Ancient Israelites were more worldly than their insular Judean cousins, study shows
Using statistical methods from field of ecological biodiversity, Israeli scholars analyze 1,000 First Temple period names and find that the northern state was likely more ‘cosmopolitan’
Rossella Tercatin is The Times of Israel's archaeology and religions reporter.
A group of top Israeli archaeologists has borrowed tricks of the trade from colleagues in the fields of ecology and biodiversity to analyze around 1,000 first names of Israelites and Judeans recorded in archaeological findings from the First Temple period (950–586 BCE).
Pioneering the use of these digital humanities tools for archaeological research, the study found that some 2,900 years ago, as the peoples of Israel and Judah lived side by side in the Land of Israel, the Israelites were more open and cosmopolitan than the Judeans.
The study was published on Monday in the prominent PNAS journal (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
“The techniques we used are commonly employed to determine how many species live in a particular natural habitat based on a limited sample that only presents a fraction of the population’s richness,” Ariel Vishne from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the lead author of the study, told The Times of Israel over a video call.
The researchers, who also included Dr. Barak Sober from Hebrew University, Prof. Israel Finkelstein from the University of Haifa, and Prof. Eli Piasetzky, a physicist from Tel Aviv University, drew from the ancient names recorded in the open-access Onomasticon.net database.
The database, a project by Dr. Mitka R. Golub from the Hebrew University, includes all the personal names collected from findings in archaeological excavations in the Land of Israel and Transjordan from the 10th century BCE until the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE (artifacts from the antiquity market and incomplete names are not part of the database).
“The preserved personal names are windows into the past, revealing not just linguistic trends but also religious practices and social hierarchies of these ancient societies,” Golub said in a statement.
“Most names come from seal impressions,” Sober told The Times of Israel, referring to the small circles of clay stamped on strings tying important documents in ancient times. “This means that they did not belong to common villagers but to the higher echelons of society.”
For this reason, the vast majority of the names found belonged to men and not to women.
Other names were found of pottery sherds, or bullae (seals).
The researchers counted names that repeated themselves only once, including names that presented the same core root with different suffixes of addition, such as Nathan, Elnathan, or Nethanel — all of which suggest the idea of a child given by God (El in Hebrew).
Other names recorded in the database include Aminadav, Zvi, Menachem, Gad and Karmi.
Using statistical methodologies employed in the field of ecology, the researchers were able to factor out the limitations of their sample. They also applied their technique to modern naming datasets from several countries, including Israel, France, the UK, and the US, to check the reliability of their results.
”Our findings suggest that societies with higher name diversity tend to be more cosmopolitan and open to external influences,” Piasetzky said in a statement. “Conversely, lower name diversity often corresponds to more traditional societies with stronger cultural conformity.”
Life on a trade route
The kingdom of Israel’s territory covered the northern part of the land, including the Galilee and Samaria (today’s northern West Bank), in what Finkelstein described as “a strategic location along trade routes fostering cultural influences.” The kingdom ceased to exist in the 8th century BCE after the Assyrian Empire conquered it in 722 BCE and deported its inhabitants. These events are narrated in both the Bible and in Assyrian records.
Judah, on the other hand, survived another 150 years, until the Babylonians managed to conquer Jerusalem.
“For several reasons, including how literacy became more widespread towards the end of the First Temple period, we have many more findings from the Kingdom of Judah compared to the Kingdom of Israel,” Sober said. “Yet it was interesting to see how, while more names from Judah survived, Israel presented a higher diversity.”
According to Sober, the result was statistically significant.
“We ran some statistical tests to ensure this was not coincidental,” he said. “This suggests that Israel’s society was more open, possibly because it had more frequent interactions with its neighbors, for example, the Phoenicians.”
“Historians who study both kingdoms usually talk about Israel as a more cosmopolitan kingdom because it was mentioned in other people’s records, which rarely happened with Judah,” he added. “Our findings fit nicely with the historical understanding of that period.”
The Judean bubble?
Another phenomenon that the researchers observed was that name diversity in Judah progressively shrank between the end of the 8th and the 6th centuries BCE.
“Other archaeological findings and historical records suggest that in the second phase of the First Temple Period, Judah witnessed a progressive standardization of cult and became a more consolidated polity,” said Sober. “This could explain why the variety of names narrowed.”
According to Sober, another possible interpretation of the finding lies in the influx of Israelite refugees who settled in Judah after the Assyrian conquest.
“Archaeological evidence shows that after the Assyrian military campaign, people migrated from north to south, and Judah witnessed a settlement boom,” he said. “It could be that at first, this migration wave increased the diversity of names, and as the new immigrants assimilated into Judean society, this diversity decreased.”
The researchers also analyzed name distribution within the two kingdoms.
“What we found is that while in Judah, its capital Jerusalem presented more diversity than the rest of the kingdom, in Israel the opposite was true, and the capital Samaria showed less diversity than the peripheral areas,” Sober said.
The expert said it is difficult to find an explanation for this phenomenon.
“It’s fascinating that these neighboring sibling kingdoms, which we would expect to share similar cultures, display such distinct social phenomena and structures,” he said.
Asked whether future excavations and discoveries could change the results of their research, Sober said that it is possible but not likely unless a significant number of new inscriptions are uncovered.
“A sample of 1,000 names is not so small,” he said. “Unless a new body of inscriptions emerges skewing our results, I believe it won’t happen.”
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