Daliyeh, Wadi Ed
1:
DALIYEH, WADI ED- (M.R. 189155). A deep, steep-sided ravine that cuts into the rim of the Jordan rift in the desolate E edge of the central hill country on the W of the Jordan river. It was the site of major discoveries in the early spring of 1962, especially a cache of ancient papyri found in one of its many caves, namely the Mughâret ˒Abū Shinjeh , which penetrates the side of the wâdī at a point some 14 km N of ancient Jericho (Tell es-Sulṭân) and 4 km SW of Khirbet Fasāyil, the Phasaelis of Herod the Great. The cave is about 1500 feet above the Jordan.
The finds, which included hoards of coins, jewelry including seal rings, scores of bullae, and vast quantities of pottery, virtually all dating to the 4th century b.c.e., were associated with hundreds of skeletal remains, all buried under millennial deposits of bat guano.
The initial discovery of papyri and artifacts in the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh was made by bedouin. Purchase of the papyri and associated finds took place in November 1962 through the agency of the American Schools of Oriental Research; in 1963 and 1964 two seasons of excavations in the caves of the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh were undertaken by P. W. Lapp on behalf of the Schools. Two caves were thoroughly excavated, Mughâret ˒Abū Shinjeh (Cave 1), and ˓Arâq en-Na˓sâneh (Cave 2). The latter contained very significant remains of EB IV occupation as well as artifacts left by squatters of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome. Cave 1 proved to be the cave of the papyrus finds, and bits of papyri, bullae, coins, cloth, jewelry, and pottery discovered in excavation firmly established the place of origin of the materials acquired from the bedouin. Save for a few bits of miscellaneous pottery from the surface of the cave floor, the deposits (beneath the surface) were homogeneous.
Most of the papyri of the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh prove to be slave conveyances, although deeds of property and similar legal documents also belong to the corpus. Perhaps ten of the papyri can be reconstructed wholly or in large measure, but most are highly fragmentary. The owners of the papyri, men and women, were evidently patricians from Samaria. Whenever the place of execution of a papyrus is preserved, it is recorded that the contract was drawn up “in Samaria the city (or Samaria the acropolis) which is in Samaria the province” and normally the deed was executed before the governor of Samaria or a high official of the chancellery. Hence the papyri have been designated SAMARIA PAPYRI. The dates recorded on the papyri range from ca. 375 to March 19, 335 b.c.e., and associated coins date as well from the late pre-Alexandrian era.
The historical occasion for the flight of Samaritan nobles from their capital city into the cave in the cliffs and wasteland of the Jordan can be specified with some confidence. In 331 b.c.e., shortly after Alexander the Great conquered Palestine, the Samaritan leaders rose up in an abortive revolt against their Macedonian overlords. According to Curtius the Samaritans burned alive Andromachus, Alexander’s prefect in Syria. In the aftermath the Samaritan conspirators were hunted down, and the city of Samaria was destroyed and resettled as a Macedonian colony. The papyri and associated finds owe their preservation to the massacre of their Samaritan owners in theMughâret ˒Abū Shinjeh.
The finds in Cave 1 in the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh furnish welcome light on a little-known era in Palestine. The papyri are the first substantial discovery of legal documents from the soil of Palestine. They provide a sample of late 4th-century Aramaic and of its legal formulas and usages, and they reveal substantial differences from the legal formularies in use in the Aramaic papyri from Jewish sources in 5th-century Egypt. Of special interest, too, are the sealings from the papyri. The bullae preserve the impressions of exquisite signets, many showing scenes from Greek mythology, some engraved with motifs familiar from Achaemenid Persia, one inscribed with the name of Sanballat II, governor of Samaria, a hitherto unknown figure, presumably the grandson of biblical Sanballat, adversary of Nehemiah in the late 5th century. The penetration of Greek art motifs in pre-Alexandrian times in glyptic is surprising but adds to a growing accumulation of data for extensive Greek influence in Syria-Palestine before the advent of Alexander.
The finds of Cave 2, if less spectacular, are also of no little importance for the historian. The repertoire of EB IV pottery used by inhabitants of the cave dates probably to the mid-21st century b.c.e. and is further testimony to the poor and relatively obscure culture which intervened between the great urban civilizations of the EB and MB. The finds of the era of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 c.e.) are the first evidence of an outpost or hiding place of Bar Kokhba’s Jewish adherents to the N of Jerusalem and Jericho. Hitherto their remains have been found chiefly in the great caves of the canyons S of Jericho which drain into the Dead Sea. Recovered in excavation was a corpus of pottery of substantial size (e.g., 65 storage jars), mostly domestic wares, together with fragments of cloth, keys, and a coin of the Second Revolt. No skeletons or written materials were found. However, papyrus bits of Second Revolt date, claimed to originate in the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh, but mixed with materials evidently from the S caves, and of dubious provenance, were offered for sale by bedouin. The fate of the Jewish rebels, who, like the Samaritan fugitives four centuries earlier, sought safety in the desolation of the Dâliyeh wilderness, is unknown. Given the ruthless efficiency with which the Romans sought out the rebels, however, it is doubtful that they escaped captivity or death. See also SAMARIA (PAPYRI) .
Bibliography
Cross, F. M. 1963. The Discovery of the Samaria Papyri. BA 26: 110–21.
———. 1966. Aspects of Samaritan and Jewish History in Late Persian and Hellenistic Times. HTR 59: 201–11.
———. 1971. Papyri of the Fourth Century from Dâliyeh. Pp. 45–69 in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology, ed. D. N. Freedman and J. C. Greenfield. Garden City.
———. 1974. The Papyri and Their Historical Implications; pp. 17–29. Coins; pp. 57–60. Scarab; pp. 80–81. In Discoveries in the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh, ed. P. W. Lapp and N. L. Lapp. AASOR 41. Cambridge, MA.
———. 1985. Samaria Papyrus I: An Aramaic Slave Conveyance of 335 b.c.e. EI 18: 7*–17*.
———. A Report on the Samaria Papyri. Pp. 17–26 in Congress Volume: Jerusalem. VTSupp 40. Leiden.
Greenfield, J. C. 1982. Babylonian-Aramaic Relationship. Pp. 471–82 in vol. 1 of Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient, ed. H. Hühne, H. J. Nissen, and J. Renger. Berlin.
Gropp, D. M. 1986. The Samaria Papyri from the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh. Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.
Lapp, P. W., and Lapp, N. L.,ed. 1974. Discoveries in the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh. AASOR 41. Cambridge, MA.
Frank Moore Cross
Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (2:3). New York: Doubleday.
