The Camels are Coming
One of the "problems" often cited by those who wish to claim that the Bible is not a reliable guide to history is the mention of camels in various Bible stories. Rebekah famously won the heart of Abraham's deputy by offering to draw water for his camels, and her husband-to-be's heart did a double-flip when, walking in the fields one evening, he looked up and saw the camels returning. The caravan of Ishmaelites who carried Joseph into Egypt were using camels and the plagues of Egypt affected the camels as well as the other cattle. Yet, according to these critics, camels were not domesticated until around 1100 BC, seven hundred years too late for Abraham to have encountered them.
Once upon a time, as the fairy tales tell us, that was a quite tenable position to take. Camel bones earlier to 1100 BC were unknown, pictures or models of camels did not occur, literary references to camels were lacking. Taken together, the evidence appeared solid that camels were not domesticated until long after the Bible first mentions them - thus "proving" that the Biblical authors were writing long after the events they described and unconsciously introduced anachronisms into their myths, comparable to claiming that Sir Francis Drake used SatNav to guide himself around the world or that Sir Walter Raleign chatted on his mobile phone in between throwing his cloak into puddles and being doused with water by his servant.?
Alas, critics frequently forget that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Early researchers found no evidence for camels, but that did not prove that camels were absent; it merely showed that the scholars had not looked in the right places. In fact, the latest evidence is that camels were domesticated in the first half of the third millennium BC. For example, excavators in Egypt have found a piece of rope 11' long and made of camel hair. They think it came originally from the land of Punt, but they also think - on on the basis of the larger than horse-size saddle and harness found with it - that the hair came from domesticated camels! The rope is securely dated to 2500 BC.The Bible must be wrong because the camels were too late - or was the Bible right all along?
If we turn to art, a rock-carving near Aswan and dated to 2350-2159 BC shows a man leading a loaded camel. Far to the north in Byblos, a bronze figurine of a camel was found in the ruins of a temple which date to the period of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt - that is to say, around 2100 BC by conventional chronology. Even further north, in Crete and in Greece, pots decorated with pictures of camels have been found in a layer that is dated to 1800-1400 BC. No one claims that camels were being used in Greece - and especially not in Crete - but the pots were imported from Egypt! Then there are seal impressions from Babylon's First Dynasty showing men riding camels.
As my mother used to say, "A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still", and those who start off with the assumption that the Bible must be wrong, no matter what it says, dismiss this evidence. They claim that the pots depict badly drawn horses, the bronze figurine is a poor attempt at a sheep, and seal impressions are notoriously spikey and indistinct. How they explain a sheep, heavily laden and larger than the man leading it, I am not sure, but let us turn to the field of literature where there can be no confusion between camels and sheep.
There is a clay tablet from northern Syria written in early Akkadian around 2000-1600 BC which lists various rations and among them is "camel fodder". Akkadian dictionaries mention "camels", while a document from Nippur dating to the early second millennium talks about "camel's milk".
In short, the evidence is conclusive that, yet again, the Bible is shown to be a reliable source of historical information. Of course, there is no doubt that camels were not as widely used in those ancient times as they were by, say, 18th century AD beduin, but that is not how they were depicted in the Bible either. They were used by nomads like Abraham and his descendents, but once the people settled down in Canaan it is only merchants, travellers or nomadic raiders who use camels. It is not until the time of the Persians that once again we find Jews using camels - and even then, probably only because they were travelling from Babylon back to their homeland.
Here are some references to support the statements above - and I am indebted to the newsgroup persona calling himself "Weland" for these:
Richard W. Bulliet, Younker, Randall W. The Camel and the Wheel, 1997.
Grigson, C., J.A.J. Gowlett, and J. Zarins ,"Late Bronze Age Camel Petroglyphs in the Wadi Nasib, Sinai", Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 42: 47-54., 1989
Zeder, M.A., E. Emshwiller, B.D. Smith, and D.G. Bradley, "The Camel in Arabia: A Direct Radiocarbon
Date, Calibrated to about 7000 BC." Journal of Archaeological Science 16:355-362, 2006
"Documenting domestication: the intersection of genetics and archaeology", Trends in Genetics 22(3):139-155.
Epstein, H. The origin of the domestic animals of Africa. Vol. 2, London, African Publishing corporation, 1971.
Ripinsky, M.. "The camel in dynastic Egypt", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 17: 131-141. 1985
Rowley-Gonwy, P. "The camel in the Nile Valley. New Radiocarbon Accelerator (AMS) dates from Qasr Ibrim", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 74: 245-248 1988.
Saber, A. S. "The Camel in Ancient Egypt", Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting for Animal Production Under Arid Conditions, Vol. 1: 208-215
P. Wapnish, "Camel Caravans and Camel Pastoralists at Tell Jemmeh", JANES 13, 1981, p. 104-105.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
