Itzbet Sartah in Rosh Ha'Ayin
There is not a lot to see at this archeological site, but it is nevertheless one of the most important small archeological sites in Israel for understanding Israelite agricultural settlement during the period of the Judges. This site has been dated to the 12th to 11th centuries BCE during the early Iron Age. Many identify it with the village of Even Ha’ezer. The most significant finding on the site is a large ostracon, the Izbet Sartah Abecedary, written in a proto-Canaanite script. This points to literacy within the community. You also see the stone foundations of a typical four-roomed Israelite dwelling. The explanatory signs on the site are all in Hebrew.
Itzbet Sartah in Rosh Ha'Ayin
Directions: Put “Shahaf Street” into Waze and click on “Shahaf, Rosh Ha’Ayin.” Drive to the end of this cul-de-sac. Park in the large parking area. You will see a footpath ahead of you which goes to the left. Follow this footpath to the archeological site. It is about a ¼-km/5-minute walk each way and there is a slight incline.
Public transport: Enter “Shahaf Street” into Moovit and click on “Shahaf Strett, Rosh Haayin.” It is about a 500-meter/6 minute walk from the nearest bus stop.
4-room house from the Israelite period
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This agricultural village lies about 3 km east of Tel Aphek and overlooking the coastal plain. It was therefore on the frontier between the highland settlers, which were most of the Jewish people, and the Philistine-controlled coastal plain. The village probably had no more than a few dozen inhabitants. It was abandoned after a few generations, in about 1000 BCE, probably as a result of pressure from the Philistines.
This site contains 4-roomed houses that were typical of Israelite homes. The outlines of one house and its rooms have been left for viewing. What you are seeing are the foundations of the house. The walls would have been made of mud bricks. These houses typically had a rectilinear plan with three, four or more spaces or rooms. A large central space was separated from the side rooms by one or two rows of stone pillars and there was an entrance from an exterior courtyard into this central space. The central courtyard was used for daily activities such as food preparation and domestic chores and may have been uncovered. The side rooms functioned as storage areas and for animals. The broad back room would have been used for living activities. There was probably a second floor for sleeping. There are also more than 40 stone-lined storage pits surrounding the house, and these would have been used for storing grain harvested from the nearby fields.
An invaluable ostracon was also found in a grain silo. An ostracon is a potsherd written on by pen and ink or by scratching. This is one of the earliest known Hebrew ostracons from this period. It is now in the Israel Museum, and there is a sign about it at this site. It has four lines of writing, followed by a complete alphabet of 22 proto-Canaanite letters. It reads from left to write, indicating that at that time the direction of writing was fluid.
This ostracon tells us that literacy was not uncommon in Israelite villages at this time. There are other indications of this in the Bible. In the Book of Judges we read about the military leader Gideon: “And Gideon the son of Joash returned from the battle when the sun was still high. And he caught a youth of the men of Succoth and inquired of him; and he wrote down for him the officials of Succoth, and its elders, seventy-seven men” (Judges 8:13-14).
Interpretation of the first four lines has been challenging because parts of the sherd are broken away, spelling was not yet standardized, and the handwriting is not particularly professional. A translation by the late Emile Puech goes like this:
Line 1: Unto the field we came,/ [unto] Aphek from Shilo
Line 2: The Kittim took [it] and came to Azor, [to]/ Dagon the lord of Ashdod, [to] Gath
Line 3: [and to] Yearim Kiriah.
Line 4: The companion of the foots soldiers, Hophni, came to/ tell the elders, a horse has come [and] upon [it was my] brother for us to bury.
This could be very exciting, since it is referring to the biblical story of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant and the death of one of Eli’s sons (both would die). The Kittim are the Philistines from Crete and this is discussing the capture of the Ark of the Covenant. The slash / indicates a break in the middle of the sherd. However, no other expert agrees with this and feel that this is an attempt to read the ostracon through the lens of the biblical narrative rather than the inscription itself. Most feel that the ostracon was written by a student practicing writing.
It has been suggested that this was the village of Even Ha’ezer — and even if it was not exactly here, it would have been very close. It is from Even Ha’ezer that the Israelites went to battle the Philistines who were camped in nearby Ofek. This is on the other side of the valley and can be seen from this site. The story of the two battles fought in the intervening area is told in 1 Samuel chapters 4 to 7. The Philistines had destroyed the city of Shilo. The Israelites gathered at Even Ha’ezer to do battle with them and were defeated, leading to the death of 4,000 men. It was reasoned that the reason for their defeat was that God was not with them and the Ark of the Covenant needed to be brought from Shilo. Eli the high priest agreed to this and his two sons accompanied the ark. The subsequent battle led to an even greater defeat than previously, with the loss of 30,000 foot-soldiers. The Ark of the Covenant was also captured and Eli’s two sons were killed.
The Ark of the Covenant brought no joy to the Philistines. It was taken to their temple to Dagan in Ashdod. Dagan was found tipped over in front of the ark and a plague also broke out in the city. The inhabitants of Dagan decided to get rid of the ark and it was brought to Gath, which was also a Philistine city. However, the people suffered a similar affliction. After seven months, the ark was returned to the Israelites at Beit Shemesh accompanied by a special offering. The Israelites then brought it from Beit Shemesh to Kiryat Yearim, where it stayed for 20 years until King David took it to Jerusalem.
Who invented the Paleo-Hebrew script?
The earliest hieroglyphs found in Egypt date from around 3300-3200 BCE. The earliest cuneiform writing found in Mesopotamia is from around 3400-3200 BCE. Later cuneiform had 600 to 1,000 signs. It was a pictorial alphabet that included logograms (word signs), phonograms, sound signs representing one, two or three consonants, determinatives, and symbols that provided context to clarify meaning. At its height, Egyptian hieroglyphs had over 700 distinct symbols. These forms of writing were extremely complex, and were the province of professionals who underwent a long period of training. Translation work would have required even more skill. These writers were employed by the monarchy, which meant that written language was the province of the ruling class.
A major advance in reading and writing came with the use of consonants that signified sounds. As an example, the sound “mu” was represented by the hieroglyph for water and was called mem for the Hebrew mayim (water). “Bu” used the hieroglyph bet, represented by a hieroglyphic simplified form of a house.
The first evidence of use of this type of writing comes from Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. The Serabit el-Khadim Inscriptions were etched in stone and reflect the activities of Semitic-speaking workers and miners working in turquoise mines in the southwestern Sinai Peninsula. They have been dated to around 1800-1500 BCE. The Wadi el-Hol Inscriptions were found in the Egyptian Western desert near ancient trade routes and have been dated to around 1800 BCE.
It is very likely that the Ten Commandments and the Torah were written in a Paleo-Hebrew script. Moses grew up among Egyptian aristocracy and may have had some knowledge of hieroglyphics, but no other Israelite would have had this knowledge. This gives rise to the hypothesis that the Israelites used this script in Egypt and brought it to Canaan when they conquered the land in about 1400 BCE (although the dating of the Exodus and conquest of the land is controversial).
Who invented this script? This is impossible to know. It could have been the Jews if they were in Egypt for 430 years (Exodus 12:40-41), although it is generally accepted in the Jewish tradition that they were in Egypt for less time than this. At the least, they could have been the ones who popularized it in Egypt among the slaves.
This means that its common name Proto-Canaanite script could be a complete misnomer and it should be called a Proto-Israelite script. The Canaanites had no particular reason to popularize writing, while the Israelites had very good reason to do so because of their religious texts. It was Semites who gave the letters of this alphabet their names, since they are Hebrew words and not Egyptian. It was the Israelites who came to Israel in the 1400s BCE and brought this alphabet to the Canaanite population. This included the Phoenicians. By the 1200s BCE, this alphabet had evolved into the Phoenician alphabet, and the Phoenicians were the ones who brought this script to Europe through their trading.
On the other hand, an ivory comb has been recently found in Canaanite Lachish with Pro-Canaanite writing. Archeologists have dated it to about 1,700 BCE. However, this is not based on carbon dating, but more on similarities to other writing from this time.
The Greeks had an issue with this script, in that their language is not composed of three letter roots, as are semitic languages. They therefore needed vowels. Their solution was to take letters which were not useful to them and use them for vowels. The Hebrew letter ayin, for example, symbolized by an eye has a guttural sound and was not used by the Greeks. They therefore borrowed it for an O, which is why the vowel O looks like an eye.
Because there were few Jews left in Israel during the Babylonian exile, this Paleo-Hebrew alphabet went out of use. When they returned to Israel from Babylon, they brought with them cuneiform script and they used this for their documents and manuscripts. Egyptian script is meant for writing on papyrus and has curves. Cuneiform writing is meant for writing on clay tablets and is more linear. This is why more recent Hebrew writing looks box-like. A few Dead Sea manuscripts are written in Paleo-Hebrew. In some others, the name of God is written in Paleo-Hebrew, while the rest of the manuscript is in cuneiform writing.
The name Proto-Canaanite is a retelling of history. It implies that the Canaanites invented the names for this alphabet, brought this script from Egypt, and popularized it in Canaan. However, it makes far more sense that it was the Jews who did this. They were also the ones who made writing the province of the common person and not just the ruling class. They did this because of their religious texts.
Despite the existence of this script in Canaan, the Egyptian rulers did not change from hieroglyphics. They could not. It would have put a whole class of professionals out of work and taken writing away from the Egyptian ruling class to the common man.
Sign about the writing on the ostracon