Tayinat
In Amos chapter 6 God condemns those in Israel who exploit the poor to live in luxury. Feeling themselves secure in their wealth and position, God reminds them of just how transitory such things can be by demanding, "Woe to you who are complacent in Zion, and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come! Go to Calneh and look at it; go from there to great Hamath, and then go down to Gath in Philistia. Are they better off than your two kingdoms? Is their land larger than yours?"
As all three places had recently been destroyed by the Assyrians - who were soon to destroy Israel - the prophets excoriation could well have sent a shiver down the spines of those who heard him - but it is only recently that the full extent of that shiver is becoming apparent.
Calneh has long been identified with the Kullani destroyed by Tiglath-pileser III in 738 BC and the excavation of Tel Tayinat by the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project is revealing just how large and important Calneh was. "The emerging archaeological picture suggests that during this period Tayinat was the capital of a powerful kingdom, the 'Land of Palastin'," says Timothy Harrison, professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Toronto and the director of the project.
The University of Chicago began work at Tayinat back in the 1935-8, when they discovered that the tel, only 30 miles from Antioch, was in a strategic position betwen the Anatolian highlands in the north and the plains of Syria. The earliest settlement on the site appeared to be in the Early Bronze. During this period Calneh was the capital city of the kingdom of Patina or Padasatini, which controlled large areas in western Syria and the northern Orontes Valley.
At some time between the Early Bronze and the Iron Age the city was abandoned and it seems that both power and population shifted to the nearby site of Alalakh. However when Alalakh was destroyed, probably the Peoples of the Sea, settlement shifted back to Calneh. Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions found at Aleppo refer to "King Taitas" and it is now thought that he was the ruler of a Tayinat, a small city state established by the Peoples of the Sea out of the ruins of the Hittite Empire. This has been confirmed by the excavations, which reveal artefacts that have strong cultural links with the Aegean world.
The excavators discovered a copper disk on which was a cuneiform inscription "for the life of Tiglath-pileser, King of Assyria", indicating either that the city was tributary to the Assyrians or that it had an Assyrian settlement. Assyrian-style stone reliefs point to the latter conclusion.
During the earlier excavations of the 1930s, the archaeologists uncovered a large temple which, they claimed, was similar to Solomon's temple described in the Bible. I must admit to being sceptical of such claims, which have been made regarding other sites and other temples. Usually it comes down to nothing more than that the temple had two rooms - hardly an astonishing innovation - without regard to the specific dimensions of those rooms or the lay-out of the buildings and courtyards around the temple.
You can visit the Tayinat Project's website for further detailed information about what has been discovered and what is planned for the future.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
