Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Queen Jezebel makes guest appearances in El Amarna


Image result for baalat nese correspondence el amarna


 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

 

 

Baalat Neše, being the only female correspondent of the El-Amarna [EA] series,

must therefore have been a woman of great significance at the time.

Who was she?

  

 

 

 

  

  Dr. I Velikovsky had introduced Baalat Neše as “Baalath Nesse” in his 1945

THESES FOR THE RECONSTRUCTION OF ANCIENT HISTORY

FROM THE END OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM IN EGYPT TO THE ADVENT OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

 

According to Velikovsky:

 

1.       The el-Amarna Letters were written not in the fifteenth-fourteenth century, but in the middle of the ninth century.

 

1.       Among the correspondents of Amenhotep III and Akhnaton are biblical personages: Jehoshaphat (Abdi-Hiba), King of Jerusalem; Ahab (Rib Addi), King of Samaria; Ben-Hadad (Abdi-Ashirta), King of Damascus; Hazael (Azaru), King of Damascus; Aman (Aman-appa), Governor of Samaria; Adaja (Adaja), Adna (Adadanu), Amasia, son of Zihri (son of Zuhru), Jehozabad (Jahzibada), military governors of Jehoshaphat; Obadia, the chief of Jezreel; Obadia (Widia), a city governor in Judea; the Great Lady of Shunem (Baalath Nesse); Naaman (Janhama), the captain of Damascus; and others. Arza (Arzaja), the courtier in Samaria, is referred to in a letter.

 

Then he, in his Ages in Chaos I (1952, p. 220), elaborated on why he thought Baalat Neše was, as above, “the Great Lady of Shumen”.

I mentioned it briefly, as follows, in my university thesis:

 

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah

and its Background

 


 

(Volume One, p. 93), as follows:

 

“Queen Jezebel

 

Velikovsky had, with typical ingenuity, looked to identify the only female correspondent of EA, Baalat Neše, as the biblical ‘Great Woman of Shunem’, whose dead son the prophet Elisha had resurrected (cf. 2 Kings 4:8 and 4:34-35). …. Whilst the name Baalat Neše is usually translated as ‘Mistress of Lions’, Velikovsky thought that it could also be rendered as “a woman to whom occurred a wonder” (thus referring to Elisha’s miracle).

This female correspondent wrote two letters (EA 273, 274) to Akhnaton, telling him that the SA.GAZ pillagers had sent bands to Aijalon (a fortress guarding the NW approach to Jerusalem). She wrote about “two sons of Milkili” in connection with a raid.

The menace was not averted because she had to write again for pharaoh’s help”.

 

I continued, referring to Lisa Liel’s rejection of Velikovsky’s hopeful interpretation of the name, Baalat Neše (“What’s In A Name?”:


 

“Liel, in the process of linguistically unravelling the Sumerian name of this female correspondent, points to what she sees as being inaccuracies in Velikovsky’s own identification of her: ….

 

NIN.UR.MAH.MESH

 

This lady’s name is generally transcribed as “Baalat Nese”, which means “Lady of Lions”. Velikovsky either saw a transcription where the diacritical mark above the “s” which indicates that it is pronounced “h” was omitted, or didn’t know what the mark meant.

[Since this character doesn’t show up well in HTML, I’ve used a regular “s”. The consonant is actually rendered as an “s” with an upside-down caret above it, like a small letter “v”.] [Liel’s comment]

He also took the “e” at the end of the word as a silent “e”, the way it often is in English. Having done all this, he concluded that the second word was not “nese,” but “nes,” the Hebrew word for miracle. He then drew a connection with the Shunnamite woman in the book of Kings who had a miracle done for her.

 

Liel’s own explanation of the name was partly this:

 

Flights of fancy aside, the name has in truth been a subject of debate, so much so that many books nowadays tend to leave it as an unnormalized Sumerogram. The NIN is no problem. It means “Lady,” the feminine equivalent of “Lord.” Nor is the MESH difficult at all; it is the plural suffix …. What is UR.MAH? One attested meaning is “lion.” This is the source of the “Lady of Lions” reading. ….

 

Whilst Liel would go on to suggest an identification of (NIN.UR.MAH.MESH) Baalat Neše with “the usurper [Queen] Athaliah”, my own preference then in this thesis was for Queen Jezebel. Thus I wrote:

 

“In a revised context Baalat Neše, the ‘Mistress of Lions’, or ‘Lady of Lions’, would most likely be, I suggest, Jezebel, the wife of king Ahab. Jezebel, too, was wont to write official letters – in the name of her husband, sealing these with his seal (1 Kings 21:8). And would it not be most appropriate for the ‘Mistress of Lions’ (Baalat Neše) to have been married to the ‘Lion Man’ (Lab’ayu)? Baalat (Baalath, the goddess of Byblos) is just the feminine form of Baal. Hence, Baalat Neše may possibly be the EA rendering of the name, Jezebel, with the theophoric inverted: thus, Neše-Baal(at). Her concern for Aijalon, near Jerusalem, would not be out of place since Lab’ayu himself had also expressed concern for that town”.

 

If this identification of EA’s Baalat Neše, or Neše-Baal(at), as the biblical Jezebel, holds good, then it can be for us a very solid biblico-historical anchor.

 

 

What is the meaning of the mysterious name, Jezebel?

 

 

 

“The etymology and meaning of the name Jezebel is unclear”.

 

Abarim Publications

 

 

  

 

 

 

The rather unique name, Jezebel, is borne probably by only two women in the Bible:


 

  • “The famous Jezebel is the notorious wife of the notorious king Ahab, daughter of Ethbaal, king of the Sidonians (1 Kings 16:31).
  • Jezebel became such a symbol of evil that John the Revelator refers to her in Revelation 2:20 (spelled Ιεζαβηλ, Iezabel), or so it seems”.

 

In the Hebrew, this name is represented as (’î-ze-ḇel) אִיזֶבֶל

 

But, upon her death, her name (in 2 Kings 9:37) is slightly altered to read (’î-zā-ḇel) אִיזָבֶל


There may also be wordplay involved in this remark (II Kings 9:37). John Gray (1913-2000) notates:

 

There is, as James A. Montgomery [1866-1949] recognizes (International Critical Commentary, p. 407), possibly a word-play between ‘dung’ (dōmen [II Kings 9:37] and zebel (meaning also ‘dung’ as in the Arabic cognate) in the Hebrew parody of an original element zebūl in the name of the queen (Gray, I & II Kings: A Commentary, Second, Fully Revised Edition (Old Testament Library), 551)

 

Given our identification of Queen Jezebel with the only female El Amarna correspondent, Baalat Neše, then it is possible that Jezebel is just a Hebrew transliteration of Baalat Neše, meaning “Mistress of Lions”, or “Mistress of the Lionesses”.

Hence:

Neše-Baal [-at is the feminine ending];

Jeze-bel

 

 

A different version of the name:

 

Nadav Na’aman, though, in his article “The Shephelah according to the Amarna Letters”, has opted to render the name of the only female El Amarna correspondent, not as Baalat Neše, but as - albeit the same meaning - Bēlit-labi’at (p. 282, n. 3):

 

The name of the queen who sent EA 273–374 is written fNIN.UR.MAHmeš (“lady of the lioness”; see Bauer 1920). Formerly, on the basis of two Ugaritic texts, I suggested rendering the name as Bēlit-nešēti (Na’aman 1979: 680 n. 32).  However, recent collations of the two Ugaritic texts have shown that the reading nešēti/nṭt was mistaken (see Singer 1999: 697–98). Thus, there is no evidence for rendering the ideographic writing UR.MAHmeš as nešēti. As an alternative reading I suggest rendering it labi’at (“lioness”). The name bdlb’t appears on arrowheads discovered at el-Ḫaḍr (near Bethlehem) and in Ugaritic texts (bdlbit). Labi’at (“lioness”) was probably an epithet of the goddess ‘Ashtartu (see Milik and Cross 1954: 6–9; Gröndahl 1967: 154; Donner and Röllig 1968: 29). See also the toponyms Lebaoth/Beth-Lebaoth mentioned in Josh 15:32; 19:6. In light of the textual evidence I suggest rendering fNIN.UR.MAHmeš as Bēlit-labi’at.

[End of quote]

 

 

On the strength of my connection of Neše-Baal and Jeze-bel, I would be inclined to stick with the Baalat-Neše rendering of the female El Amarna correspondent.

 

Seal of Bible’s Queen Jezebel

 

 

 

“Korpel said that owning her own seal confirms the biblical image of Queen Jezebel,

wife of King Ahab, as a woman of influence”.

 

Catherine Hornby

 

 

 

 


The inscription and symbols on the seal make it highly likely that it was the official seal of the wicked woman of the Old Testament. She was a woman of power as indicated by her title “Queen Mother” (2 Kgs 10:13). Although Jezebel had her own seal to authenticate official correspondence, when she forged the letters to the elders and nobles of Jezreel in order do away with Naboth and seize his vineyard, she used Ahab’s seal rather than her own for maximum authority (1 Kgs 21:8). ….

[End of quote]

 


The Seal of Jezebel


Jezebel



Haaretz reports (via Mirabilis):

 

For some 40 years, one of the flashiest opal signets on display at the Israel Museum had remained without accurate historical context. … Dutch researcher Marjo Korpel identified article IDAM 65-321 as the official seal of Queen Jezebel, one of the bible's most powerful and reviled women.

 

Israeli archaeologists had suspected Jezebel was the owner ever since the seal was first documented in 1964. "Did it belong to Ahab's Phoenician wife?" wrote the late pioneering archaeologist Nahman Avigad of the seal, which he obtained through the antiquities market. "Though fit for a queen, coming from the right period and bearing a rare name documented nowhere other than in the Hebrew Bible, we can never know for sure." . . .

 

In her paper, scheduled [this was written in 2007] to appear in the highly-respected Biblical Archaeology Review, Korpel lists observations pertaining to the seal's symbolism, unusual size, shape and time period. By way of elimination, she shows Jezebel as the only plausible owner. https://scribalterror.blogs.com/scribal_terror/2007/10/the-seal-of-jez.html

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-jezebel/dutch-scholar-traces-ancient-seal-to-bibles-jezebel-idUSL2317518720071023


Dutch scholar traces ancient seal to Bible's Jezebel


 


 

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch scholar has traced an ancient royal seal back to the biblical figure Queen Jezebel, based on a study of its engravings and symbols.

….

An ancient letter seal, which was discovered in 1964, is displayed in this University of Utrecht handout released October 23, 2007. A Dutch scholar has traced the ancient royal seal back to the biblical figure Queen Jezebel, based on a study of its engravings and symbols.

 

After close scrutiny of the images on the seal, which dates from the 9th century BC, Utrecht University Old Testament scholar Marjo Korpel concluded that it must have belonged to Queen Jezebel, she told Reuters ….

 

“Because of the symbolism on the seal, which has to do with royalty, and the date of the seal, there is a great possibility that it is the real seal of Queen Jezebel,” said Korpel.

 

“There is a sphinx on the seal, which stands for royalty or king. But this sphinx has a female crown, which I suppose has to do with a female owner.”

 

Other symbols include two cobras and a falcon, which she said have also been associated with royalty. The size and the image quality of the seal, located in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, also led Korpel to her conclusion.

 

“It’s twice as big as normal seals and also the iconography is very nicely engraved,” Korpel said.

 

Archaeologist Nahman Avigad found the seal in Israel in 1964. Although it was assumed that it belonged to Jezebel as it was engraved with the name “yzbl” in ancient Hebrew, there was lingering uncertainty because some of the letters were missing.

 

By comparing the seal with other similar relics, Korpel showed that its upper edge must have included two missing letters that complete the spelling of Jezebel’s name.

 

Korpel said that owning her own seal confirms the biblical image of Queen Jezebel, wife of King Ahab, as a woman of influence.

 

“If she had her own seal she was able to seal documents and so on. Egyptian queens also had great influence because of their seals,” she said. “It might point to the fact that she was a very intellectual woman.”

 

Jezebel’s story is told in the Books of Kings. She is portrayed as a foreign idol worshipper, who dominated her husband Ahab and ruled through her sons after his death. She met her death when she was thrown from a window and eaten by dogs.

 

 

Seal of Jezebel has Egyptian Queen Tiy characteristics

 

 

“Often [Queen Tiy(e)] is represented wearing the Isis/Hathor crown

or the crown with double uraei”.

 

Marjo C.A. Korpel

 


 

Fit for a Queen: Jezebel’s Royal Seal


Scholars Debate “Jezebel” Seal


Reviewed by Marjo C.A. Korpel   •  05/01/2008

 

….

The winged sphinx, winged sun disk and especially the falcon are well-known symbols of royalty in Egypt. The female Isis/Hathor crown on the winged sphinx (symbol for the king) suggests the owner to be female. The graceful Egypto-Phoenician style points to someone who apparently loved this type of art, a circumstance tallying with the fact that Jezebel was a Phoenician princess (1 Kings 16:31).

 

https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp-content/uploads/jezebel-seal-5.jpg

© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
MIRROR IMAGE. Because most seals were pressed into wet pottery or into small blobs of clay used to secure scrolls— serving much like a signature— symbols and letters were often carved in reverse. When stamped into the clay, the seal images and inscription would appear correctly. This photo of the Jezebel seal and its impression, or bulla, show the seal in reverse and in proper stance.

 

The double uraeus (cobra) at the bottom is a typical symbol of queens with prominent roles in religion and politics from the 18th Egyptian dynasty onward. Especially the [Egyptian] queen Tiye seems to have functioned as a model for later queens. Often she is represented wearing the Isis/Hathor crown or the crown with double uraei. So, independent of the name of the owner, the iconography definitely suggests a queen. Although other individuals used the same symbols to indicate their closeness to the throne, no other seal uses them all. ….

[End of quote]

 

That the biblical Queen Jezebel might have been influenced by the prominent Queen Tiy of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty is a far more reasonable proposition in a revised historical context according to which these two queens were actual contemporaries.

 

In conventional history, on the other hand, Queen Tiy of Egypt (c. 1350 BC) is separated from Queen Jezebel (c. 850 BC) by a full 500 years.

 

 

‘Lion Man’ had travelled north to acquire a wife

 

 

“We know that Ahab’s influence, as an Omride, did extend northwards,

and that he did enter into a marriage contract with Jezebel,

daughter of Ethbaal, ruler over the Sidonians (1 Kings 16:31) …”.

 

 

 

According to the El Amarna-biblical connection that I have proposed in my article:

 

King Ahab in El Amarna

 


 

King Ahab is to be identified as El Amarna’s Lab’ayu, ruler of the region around Shechem.

Now, it is interesting to learn that this Lab’ayu (“The Lion Man”) had gone seeking for a wife in the northern coastal region which is approximately from where King Ahab had acquired his famous wife, Jezebel.

 

I wrote on this briefly in my university thesis:

 

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah

and its Background

 


  

(Volume one, p. 90):

 

….

Campbell [Campbell, E. 1964, The Chronology of the Amarna Letters, John Hopkins, Baltimore] could not believe that so petty a king as he imagined Lab’ayu to have been would have, as EA 32 indicates, ranged as far northwards as Arzawa (not certainly located …), to get a foreign wife:231

 

To assume, however, that Lab’ayu, who did wander as far afield as Megiddo and the outskirts of his hill-country stronghold [sic], should go so far as to try to make a marriage contract with the daughter of the king of a region fully 300 miles away, is at best a strain on one’s credibility. ...

 

Ahab though, as we have seen, was by no means a petty king. We know that Ahab’s

influence, as an Omride, did extend northwards, and that he did enter into a marriage

contract with Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal, ruler over the Sidonians (1 Kings 16:31) ….

Thus EA 32 might be giving some true indication of the extent of Ahab’s influence ….

 

 

Lab’ayu had, like King Ahab, two prominent sons

 

 

“… the territory ruled by Lab’ayu and his sons, which bordered on the territories of

Gezer in the west and Jerusalem in the south, also including the Sharon coastal plain, reaching at least as far as the Jezreel valley/Esdraelon in the north,

and stretching over the Transjordan to adjoin Bashan, corresponds remarkably well

with the territories ruled by Ahab of Israel and his sons”.

 

 

 

I wrote on this briefly in my university thesis:

 

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah

and its Background

 


  

(Volume one, pp. 90-92):

 

Lab’ayu’s Sons

 

There are several letters that refer to the “sons of Lab’ayu”, but also a small number that, after Lab’ayu’s death, refer specifically to “the two sons of Lab’ayu” (e.g. EA 250). It follows from my reconstruction that these “two sons of Lab’ayu” were Ahab’s two princely sons, Ahaziah and Jehoram; the former actually dying in the same year as his father.

Only one of the sons though, Mut-Baal of Pi-hi-li (= Pella, on the east bank of the Jordan), is specifically named. He, my tentative choice for Ahab’s son, Ahaziah … was the author of EA 255 & 256.

Campbell,232 rightly sensing that “Mut-Ba‘lu’s role as prince of Pella could conceivably coincide with Lab‘ayu’s role as prince of Shechem [sic]”, was more inclined however to the view that “Mut-Ba‘lu would not be in a prominent enough position to write his own diplomatic correspondence until after his father’s death”.

But when one realises that Lab’ayu was not a petty ruler, but a powerful king of Israel - namely, Ahab, an Omride - then one can also accept that his son, Mut-Baal/Ahaziah

could have been powerful enough in his own right (as either co-rex or pro-rex) to have been writing his own diplomatic letters.

That Ahaziah of Israel might also have been called Mut-Baal is interesting. Biblical scholars have sometimes pointed out, regarding the names of Ahab’s sons, that whilst Jezebel was known to have been a fierce persecutor of the Yahwists, Ahab must have been more loyal, having bestowed upon his sons the non-pagan names of ‘Ahaziah’ and ‘Jehoram’. Along similar lines, Liel has written …:

 

One reason for the use of the generic Addu in place of the actual DN, especially

in correspondence between nations worshipping different deities, might have been to avoid the profanation of the divine name by those who did not have the same reverence for it. This would be the case especially for the Israelites. Even

Israelites such as Ahab, who introduced Baal worship, did not do so, in their estimation, at the expense of YHVH, Whom they continued to revere. Ahab gave his children (at least those mentioned in the Bible) names containing YHVH: Jehoram, Ahaziah, Jehoash and Athaliah. He also showed great respect and deference to the prophet Elijah.

 

The truth of the matter is that Ahab called Elijah “my enemy” אֹיְבִ֑י (1 Kings 21:20). And, if Elijah were also the prophet, Micaiah son of Imlah, as I shall be suggesting later, then Ahab also said of him: ‘… I hate him …’ (v. 8). Moreover, if, as I am claiming here, Ahaziah were in fact EA’s Mut-Baal - a name that refers to the Phoenicio-Canaanite gods Mot and Baal - then such arguments in favour of Ahab’s supposed reverence for Yahwism might lose much of their force. Given the tendency towards syncretism in religion, a combination of Yahwism and Baalism (e.g. 1 Kings 18:21), we might even expect the Syro-Palestinians to have at once a Yahwistic and a pagan name.

Scholars find that Mut-Baal’s kingdom, like that of his father, spread both east and west of the Jordan. They infer from the letters that Lab’ayu had ruled a large area in the Transjordan that was later to be the main substance of the kingdom of Mut-Baal. In EA 255 Mut-Baal writes to pharaoh to say he is to convey one of the latter’s caravans to Hanigalbat (Mitanni); he mentions that his father, Lab’ayu, was in the custom of overseeing all the caravans that pharaoh sent there. Lab’ayu could have done so only if he controlled those areas of Transjordan through which the caravans were to pass. The area that came under the rule of Mut-Baal affected territories both east and west of the Jordan.

In EA 256 we learn that the kingdom of Ashtaroth bordered on Mut-Baal’s (to the N and E: Ashtaroth being the capital of biblical Bashan) and that this neighbour was his ally.

That Mut-Baal held sway west of the Jordan may also be deduced from EA 250, whose author complains that the “two sons of Labayu” had written urging him to make war on Gina in Jezreel (modern Jenin). The writer also records that the messenger of Milkilu “does not move from the sons of Labayu”, indicating to pharaoh an alliance between these parties, which further suggests that Mut-Baal had interests west of the Jordan.

It will be seen from the above that the territory ruled by Lab’ayu and his sons, which

bordered on the territories of Gezer in the west and Jerusalem in the south, also including the Sharon coastal plain, reaching at least as far as the Jezreel valley/Esdraelon in the north, and stretching over the Transjordan to adjoin Bashan, corresponds remarkably well with the territories ruled by Ahab of Israel and his sons.

….

It should be noted that kings and officials were expected to ‘inform’ even on members of their own family. Lab’ayu himself had, prior to this, actually informed on one of his

fathers-in-law.233 These scheming ‘vassal kings’ were continually changing allegiance; at one moment being reckoned amongst the habiru insurgents, then being attacked by these rebels - but, always, protesting their loyalty to the crown. ….

 

 

 

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