Ancient Palestine

I

Introduction

Ancient Palestine, a region of the ancient Near East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea between Egypt and Syria. It comprised territory that in the 21st century included Israel, the Israeli-occupied West Bank (Samaria and Judea), the Gaza Strip, southern Lebanon, and northwestern Jordan to the east of the Jordan River. Ancient Palestine was the “Holy Land” of the Bible, the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity.

Ancient Palestine consisted of five geographical divisions. Four ran parallel from north to south. Along the Mediterranean there was a narrow coastal plain. Farther east was hill country—Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. East of that was the valley of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, part of the Great Rift Valley. Still farther east were the Transjordanian highlands. The arid Negev extended southward from the Judean Hills to the Gulf of Aqaba.

The oldest evidence historians possess for the linguistic and ethnic character of the population of Palestine comes from the second millennium bc. Then and later, the country was inhabited by a diversity of ethnic groups, mainly Semitic in language. The invading Israelites knew the area as Canaan and its inhabitants as Canaanites. The Egyptians’ main term for the area was Rezenu (Retenu), and they also referred to it as Pwenet (Punt) and Toneter (God’s Land). In Greek the land was known as coelo (southern) Syria. The modern name Palestine, deriving from the Greek Philistia (the southern Mediterranean coast), was imposed by the Romans after the Bar Kochba revolt (ad 130-134), when they killed or deported most of the formerly predominant Jewish population.

II

The Stone Age

The Stone Age was a time of slow development that laid the foundations of all later economic and social life. During the Paleolithic or “Old” Stone Age in Palestine (before 20,000 bc), the inhabitants lived in seasonal camps and cave shelters and obtained food by hunting and foraging. During the Mesolithic or “Middle” Stone Age (about 20,000-8500 bc) larger, semipermanent villages appeared. They were made possible by the beginnings of domestication of plants and animals.

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The Neolithic or “New” Stone Age (about 8500-4500 bc) was marked by the first full domestication of plants and animals. This made food supplies more plentiful and more reliable. Permanent villages were established and the population grew considerably. One of the most ancient urban settlements known was at Jericho, which had brick houses and a stone town wall in about 6850 bc. Pottery made its first appearance in Palestine about 6000 bc. The first use of metal (copper) also took place during the Neolithic Age. During the Chalcolithic Period, or Copper-Stone Age (about 4500-3300 bc) there was further economic advance. Grains were grown, possibly using primitive irrigation techniques. Agricultural products such as olives and grapes were brought from the hill country to villages in the lower Jordan Valley. The manufacture of stone, ceramic, and copper articles, as well as textiles and basketry, developed.

III

The Early Bronze Age

The Early Bronze period (about 3300-2000 bc) was marked by the rise, zenith, and collapse of the first truly urban cultures in Palestine. Early Bronze I (about 3300-3200 bc) was a brief, transitional phase known largely from scattered villages and several large cemeteries. It marked a decline from the Chalcolithic. Nevertheless, there was trade with Late Predynastic Egypt (see Ancient Egypt).

By Early Bronze II (about 3200-2600 bc) there were many more sites, most had grown into larger towns, and the few large cities were surrounded by massive walls. Palestinians traded with Egypt and established colonies in the southern Sinai, probably to exploit copper and other minerals. Before the end of the period, trade with Egypt came to a standstill.

The Early Bronze III period (about 2600-2400 bc) was a renewed and possibly expanded urban phase centered mostly in the center and south of the country. Enormous city walls, temples, and possibly palaces were constructed. There was little contact with Egypt. There was contact with Mesopotamia, however, and the beautiful lustrous finished pottery from Khirbet Kerak points also to North Syrian and Anatolian influences. Toward the end, several towns apparently were destroyed, and most others were in decline. By about 2400 bc, virtually all the Early Bronze II and III sites were abandoned. This may have been caused by the exhaustion of natural resources, environmental degradation, the collapse of international trade, disease, and famine.

The Early Bronze IV period (about 2400-2000 bc) is characterized by hundreds of new villages and encampments, many in marginal zones such as the Jordan Valley, Transjordan, the Negev, and Sinai. Most of the large tells (mounds) of the previous urban phases were deserted, or occupied only seasonally; some became burying grounds for groups of pastoral nomads.

IV

The Middle Bronze Age

The Middle Bronze Age (about 2000-1500 bc) brought the full flowering of “Canaanite” civilization. During Middle Bronze I (about 2000-1800 bc) there was a gradual return to urban life, perhaps stimulated by contact with Egypt and by movements of Amorites (West Semitic peoples from Syria) into the country. The former town sites in the marginal zones were almost all abandoned, new towns were established along the coast and in the interior, old urban mounds were reoccupied, and city walls were built. In Middle Bronze II (about 1800-1650 bc) these advances were consolidated and a fully established city-state system emerged.

The final phase, Middle Bronze III (about 1650-1500 bc), represents the zenith of the second urban period in Palestine, in many ways the most impressive development in pre-Roman Palestine. At Shechem, massive fortifications and two city gates enclosed a well-planned urban site with a barracks, palace-administrative center, public plaza, and two temples. The citadel at Gezer included a tower nearly 17 m (55 ft) across. Nearly all sites have enormous, complex fortification systems.

About this time, Asian princes called Hyksos (“rulers of foreign countries”) rose to power in Egypt, only to be driven back to Palestine by the founders of Dynasty XVIII, about 1550 bc. In the next half to three quarters of a century every site in Palestine was destroyed.

Middle Bronze Age Palestine’s most important and influential cultural innovation was the invention of the Proto-Sinaitic writing system, the oldest known semialphabetic writing (see Writing). Inscriptions found both in the Sinai and in Palestine are written in forms of this simple but effective system. From this region, over the centuries, alphabetic writing spread around the world. Technological innovations of the Middle Bronze Age include the first fast-wheel-thrown pottery and the introduction of the first true tin-bronze on a large scale, which made possible new kinds of weapons and implements. For the manufacture of these bronzes, tin was imported by donkey caravans from upper Mesopotamia, nearly 800 km (500 mi) away.