(Striking Gods & Other Objects) Canaanite Temple Remains (Lachish)

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Sharing and saving for students these images from this article in Ha’aretz of diminutive temple remains, including two tough little striking gods. They were dug up in central Israel at Lachish, an important Canaanite town-city circa 1800 B.C.E.. From the article, we learn how, in the wake of clashes between Canaan and Egyptian empire (the expansionist 18th Dynasty: 1549 to 1292 B.C.E), Lachish was destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed.  Dating from the period between 1200 to 1150 B.C.E., the artifacts mix Canaanite and Egyptian gods and other design elements. Static and unstatic, the objects give a sense of busy temple life. Of note is this appearance of the past and out of the past, a world spatially emergent and simultaneously stuck in time, at once concrete but only vaguely suggested in gold, bronze and clay.

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Bronze cauldron; photo credit: Tal Rogovski

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Tal Rogovski

 

 

 

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 Tal Rogovski

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 Tal Rogovski

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 Clara Amit / IAA

 

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 Tal Rogovski

 

 

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 illustration by O. Dobovsky

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Tal Rogovski

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 Tal Rogovski

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 Tal Rogovski

About zjb

Zachary Braiterman is Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. His specialization is modern Jewish thought and philosophical aesthetics. http://religion.syr.edu
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