Nadav Na'aman (born in 1939 in Jerusalem) is an Israeli archaeologist and historian. He specializes in the study of the Near East in the second and first millenniums BCE. His research combines the history of the Ancient Near East, archaeology, Assyrology, and the study of the Hebrew Bible. He possesses broad knowledge in all these four branches of research.
Na'aman was born on a kibbutz near Jerusalem and grew up in Kvutzat Kinneret, a kibbutz on the Sea of Galilee. His father was Professor Shlomo Naaman, who taught in the Department of General History of Tel Aviv University (TAU).
After completing his IDF military service (1957-1960), he left the kibbutz in 1964 and studied archaeology and Jewish history.
Na'aman received his doctorate in 1975 from Tel Aviv University with Yohanan Aharoni as supervisor, with a thesis on the importance of the Amarna letters for the history of Israel. He subquently worked as a lecturer in archaeology and history of the ancient Near East at TAU.
In 1984, Na'aman became Associate Professor of Jewish History. From 1989 until his retirement in 2007, he held a chair in Jewish history at TAU. In 2012 he was elected a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.
In 1974, Na'aman published his first article, which contained a discovery of considerable importance for research. He found that what had been regarded as two separate clay tablets written in cuneiform in the Akkadian language, each attributed to another king of Assyria, Tiglath Pileser III and Sargon II, respectively, are actually fragments of one single tablet that had been broken at some point. This tablet became known as the Azekah Inscription. [1]
Earlier, in one of these two pieces, researchers read the name of Azariah, King of Judah, and therefore assumed that he took part in the war that was going on in central Syria. The fragment of the second tablet mentions the attack on the city of Azekah, which was attributed to Sargon, king of Assyria.
When the two fragments of the tablets were put together, it became clear that they describe, in considerable detail, the Assyrian King Sennacherib's campaign against Hezekiah, king of Judah. As a result, what was written earlier about Tiglath-Pileser and Sargon's campaigns to the Land of Israel was removed from scholarship, and instead, important details were added about Sennacherib's campaigns into Judah in 701 BCE.
Na'aman teamed up with archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Yuval Goren to try to determine the origin of the Amarna tablets. They conducted the examination of the composition and origin of clay of which the tablets were made.
Yuval Goren removed samples from hundreds of tablets, tested and determined what material they were made of and from where in Canaan a material with such a chemical and mineralogical composition could have originated. Thus, in combination with the historical data emerging from the tablets and the archaeological data from sites throughout Canaan, the researchers determined the provenance of these tablets.
The three authored the book Inscribed in Clay, in which they presented the data from their research, including conclusions about the origin of the tablets and what this implies for the study of the Amarna documents. In this way they could determine the origin of many tablets in which the sender's name was lost through damage, or was not mentioned at all. [2]
There are also cases where the names of places are mentioned, but researchers disagreed on their identification, thus a petrographic examination of the clay made it possible to decide the debate.
Na'aman also took part in the Brook of Egypt debate, identifying this biblical river as the Besor Stream. [3]
The identification of the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa proved to be problematic. Na'aman also contributed significantly to this debate. He held that the ruins were Canaanite, based on strong similarities with the nearby Canaanite excavations at Beit Shemesh. [4]
The tribute volume upon his retirement was published in 2006. [5]
His younger sister is Michal Na'aman, a noted Israeli artist.
The Kingdom of Judah was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands of Judea, the kingdom's capital was Jerusalem.
Lachish was an ancient Israelite city in the Shephelah region of Canaan on the south bank of the Lakhish River mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. The current tell by that name, known as Tel Lachish or Tell el-Duweir, has been identified with Lachish. Today, it is an Israeli national park operated and maintained by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. It lies near the present-day moshav of Lakhish.
Dan is an ancient city mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, described as the northernmost city of the Kingdom of Israel, and belonging to the tribe of Dan, its namesake. It was later the site of a royal sanctuary built by Jeroboam.
Uzziah, also known as Azariah, was the tenth king of the ancient Kingdom of Judah, and one of Amaziah's sons. Uzziah was 16 when he became king of Judah and reigned for 52 years. The first 24 years of his reign were as a co-regent with his father, Amaziah.
Israel Finkelstein is an Israeli archaeologist, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and the head of the School of Archaeology and Maritime Cultures at the University of Haifa. Finkelstein is active in the archaeology of the Levant and is an applicant of archaeological data in reconstructing biblical history. Finkelstein is the current excavator of Megiddo, a key site for the study of the Bronze and Iron Ages in the Levant.
The Amarna letters are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru, or neighboring kingdom leaders, during the New Kingdom, spanning a period of no more than thirty years in the middle 14th century BC. The letters were found in Upper Egypt at el-Amarna, the modern name for the ancient Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten during the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt.
Azekah was an ancient town in the Shephela guarding the upper reaches of the Valley of Elah, about 26 km (16 mi) northwest of Hebron.
The Jehoash Inscription is the name of a controversial artifact claimed to have been discovered in a construction site or Muslim cemetery near the Temple Mount of Jerusalem in 2001.
LMLK seals are ancient Hebrew seals stamped on the handles of large storage jars first issued in the reign of King Hezekiah and discovered mostly in and around Jerusalem. Several complete jars were found in situ buried under a destruction layer caused by Sennacherib at Lachish. While none of the original seals have been found, some 2,000 impressions made by at least 21 seal types have been published. The iconography of the two and four winged symbols are representative of royal symbols whose meaning "was tailored in each kingdom to the local religion and ideology".
Gath or Gat was one of the five cities of the Philistine pentapolis during the Iron Age. It was located in northeastern Philistia, close to the border with Judah. Gath is often mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and its existence is confirmed by Egyptian inscriptions. Already of significance during the Bronze Age, the city is believed to be mentioned in the El-Amarna letters as Gimti/Gintu, ruled by the two Shuwardata and 'Abdi-Ashtarti. Another Gath, known as Ginti-kirmil also appears in the Amarna letters.
KhirbetQeiyafa, also known as Elah Fortress and in Hebrew as Horbat Qayafa, is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley and dated to the first half of the 10th century BCE. The ruins of the fortress were uncovered in 2007, near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, 30 km (20 mi) from Jerusalem. It covers nearly 2.3 ha and is encircled by a 700-meter-long (2,300 ft) city wall constructed of field stones, some weighing up to eight tons. Excavations at site continued in subsequent years. A number of archaeologists, mainly the two excavators, Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, have claimed that it might be one of two biblical cities, either Sha'arayim, whose name they interpret as "Two Gates", because of the two gates discovered on the site, or Neta'im; and that the large structure at the center is an administrative building dating to the reign of King David, where he might have lodged at some point. This is based on their conclusions that the site dates to the early Iron IIA, ca. 1025–975 BCE, a range which includes the biblical date for the biblical Kingdom of David. Others suggest it might represent either a North Israelite, Philistine, or Canaanite fortress, a claim rejected by the archaeological team that excavated the site. The team's conclusion that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a fortress of King David has been criticised by some scholars. Garfinkel (2017) changed the chronology of Khirbet Qeiyafa to ca. 1000–975 BCE.
Shaaraim, possibly meaning "Two Gates", is an Israelite city mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament. It has been identified by some with Khirbet Qeiyafa, an archaeological site on a hilltop overlooking the Elah Valley in the Judean hills.
Sennacherib's Annals are the annals of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. They are found inscribed on a number of artifacts, and the final versions were found in three clay prisms inscribed with the same text: the Taylor Prism is in the British Museum, the Oriental Institute Prism in the Oriental Institute of Chicago, and the Jerusalem Prism is in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Nile silt or Nile mud is a ceramic paste employed widely within Ancient Egyptian pottery manufacture, sourced from local Quaternary Nile sediments.
The Azekah Inscription, is a tablet inscription of the reign of Sennacherib discovered in the mid-nineteenth century in the Library of Ashurbanipal. It was identified as a single tablet by Nadav Na'aman in 1974.
The Sargonid dynasty was the final ruling dynasty of Assyria, ruling as kings of Assyria during the Neo-Assyrian Empire for just over a century from the ascent of Sargon II in 722 BC to the fall of Assyria in 609 BC. Although Assyria would ultimately fall during their rule, the Sargonid dynasty ruled the country during the apex of its power and Sargon II's three immediate successors Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal are generally regarded as three of the greatest Assyrian monarchs. Though the dynasty encompasses seven Assyrian kings, two vassal kings in Babylonia and numerous princes and princesses, the term Sargonids is sometimes used solely for Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
Oded Lipschits is an Israeli professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East Studies at Tel Aviv University. In 1997 he earned his Ph.D. in Jewish History under the supervision of Nadav Na'aman. He has since become a Senior Lecturer and Full Professor at Tel Aviv University and served as the Director of the Tel Aviv Institute of Archaeology since 2011. Lipschits is an incumbent of the Austria Chair of the Archeology of the Land of Israel in the Biblical Period and is the Head and founder of the Ancient Israel Studies Masters program in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near East Studies.
The Book of Joshua lists almost 400 ancient Levantine city names which refer to over 300 distinct locations in Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Each of those cities, with minor exceptions is placed in one of the 12 regions, according to the tribes of Israel and in most cases additional details like neighbouring towns or geographical landmarks are provided. It has been serving as one of the primary sources for identifying and locating a number of Middle Bronze to Iron Age Levantine cities mentioned in ancient Egyptian and Canaanite documents, most notably in the Amarna correspondence.
Amnon Ben-Tor was an Israeli archaeologist, Professor of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was the recipient of the 2019 Israel Prize in archaeology. His main field of expertise was the archaeology of the ancient Near East and biblical archaeology. He specialized in the art of Bronze Age carving, relationships between ancient cultures, and since 1990 focused on researching Tel Hazor as a key to solving many mysteries in the field. He was Yigal Yadin's partner in the excavations at Tel Hazor and also excavated with him at Masada, writing a book on the subject. Ben-Tor held the view that the united monarchy of Israel did indeed exist in reality as a kingdom that ruled over significant parts of the Land of Israel, contrary to the opinion of "minimalist" professors like Israel Finkelstein, Nadav Na'aman and Ze'ev Herzog, and this was based on an archaeological interpretation of findings in the field, not religious faith or ideology, as he defined it.