Dimensions and Disciplines

The twenty-first century has burst upon the stage of history in a worldwide epidemic of racial and ethnic violence. Whereas the twentieth-century pundits sought to eliminate the natural human instinct for self- and group identification (partly as a reaction to the gross misuse of that instinct that led to the Second World War), the end of the Cold War saw an outbreak of local conflicts between peoples of diverse cultures seemingly no longer able to share a small piece of the planet with their neighbors.
 In times of such crisis, wise men everywhere have turned to their ancient sacred writings for wisdom to overcome their plight. Globalization has led to the development of a vast constituency of people who find their guidance in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures: the Jewish Diaspora on every continent, and the spread of Christianity through the enterprise of evangelization.
 Of all the writings held sacred by the world's religions, only the Bible presents a message linked to geography. This is not just the location of religious centers but the experience of a people in its land, a people that has insisted on its God-given right to self-identity throughout the ages and in defiance of all forces that sought to deny it. All Jews and Christians who profess to find the source of their faith in these Scriptures look to the experiences of that people depicted in the Bible as examples and role models for their search after the Divine will and for their moral conduct among men. The religious experiences of that ancient people took place in relation to a geographical setting, generally a small postage stamp on the face of the globe, a patch of terrain in the southern part of the eastern Mediterranean littoral.
 The Bible is replete with geographical information, not as a guidebook for travelers or a textbook on geography, but often almost incidental to the message. Yet without the geography, that message is often obscured or vitiated for the uninformed reader. The present atlas seeks to introduce the reader to the geographical elements that can help to make real the social, historical and spiritual experience of the People of the Book.
 This is not meant to be a textbook in geography, not even biblical geography. It is an attempt to view the geographical setting through the eyes of the ancient inhabitants. It concentrates on the terms and places that have enjoyed their attention; it seeks to define them in terms of their ancient understanding. On the other hand, recognizing that the geography of the Land of the Bible is not complete and that many other peoples have contributed to its history, our attention will be turned to every available documentary source, Egyptian, Akkadian, Moabite, Phoenician, Greek, Latin, Arabic, etc., that may provide geographical details and perspective. Many ancient towns escaped mention in the Bible but are known from Late Bronze sources and reappear again in the Hellenistic Age. They were there all along as their archaeological mounds often testify. The Canaanites, Amorites, Moabites, Edomites, Ammonites, Nabateans and others had a share in the historical vicissitudes of the land in question. Their experiences
are treated as equally worthy of attention and every possible source must be exploited to fill in the picture. This inclusive approach, utilizing all possible sources in addition to the Bible, is consciously meant to be a continuation of the scholarly tradition established by the patriarchs of modern historical geography in the Holy Land: George Adam Smith, Albrecht Alt, and my own personal mentors, Benjamin Mazar and 
Yohanan Aharoni.
 Not only the religious Jew or Christian may gain insight and inspiration from this historical and geographical story. In the past, one might have pointed to the biblical tradition as one of the foundations of “Western” culture. Globalization is making that Western conceit obsolete. The ideologies and technologies of the Western world are becoming the possession of a world constituency. Even those populations with equally venerable and ancient cultural traditions may find understanding and insights from the human experience that derived from the Ancient Near East in general and from the Levantine and East Mediterranean peoples in particular.

DIMENSIONS OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
The SPATIAL dimension naturally plays an important role in historical geography. The focus will be on the geographical entities known to us from the “Eastern Mediterranean” and the “Ancient Near East.”
 The Temporal dimension requires the exposition of the country's and the peoples' experiences over time. This is the “Historical” aspect of this endeavor. As a working definition, history as intended here is “man's reflection on his past.” The human animal had been given the blessing and the curse of reflection. We can think about and evaluate the events of our past, our present and our prospective future. The written sources we study may all have an agenda, e.g. Pharaonic propaganda, religious exhortation, but the allusions to geographical details are seldom a matter of invention. The ancient writers often framed their tendentious messages in a geographical framework. That framework often helps us to reveal a more objective situation than the original writer may have intended (consciously or unconsciously). The scholarly, scientific exposition of ancient sources using all the tools of paleography, epigraphy, grammar, syntax and discourse analysis, is an honorable and worthy enterprise. There is nothing to be gained by the pretext born of intellectual laziness known as Post-modernism.
 The Cultural dimension requires that the Bible and its contemporary sources must be interpreted in the light of Ancient Near Eastern culture. Each generation pictured biblical history in terms of its own culture, e.g. medieval and Renaissance art. The past two centuries and a half of archaeological research have provided us with graphic representations and actual objects from real life: buildings, artifacts, facial and hairstyles, etc. (cf. for example Pritchard 1954, 1969; Mazar, Avi-Yonah and Malamat 1958). Modern historical study must seek to interpret events in the matrix of that ancient culture.
 The Spiritual dimension derives from the fact that religion in antiquity was not a separate compartment of life; it was integral to everyday living. Furthermore, the expressions “Holy Land” and  “Holy Places” reflect the religious motivation of many of the ancient writers and more specifically the motivation of myriads of students of biblical history. While the approach in this atlas is meant to be entirely secular in the scholarly sense, the sensibilities of the religious constituency are respected and no apologetic agenda is intended in that sphere. Every interested person of every persuasion should be able to partake of the fruits of our labors and derive whatever religious benefit he or she may be seeking. But on that score, the onus is on the reader; only the receptive can receive. 
DISCIPLINES OF HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
Historical geography is not a discipline of itself. It is rather the synthesis of data from several fields of research.
Physical Geography 
Though this is not a textbook of physical geography, the study of the physical makeup of the geographical area of our interest must play a major role. The emphasis is on what may be learned about the ecology within which the historical events had taken place. Today all the modern techniques of scientific research, including space technology, are utilized to help us understand the nature of our planet and its living surface. All scientific methodologies must be welcomed in the study of historical geography. The most important elements that must be considered are:
1. Geology and Orography—geomorphology.
2. Ecology—soils and rocks and their potential, flora and fauna and their contribution.
3. Hydrology—water sources and the means of their utilization.
4. Meteorology—changing weather patterns as affecting the way of life in the various periods.
5. Cartography—recording of data and representing it on paper.
    With regard to cartography, each generation has used its own methods and concepts in the making of maps (Kadmon and Shmueli 1982). The Medeba Map in the floor of the sixth-century church at present-day Madaba (Donner and Cüppers 1977; Donner 1992) expresses the concept of the Holy Land and its towns and villages as held by the ecclesiastical scholars of the day. Typical European maps of the Middle Ages were perforce greatly distorted by ignorance (Kadmon and Shmueli 1982:26_28). The first modern map drawn from actual survey data was the Jacotin Map resulting from the work of Napoleon's engineers in 1799 (cf. Karmon 1960). It was at a scale of 1:100,000. The map devised by H. Kieppert (1856), from the notes made in the field by E. Robinson and E. Smith in 1838 and 1852 (Robinson 1841, 1856), was prepared at a scale of 1:400,000 and served Bible scholars for over a generation. Carel van de Velde, a devout Dutch naval engineer, prepared his own map based on his personal survey of the northern part of the country (van de Velde 1858) but it was less well known. It was the great map of 26 sheets prepared by the team of Royal Engineers led by C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener (Conder and Kitchener 1881_83) that became the standard for scholars. The team was sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund. Their map was done at a scale of one inch to a mile. Its sheets were used, with some updating, based on aerial photographs by the opposing forces fighting in Palestine during World War I. The Germans had changed the scale to metric.
    The establishment of the British and French Mandates led to new mapping projects at various metric scales (mainly 1:100,000 and 1:50,000, but also 1:20,000) in the respective areas. The modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel have all produced up-to-date maps, often marking important antiquity sites. 
    In one area a caveat must be expressed. Modern geographers often make use of ancient geographical terms without determining their precise definition from the ancient sources, including the Bible. The most glaring example is the “Negeb.” This term is now applied to the entire triangle from Beer-sheba down to Elath. But in biblical times it was not so (Aharoni 1958a). Numbers 13 and 14 make it clear that the Israelites and their spies at Kadesh-barnea went up to the Negeb. Kadesh-barnea was not in the Negeb, it was in the Wilderness of Zin (or of Paran). South of Beer-sheba was the steppe land of Beer-sheba, the zone of grazing land characterized today by Eocene limestone hills; thence fled Hagar from the wrath of Sarah (Gen 21:14). There were doubtless a number of “steppe  lands” (Hebrew mi∂bœr) between Beer-sheba and Kadesh-barnea. The term Negeb applied only to the Beer-sheba Valley and the drainage basin of the Besor stream.
    Ever since the beginning of modern research there has been a cavalier use of biblical Hebrew terms. G. A. Smith (1931) made a valiant effort and often was successful in defining the Bible's geographical terms in relation to the terrain, but even he led us astray with a misunderstanding of the Jezreel Plain (Smith 1931:249_50), which resulted in the false distinction between Esdraelon and Jezreel (Rainey 1976d:635).
 There is a varying degree of certainty as to the proper identification of such features as the brook Besor, which is assumed to be the Wâd¥ Ghazzeh, and the river Yarkon, identified today with the Wâd¥ el-‘Auja, but which was more likely the Wâd¥ Mu∆rarah (now called Na˙al ’Ayyalon; Rainey 1990:63). The location of hills and cliffs is often difficult, although a visit to the scene of some biblical event may lead to its identification (e.g., Bozez and Seneh, 1 Sam 14:4).
 When the biblical references are not sufficiently precise, one may find more detailed allusions in the rabbinic or the ecclesiastical sources (Avi-Yonah 1976). Naturally, one must then try to estimate just how knowledgeable these later sources may be about the earlier period. Generally speaking, rabbinic texts show a high degree of accuracy in reflecting the Old Testament topographical nomenclature. Christian writers are frequently dependent ultimately on Jewish sources and, thus, may share the benefit of firsthand knowledge. Crusader texts, on the contrary, are more often based on idle fancy and folklore.
    Complete certainty in defining the ancient geographical terms cannot be attained with the sources available. But one must make the effort in any serious historical research. The modern geographers must not be allowed to apply the biblical terms in any manner that suits their fancy without reference to the ancient sources (Rainey 1976). Furthermore, maps for biblical atlases should be based on the best in modern topographical recording, i.e., on the latest scientific maps (Baly 1982).
 An effort will be made throughout this atlas to apply the ancient names properly, restricted to the areas they designated in ancient times. The following is a description of the country using the ancient terms for the respective features and area.
Historical Philology
This is the study of ancient texts and will comprise the main activity of this present study. 
1. Biblical Geographical Texts. His-torical geography begins with the Bible itself and a good example is the narrative of Genesis, chapter 14. The author has at his disposal a geographical tradition older than his own day. This is reflected in the ancient toponyms. Sometimes he makes a comment such as בֶּלַע הִיא-צׂעַר “Bela, that is, Zoar” (Gen 14:2), or עֵין מִשְׁפָּט הוּא קָדֵשׁ “En-mishpat, that is, Kadesh” (Gen 14:7), which show us that the other double names in the chapter must be likewise understood. He reveres his older tradition, but he wants his reader to have geographical orientation relevant to his own day so he gives the more recent names of the older sites. Without geographical orientation, he is saying that one cannot get the full impact of the narrative.
    Some biblical passages of a dramatic nature also include geographical details, e.g., the story of David and Goliath:
Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle; and they were gathered at Socoh which belongs to Judah, and they camped between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephes- dammim. Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and camped in the valley of Elah, and drew up in battle array to encounter the Philistines. The Philistines stood on the mountain on one side while Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with the valley between them. 
(1 Sam 17:1_3; cf. Rainey 1975)
Using the equation Socoh = Shuweikeh, it is possible to locate most of the places mentioned in this passage. It will be discussed in detail in a later chapter.
 One also finds geographical references among the prophets. When Isaiah spoke of the invasion by Tiglath-pileser III, he mentions three geographical entities:
But there will be no [more] gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make [it] glorious, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.                   (Isa 8:23 = Eng. 9:1)
 These can be easily identified by comparison with Tiglath-pileser's itinerary: 
In the days of Pekah king of Israel, Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria came and captured Ijon and Abel-beth-maacah and Janoah and Kedesh and Hazor and Gilead and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali; and he carried them captive to Assyria.                                                      (2 Kgs 15:29)
 The “way of the sea” is the route known later as the road from Paneas (Banias) to Tyre (Rainey 1981c). “Beyond the Jordan” is Gilead (Perea in Herodian times), and the “Galilee of the Gentiles (foreigners/nations)” is the Jezreel Valley (= Harosheth-ha-goiim of Judges 4) where the Assyrians soon established an administrative center.
 Other geographical texts in the Bible are not so dramatic. Some are bureaucratic, e.g., the classic list of towns in the allotment of Judah (Josh 15:20_62). Albrecht Alt (1925b) recognized that this list is organized according to four geographic areas: Negeb, Shephelah, 
Hill-country, and Steppe (Wilderness). Note, for example, אֶל-גְּבוּל אֱדוֹם בַּנֶּגְבָּה “toward the border of Edom in the Negeb” (Josh 15:21); בַּשְּׁפֵלָה “in the Shephelah (Lowland)” (ibid. v. 33). Each of these is comprised of a distinct geological formation. Furthermore, within the list of the respective districts there are periodic subtotals. The subtotals summarize groups of towns that are in close proximity to one another, e.g., “in all, twenty-nine cities, with their villages” (ibid. v. 32). In other words, the subtotals reflect a division into sub-districts. In the Hill-country, the Hebrew text is missing one district that must have lain between Hebron and Jerusalem. It would have included Bethlehem, the birthplace of David. The missing list can be supplied by the Septuagint, Joshua 15:59a. Though some of the names are corrupted in Greek transmission, the general nature of the list can be discerned. This underlines that need to utilize all the tools of textual criticism when researching geographical texts in the Hebrew Bible.

2. Post-biblical Sources. Post-biblical writings are essential for research into the biblical period since the rabbis and church fathers had shown a keen interest in geography, and their knowledge is often invaluable for locating biblical sites. Josephus, who is dependent in large measure on the Septuagint, but not always, is an independent Jewish Roman source for Jewish geographical concepts of the first century CE. His locations and identifications are highly colored by contemporary conceptions and do not always match the evidence from earlier periods.
 Rabbinic Geographical Texts. Because of the biblical commandments which begin with the statement, “When you come into the land. . .” (Ex 12:25 et passim), there was a great concern in halakhic Judaism about fulfilling those commandments by being on the soil of the Land of Israel. Only people who were actually within the land could carry out those commandments, such as paying the tithe, observing the seventh year of rest, etc. There are many discussions about the location of biblical towns in the light of their contemporary information in the Talmudic (Roman-Byzantine) period (Neubauer 1868; Reeg 1989).
 Special attention was paid to the designated borders of the land to which the returnees had come from the Babylonian exile. A mosaic inscription found on the floor of the synagogue excavated at Re˙ov, south of Beth-shean, deals with various geographical details that would concern the inhabitants of the Beth-shean Valley (Sussman 1973_74, 1975) but also contains a copy of the text, hitherto known from Rabbinic sources, of the border description (Sussmann 1976). 
 Estori ha-Par˙i was a Jewish savant from Spain who came to the land of Israel in the fourteenth century CE and spent a considerable time researching the land from a geographical and ecological standpoint (Prawer 1973; Elbaum 1972). He was concerned to establish the meaning of the halakhic regulations (such as weights and measures) in terms of his own day. Furthermore, he sought to prove that all parts of the land were acceptable under Halakhah; none were to be excluded as was done by Judah ha-Nasi (the Prince). His work, Kaftor vaFera˙, has seen several editions and is often useful to us today.
 Ecclesiastical Geographical Texts. The church fathers were concerned to identify the biblical sites, especially those where some mighty work or miracle was said to have occurred. Although the Caesarea Academy under Origen in the third century CE concentrated tremendous efforts on research into the biblical text, the documents that can be traced back to that endeavor seldom have geographical implications. On the other hand, in the fourth century CE the academy was headed by Eusebius (263_339 CE), Bishop of Caesarea. In addition to his historical researches, he also is credited with a catalog of biblical place names, the Onomasticon (Klostermann 1904). This great annotated list, now preserved in Greek and Latin, arranges the biblical toponyms by Greek alphabetical order and then by biblical books under each rubric. The entries usually follow Septuagintal orthography and they are annotated in terms of their biblical significance. Where Eusebius knows the location of a town, he mentions it in relation to the nearest Roman administrative center, giving direction (using only four points of the compass) and Roman mileage, not as the crow flies but according to the turnoffs from major Roman roads. It would appear that those directions and distances were based on itineraria maps or lists, perhaps sketch maps, for use by travelers. It seems likely that the Greek Onomasticon was based on an original Hebrew list, probably of Rabbinic origin. 
 Jerome (c. 345_420 CE) translated the Onomas-ticon to Latin, and in conjunction with his great work of Bible translation, from Hebrew directly into Latin instead of by way of the Greek Septuagint, he also wrote commentaries in which he makes some geographical observations. These latter must be used with caution, however, since they were sometimes colored by his own travels.
 The sixth-century Christian conception of the Holy Land and its sites found expression in the mosaic floor of the church in Medeba. Careful study of the graphic representation of the different kinds of site (forts, villages, walled cities, etc.) and the Greek annotations, reveals that the author(s) made use of various sources, not only the Onomasticon.
 A valuable ecclesiastical source written in Arabic is the Annals of Eutychius, Patriarch of Alexandria (877_940), who discussed biblical matters and included some geographic information (Cheikho 1906_09).
 The Peutinger Table is a twelfth-century monastic copy of a map based on second-century sources. For Palestine the source was probably Ptolemy of Alexandria (Finkelstein 1979:28_30). It is very likely a copy of a map displayed on the wall of a colonnaded walk in Rome, showing the extent of the Roman Empire in the second century CE.
 Scholarship in the Age of Reason is exemplified by the encyclopedic work by Adrian Reland (1714), who compiled a massive collection of information from all available sources but never visited the Land.
    Arabic Geographical Texts. The Arab geographers contain valuable information about the country during the Middle Ages. They were not interested, of course, in biblical associations but only in the contemporary situation. On occasion they may give us a precious toponymic detail. For instance, the town known as P-˙-l in Egyptian sources of the Late Bronze Age is probably Pi˙ili of the Amarna letters (EA 256:8, 13, 34), Pella in the Hellenistic-Roman period, and today is known as ·abaqat Fa˙il. But the real name in the Middle Ages was Fi˙l, as witnessed by Yœqût (III, 853). Yœqût points out that Fi˙l is not an Arabic word! So he brings us testimony that the name of the ancient Canaanite city had survived among the local inhabitants in a non-Arabic form. The evidence from the Arab geographers has been systematically summarized by modern scholars (LeStrange 1890; Marmadji, 1951).
 Ancient Near Eastern Geographical Texts. A century and a half of archaeological research has produced numerous inscriptions from the main cultural centers of the Ancient Near East: Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia. The Egyptians have left us such collections as the Execration Texts (see chap. 5), Pharaonic topographical lists (Simons 1937), school texts, and sometimes inscriptions within the tombs of Egyptian officials.
 From Mesopotamia come royal annals and correspondence, especially from the kings of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Of special note is the collection of cuneiform texts discovered at el-‘Amârnah in Egypt (Izre'el 1995), many of which were written by city rulers in Canaan during the mid-fourteenth century BCE.
 From the Holy Land itself there have come only a limited number of inscriptions, much fewer texts with historical geographical information. From Cisjordan we have the Samaria Ostraca, the Óashavyahu Ostracon, the Lachish and Arad letters, and now the Aramaic inscriptions from Tel Dan. Of these, Arad Ostracon 24, about an Edomite threat to Ramoth-ha-negeb, is still the most detailed single text of this group. From Transjordan the Mesha‘ stele is the most detailed historical and geographical text found anywhere in Palestine (Rainey 2001c). 
Modern Approach to Ancient Sources. 
A few remarks are in order about the interpretation of inscriptions, both for general purposes and for historical geography in particular.
 Text as Artifact. First, the inscription must be treated as an archaeological find. Its provenance, i.e. its exact find spot, is important. Of course, inscriptions often become known via the antiquities market and the original find spot is unknown. That is unfortunate because an inscription can shed much needed light on its locus and stratum. The opposite may sometimes be true, i.e. the context may help to understand the nature and date of an inscription. 
 The second feature of an inscription as artifact is the material on which it is written and the means by which it was inscribed (chisel on stone, reed pen with ink on papyrus or potsherd, etc.). The clay of a cuneiform tablet 
or of an ostracon may be analyzed to find the provenance.
 Text as Document. Every document must be analyzed for its Script from the standpoint of paleography and the orthography. Perhaps the main key to an inscription is its Language, which must be studied for its lexicography, morphology and syntax. Without a sound grammatical understanding of the text, there is no basis for historical interpretation. The Genre of the inscription is no less important. Is it a display inscription like the Mesha‘ stele, is it correspondence like the Lachish letters, or perhaps it is administrative like the Samaria ostraca? Some inscriptions may be literary creations, such as the Story of Sinuhe or the Story of Wenamon. Ritual/cultic texts may also give geographical details, e.g. some of the Hittite rituals (KI.LAM). 
    All of these considerations lead to a historical and geographical analysis of the Content: events, places, relationships, social data, etc.
TOPONYMY
The third major discipline is the study of place names. An important aspect of any ancient culture is its corpus of geographical names. These reflect many aspects of local psychology, society, and religion (Wainwright 1962:38_55). The corpus of geographical names in any region comprises a rich source of linguistic, ethnic, historical, and folkloristic information (Pei 1966:63_77; Wainwright 1962). This is especially true of Palestine.
Discovery in Modern Times 
Early Nineteenth Century. After Napoleon's campaign at the end of the eighteenth century, modern scholars began to gain a new awareness of the Middle East (Ben-Arieh 1979). Study of the biblical languages and literature were gaining a fresh impetus in the nineteenth century and a parallel development was taking place in the realm of physical geography. Explorers began to travel across the length and breadth of the eastern Mediterranean, sometimes armed with the latest tools of philological and topographical scholarship (Bliss 1906:172_183). The Jacotin 
Map (published in 1810), based on the triangulation and sketches made during the Napoleonic campaign, gave some names in Arabic script, but many of the transcriptions are widely divergent from the original names (Kallner 1944; Karmon 1960); research in historical toponymy would have been impossible on that basis. U. J. Seetzen, who in 1806_07 traveled extensively in Transjordan and elsewhere, was able to recognize many ancient names in their Arabic guise, e.g., Macherus = Mukœwer (Seetzen 1854_59:330). Nevertheless, it was J. L. Burckhardt (1822) who made the next important step forward by following a careful system of transcription for Arabic names, something which Seetzen had not succeeded in doing.
 Meanwhile, the scientific understanding of ancient Hebrew was being placed on a solid footing by W. Gesenius (1819), whose grammar and lexicon form the basis for all subsequent study.
 Robinson and Smith. Finally, the attributes of profound biblical scholarship in philology and linguistics were combined with a thorough knowledge of Arabic and brought to bear on the evidence in the field by a unique pair of scholars, E. Robinson and E. Smith (Bliss 1906: 184_223). Robinson (Schaff and Schaff 1911; Williams 1999) had long been engaged in the intensive study of Hebrew and Greek, having begun his career by translating grammars and lexicons with Moses Stuart and following this up by serious study in Germany with linguists and philologists, notably Gesenius, and also geographers, especially Karl Ritter. Smith, a former pupil of Robinson, had gone on to study Arabic and during his ministry in Beirut engaged in the translation of the Bible into Arabic. He was also a natural-born linguist and had a fluent command of the spoken dialects of the eastern Mediterranean. These two scholars joined forces in Cairo in 1838 to carry out an extensive trip through Sinai to Palestine: across the Arabah to Petra, and most important of all, throughout the hill country north and west of Jerusalem, down to the Shephelah and the coastal plain. The publication of Robinson's two-volume report of this trip made use of Smith's detailed linguistic notes on the Arabic place names. Together, they succeeded in matching up dozens of names from the Bible and post-biblical sources with those in use by the native population. Fifteen years later, they resumed their teamwork by a trip from Beirut through southern Lebanon, Galilee, Samaria, and (Robinson alone) the Huleh Valley, Damascus, and the Orontes up to Homs Pass. Thus, a third volume was added to complete their masterpiece (Robinson and Smith 1867). Smith's extensive linguistic gazetteer of place names, including lists from independent journeys of his own, was included in the first edition only of Robinson's work (Smith 1841). That appendix comprises the most reliable witness to Arabic toponymy in Syria-Palestine compiled during the nineteenth century (Kampffmeyer 1893:12). Robinson's great knowledge of the ancient sources enabled him to formulate some of the linguistic rules governing the transformation affecting place names from ancient to medieval and modern times.

Late Nineteenth Century. Very few real advances in toponymic linguistics were made in the wake of Robinson and Smith (Bliss 1906:224_254) until the arrival of E. H. Palmer in 1868. For two years, he explored Sinai and southern Transjordan in the company of the Royal Engineers, including C. Warren of Jerusalem fame and later 
C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, a noted naturalist with much experience in the Middle East and North Africa (Besant 1877). Palmer carefully recorded every geographical term he could collect and his notes are still a valuable witness to the nomenclature and toponymy of those areas (Palmer 1872).
 To Palmer was also assigned the task of the final editing of the name lists from the British Survey of Western Palestine (Palmer 1881; cf. also Armstrong 1895). This task was made more difficult by the fact that Tyrwhitt Drake, who had begun with the survey team as a translator and naturalist, died during the first year. It is unfortunate that a trained linguist was not with the survey team throughout their full term. Their method had often been to record the names they collected during fieldwork in Latin characters which were transcribed back into Arabic letters by a dragoman hired from the local population (Conder 1881). Palmer admits that a margin of error still exists in his own revision, though he undoubtedly corrected many mistakes of the original notations (Palmer 1881:iii). The Survey of Western Palestine, with Palmer's help, thus furnished a major witness to the toponymy of the area in the latter half of the nineteenth century (Conder and Kitchener 1881_83). Their material was supplemented and enlarged by the published journals of V. Guérin (1868; 1874; 1880), compiled during extensive travels throughout the country in the years 1863, 1870, and 1875. Other researchers (Bliss 1906: 255_87) whose field investigations have contributed to the increase in toponymic knowledge include such figures as C. Clermont-Ganneau, whose most famous discovery was the location of biblical Gezer at Tell el-Jazer, the result of a chance find in an Arabic historical text followed up by a field trip (Clermont-Ganneau 1899:224_275). Perhaps the most widely read compilation was by the clergyman W. M. Thomson (1885).
 Transjordan was explored by Selah Merrill (1883) and Gottlieb Schumacher (1886; 1888; 1889), whose reports provide an important supplement to the Survey of Western Palestine. The place names in Schumacher's lists from northern Transjordan were later reworked by C. Steuernagel (1927). A survey of Eastern Palestine was begun but political circumstances prevented its completion (Conder 1889). Work in this region was carried forward in the twentieth century by R. E. Brünnow and A. von Domaszewski (1904_09), Musil (1907_08), and finally by N. Glueck (1934; 1935; 1939; 1951).

Post_World War I. The British Mandate saw the establishment of a Department of Antiquities and, along with other administrative projects, the extensive mapping of the entire country. Various research institutions in Jerusalem began to foster a renewed and intensive series of field trips for the study of topographical and archaeological problems. Most notable were the annual excursions led by A. Alt; others were conducted by W. F. Albright. The work of the ´cole Biblique culminated in the comprehensive two-volume work of F. M. Abel (1933; 1938). Among the leading Jewish scholars of this period were S. Klein, B. Maisler (Mazar), and S. Yeivin, whose books and surveys contributed to a wider understanding of the toponymy.
    The newly drawn Mandate maps, all on the metric scale, have been the basis for all further toponymic recording. The registration of historic monuments and antiquity sites was begun on a serious scale (Palestine 1944). All of these projects have been continued by the respective antiquities departments of the State of Israel (1964) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Maps from Mandate times at 1:20,000, especially the older ones from before the Second World War, usually preserve a great deal of the original Arabic toponymy (Schattner 1973:177_178). The problem of literary versus the colloquial forms of Arabic names will be discussed below.
Biblical Evidence. Concern for geographi-cal orientation appears in several biblical passages (Aharoni 1962c:61_63); this is especially true for narratives in which the toponymy was already antiquated. The classic example is Genesis 14:2_8, where nearly every place name in the original story had gone out of use by the Israelite period. When the passage was edited for a later readership, the older toponyms were annotated: “Bela (that is, Zoar), Valley of Siddim (that is, Salt Sea), En-mishpat (that is, Kadesh)”; it would thus seem that two other double names in the same text, Ashteroth-karnaim and Shaveh-kiriathaim, are also meant to be historical glosses.
    The biblical writers were well aware that some pre-Israelite towns had undergone a change in name during the course of the Israelite occupation. Such was the case with the cities in Bashan conquered by Jair (Num 32:41; Deut 14:15; Judg 10:4) and Nobah (Num 32:42). The town of Laish, possibly known from the second-millennium sources (Dossin 1970:102; Malamat 1971c:35), had its name changed to Dan when the Danites occupied it (Judg 18:29). The same fate befell the major Canaanite towns in the Judean hills: Kiriath-sepher (Josh 15:15; Judg 1:11; also Josh 15:49 LXX), which became Debir, and Kiriath-arba (Gen 23:2; Josh 14:15 = Judg 1:10; Josh 15:54, 20:7), which became Hebron. One of the latest pre-Israelite enclaves to hold out, Jebus, seems to be of a different order; though the geographical annotations give Jerusalem as the gloss for Jebus (Josh 18:28; Judg 19:10) and for the Jebusite (Josh 15:8), the Jebusites are said to be the inhabitants of Jerusalem (Josh 15:63; Judg 1:21; 2 Sam 5:6) and once Jerusalem is glossed by Jebus in a later text (1 Chr 11:4). In fact, the name Urushalim is well documented in second-millennium sources (cf. Helck 1971:592).
 Another variation occurred with Luz, an important Bronze Age town north of Jerusalem; it became known as Bethel after the town succumbed to the house of Joseph (Gen 28:19; Judg 1:23). However, it would appear that the name Bethel had originally applied to a holy place near Luz (Josh 16:2, 18:13), which suggests that the latter simply acquired the name and the sanctity of the former when the Israelites moved in (Elliger 1930:304, n. 3).
 Some geographic names carry legendary explanations in the biblical text. The region west of (behind) Kiriath-jearim came to be known as Mahaneh-dan (“Camp of Dan”) because the Danites had encamped there (Judg 18:12). Beer-sheba is so called because of an oath sworn there to Abraham (Gen 21:31) and later in another version by Isaac (Gen 26:33). There is no connection with seven wells! The name of a desert well was associated with a legend about Hagar and Ishmael, viz., Beer-lahai-roi, because Hagar was said to have seen God there (Gen 16:13_14). The name Moriah, applied to the mount where Abraham is said to have offered Isaac (Gen 22:2), also identified in a later source with the temple mount (2 Sam 24:18 ff.; 2 Chr 3:1; cf. Ant. 1.13.1, 2 § 224, 226), may be the object of the interpretation given in Genesis 22:14 when Abraham called the place of his sacrifice YHWH yir’eh: “The Lord will see (to it).”
 Sometimes the older name was still in use, not only in ancient historical and legendary texts but also in purely administrative documents, e.g., the lists used in the Book of Joshua. In such cases, the editor found it necessary to add an explanatory gloss to update the names for his contemporary reader (Josh 15:8, 15, 54, 60).
 Some historical information may also be derived from types of place names. Isserlin (1957) sought to show that certain types of toponyms were characteristic of the Israelite period but not of the preceding Canaanite age. He was incorrect about names containing the element geba‘ since names of that type appear in the Thutmose list (Nos. 41, 114). On the other hand, he may have something with regard to names containing the element râmah, which seem to predominate in hill-country areas and are not found in the Late Bronze Age sources. Nevertheless, one should note that the Egyptian texts, which are the principal source for the pre-Israelite toponymy, generally do not deal with the hill country. The râmah names as noted by Isserlin occur mostly in the hilly regions and in the Negeb. Therefore, the negative correlation between them and the Canaanite corpus may be due to the nature of the documentary sources and not to a new type of place name introduced by the Israelites. A special detail noted by Isserlin is that the Canaanite toponyms do not include any Ba‘al names. This is also true for Ugarit as well as the sources from the land of Canaan. That such names occur only in Iron Age documents, viz. the Bible, may possibly be taken as evidence for some early, non-Yahwistic elements in the tribal groups that came to make up Israel. It is also possible that Ba‘al, or the name Ba‘al at least, may have achieved widespread popularity at local shrines only toward the end of the Late Bronze Age or the beginning of the Iron Age. Such a development cannot be traced since the local documentation is inadequate. Some linguistic aspects of the pre-Israelite substratum will be noted in the next section.
Grammatical Analysis. Much less attention has been given to the grammatical analysis of ancient Semitic toponyms than to personal names (Gray 1902; Borée 1930). Only the salient features can be treated here.
    Linguistics can be useful in identifying place names which may have belonged to an older, pre-Israelite stratum. For example, the phonological shape of ’Edré‘î (always pausal; e.g. Num 21:33 in Bashan; Josh 19:37 in Naphtali) evidently reflects the shift of ∂ (= Arabic ∂âl) to d (Arabic dâl) as in Ugaritic and Aramaic, in contrast to Hebrew, where the same phoneme shifts to z. The root of this name can hardly be anything but *∂r‘ from which we have Arabic ∂irâ‘ and Hebrew zµrôa‘ (“arm”). The settlement that appears later in Naphtali (Josh 19:37) is in a topographical list of Thutmose III as ‘u-tá-ra-‘a (no. 91), which would confirm the d (since z would appear as ∂ [dj] in the hieroglyphic transcription). However, this form seems to represent a dialectical peculiarity of Transjordan (shared with the kingdom of Ugarit on the northern coast). Even the Jerusalem Canaanite dialect of the Amarna scribe had the shift d > z as exemplified by the gloss zuru≈ (e.g. EA 286:12) for *zorô‘ (or *z≥rô‘, *z‹rô‘ ?) = Heb. zµrôa‘, “arm.” On the other hand, the form ’Edré‘î cannot be taken as an early evidence for the presence of Aramaic in the area, since the earliest Aramaic inscriptions (ninth century BCE) seem to reflect the preservation of ∂ (cf. Degen 1969:35).
 Other features of an earlier linguistic stratum can be seen in place names with an -at ending, which became -œ (written ah in the Hebrew text). Such forms as dœbµrat (Josh 19:12 et passim) and ∆œrµpat (1 Kgs 17:19 et passim) have been taken as third feminine of the suffix conjugation (Olshausen 1861: par. 277 VI, p. 617). However, it seems more likely that these were nominal (or adjectival) forms as evidenced by the eighth-century BCE transcription of the latter name as URUÔa-ri-ip-tu (Luckenbill 1924:29, line 42). Both names can, therefore, be grouped with other nominal forms such as ’˜lat, ’Anœ˙~rat, Bœ∆µqat, Gînat, Óelqat, as feminines in which the -at was still preserved as the sufformative; such forms are attested for neighboring Canaanite dialects such as Moabite and Phoenician even in the Iron Age (Kautzsch 1910:223). The Late Bronze Age evidence, mainly the Egyptian transcriptions, demonstrates the preservation of the final -t (Borée 1930:43_46).
 Unlike personal names, there are very few sentence names applied to places and these are most likely personal names that have become attached to geographical features, for example, gê(y) Yiptah-’el “the valley of Iphtah-el” (Josh 19:14, 19:27), gê(y)’ (ben-) Hinnºm “the valley of (the son[s] of) Hinnom” (e.g. Josh 18:16; Jer 7:31). One clear example of a verbal sentence name, Yabnµ’®l (Josh 15:11), was shortened to Yabne(h) (2 Chr 26:6), later to appear in Greek sources as Iamnia (1 Macc 4:15, etc.). The name ’Eltô(w)lad (Josh 15:30, 19:4) is also shortened to Tô(w)lad (1 Chr 4:29, also spelled tld on an ostracon from Beer-sheba, Aharoni 1973:71).
 An interesting oddity is the preservation of a few infinitives from the obsolete Gt stem, obviously a carry-over from an earlier stage of the language (Burney 1911:83_84; Bauer 1917:410; Honeyman 1949:50_51), viz., ’Eßtµ’ôl (Josh 15:33; Judg 13:25) and ’Eßtµmô~‘ (Josh 21:14; 1 Sam 30:28; 1 Chr 4:17, 4:19, 6:42) with variant ’Eßtµmô(h) (Josh 15:50). To these can be added ’Eltµq®’/’Eltµq®(h) (Josh 21:23 and 19:44 respectively) and probably also ’Eltµqôn (Josh 15:59).
    Numerous examples of the construct have been developed, e.g., the many cases of Bêt, “House of X,” in which the second element is evidently a deity. Note also Bµ’®r-ßeba‘, Râmat-negeb, Qedeß-naptœlî, the latter two evidently requiring the second element to distinguish it from other places of the same name, such as Râmôt-gil‘œd.
    As will be seen from the semantic analysis below, most geographical names are appellatives, describing some feature or aspect of the site. These can be treated best according to their semantic categories.
    Quite a number of places are locative in nature. A typical Semitic pattern is maqtal/maqtœl as the nominal form reflecting the place where the root conception is localized. Frequent examples in Hebrew, where attenuation of short a-vowels in closed, unaccented syllables has given rise to miqtœl/miqtôl, fall in the semantic field of “lookout,” “vantage point,” especially the many places known as Migdal, Migdal-, and Migdôl. The Semitic root is *dgl, “to see,” “to look (out for),” with metathesis, and the nominal forms refer to a “tower,” “lookout.” Similarly, one finds Mi∆pe(h)/Mi∆pœ(h) from *∆py, “to look out” (from which Ôipat, Zephath, is also derived). Other such forms include Miß’œl, Migrôn, Môlœda(h), Mikmœs, Mœ‘ôn (where the attenuation is precluded since the first syllable is not closed), and Mattœnœ(h).
    Another locative device is the adverbial -œh sufformative, the directional indicator, e.g., Hœrâmœtœh, ’Eprœtœh, B®rôtœh, and Qµh®lœtœh. It cannot be confused with the frequent -œ(h) created by the disappearance of the feminine -t; unlike the feminine ending, the locative does not take the accent. That the he is consonantal is proved by its presence in Ugaritic. B®rôtœy (2 Sam 8:8) is probably identical to B®rôtœh (Ezek 47:16); this suggests that both sufformatives, -œy and -œh, are related, perhaps as dialectical variants or as semantically equivalent though of divergent origin. One would then be led to speculate that Hœrâmœtœh is also the equivalent, semantically as well as geographically, of Hœrâmœtayim (1 Sam 1:1), the -ayim being a longer form of -œy. In any case, the -œh is hardly to be equated with the Semitic accusative -a; note, for example, that it can be appended to a plural form such as haßßœmaymœh. This locative element is one of the few that can intrude between a construct and its genitive, e.g., Bµ’®rœh Íeba‘ (pausal; Gen 46:1).
 If one can assume that Hœrâmœtœh and Hœrâmœtayim are semantic equivalents, then the other -ayim endings, though formally identical to the dual, may also be considered to have locative force, e.g., Gittayim, Óôrônayim (= Moabite ˙wrnn), and various others. Even if some of the place names with this ending are dual and nothing more, such as Qarnayim and Ía‘µrayim, some of the others do not seem to have the dual force.
 The adverbial force of -œm also seems quite likely. Such place names as Óê(y)lœm, ‘ê(y)ªœm and ‘ˆdullœm may fall into this category. Note also the variants for the same town, Hœ‘ê(y)nœm (Josh 15:34) and ‘˜(y)nayim (Gen 38:14, 38:21).
 Most of the other sufformatives, especially -ôn, -ân, and -ô, generally belong to a particular nominal or adjectival form serving as an appellative of one kind or another. As a case in point, note *Íim‘ôn, which is possibly adjectival from the name of the hyena dog that appears in Arabic as sim‘ (Rainey 1976f:63_64) and which may have been the tribal eponym and perhaps also the tribal totem animal. Similarly, one finds Íôm‹rôn from Íemer (1 Kgs 16:24).

Semantic Analysis. Because of the intimate connection between social structure and settlement pattern, many place names appear in the tribal genealogies (Aharoni 1979:245_248). On the one hand, settlements can appear as descendants of the eponymous tribal ancestor, e.g., Anathoth, Alemeth, Azmaveth, and Mozah in Benjamin (1 Chr 7:8, 8:36), while on the other hand, the names of the settlements can appear as the ancestors of tribal members (1 Chr 7:9, 8:37). In such cases, the town may have been founded by the Benjaminites, but in Judah, a clansman frequently became enrolled as the father of a town that was probably captured and occupied by the tribe, e.g., Naham, the father of Keilah (1 Chr 4:19). Many of the other names that appear as offspring of tribal ancestors were doubtless founded only by the Judeans themselves (1 Chr 2, 4; Noth 1932). Further proof of the presence of true toponymics as eponyms came from the Samaria Ostraca (Aharoni 1979:356_368), where administrative districts bear the names of prominent members of the Manassite genealogy, viz., Helek, Abiezer, Shemida, [A]…riel, Shechem, Hoglah, Noah (cf. Num 26:28_34, 27:5_11, 27:14, 36:10_12, cf. 1_8; Josh 17:1_6; 1 Chr 7:14_19).
 A great deal of cultural, social, and religious information is contained in the place names (Gray 1902). However, as demonstrated below, the same basic categories of place names prevailed in the pre-Israelite period so that the Bible reflects a mixed corpus (Isserlin 1957). Thus, a town containing a divine element may hark back to Canaanite days and not necessarily reflect religious practice during the Iron Age. Almost the entire corpus of geographical names from Palestine (except the later Execration Texts), Canaanite and Israelite, was collected, analyzed, and classified by W. Borée (1930). Due to the nature of the evidence and the number of names for which more than one interpretation is possible, the classifications by him and by other scholars vary somewhat, especially in regard to certain types and subtypes (Aharoni 1979:107_111). A selection of the principal categories follows.
 (1) Toponyms containing divine names, particularly those beginning with the element “beth,” evidently signifying a temple to the deity in question, e.g., Beth-el, Beth-dagon, Beth-shemesh, etc. These are more typical of the Canaanite cities already present in the region with the arrival of the Israelites (Isserlin 1957:133). Note the variant Beth-baal-meon/Baal-meon, which suggests that the “beth” may have been optional in certain instances; note also Ir-shemesh as an apparent variant of Beth-shemesh. Other names in this class consist of the divine element only, e.g., Anathoth, Ashtaroth. Numerous places are named after the local manifestation of Baal, e.g., Baal-gad, Baal-hazor, Baal-peor, and many others, as well as the feminine Baalath and the feminine plural Bealoth.
 (2) Toponyms containing patronymics or ethnicons. Note (Elon-)beth-hanan, (Beth-)azmaveth, Bene-berak, the Valley of (the son[s] of) Hinnom, pertaining to persons and clans. Other geographical names constructed on the pattern of personal “sentence names” might also be of this nature, e.g., Jabneel, Ibleam, Jokneam, etc.
 (3) Topographic descriptions: sites named after specific topographical features, e.g., Geba, Gibeah, Gibeon, Gibbethon, Tyre, Sela, or topographical situa-tions, Ramah, Ramathaim, Merom, Mizpah/Mizpeh, Zephath, Beth-emek, Rehoboth, etc. The Geba/Gibeah, Ramah/Ramoth, and Mizpeh/Mizpah names are more typical of Iron Age settlements, especially in the hill country (Isserlin 1957:135_141). The presence of ancient ruins may be indicated, Hattel, Ai, Aiath, Ije-abarim, and possibly Hormah. Other aspects of the local soil are sometimes described: Tob, Shaphir, Ahlab, Daberath, Madmen, Madmannah, Ophrah, Jabesh, Beth-jeshimoth. Water sources also led to the coining of a name: Abel, Aphek, Beer-sheba, Beeroth, En-gedi, En-gannim, Gebim, Giah, Hammath, Achzib, Chezib.
 (4) Works of man: agricultural installations, Goren, Addar, Gath, Gittaim, Beth-haccerem, etc. Types of settlements, Dor, Mahanaim, Maon, Succoth, Kir, Kerioth, Ataroth, Hazeroth, Hazor, and compounds with the element ˙œ∆®r (construct ˙a∆ar). With the exception of Dor and Hazor, these seem to have belonged primarily to the Iron Age (Isserlin 1957:137). Others may describe fortifications, Migdal (cf. Mizpeh/Mizpah), Bezer, Geder, Beth-gader, Gederah, Gedor, Gederothaim, Shaaraim, Rehob; or cultic shrines, e.g., Bamoth, Gilgal, Beth-gilgal. Religious sanctity may be expressed by terms such as Kedesh, Kadesh, and probably Eshtaol and Eshtemoa (related to places where oracles could be given or received; Burney 1912; Montgomery 1935:61_62).
 (5) Local fauna. The association with specific animals or kinds of animals is also prominent, believed by some to reflect a totemistic relationship between the animal and the local population (Gray 1896:105_106; 1902:3316), but not in most cases: Aijalon, Beth-hoglah, Beth-lebaoth, Beth-nimrah, Gob, Hazar-susim, Hazar-shual, Chephirah, Laish, Eglon, Beth-eglaim, En-eglaim, Zeboiim, etc.
 (6) Local flora. Especially frequent are names derived from some local plant or fruit, e.g. Abel-shittim, Beth-shittah, Beten, Betonim, Beth-arabah, Beth-tappuah, Rimmon, Gath-rimmon, En-rimmon, etc., also Senaah, City of Palms, Tamar, Anab, Kiriath-jearim, Sorek, Socoh, Shamir, and Taanath-shiloh.
 It is reasonable to assume that not only settlements but also prominent topographical features including water sources, hills, cliffs, unusual rocks, etc., also had their own names (for Hebrew geographical terminology in general, cf. Schwartzenbach 1954). Among the more local features of this type, one may mention the rocky crags Bozez and Seneh (1 Sam 14:4) or the “Rock of Rimmon” (Judg 20:45_47, 21:13). In the wilderness of Judah one finds a “Rock of Escape” (1 Sam 23:28) and the “Wild Goats' Rocks” (1 Sam 24:2). Two instances of Ebenezer, “stone of help (salvation)” (1 Sam 4:1, 6:12), clearly different stones at widely separated places, denote the idea of divine help in time of trouble and probably were associated with local ritual institutions. Sometimes, prominent stones did not receive names—or else their local names were not known to the biblical author(s), for example, the “rock in the field of Joshua” near Beth-shemesh (1 Sam 6:14, 6:18).
 Hills also bore special names (Abel 1933:334ff.), frequently of a tribal or clan nature, e.g. Mount Judah, but sometimes the relation was apparently the reverse, e.g. Mount Ephraim, which covered a much larger area than the later tribal area of Ephraim. The origin of a particular name is often obscure, e.g. Mount Hachilah (1 Sam 23:19, 26:1, 26:3), though most of them may derive from ancient eponyms, e.g. Mount Ephron (Josh 15:1, 15:9), though some are even descriptive, e.g. Mount Seir (the “hairy” mountain; Josh 15:10). Districts of local regions are usually designated by the name of a local clan or group, e.g. the lands of Shalishah and Shaalim (1 Sam 9:4) or the various Negebs (Aharoni 1958a:27_31) such as the Negeb of Judah, of Jerahmeel, of the Kenites (1 Sam 27:10), or of the Cherethites and the Calebite (1 Sam 30:14) as well as the Negebs in the Shishak list (Mazar 1957a:64; Noth 1938b:294ff.). On the lowest local level, certain installations were also known by the name of their founder and/or owner, e.g. the Cistern of Sirah (2 Sam 3:26), or the Threshing Floors of Atad (Gen 50:10), of Nachon (2 Sam 6:6) and/or Araunah/Ornan (2 Sam 24:18; 1 Chr 21:15, 21:18). All of these would suggest that the local toponymy was much richer than that preserved in our texts. A highly suggestive analogy may be drawn from the toponymic picture preserved among the Arabic-speaking population of the nineteenth century.

Arabic Toponymy. Form and Trans-mission. What surprised western scholars and explorers the most was the amazing degree to which biblical names were still preserved in the Arabic toponymy of Palestine. Careful study of the corpus accumulated during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries makes it possible to establish certain linguistic and socio-linguistic phenomena that were at play in the transmission of these names. By far the most reliable witness is the list by Eli Smith (1841b); second would doubtless be the Survey of Western Palestine. Transjordan is represented by the high-quality list of the American Palestine Exploration Society (Paine 1875) and also those of Schumacher (1886:32540; 1888:275_304; 1889:74_78, 191_207). Among the other explorers, such as Guérin (1868; 1874; 1880), van de Velde (1854; 1858), and Seetzen (1854_59), one frequently can discern mistakes, usually due to their own errors in hearing the Arabic pronunciation and in recording what they heard (Kampffmeyer 1893:9_12).
 An important distinction must be made with regard to local toponyms. Most Arabic place names now have two forms, a literary and a colloquial. The former usually appear in the medieval Arabic geographies and in various governmental publications. Here a certain reservation is in order with regard to official rosters of the Ottoman government (Socin 1879; Gatt 1884; Hartmann 1883); Hartmann noted that the officials who wrote up the lists were often Turks who did not know much Arabic, if any (Hartmann 1883:103_104). Even when the official was a native Arabic speaker, his disdain for the job often led to sloppiness in recording. So a certain suspicion will always exist as to the trustworthiness of such sources. During the British Mandate, in keeping with long-established custom in the Arab world, all place names were recorded in their literary form, with some few deviations (Palestine 1931). The resultant spellings were adopted for all official maps and rosters (Palestine 1944). The governments of Israel and Jordan have, of necessity, continued this practice (Israel 1964:1350, n. 4). 
 As illustrations of the difference between the literary and the colloquial form, one may cite the following: a certain town on the edge of the Sharon Plain appears in the official sources in the form Jaljûlya (Palestine 1944:1268; Israel 1964:1432); this toponym, of course, is known in the Jordan Valley as well. G. Kampffmeyer (1893:32_33) noted that transcriptions recorded by various investigators during the nineteenth century varied from Jiljûleh to Jiljûlieh and Jeljûlieh (for Jaljûlieh), all of which he accepted as correct variants. Some residents of the town once told me that they pronounced the name Jiljîlieh. To cite another instance, official maps record two water sources northwest of Khirbet Rabûd by the names Bir el-‘Alaqah el-Fôqân¥ and Bir el-‘Alaqah et-Ta˙tân¥, while the local fellahin pronounce the respective adjectives el-‘Alyeh and et-Ta˙ta (Kochavi 1974: 3), forms much closer to the biblical ‘illît and ta˙t¥t (Judg 1:15). Even in modern Hebrew speech, the colloquial form prevails over the Hebraized literary Arabic form: the official Ramlœh, pronounced Milra‘, is universally supplanted by the Mil‘êl form Râmleh or even Râml¥.
 Scholarly research has always focused its attention, and rightly so, on the colloquial form. It was this that the explorers heard from the local population. Kampffmeyer (1892:10_13) discovered that within the corpus of spoken tradition, two processes could be discerned, which he called transmission by the “Arabic mouth,” and by the “Syrian mouth.” In the former case, the names were taken over as pronounced by the Arab conquerors immediately upon their arrival in the area. This happened in places where administrative centers were set up at the very beginning and where some Arabs took up residence. On the other hand, the large, indigenous population, Arameans, Jews, Canaanites, etc. (lumped together under the term “Syrians”), maintained their own native tongue(s) for a considerable period of time and only gradually did they adopt Arabic as their native language. During the course of that process, they were undoubtedly bilingual for quite a long while and thus learned to transform the older vocables into Arabic ones with the “proper” phonetic shifts. Of course, they were not scientific linguists seeking to follow some established textbook, but they surely were guided by both the day-to-day comparisons of Aramaic and Arabic words and also by the well-established tradition of the Qurân, which contains many proper nouns borrowed from Jewish and Christian sources (Horowitz 1925). These Quranic canons of borrowing must have played a major role in this process; as the population became Arabized, numerous toponyms based on Islamic traditions were coined. Many of Kampffmeyer's presumed examples of the “Syrian mouth” have been shown to be based on very flimsy linguistic arguments (Elitzur 2004:367_368).
 A good example of the transmission by “Arabic mouth” is Mu≈mœs, which comes directly from the Hebrew Mi˚mœs. The kh sound in Arabic is that of ≈ (≈a), which eventually shifted in Hebrew, Canaanite, and Aramaic to ˙ (˙®t), so there is no generic relationship to the aspirated k (kap, which shifted to khap in postvocalic position). The s would normally be reflected in Arabic by ß. So the non-etymological form of the Arabic Mu≈mas shows immediate borrowing. 
 The majority of place names followed the gradual process, i.e. by “Syrian mouth.” Account must also be taken of the dialectical variations among the indigenous inhabitants; the town dwellers, fellahin, and bedouin all have their own peculiar pronunciation of certain phonemes. 
 Saarisalo (1927:82_84) was misled by the (Galilee) bedouin's habit of pronouncing the q (qop) by the very hard g, or he may have encountered villagers who pronounced it simply as k. What he heard and recorded as Kadîß led him to reject the Survey of Palestine form, Qadîß, and the identification with Kedesh-naphtali (Kochavi 1963: 171_172). 
 Some dialectical differences occur from village to village, from region to region, though research in this field has been very limited (Bergsträsser 1915; Cleveland 1963). Today, even in areas where the Arabic toponymy is still preserved in situ, the effect of mass communications and the rise of educational standards may tend to obliterate local differences and could even lead to the fixing of “literary” forms for many place names, a process sometimes evident among educated members of the village population.
Typical Categories. The usual sound shifts that developed in transmission by the “Syrian mouth” correspond generally to the standard phonetic differences between Arabic and Hebrew. A few names survived in exactly the same form as the biblical, e.g. Óal˙ûl (even though the etymology is probably from the root ˙yl), Hâm from Hebrew Hœm, and Zip (identical in Hebrew). Other names are easily recognizable in spite of minor changes, e.g., Ashdod (’Aßdôd) became Esdad, Ashkelon (’Aßqµlôn) became ‘Asqalân, ‘Akkô = ‘Akkœ, ‘˜n-gé∂i = ‘Ain-jídi, etc.
 However, the changes that can take place are not only linguistic in the pure sense of the word. Many of them may be classed as sociological or psychological. One of the most interesting is the change of ‘~dullœm to ‘îd el-mâ, “Festival of the Water,” or ‘îd el-Mi’ah, “Festival of the Hundred” (Clermont-Ganneau in Conder and Kitchener 1881_83:111, 361_367). The biblical name had no meaning in Arabic, so a folkloristic interpretation was given to the name in a form that did mean something in the local language. In like manner, Dîbôn (originally Daibôn according to LXX) became Dh¥bân with dh and the Arabic -an (corresponding to Hebrew -ôn), probably a folk etymology from Arabic dhîb: “wolf” (cf. Hebrew zµ’®b; Kampffmeyer 1893:36). In other cases, a minor shift took place which still did not result in an intelligible Arabic name. Such was frequently the case with sufformatives: the most dramatic example being Gibeon, Gib‘ôn, Arabic el-Jîb, which not only lost its appellative suffix -ôn but the radical ‘ayin as well. Kampffmeyer (1893:2627) had even suggested that el-Jîb was actually the reflex of hagg®b (Isa 10:31), but that place must be sought east of the watershed. In many instances, the Arabic form without a sufformative may simply reflect a byform inherited from antiquity (Kampffmeyer 1892:111ff.); cf. ‘Almôn, ‘Alemet = Arabic ‘Almît; *Ía‘albôn, Ía‘albîm, Ía‘~labb~în = Selbît; Bµªônîm = Batneh; Kµsœlôn = Keslœ; Kµsullôt = ’Iksâl.
 Examples of pure translation from Hebrew to Arabic are rare. One certain case is that of Tell el-Q⃥, “the mound of the judge,” representing Dân: “He (who) judges.” Another may possibly be Khirbet el-Watn: “Ruin of the homeland,” if its identification with Môlœdœh should be substantiated.
 One sure test of a genuine ancient name is when it definitely does not mean anything in Arabic. An additional control is the presence of some well-documented sound-shift or cultural modification. The best known case is that of Beitîn, which is meaningless in Arabic; the plural of “house” is buyût and the Aramaic plural is battîn. Robinson and Smith had noted that near ancient Beth-shemesh there was a Wâd¥ Isma‘în (a segment of Na˙al Sºr®q), which the local fellahin admitted was named for Isma‘îl = Ishmael. They also found Zer‘în for Jezreel (Robinson and Smith 1867:1, 449, and n. 3). We may add that Birket Isra’îl in Jerusalem was often pronounced Birket Isra’în (Kampffmeyer 1892:32). Therefore, the final n for final l was clearly substantiated. However, lamed is generally preserved in Arabic toponyms, even in final position, so it would appear that the shift in these examples is from ’®l, “god,” > îl > în, viz., an intentional corruption of the divine element! Therefore, the equation of Beitîn with biblical Bethel is certain.
 This conscious tendency to mispronounce the name of God goes hand in hand with another practice, that of euphorism—the substitution of a “good” element for a “bad” one. The principle was not grasped prior to its discovery by R. Hartmann (1911). He began with the name ‘Ophrah, belonging to a town that Robinson (Robinson and Smith 1867: 1, 447) had identified, entirely on textual and topographical grounds, with present-day eª-·aiyibeh. Hartmann saw that the change of name was motivated by the fear of pronouncing a name containing the same consonants as Arabic ‘ifrît, “demon.” He was able to show that elsewhere in the country, whenever a biblical name with the consonants ‘-p-r or the similar ˙-p-r is to be sought, one finds a name like ·aiyibet el-Ism: “Favor of the name,” or simply eª-·aiyibeh: “the favor.” Other examples are Ó~pœraim (Josh 19:19), Bêt-lµ‘aprœh (Mic 1:10), Ephron, preserved only in Greek (1 Macc 5:46; 2 Macc 12:27), and perhaps Óeper (Josh 12:17; 1 Kgs 4:10).

Transference. On occasion, the ancient name became detached from its original site but continued to exist in the vicinity (Aharoni 1979:112_113). It may have become attached to the tomb of a venerated sheikh, either on the tel or nearby, e.g., Sheikh er-Ri˙âb on Tell e∆-Ôârem preserved the ancient name Rµ˙ôb (in the Beth-shean area, known from Egyptian and ecclesiastical sources); also Sheikh Ab∑ Shûsheh el-Jezâr¥ on the mount beside the village of Ab∑ Shûsheh—the tel was usually called simply Tell Jezer—for ancient Gezer. The biblical name may be echoed by that of some topographical feature in the immediate vicinity of the original site, e.g. Wâd¥ Yâbis in the presumed locale of Yœb®ß Gil‘œd, or Wâd¥ el-Qein¥ close to Arad (in the Negeb of the Kenites) and probably indicating the proximity to biblical Qînœh; or at a spring such as ‘Ain Ôerîdah and the nearby valley, Khallet e∆-Ôerîdah, which seem to point to an ancient Ôµr®dœh in the vicinity. Perhaps the best known example of this type is ‘Ain Shems, “Spring of the Sun,” which gave Robinson the clue to locating Beth-shemesh (which must have stood on Tell er-Rumeileh, according to the archaeological remains). Jebel Marûn er-Râs signals the locale of biblical Marôn/M®rôm. Ïahret e∆-Ôâf¥, the name of the terrain beside Khirbet es-Sitt Leilœ, seems to preserve an echo of the ancient Zephath (dj-f-t) known only from the topographical list of Thutmose III (Aharoni 1959:116). In other cases, the ancient name may be preserved on a ruin or even a village that is not identical with the actual mound of the original settlement. A key factor in this transference of names was the revolution in city planning that came with the influx of Hellenistic culture. The mounds were no longer big enough to hold a town, so the new establishment, the polis, was laid out on the lands below the older tell (which sometimes continued to bear a temple). The two classic examples are ‘Akkô (on the site of Greco-Roman Ptolemais and Crusader Acre, instead of at the Bronze and Iron Age site of Tell el-Fukhkhâr, where biblical Acco must have stood) and Beisân (on the ridge opposite the original mound of ancient Beth-shean, Tell el-Óusn). The confining of this latter village, Beisân, to the high ground south of the tel, was probably because the intervening low ground had become swampy since the Byzantine period. Therefore, the presence of an ancient name in Arabic garb in the vicinity may only serve to confirm the locale, while archaeological investigation is required to pinpoint the site.
History. Something may often be learned about the history of a site from its Arabized name. Especially is this true of names from the Roman-Byzantine period. In the majority of cases, a Greek or Latin name assigned by Hellenistic or Roman authorities enjoyed an existence only in official and literary circles while the Semitic-speaking populace continued to use the Hebrew or Aramaic original. The latter comes back into public use with the Arab conquest. The Arabic names Ludd, Beisân, and Ôaffûrieh, representing original Lºd, Bêt-ßµ’œn and Ôippôr¥, leave no hint concerning their imposing Greco-Roman names, viz. Diospolis, Scythopolis, and Diocaesarea, respectively. On the other hand, Arabic Qeisârieh, Sebâstieh, and Nâblus reflect the Greco-Roman names given by the ruling authorities, the first two by Herod and the third by Vespasian. Caesarea was founded as an entirely new city with an imported population, as was apparently (Flavia) Neapolis (at least to some extent), so the older local names, viz., the Tower of Straton (already corrupted from Phoenician ‘Abd-ashtart) and Shechem (also *Ma‘bartâ or *Mµbor<ak>tœ) were swallowed up and almost forgotten except in learned circles. The name Shômrôn/Sâmerîna was also lost, because when Herod came to build his city in honor of Augustus (Josephus War 1.21.2 § 403), the original Samaritan population had not been living there since their expulsion by the Macedonians (Curt. 4.8.9; Marcus 1958:523_525), so the predominant element was Macedonian/ Hellenistic. Likewise, Herod Antipas had to bring in a new populace of mostly unsavory elements for his newly founded Tiberias; thus, the older name of biblical Rakkath, which was really nearby (cf. Neubauer 1868:208ff.), was effectively erased, and the form ·abarîyeh still testifies to the honor paid to the emperor Tiberius by his Jewish vassal.
Sociological Analysis. Analysis of the Arabic toponymy must go beyond recognition of biblical and other ancient names. In order to further the cause of historical and anthropological research, various factors in the development of place names as they are found in the nineteenth-century maps (and later) must be understood. Perhaps the most common element in compound place names are topographical terms, e.g. râs, ‘ain, ƒahr, ƒahrah, khalleh, jebel, etc. (Socin 1881). Types of trees and plants also figure prominently, along with structures, e.g., beit, burj (loanword from Greek pyrgos), dâr, deir, and so forth. However, the most interesting aspect sociologically is the large number of personal names, some undoubtedly eponyms of tribes and clans, others of local saints, that cover the Arabic map of Palestine. Figures of Muslim tradition, including various prophets and friends of Mohammed, are very common. Among these must be classed the ubiquitous biblical figures such as Mûsœ (Moses), Yûnis (Jonah), Da’ûd (David), ’Ayyûb (Job), Elyas (Elijah), Jibrîn (Gabriel), and others, the form of whose names, if not the local association, was dictated by Islamic tradition (Horovitz 1925). But many local names are purely that, i.e., names of local personages associated with the site. Tell es-Seba‘ has also been known in recent times as Tell Ab∑ Ma˙fûz, after a man who once owned a parcel of land on the mound (Albright 1924b:152; 
1924c:6). Worthy of special note is Qaryet el-‘Inab, the ancient Kiriath-jearim, which came to be known by the name of a famous robber chieftain, Ab∑ Ghôsh. These names are sometimes transient, as in the case of Tell Mukhmar beside the Wâd¥ Qânah; in the 1920s the site was also known as Tell Hasan e∆-Ôâli˙ after a former owner, and then Bayyâret el-Yehûd after the orchards planted there by the Jewish settlers at Peta˙ Tiqvah (Albright 1923a:7). The other name found there at this time was Tell Ab∑ (e)l-Bûm, which would mean “the mound of the father of the owls.” It evidently was derived from the name of one of those Jewish owners called Apfelbaum (Alt 1926a:69, n. 5)!

Modern Hebrew Toponyms. Since the revival of the Hebrew language as a spoken vernacular, there has been a concomitant renewal of Hebrew toponymy (Maisler 1932). Today there are Hebrew names not only for modern communities, such as kibbutzim and settlement towns, but for topographical features (hills, water sources, etc.) and antiquity sites as well. The majority of these are Hebraized forms of the former Arabic name, e.g., Arabic Tell ‘Arâd is Tel ‘Arad, Tell Jezer is now Tel Gezer, Khirbet Meßâß has become Tel Masos. Frequently, the new Hebrew form is not really cognate to the Arabic but was chosen for its general resemblance; Tell el-Fâr, “The Mound of the Mouse,” has been promoted to Tel Par, “The Mound of the Bull.” The earlier enthusiasm for restoring biblical names to their ancient sites has cooled down somewhat, especially after Tell (‘Arâq) el-Menshîyeh, changed to Tel Gat, was proved not to be a suitable candidate for Gath of the Philistines (Rainey 1975c:75*). Now the site is called Tel ‘Erani after the epithet of Sheikh Ahmed el-‘Arein¥, whose tomb is located there.
    Even when the biblical identification has been sustained by archaeological and other evidence, the modern Hebrew form may differ slightly in transcription from the spelling and pronunciation in the English and French Bibles. Tell ed-Duweir appears in our Israeli maps as Tel Lakhish; Bîr es-Seba‘ is now Be'er Sheva‘. Experience has shown that students of the Bible who have not studied Hebrew are often puzzled by names such as these and do not always grasp the connection with the biblical Lachish and Beer-sheba (French Lakish and Bersabée), respectively. The non-Hebrew-speaking reader may not be aware that Tel ‘Ira should be pronounced ee-rá and not ira or that Na˙al ‘Iron stands for ee-rón and not the English name of the metal, “iron” (¥-µrn or ¥-r÷n)!
    Modern maps issued by the Survey of Israel are printed in both Hebrew and English. The transcriptions established for Hebrew toponyms are, therefore, geared for an English readership. Diacritical marks are virtually nonexistent. The ’alep and the ‘ayin are represented (the former only when intervocalic) by the signs ’ and ‘ respectively. Two instances of diacritical marks are apt to disturb the specialist in Semitic linguistics: the ˙et is represented by ¬ instead of the customary ˙ and the ∆ade is transcribed ° in place of ∆. In the case of Tel Ha°or, one has no problem recognizing biblical Hazor but not everyone would associate Even Yi°haq with a person named Isaac. On the other hand, official publications by the Department of Antiquities (cf. Israel 1964) ignore the marks under both ˙ and °, but since the transcriptions appear alongside spellings in Hebrew characters, there is no problem for the scholar to determine the exact consonantal structure.

Collateral Sources. Today the research into geographical nomenclature from the biblical periods can avail itself of many important sources in the effort to bridge the gap between the ancient (Canaanite, Hebrew, Aramaic) and the later (Arabic) toponymy.
 Texts and Versions. One of the first steps must be the establishment of the correct linguistic form of the ancient name (Aharoni 1979:100_101). The Masoretic text with its traditional vocalization must be evaluated in the light of recent advances in the study of Hebrew phonetics and morphology. A further control on the Masoretic readings is provided by the versions, especially the older MSS of the Septuagint (Kénnecke 1885; Dos Santos 1972; Rainey 2001a). There are some major passages where the Septuagint is obviously superior, e.g., in Joshua 15:59, where the latter half of the verse is entirely missing in the Masoretic text (Noth 1953:99). The remaining names are supplied by the Septuagint, including Bethlehem (the presence of which assures us of the authenticity of the Greek entry) and evidently (Beth-hak)kerem (Aharoni 1961:115). The works of Klein (1934_35), Albright (1946b), and Mazar (1960a) in particular have shown that many refinements are possible in the list of Levitical cities (Josh 21; 1 Chr 6). For most of the text of Joshua, with all its geographical lists, one may utilize the intensive textual analysis of the Septuagint by M. Margolis (1931_34; 1992); the critical apparatus of recent editions of the Septuagint is also important for the other books.
 An example of the oddities encountered in toponymic research, one may note the rare place name in the Tabor Valley, Anaharath. The biblical form is אֲנַחֲרַת ’anœ˙arᆠ(Josh 19:19), which LXX B renders Anacereq. The place is mentioned (Ahituv 1984:59) in the topographical list of Thutmose III (No. 52a),
, ’á-nu4-≈ar-tu, and the Memphis Stele of Amen˙otep II (Helck 1955_58:1308, 5), , ’á-nù-≈ar-tá. Note the variation in the second vowel between the Hebrew and the Greek with œ or a and the Egyptian with -u- that probably stands for º or even ô, and is apparently the original Canaanite *’Anº≈artu. The original Hebrew form is preserved in the Septuagint, which reflects *’Anœ≈ere†, while the form preserved in the Masoretic vocalization is evidently Aramaic ’anœ˙arᆠ(Albright and Lambdin 1957:115)! 
 Outside sources, in particular the Egyptian topographical lists of Thutmose III and subsequent pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, have multiplied the corpus of place names from the second millennium BCE and have proved that the toponymic culture of the Hebrew Bible is a direct continuation of the Late Bronze Age (Simons 1937). The older, “Canaanite” names fall into the same linguistic and semantic categories as those of the Israelite society (Borée 1930). Furthermore, the impressive number of toponyms from North Syria furnished by the Egyptian lists and also by cuneiform documents from Alalakh, Ugarit, Hattusas, and el-Amarna prove that the entire eastern Mediterranean shared a common toponymic culture (Dussaud 1927; Astour 1963). One distinction must be made, however, between the southern Levant, i.e. Canaan, and the northern, where Hurrian elements, including various adverbial sufformatives, play a dominant role. Of special interest is the corpus of place names from Ugarit, where the documentation is in both the syllabic and alphabetic cuneiform (Astour 1975). The semantic categories are like those of Canaan in most respects.
 The early second millennium BCE is also represented by the Execration Texts from the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, viz. the sections therein that contain place names from Syria-Palestine. Though dialectically older, they show that the general pattern of toponyms is like that of the Late Bronze and Iron ages (Rainey 1972b:395_396, 401_408). 
 The larger role of ’aqtal and ’aqtalân formations is the most striking linguistic feature (though some of the same names continue in later periods unchanged).
 An additional increment to the toponymy of Palestine may be found in the Shishak list from his campaign in 925 BCE (Mazar 1957a; Helck 1971:238_245; Kitchen 1973b:293_300, 432_447). For the remaining Iron Age, one must consult the Assyrian documents and the Neo-Babylonian, both annalistic and administrative, that deal with the conquest and consolidation of Syria and Palestine (for the Assyrian texts cf. Parpola 1970).
 Linguistically, these extra-biblical toponyms contribute to our understanding of the pre-Israelite West Semitic dialect(s) of Palestine as well as the pre-Masoretic vocalization of many place names in the Iron Age. The ancient consonantal structure is reflected in both the Egyptian and Ugaritic scripts, which are richer than the 22-letter Phoenician alphabet borrowed by the Hebrews. Several proto-Semitic phonemes that lost their distinctiveness in Hebrew were still differentiated in the second millennium, as proven by the scrupulous transcriptions of the Egyptian (and also the Ugaritic) scribes. The vocalic structure may be studied via the syllabic cuneiform spellings and even to some degree by the “syllabic,” or more precisely the “partially syllabic” system, used by the Egyptians for foreign words (Helck 1971:536_575). With regard to the cuneiform script, its polyphonal nature—whereby most signs can represent more than one value—prevents an accurate transcription of consonants (and of some vowels) without proper controls from other scripts. Various consonant groups, such as the bilabial plosives, the dentals, the velars, and especially the sibilants, are not precisely distinguished in most periods, in particular in the Amarna texts (Knudtzon 1915:1, 979_990). Inasmuch as an internationally agreed system of notations was not in general use until very recently (since World War II), scholars untrained in cuneiform must be warned not to use the provisional and often misleading transcriptions in older publications for linguistic analysis. 
 To illustrate, the name written ú-zu in the Amarna texts (whose phonemic spellings usually follow the Babylonian pattern), the coastal suburb of Tyre, must be read ú-sú as proved by two lines of evidence: Assyrian scribes in the Iron Age later wrote ú-ßú since in their dialect s and ß were reversed from the Babylonian—they would never write ß for z. On the other hand, the Egyptian transcriptions always use the † (tj) phoneme in this name, which invariably reflects s (samekh) and never z (in every certain instance).
 Therefore, the toponymist of today is in a vastly superior position to analyze the place names of Palestine with regard to their linguistic and semantic formation. In addition, there are even some toponyms documented in these second-millennium sources that are not mentioned in the Bible which reappear in Greco-Roman sources. Archaeological remains at their respective sites usually indicate that these towns enjoyed a continuous existence from the Canaanite to the Roman period even though they are ignored by Israelite sources. 
    A good illustration is the *Rµhôb south of Beth-shean. It evidently appears in the Execration Texts as *’ar˙âb, in a Taanach text (fifteenth century BCE) as Ra≈œbu, and in Egyptian inscriptions of Thutmose III as ra-˙-bu, Seti I as ra-˙a-bu, and Shishak as rú-˙ú-bê, but also in Eusebius' Onomasticon as Roºb, and finally in the name of Sheikh er-Ri˙âb whose tomb is venerated there.
Concluding Remarks. The study of the toponymy of the Levant thus can be seen to cover a broad spectrum of linguistic, sociological, historical, and even archaeological aspects. The main focus of attention has always been the biblical place names, especially their geographical location. The linguistic processes began to receive treatment only at a later stage, except for the work of the church fathers at Caesarea and Jerome. Perhaps this was only natural, since one needs a valid corpus with which to work before making a linguistic analysis. The new sources, mainly epigraphic, such as the hieroglyphic and cuneiform texts, have opened new vistas for further toponymic research. Still, a great deal remains to be done on the Arabic toponymy, both linguistic and sociological. There is considerable variation in the orthography of geographical names in the ancient and modern world depending on the language and script. Chronological linguistic developments have also been at play. In this volume, no attempt has been made to achieve uniformity. The only consistency in geographical nomenclature is inconsistency.
Archaeology
Archaeology is the scholarly investigation of past human life, especially as it is revealed through relics, i.e. material objects, that have survived from ancient times.
    Definition: The word is derived from Greek archaio- + logos, i.e. the orderly arrangement of facts regarding ancient things. During the Hellenistic Age the term was used in the sense of “antiquarian lore,” “ancient legends,” “history.” For example, Josephus' famous history of the Jews, called the Antiquities in English, was called Ioudaikes archaiologias. The term came to be used by scholars in the eighteenth century to mean all study of antiquity. In that broadest sense, it was applied to areas that today might be limited to physical anthropology, on the one hand, or to art history and linguistics, on the other.
    The emphasis on everyday life as the legitimate study of archaeology can be seen in nineteenth-century works on biblical and Jewish antiquities based on the written documents. The biblical (Keil 1888) and talmudic (Saalschütz 1855_56) references to buildings, utensils, rituals, foodstuffs and agriculture were collected systematically and studied philologically like any other cultural or historical subject.
    Today archaeology of the Near East is a specialty in its own right. Within this field there is what many call “biblical archaeology.” One cannot divide them very easily because some parts of the Bible deal with adjacent countries such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, and others. From a logical point of view, the archaeology of Palestine (Eretz-Israel) is a special area of study which greatly overlaps but is not necessarily the equivalent of biblical archaeology. The legitimacy of the latter term has recently been brought into question. It is best to admit that the Bible, the most extensive written document to survive from the Ancient Near Eastern world, deals with the life of Israel and its neighbors: therefore, it is reasonable and desirable that the material side of Israelite and contemporary cultures be elucidated by archaeological research. 
    More complex today is the question of where archaeology belongs in the range of academic disciplines. It will often be found associated with anthropology in the framework of the social sciences. This is especially true of prehistoric archaeology, particularly in the New World, i.e. the Western Hemisphere and also the islands of the Pacific, etc. On the other hand, archaeology that began with an interest in the Old World, mainly Classical Greece and Rome and the Near East, was closely associated with the literary and linguistic research in those fields. Thus, archaeology became a branch of classical studies, Greek and Latin, and subsequently of biblical and Ancient Near Eastern studies. This placed archaeology within the humanities. The same overlapping occurs, therefore, as in the field of history, which partakes of both the social sciences and the humanities. Furthermore, new applications of the natural sciences are being utilized every year in the analysis of archaeological materials. Fortunately, modern archaeology now benefits from the current ecological concern. The total environment of ancient man is studied in all its facets. He is seen as not only a military and political but also as a social being who was influenced by and who influenced his physical surroundings. As will be seen below in the discussion of the philosophy of the discipline, archaeology is a combination of all three fields, though the final interpretation of any given mass of materials must be conducted in terms of the human value judgments of the investigators. In that sense, it is more a part of the humanities, even though statistical studies and scientific analyses may be utilized.

Materials. During the Renaissance, the classical authors received new attention along with the objects of Greco-Roman art. With the campaign by Napoleon to the Middle East, the western world became aware of the vast monumental culture of Egypt. The savants who accompanied the French army in 1799 recorded surface remains, e.g. pyramids, temples, tombs. Other explorers began to bring back to Europe their reports, drawings and tracings of buildings, ruins, inscriptions and other objects. In addition, the study of life in the Muslim countries of the nineteenth century became a special object of interest and many parallels to aspects of biblical culture were discerned. The materials that attracted the interest of scholars varied greatly.
    Inscriptions, especially the hieroglyphs and cuneiform, became a focus of research for many specialists. The texts in these scripts were usually found on “archaeological” objects, i.e. stelae, statues, temple walls, bas reliefs, and their decipherment can legitimately be called archaeological research. The Phoenician script, first discovered on statues from Malta, was also decoded in the early nineteenth century, thus providing the key to later finds of Hebrew inscriptions from Palestine.
    Architecture naturally has become a major field of archaeological research because in some countries, such as Greece and Egypt, there were major buildings, mainly temples, which survived the ravages of time. They can be excavated and at least partially reconstructed. Monumental tombs also provide details of an architectural nature, the abodes of the dead being built in a manner analogous to those of the living. With the advance of excavation technique (see below), interest has been attracted to the badly ravaged remains of architecture found buried beneath the ruins of subsequent cities. Fortifications, including the earthen ramparts used to create city mounds, gate complexes, postern gates and other innovations have come to light. Public and private buildings are often preserved only in their stone foundations, the brick superstructure having been obliterated by the action of nature and of man. Even the flimsy dwellings of primitive man can sometimes be retrieved by careful excavation of the traces in the soil, potholes and other perishable details leaving traces in the ground.
    Decorative aspects of architecture such as wall paintings and sculptured columns belong in one sense to the study of ancient art. Their connections with minor glyptic and miniature painting are often the subject of special study.
    Small objects cover a wide range of human activity. The most ubiquitous of all is pottery. From the time of ceramic utensils (pottery Neolithic, cf. below), man has used and broken vast amounts of pottery. It has been demonstrated that techniques of manufacture and styles of design and decoration underwent a development throughout the ages. The classification of these details according to their chronological appearance was made possible by comparisons with similar finds in Egypt where the vessels come from datable tombs. Thus, there are certain features such as styles of burnishing and painting, shapes of rims and bases, and others, which are now identifiable as belonging to particular periods in the country's history. Even sherds bearing such recognizable characteristics can be used as a rough indication for dating. Nevertheless, the pottery chronology holds good only for major periods in most cases. Refinements for shorter phases of time, such as the centuries of the Judean monarchy, are still far from satisfactory.
    Weapons are another class of artifacts requiring special study. The objects found in excavations can be compared to representations in Assyrian and Egyptian art. When metals are involved, modern technology is helping to analyze the alloys used and geologists are searching for the sources of the original ore. Metal objects of agricultural and other domestic use receive similar treatment. For the later periods, coins comprise a valuable category of metal finds often with datable inscriptions.
    Personal ornaments often appear in tombs and on occasion in stratified excavations. Since a large percentage of such items were imports from neighboring cultures, they are of special value for chronological and cultural relationships. Ivory plaques carved as furniture decorations have also been found. Their study is an important aspect of ancient art in Eretz-Israel and its cultural ties with Phoenicia and Egypt.
    Only in the dry climate of the desert was it possible for items of clothing to be preserved. Finds of that nature have occurred in caves of the Judean wilderness and northern Sinai. In Egypt, however, an abundance of cloth samples from various periods has been recovered, along with whole plants and other organic materials. 
    Special skills have been developed, mostly by trial and error, for the recovery and preservation of small finds. Care must be taken in removing them from the ground (after exact recording of the find spot), sometimes by using wax, plaster or other preservatives. Then comes the stage of cleaning, particularly the metal objects, and repair when possible. The objects must be drawn and photographed, after which the real scientific study begins. Comparisons with similar finds from other excavations must be made and conclusions drawn. The richest source for details of everyday life from which to deduce parallels for finds in Eretz-Israel is Egypt, where most phases of everyday life are amply illustrated by pictures, captions and even the objects themselves, marvelously preserved.

History. In Mesopo-tamia, explorers such as Paul Emile Botta and Austen Henry Layard had proved in the 1830s and 1840s that the large mounds (tells in Arabic) con-tained the remains of ancient cities. They were recovering im-
pressive monuments in stone for their respective national museums. In Egypt, teams of scholars made epigraphic surveys of inscriptions and wall reliefs and individual excavators such as A. F. F. Mariette brought to light the remains of ritual installations as well as statuary and other funerary remains. But in Palestine, not all scholars had learned the lessons of Mesopotamia. 
    C. R. Conder (1878:I, 46), head of the PEF Survey, denied that the tels were the sites of ancient towns. He thought they were places where bricks were manufactured! In general, archaeology was concerned with surface remains: temples, churches, burial caves, pillars and other architectural pieces. Charles Warren and the American Selah Merrill, among others, were already contending that the tels were the real deposits of ancient remains from the Old Testament period. The controversy raged until it was finally settled by the investigations at Tell el-Óesi by W. M. F. Petrie in 1890 and F. J. Bliss in 1891 (see below).
    During the nineteenth century books on archaeology were also written by philologists. The details of everyday life as described in the Bible and the Talmud were assembled in a systematic manner. The various terms were treated linguistically and the texts were analyzed. Very little was as yet available from the material finds of field research to illustrate the points raised by such philological studies.
    The great turning point was with W. M. F. Petrie's work at Tell el-Óesi in 1890 (Petrie 1891). He worked for six months and demonstrated that the mounds of Palestine were built of layers of debris deposited during the various building and destruction phases in the life of the settlement. He showed that the artifacts within the respective layers changed in style with the progress of the ages. This was especially true of the pottery both in terms of manufacture and decoration. He was followed there by F. J. Bliss (1894), who conducted the first systematic excavation of layer after layer, demonstrating the nature of stratigraphy. Henceforth, excavations were conducted at other sites, e.g. 
R. A. S. Macalister (1912) at Gezer (1902_09), E. Sellin and C. Watzinger (1913) at Jericho (1908_09), and attention was paid to the ceramic evidence, the sherds within the debris. There was yet no agreement as to the proper dating of many pottery styles. On the other hand, careful attention to the architectural remains and their associated soils was initiated by G. A. Reisner and C. S. Fisher (1924) during three years at Samaria (1908_10).
    Only after World War I was there any agreement achieved in pottery chronology. This was done especially by the great University of Chicago effort at Megiddo from 1925 to 1936, the reports of which are still basic to all architectural and ceramic interpretation in Pal-estinian archaeology. Though the expedition suffered somewhat by changes in its leadership, its massive achievements, removing several strata of that most important site and publishing them handsomely, have hardly been surpassed to this day. At the same time, W. F. Albright conducted a parallel endeavor on a much smaller scale at Tell Beit Mirsim from 1926 to 1932. He was first in print with his pottery chronology and thus earned the credit as the man who brought order out of chaos in ceramic chronology. (Albright 1932b, 1933b, 1938; Albright and Kelso 1943). His site was also dug with careful stratigraphic and architectural control and his publications are lucid and trustworthy. In spite of certain excusable errors in inter-
pretation, the Tell Beit Mirsim excavation is still basic to understanding the discipline.
    Surface exploration was begun east of the Jordan by Nelson Glueck in the 1930s. In the previous century there were partial efforts made but the region in its entirety had not been thoroughly covered or even mapped properly. Glueck sought, with only relative success, to apply the method of pottery dating to surface surveys. His work pointed the way to more sophisticated work following World War II.
 After the Israel War of Independence in 1948, work was renewed mainly by Israeli expeditions in Israel and by American, French and British teams in Jordan and the West Bank. A leading figure in these efforts was Kathleen Kenyon, whose work at Jericho helped to solve some of the questions left unanswered by John Garstang, particularly with regard to its destruction in the mid-second millennium. Other expeditions, led by less experienced personnel, began to adopt her stratigraphic methods. In a way this was healthy, but unfortunately the Kenyonist doctrinaire attitude to certain dogmas of interpretation became even more extreme among her followers. Her work at Jerusalem in the 1960s only served to muddle most of the major problems troubling the students of that city's history.
    Meanwhile, a more practical application of stratigraphic excavation was developing among the Israeli excavators. The great expedition to Hazor—actually a group of excavations directed by experienced scholars, each in a separate area, and coordinated by Yigael Yadin—provided an opportunity to establish methods of recording that utilized the lessons learned by Reisner and Fisher, with the pottery analysis of Albright and the Megiddo publications. Henceforth, the archaeologists of the Hazor team branched out to major excavations in various parts of the country: Y. Aharoni to Ramat Rahel and Arad, R. Amiran to Arad and Tel Nagila, M. Dothan to Ashdod, Yadin to Masada, etc. The nationwide and even municipal archaeological departments were busy rescuing antiquity sites from the threat of modern land development. Government departments of antiquities in all Levantine countries continued the work of the former mandated authorities of Britain and France.
    Survey was also continued, especially by a nationwide effort in Israel. Foreign teams are now working intensively in Jordan. Hundreds of sites are being recorded, placed under the protection of the antiquities law, and settlement patterns from various historical and prehistoric periods are being studied. Modern cartographic methods are also making it easier to do archaeological and ecological studies.

Methods. Various techniques have been developed over the years for the uncovering and recording of ancient deposits. Considerable controversy has arisen with regard to methods of excavation although the opposing “schools” are doing basically the same kind of work. After the major developments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that is, recognition of the architectural and cultural layers and the analysis of ceramics and other artifacts by chronological periods, further refinements were made in the post_World War I period. M. Wheeler had developed the study of the debris deposit, his “geology of the site,” with emphasis on vertical sections cut through the soil and recorded in drawings. He was thus able to define more clearly such features as foundation trenches for walls, associated floors, intrusive pits, and so forth. His chief disciple, Kenyon, brought his method to the Near East. However, this approach was also accompanied by certain tenets of interpretation which diverge from reality, e.g., that a floor should be dated by the sherds under it and in its makeup rather than by the pottery vessels found in situ on it. The recordings produced by holders of this view are somewhat clumsy in that each layer of soil is treated as a locus even when it may represent only a passing phase, e.g., a wind deposit during a period of abandonment. The vertical sections (baulks) between excavation areas are often left in place through a sequence of several strata, thus hampering the elucidation of whole structural complexes such as rooms and buildings. Pottery restoration is also hindered when part of a room is not excavated since parts of various vessels may remain in the baulks. Defenders of the Wheeler-Kenyon method thus fell into a trap; they became servants of a system instead of making the system serve them.
    Stratigraphy is, in fact, a three-dimensional feature of the antiquity site. The occupation levels are built on the ruins of their predecessors, and pits, foundation trenches, etc., cut through the deposits below. Stubs of older walls are often incorporated into later structures and soil containing earlier artifacts was used to fill in constructing floors and other features in the latest stratum. Potsherds from earlier periods thus work their way up in a mound and later sherds work their way downward. For that reason, dating should be based on whole vessels in situ wherever possible.
    Recording must also be designed to cope with the three-dimensional situation. Vertical sections in the five-meter squares preserve only one dimension of the deposits. The photographs, taken constantly during the excavation process, give a realistic dimension to the structures and other features, especially when a person is included as a human measuring stick. But the most accurate record is that on the horizontal plane, the draftsman's accurate scale plan of the area, with recorded levels for floors, walls and other features. Artifacts must be recorded in their exact position both by depth and area. The finds are related to their feature (pit, floor, etc.), the feature to its structure or structures, and these are then associated with all other such features that were contemporary on the site. Prose descriptions of each locus and of each occupation level (consisting of all the loci that originally came into existence during the same period) serve to fill in the picture.
    The archaeological survey deals with several aspects of the sites and the survey area: 
Types of settlements: fortified towns, villages, caves, encampments, tombs; 
Distribution of settlements in a certain area and which areas are empty and which occupied;
Ecological Relationships of the settlements: water sources, agricultural potential, security, lines of communication; 
Artifactual and Organic Analysis, viz. pottery, architecture, other utensils, traces of botanical and zoological data, and also other geological (ecological) materials.
    An important series of archaeological surveys in the past two decades were mainly the result of Yohanan Aharoni's influence, and the practice of conducting a survey as part of any archaeological research project was due to his example (especially his survey of Upper Galilee and the Negeb in the 1950s). His disciple, Moshe Kochavi, sent Avi Ofer (Judean Hills), Israel Finkelstein (Hills of Ephraim), Adam Zertal (the Manasseh area), Zvi Gal (Lower Galilee) and Rafi Frankel (Upper Galilee) in-to the field. Itzhaq Beit-Arieh inherited Aharoni's focus on the biblical Negeb (mainly the Beer-sheba Valley) and continued the survey and further excavations.
    In Syria intensive surveys have been conducted during the past two decades in conjunction with government hydrological projects. There have also been major surveys in Jordan, especially in Moab.

Philosophy. Methods of excavation and other research will naturally be shaped to suit the goals of the project. The attitude of the investigator to archaeological research determines his goals and thus his methods. First and foremost, archaeology should devote itself to the material way of life of ancient man. Only when actual epigraphic finds are made can it be said that the excavation is producing historical information. Too often, the archaeologist has assumed that his goal was to excavate the history of the site. The method chosen is that of excavating a narrowly restricted area “to get the sequence” of occupation levels. Though sometimes necessary, such a method is destructive of the real occupation features that played a role in the life of the inhabitants. It is better to uncover larger areas, logical assemblages of loci that together will illustrate the character of the occupation in its respective phases. The sequence will also be obtained but not at the expense of spatial stratigraphy.
    Interpretation of archaeological information, even when it includes many laboratory reports and the most careful and objective recording, is still a subjective affair. Though the objects found have an objective reality, their meaning as witnesses to life at the site can only be grasped by the exercise of human judgment. For example, two major activities in the past, public building works in times of prosperity and brutal destruction in times of war, usually leave their traces in the ruins of an ancient site. However, the dating of such features as structures and destruction levels depends on some precise link with known historical events. In even the best of cases that essential link between material finds and historical or even ethnic factors is tenuous in Palestinian archaeology. This is due to the paucity of written materials discovered in stratified contexts. Recently, there has been some criticism of the “biblical” archaeologist for being too bound up with his philological and historical studies to do objective work in the field. If anything, the “biblical” archaeologist has given too much credence to the “objectivity” of his material finds at the expense of sound historical analysis apart from mute archaeological evidence. One must work in the two disciplines separately and then exercise the utmost caution when trying to link them up. Most archaeologists' historical syntheses are highly tentative at best.
    For the time being, it is better to concentrate on elucidating the material culture reflected at a particular site along with its local chronological development. Every modern excavation should be coordinated with a local regional survey as well as geological and other investigations aimed at archeometric evaluations. The cultural analysis of artifacts and the social organization reflected in the layout of the site play a dominant role in this interpretation. All these factors together may then be placed in the framework of the known historical details and an attempt at synthesis made.

Linkage and Synthesis. The interpretation of archaeological evidence has to be addressed anew with every generation of scholars. This writer's definition of archaeology, shared with students during almost forty years of teaching historical geography, is as follows:
Archaeology is the science of digging a square hole and the art of spinning a yarn from it.             (Rainey 2001:140_141)
    All of the new techniques for data retrieval in the field and in the laboratory are most welcome. Even digging the square hole has been enhanced by laser instruments for measuring, digital photography, and many other processes. Laboratory analyses of all kinds—pollen, clay, bones, organic remains, metals, etc.—are subjected to a plethora of tests and evaluations. Fine. But in the end, archaeologists are in many ways still at square one. Here is a post-modernist statement that deserves careful consideration; hopefully, the author will not object to its being taken out of the original context (a debate on similar issues):
. . . there is no archaeological record as such, only fragmented material traces of the past. . . .      (Hamilakkis 1999:60)
    One must avoid the common pitfall of thinking that the available data comprise a comprehensive picture, for any of the periods or phases of antiquity. Every year, as new data come to light, it is necessary to accommodate them within the parameters of previous understanding. But there will always be gaps. Furthermore, field archaeology is said to deal with “facts.” But the question arises, “What is an archaeological fact?” During the past fifty years that careful scrutiny has shown that most of the “facts” on which syntheses and historical interpretations have been based, are mainly just the opinions of archaeological “authority figures.” Some historians have objected that archaeological evidence is “mute,” an opinion that does not seem fair. The main drawback of archaeological evidence is its ambiguity. Every archaeological report is the result of decisions on the part of the excavator. What goes into the record is the archaeologist's opinion of the meaning of his evidence. Statements like, “the archaeologist thinks,” “in the excavator's opinion,” are the bane of this profession. It is easier to rely on such shibboleths than it is to take a long, hard look at the evidence itself.
    A connection between archaeological finds and historical information may be achieved by various means: texts found at the site which hopefully may come from clear-cut stratigraphic contexts; these may include special kinds of epigraphic materials such as seals and other small objects bearing inscriptions, e.g. clay bullae. General features of particular strata, such as prominent buildings or distinct destruction debris, which may be suggested as corresponding to known building activities or with military actions mentioned in written sources. Such associations may be fairly obvious, as with the interpretation of the destruction of Lachish Level III with the campaign of Sennacherib, but instances such as this are much too rare.