennessy, 'Preliminary Report on a First Season of Excavations

at Teleilat Ghassul,' Levant 1 (1968), p. 1-24 [plus his Editor's Comment p. vii, see

Orientalia 38 (1969), p. 131]. 17. Alexis Mallon, Robert Koeppel, Rene Neuville, Teleiliât G has «//(Rome:

Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1934), p. 34; Plate 14, 1.




neous, though in its lower thickness it contains a stronger admixture of chalky stones. In some cases this plaster flooring rested upon a bed of neatly prepared stones, imbedded in the soil below, but not in the

plaster above. More usually this stone bedding was wholly lacking. The plaster walls, though their polished surface was scarcely distinguish able from that of the floor material, in fact bore a thin coating of scarcely more than a millimetre applied directly to the smoothed mud which

served as adhesive-agent in the construction of the mud-brick walls.

Whereas at Byblos the neolithic flooring was thick, cement-hard,

practical, immensely tough and weather-resistant, and rather ugly, at Jericho it was eggshell-thin, delicate, gypsum-soft, painted, aesthetic,

fragile, and impractical. In fact the Sul{ân 'flooring' was really identical with a wa//-plaster not unlike that which we found abundantly at Ghassul. As already noted, the 'hospital corners' or faintly upward

curving edges of the flooring-material at Byblos leave open the possibility that it continued up along the walls. But at Byblos the material of both

floor and walls is more suited to a floor; at Jericho it is more suited to a

wall. The impression that the delicately beautiful 'floors' of the Sultân

neolithic could never have been really intended to be trampled on is to

some extent confirmed by the fact that they were within a sanctuary area. The likeness of this area to some Greek sanctuaries, intended

doubtless as private abode of the god and never to be trod by mortal

foot, has been set forth elsewhere.18 And we will presently note the

neolithic floors of Anatolian Çatal linked with a similar sanctuary,

though data on the hardness of those floors so far escapes us. In any case, we must beware of projecting backward our modern notions of

flooring constructed to resist hobnailed boots or the deadlier feminine

spiked heels. In Korea today it would still be unthinkable to enter even

the poorest house without leaving one's shoes outside the door: to say

nothing of less fortunate countries where there are no shoes. Every

archaeologist will recall also the delicate painted floors of Amarna

exposed in the entrance hall of Cairo Museum. The exquisite frescoing was unquestionably more suited to a wall, but was verified also in other

floors of the Palace-Harem.19 Though the flooring itself was more

18. L.-H. Vincent, Revue Biblique 48 (1939), p. 94; North, Estudios Eclesidsticos

27 (1953), p. 332.

19. William M. Flinders Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (London: Egypt Exploration

Fund, 1894), p. 8-14; Plate V ; North, Archeo-Biblical Egypt (Rome: Pontifical Biblical

nstitute, 1967), p. 39-41.




durable, the painted designs could not have survived trampling any better than the eggshell-surfaces of Jericho.

The Byblos floors, as we were saying, are immensely harder. The

surface is undeniably fine and polished, in its own way; but the polish is that of cement or stone as compared with the glassy smoothness to

Jericho. Nor can the difference be ascribed to the exposure of the surface

at Byblos, since precisely the hardness of the surface is resistant of

temperature and rain. In M. Dunand's words, 'Over the neatly-leveled soil had been laid a bed of crushed limestone, or more rarely sandstone, in chunks as large as a fist or two. The stones at the edge are noticeably

larger, determining thus a border in relief about the stone-laid area. Over

these stones there was spread a thickness of chalk-clay, called locally

hawâra, 2-3 cm. thick, penetrating well into the cracks between the

underlying stones, and not spreading beyond those of the border. This

chalk-clay is covered with a film of carbonate of lime of a deep-cream

color, in thickness at most 5-10 mm., which rises upward at the edge and sometimes goes beyond the border-stones. Its surface had been

carefully polished, perhaps by means of large flat stones of which several

examples have been retrieved.'20 Similarly ten years later Dunand wrote, 'We found seven more neolithic lodgings, with a floor covered by a

thick layer of lime {chaux) over a bed (radier) of stones. [In one case

these were] small stones half the size of a fist, with chipped surface and sharp edges due apparently to crushing or even rather the effect

of fire,'and a few steps west 'a fine floor covered with lime, oriented N-S, had kept a part of itr wall-risers (murets).... In a second stage the length of this habitation was reduced by a third and its floor remade. The successive stages apparently used the same hearth, in the middle of the south short side where we were prevented from excavating... At the NE corner of the earlier stage, the floor was dug out by a neolithic burial of which we found the skeleton.'21 Farther west were the floors of

squares 0/6, 1/6, and 1/7, of which we here submit the plan. This description is accurate in detail (though leaving the nature of

the 'chalk-clay hawârà' open to further analysis). It conforms perfectly to the impression of the observer, and enables the reader to form a detailed image of the structure of the floor. None the less, M. Dunand declared himself ready to revise his formulation in consequence of an

20. M. Dunand, 'Rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles de Byblos en 1949,' Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth 9 (1950), p. 69.

21. Dunand, 'Rapport... 1957,' BMB 16 (1961), p. 70f,




experience which illustrates strikingly the character of our material. He had directed me to secure a good piece for chemical analysis. I chipped off several specimens in search of one whose limey top-surface would be at least a centimetre thick. But in all these samples, the material

directly underlying the surface seemed recognizable by its texture, its

hardness, and its crystalline structure, as stone. Only a negligible half millimetre top-surface was of a different and more powdery substance.

Upon being consulted, M. Dunand at once agreed that the thicker material was stone, and he set a workman to painstakingly chipping off

the half-millimetre surface in order to find the junction of the stone

with its adherent. But this search was doomed to prove fruitless and M.

Dunand's original formulation was vindicated; because meanwhile

we examined numerous specimens in which the 'intermediate stone'

layer clung too close to the underlying heterogeneous stones to be any

thing but some form of cement, or more properly synthetic stone.

A synthetic stone more perfectly white in color, but of hardness

and trompe l'oeil stoniness rivaling the Byblos specimens (and containing sherds imbedded within it, not merely attached as in the Byblos slab

to be described below), has been exposed for several years in the Warka

'Stone Cone Mosaic Temple,' where the E-Anna and E-ReS areas meet

('Dating Trench'), ana further specimens appeared in the 1965 digging there.22

According to Matson's study of the Persepolis plaster, this term is to be distinguished from 'mortar' only by an arbitrary line with respect to

fineness.23 From his terminology it would follow that we should call the Jericho flooring plaster and that of Byblos mortar (or, as we hope he would admit, synthetic stone). He there discusses the procedure of

distinguishing gjjWMWJ-plaster from //me-plaster: only the latter fizzes

in dilute acid.

Neolithic flint-fragments and pottery-lacuna. It has already been

22. R. North, 'Status of the Warka Excavation,' Orientalia 26 (1957), p. 236;

185-256.

23. F. R. Matson, 'A Study of Wall Plaster, Flooring, and Bitumen,' appendix

to Erich F. Schmidt, Persepolis I (Oriental Institute Publications, 68; Chicago:

University, 1953) p. 285f. The chief researches into ancient plasters and mortar on

which he bases himself are J. R. Partington, Origins and Development of Applied

Chemistry (London, 1935), and A. Lucas, Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries

(London, 1948), which has since appeared in a fourth edition thoroughly revised by

J. R. Harris (Arnold, 1962), on p. 268 citing without approval R. Forbes' continuing

series of Studies in Ancient Technology.




sufficiently emphasized that at Jericho no pottery whatever was found

below the Level IX of the Garstang sondage, including the (still lower) Levels XI to XIII in which the polished floors occur. Equally in the

neolithic levels of the tell-centre, many were wholly without pottery. The long and careful toil in the north sondage areas quite excludes

the possibility of any pottery fragments having passed unnoticed. The

neolithic flints found by Garstang in his sondage were abundant, but

surprisingly infrequent in the Kenyon campaign.

At Byblos, an average half-metre of fill separated the neolithic floors

from the chalcolithic settlement above. Even the burial jars of this

chalcolithic settlement do not normally penetrate below the neolithic level,

though of course it is quite possible that they should without detriment

to the relative chronology. The sherds discovered immediately above

and below the hard-cement floors were abundant but extremely fragmen

tary. They have already been classified by Dunand as indubitably pre chalcolithic. The affiliations he suggests with other sites are numerous

but extremely tentative. Flints, generally black, also abound; but less

than 7 % are worked into tools. He concludes that the neolithic popula tion of the area was quite distinct from that which came to occupy it in

chalcolithic times, after an interval of abandonment.24

Now hot off the press has appeared Cauvir's study of neolithic

utensils as the fourth volume of the Byblos Excavation Final Report. It distinguishes the 'middle neolithic,' in which there was only a single floor-surface and very little architecture of any kind, from the 'older

neolithic,' in which the numerous surfaced floors were always in

monocellular houses. One of his photos gives an interesting variant

view of the floors perceptible in our photo of Area A.25

Plaster-ceramic transition. One Byblos slab proved especially interest

ing. It was near the edge of its square, projected slightly upward, and was of a somewhat different surface-colour and texture from the rest.

But upon being lifted, its bottom surface was found to consist of sherds

neatly laid into the cement as in a sort of rough mosaic. Or rather, just as in the nearby flooring there was a bed of stones over and into which the cement had been pressed, so here it should be said that the sherds were the base onto which the cement had been poured. This fact had

24. Dunand, 'Rapport... 1948,' BMB 9 (1950), p. 57ff.

25. Jacques Cauvin, Les outillages néolithiques de Byblos et du littoral libanais

(M. Dunand, ^068ש de Byblos 4; Direction des Antiquités libanaise Etudes et

documents d'archéologie, 5; Paris: Maisonneuve, 1968) p. 41 and Plate II.




no very particular significance, since sherds were quite numerous

above and below, and the date of the imbedded sherds (apart from

some at first doubtful pieces) was not provably later.

What is more important is that the slab turned out to be made of a

reddish concrete which one might be tempted to call itself semi-ceramic.

The ordinary chalcolithic (and some other) pottery of Byblos is made of a

bright red clay in which a 'minority' of sandy white grits are prominent. In this slab, on the contrary, the sandy grits constituted the basic (cement)

texture, but it was 'contaminated' with red pottery-like material. It

may be noted that some nearby walls were made of red earth regarding which the excavator hesitated to pronounce whether it had been trodden

or moulded into bricks, or again whether contemporary or posterior to

the concrete floors. Though the pre-IX levels of Jericho have high

quality plaster floors before any appearance of pottery, the Byblos slab

might suggest that we have in the Jericho plastered bin-jars, of which new

samples were found in 1953 at the center of Tell es-Suflân, a perhaps atavistic evolution of ceramic into cement.26

We must not conclude without describing two remarkable further

samples of neolithic flooring which have been excavated long after our

work at Jericho and Byblos, in both cases by Jericho fellow-workers of

1953. Miss Kirkbride through several years excavated a pre-pottery neolithic village at Beida near Petra. During one of the campaigns she

was assisted by the paleobotanist Hans Helbaek, and she is now Mrs.

Helbaek.

This Beida floor is plastered. The overall description of the site

says, 'Two kinds of plaster were used for floors and walls. Their

content has not yet been analyzed,' (after only five years, she says ; we have

been waiting twenty years for both Jericho and Byblos analyses!)

'...Layers VI-IV were predominantly a sandy clay mixture [with a] strong,

though not very visible element of lime.' (But in Level IV she contrasts

the 'sandy plaster' with the 'predominantly white, solid lime plaster.') 'In Levels III-I white lime plaster comes into general use... There are

thin grey-black coatings of astonishing hardness and adhesive strength

between the lime layers.'27 Though plastered, this floor does not really

26. Miss KenYON in Palestine Exploration Quarterly 85 (1953), p. 85, notes how

highly developed already is that earliest pottery found at Jericho, on which is based

the [Garstang] claim that pottery was invented ihere out of the plastering of bins.

27. Diana Kirkbride, 'Five Seasons at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Village of

Beidha in Jordan [1961-4],' Palestine Exploration Quarterly 98 (1566), p. 23; 8-61

[-72 by Helbaek and others]; for the 1965 season, see 99 (1967), p. 5-13.




resemble the neolithic floors of either Jericho or Byblos. It bears a more

striking resemblance to our Ghassul post-hole areas or at least to the

small plastered portion immediately around the hole.

Other neolithic houses found at Beida show a quite different structure from either Jericho-Byblos or Ghassul. However, one house is described as having 'a floor of heavy white lime plaster which, on analogy with earlier houses, was continued up the walls/ and in that house it was felt worthy of note that there was no post hole or even any kind of

depression for roof support. One of the plaster floors had been re-laid five times. If we are not allowing our imagination to play tricks with us, it would seem that this reconstruction of one Beida neolithic occupation area bears a striking resemblance to that of Jericho which we will present ly compare to Çatal.

Our final concern is with the altogether remarkable and unique neolithic frescoed sanctuaries discovered by James Mellaart at Çatal Hiiyiik near Konya-Iconium in Anatolia, which we were privileged to visit during its excavation in 1965. This isometric reconstruc tion bears enough resemblance to the one just shown at Beida to

suggest that they both have something in common with the Jericho

sanctuary. There is one of the examples of Çatal neolithic flooring in what is explicitly called the Bull Shrine, bearing on its walls one of the many odzens of incredibly vivid frescoes which have become a wonder of the world in recent years.28 Compare this now with the Jericho neolithic floor and walls of which I have been speaking. Though the

presumptive cult-object is quite different, the room itself seems to merit

comparison. Moreover in the corner just beside the Jericho sanctuary was found a skull buried upright just below the floor, apparently with some intentional symbolism. James Mellaart was working at another

28. James Mellaart, Çatal Hiiyûk: a Neolithic Town in Anatolia (New Aspects of Antiquity, 1; London: Thames and Hudson, 1967); Earliest Civilizations of the, Near East (Thames and Hudson, 1965), p. 81-101 ; 'Excavations at Çatal Hiiyiik 1961 -5 Anatolian Studies 12 (1962),p. 41-65(-110 flints); 13 (1963),p.43-103; 14 (1904),p. 39-119 (-123 plants by Helbaek); 15 (1965),p. 135-156,169-176 textiles; 16 (1966), p. 165-191; p. 170 'all of Çatal Hiiyiik is "Pre-'Aceramic-Neolithic." See Mellaart's

Archaologischer Anzeiger des Deutschen Archàologischen Instituts 81 (1966), p. 1-15, his photographic reports in Illustrated London News especially for May 28, 1966; Feb. 1-22 and May 9, 1946; June 9, 1962; Jan. 26, 1963; and his earlier studies on 'Anatolian Chronology in the Early and Middle Bronze Age' and 'Early Cultures of the South Anatolian Plain,' Anatolian Studies 7 (1957), p. 55-88; and 10 (1961), p. 159-184; 13 (1963), p. 199-236.



Fig. 1. Neolithic floors on grid: verticil 0-7, horizontal 6-3.



Fig.

2.

Shape

and

dimensions

of

some

Byblos

floors.



Fig.

3.

Grid

2/7

marked

B

on

Fig.

1.



Fig.

4.

Grid

3/8

marked

A

on

fig.

1.




part of Tell es-Sultân while these discoveries were being noted. And now

compare what Mellaart himself found worthy of special attention at

Çatal Hiiyiik directly beneath the floor of one of its shrines. Regrettably our careful perusal of the Çatal reports has so far given no detailed

information about the floor-composition. But this will doubtless soon

be forthcoming, and we may look to it for further light on the enig matic relations between neolithic and chalcolithic at Ghassul, Jericho, and Byblos.



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VOLUME I: THE ANCIENT NEAR-EAST AS RELATED TO THE BIBLE AND THE HOLY LAND; THE BIBLE; ARCHAEOLOGY;...

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