by
Damien F. Mackey
O. Neugebauer, in his article “The Chronology of the Hammurabi Age” ... ties up all together Khabur ware, Shamsi-adad I and Hammurabi, and Alalakh level VII, which I have previously accepted (following D. Courville) as the level of Iarim-Lim, who is my biblical Hiram.
When I had previously considered Cushan (so-called “Rishathaim”) of Judges 3:8 to have been a ruler from the region of Upper Mesopotamia (from Aram Naharaim), his sway possibly extending to Assyria, I was thinking in fairly large geographical terms for this king. Hence I was impressed with Dr. John Osgood’s suggestion that the significant Khabur ware of this approximate region was archaeological evidence for the period of dominance by Cushan.
Dr. Osgood had written on this in his typically excellent article:
The Times of the Judges—The Archaeology:
(b) Settlement and Apostasy
.... Amiram then, as Albright, asserts a connection between the Khabur basin and the M IIA pottery of Palestine—the same areas affected by the biblical narrative of Chushan-Rishathaim. Is this imagined? Or coincidental? To be sure, this connection has been disputed—most particularly by Jonathan Tubb.12 However, in analysing his objections, we discover that he was criticising the hypothesis of a cultural sequence from one area to the other, and this definitely cannot be demonstrated. In fact, it is contradicted. Understandably Tubb then rejects such a cultural connection (see Figure 4).
....
What Tubb, however, does not do is pay attention to the biblical model envisioned by the Chushan story, which describes a brief but vital contact by conquestof Israel by the forces of Aram-Naharaim. He cannot do this meaningfully because his absolute chronology does not allow such a connection with the Israelite story in the days of the Judges. This also would overthrow accepted thinking and would mean a simple recognition of the Judges accounts as valid and simple historical records, and not just tribal narratives as the ‘documentary hypothesis’ demands, in current thinking. That there was such contact the Bible asserts. That there were, in Palestine, in MB IIA (MB I Kenyon), signs of Khabur influence at the same period that Khabur Ware was in vogue in Aram-Naharaim is confirmed by Patty Gerstenblith.
“…the appearance of both ‘Habur’ ware store jars and ‘Habur’-type decorations marks the beginning of MB I period in the Levant … we see that the ‘Habur’ store jars appear in quantity at Chagar Bazar, just before the end of MB I period in the Levant … That it may have been present there at an earlier date and is only missing at those sites excavated in northern Mesopotamia is perhaps shown by its presence in quantity at the Baghouz cemetery, which probably corresponds more closely to the Levant MB I than do the northern Mesopotamian sites, which seem to postdate the MB I period.”13 (emphasis ours) (Note: MB I Kenyon = MB IIA Albright)
In other words, here in Palestine in the boundaries of ancient Israel is just the cultural influence evident which we would expect from the biblical narrative, taken at face value.
The culture of the Khabur basin (Aram-Naharaim) is seen and at no other period. Its appearance then in Palestine first corresponds to the initial appearance of this ware in the Khabur region.
[End of quote]
But I have recently had to drop that archaeological connection since coming to the different conclusion that Cushan was, in fact, a king of Edom, a long way away from Aram Naharaim land:
Cushan rishathaim was king of Edom
and:
Cushan rishathaim was king of Edom. Part Two: Cushan reigned centuries before Hammurabi
Khabur ware, instead - or part thereof, at least - seems to have been properly assigned to the era of kings Shamsi-adad I and Hammurabi, conventionally dated to c. 1800 BC, but correctly (in my opinion, following D. Hickman) to be dated to the time of kings David and Solomon of Israel.
See e.g. my article:
O. Neugebauer, in his article “The Chronology of the Hammurabi Age” (JAOS, 61, n. 1, March 1941), ties up all together Khabur ware, Shamsi-adad I and Hammurabi, and Alalakh level VII, which I have previously accepted (following D. Courville) as the level of Iarim-Lim, who is my biblical Hiram. See my multi-part series:
commencing with:
Neugebauer writes (on p. 58) - with some unintended irony given the severe dislocation (in relation to biblical history) of Hammurabi:
.... One of the most spectacular steps in the study of ancient chronology during recent years is the correction, by not less than 275 years, of the date of one of the most important and best known [sic] periods of oriental history, the time of Hammurabi of Babylon.
The drastic change became necessary when Thureau-dangin in 1937 recognized ... that the archives from Mari (on the middle Euphrates) proved Hammurabi a contemporary of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I, thus opening the way for applying Assyrian chronological material to the problem of dating the First Babylonian Dynasty. This consequence was first noted by Albright in 1938, who placed ... Hammurabi’s accession tentatively at “about 1870 B.C.” Two years later the same author gave a more detailed report on the new chronology of Western Asia ... dating Hammurabi still later, at 1800 B.C. The present monograph by Smith, written without the benefit of Abright’s revised results, arrives at essentially the same date, proposing for Hammurabi the years 1792-1750 B.C., and hence 1894-1595 for the First Babylonian Dynasty.
....
The evidence of pottery (Smith, 3-10) is regarded as basic. ... the palace of Level VII [Alalakh] belongs to the period of Shamshi-Adad I and Hammurabi and contains Khabur ware as well as Chager- Bazar and Brak (p. 8). ....
