A cache of copper artifacts made some 6,300 years
ago may contain a secret code used by ancient Levantine metal workers,
which would make this one of the earliest forms of primitive writing in
the world. That’s the new and controversial theory of an Israeli
researcher who believes he has deciphered the meaning of the exquisite
but as-yet-enigmatic artifacts that were uncovered decades ago in a
remote desert cave in Israel.
More than 400 copper objects were found in 1961, wrapped in a tattered mat in a cavern on the nearly inaccessible slopes of Nahal Mishmar, a seasonal stream that flows into the Dead Sea.
The so-called Nahal Mishmar
hoard was one of the greatest prehistoric finds in Israel and in the
world. It revealed a previously unsuspected sophistication and advanced knowledge of metallurgy among the people who inhabited the Levant during the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age.
The treasure belonged to a
culture that modern archaeologists have named Ghassulian – not because
we have any idea what these people called themselves, but because it was
first identified at a site in Jordan called Teleilat Ghassul.
Carbon 14 dating of the mat
that held the Nahal Mishmar artifacts has shown that the hoard goes back
to around 4300 B.C.E. and many of the myriad objects, shaped as bowls,
maces, crowns and scepters, display a level of craftsmanship that was
thought unthinkable for that period.
Most of the artifacts were
produced using the lost-wax technique, a complex and time-consuming
process. Even more surprisingly, analyses have shown they were made of
then-unique alloys of copper with arsenic, antimony and other metals,
which would have had to be sourced as far as Anatolia or the Caucasus.
Though most researchers
agree the objects had some kind of ritualistic purpose, the hoard has
remained somewhat of a mystery for archaeologists, who are hard pressed
to explain what was the exact use of the artifacts, or what meaning can
be ascribed to the motifs that decorate them.
Part of the enigma stems from the fact that the Ghassulians lived before recorded history and have left us no writings to tell us about themselves.
Or did they?
The depictions of horned
animals, birds, human noses and other motifs found on the artifacts are
not just random decorations or symbolic images, claims Nissim Amzallag, a
researcher from the Department of Bible studies, Archeology and the
Ancient Near East at Ben Gurion University.
Amzallag,
who focuses on the cultural origins of ancient metallurgy, theorizes
that these representations form a rudimentary three-dimensional code, in
which each image symbolizes a word or phrase and communicates a certain
concept.
In other terms, the Nahal
Mishmar hoard should be seen as a precursor to the early writing systems
that would emerge centuries later in Egypt and Mesopotamia, Amzallag
says.
The researcher recently published his study of the hoard in Antiguo Oriente,
a peer-reviewed publication of the Center of Studies of Ancient Near
Eastern History at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina.
Not as easy as A-B-C
In his work, Amzallag
analyzes several key pieces in the hoard and speculates on the possible
semantics of the iconography. Many of the depictions can be interpreted
as logograms, that is, graphic symbols that represent a particular w
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