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The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud IJS STUDIES IN JUDAICA Conference Proceedings of the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London General Editors Markham J. Geller Ada Rapoport-Albert François Guesnet VOLUME 16 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ijs The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud Edited by Markham J. Geller In memory of Joe Turner, who believed in ץרא ךרד םע הרות LEIDEN | BOSTON The archaeology and material culture of the Babylonian Talmud / edited by Markham J. Geller. pages cm. — (IJS studies in Judaica, ISSN 1570–1581 ; volume 16) Conference proceedings of the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-30488-8 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-30489-5 (e-book : alk. paper) 1. Judaism—History—Talmudic period, 10-425—Congresses. 2. Jews—Iraq—Babylonia—History— Congresses. 3. Excavations (Archaeology)—Israel—Congresses. 4. Talmud—Evidences, authority, etc.— Congresses. 5. Talmud—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—Congresses. I. Geller, Markham J., editor. BM177.A73 2015 296.1’25009—dc23 2015030276 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-1581 isbn 978-90-04-30488-8 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30489-5 (e-book) Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents Acknowledgements vii The Contributors viii Introduction: The Archaeology and Material Culture of the Babylonian Talmud 1 Markham J. Geller 1 The Land behind Ctesiphon: The Archaeology of Babylonia during the Period of the Babylonian Talmud 6 St John Simpson 2 “Recycling Economies, When Efficient, are by Their Nature Invisible.” A First Century Jewish Recycling Economy 39 Matthew Ponting and Dan Levene 3 The Cedar in Jewish Antiquity 66 Michael Stone 4 Since When Do Women Go to Miqveh? Archaeological and Rabbinic Evidence 83 Tal Ilan 5 Rabbis in Incantation Bowls 97 Shaul Shaked 6 Divorcing a Demon: Incantation Bowls and BT Giṭṭin 85b 121 Siam Bhayro 7 Lilith’s Hair and Ashmedai’s Horns: Incantation Bowl Imagery in the Light of Talmudic Descriptions 133 Naama Vilozny 8 The Material World of Babylonia as Seen from Roman Palestine: Some Preliminary Observations 153 Yaron Z. Eliav vi contents 9 Travel between Palestine and Mesopotamia during the Hellenistic and Roman Periods: A Preliminary Study 186 Getzel Cohen (z’’l) 10 Shopping in Ctesiphon: A Lesson in Sasanian Commercial Practice 225 Yaakov Elman 11 Substance and Fruit in the Sasanian Law of Property and the Babylonian Talmud 245 Maria Macuch 12 Rabbinic, Christian, and Local Calendars in Late Antique Babylonia: Influence and Shared Culture 260 Sacha Stern 13 ‘Manasseh Sawed Isaiah with a Saw of Wood:’ An Ancient Legend in Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Persian Sources 289 Richard Kalmin 14 Biblical ‘Archaeology’ and Babylonian Rabbis: On the Self-Image of Jews in Sasanian Babylonia 319 Isaiah Gafni 15 Loanwords in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: Some Preliminary Observations 333 Theodore Kwasman 16 The Gymnasium at Babylon and Jerusalem 387 Markham J. Geller and D.T. Potts Index 397 Acknowledgements The papers in the present volume were originally given as lectures at an Institute of Jewish Studies Conference at UCL on ‘Talmudic Archaeology’, 22–24 June, 2009. The conference was supported by a gift from David and Aron Turner in memory of their father, Joe Turner of London (Mordechai Yoseph Ben Reb Moshe Yitzchak) who was a passionate believer in ץרא ךרד םע הרות. Special mention must be made of the passing of our friend and colleague, Getzel Cohen (z”l), who passed away before he could see the fruit of his labours. The index was prepared by Tanja Hidde. The Contributors Siam Bhayro Ph.D. (2000) in Semitic languages from University College London, is Senior Lecturer in Early Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, having previously worked at Cambridge, Sheffield, University College London, and Yale. His research interests include the Bible, Semitic languages, early Judaism, medicine in the Christian and Islamic orient, and Jewish magic. Getzel M. Cohen (z’’l) was Professor of Classics and History at the University of Cincinnati. He was also Director of the Tytus Visiting Scholars Program at the University of Cincinnati and Director of the Institute for Mediterranean Studies. Prof. Cohen was the Assistant Director of the University of Cincinnati Archaeological Excavation on Kea, 1982–2005 and Founding Director of the University of Cincinnati Archaeological Excavation at Troy, 1987–2003 (with Tübingen University). His publications include The Seleucid Colonies (Wiesbaden, 1978); The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands and Asia Minor (Berkeley, 1995); The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea Basin and North Africa (Berkeley, 2006); The Hellenistic Settlements in the East from Armenia and Mesopotamia to Bactria and India (Berkeley, 2013). Yaron Eliav is Associate Professor of Rabbinic literature and Jewish history of late antiquity at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is the author of God’s Mountain: The Temple Mount in Time, Space, and Memory (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005; soft-cover 2008) and co-editor of various volumes including The Sculptural Environment of the Roman Near East: Reflections on Culture, Ideology, and Power (Leuven, 2008). Yaakov Elman holds the Herbert S. and Naomi Denenberg Chair in Talmudic Studies at Yeshiva University. His interests and research range over various eras of rabbinic intel- lectual history, from Talmudic times onward, and he has published dozens of studies on particular facets of that history. His attention is now focused on the influence of Zoroastrian and Middle Persian culture on the Babylonian Talmud, of which the study in this volume is part. The Contributors ix Isaiah Gafni holds the Sol Rosenbloom Chair of Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His interests focus primarily on Jews and Judaism in post- biblical antiquity, and include Judaea and the Diaspora in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods as well as Talmudic Babylonia. His books include The Jews of Babylonia in the Talmudic Era—A Social and Cultural History (Jerusalem, 1990 [Hebrew]), and Land, Center and Diaspora—Jewish Constructs in Late Antiquity (Sheffield, 1997). Markham J. Geller is Director of the Institute of the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London, and currently on secondment to the Freie Universität Berlin as Professor für Wissensgeschichte. Tal Ilan is professor of Jewish Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. She studied and wrote her PhD at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She is interested in onomastics of ancient Judaism, Talmud and gender. She heads the project A Feminist Commentary on the Babylonian Talmud, of which 7 volumes have been published to date, first among them her commentary on Taanit (FCBT II/9; 2008). Among her major publications are her PhD, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine (1995); Mine and Yours are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature (1997); Integrating Women into Second Temple History (1999); Silencing the Queen (2006); A Lexicon of Jewish Names in Late Antiquity (4 volumes; 2002–2012). Richard Kalmin holds the Theodore R. Racoosin Chair of Rabbinic Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 1982. His publications include Jewish Babylonia between Persia and Roman Palestine (Oxford, 2006), Sages, Stories, Authors, and Editors in Rabbinic Babylonia (Atlanta, 1994), and Migrating Tales: The Talmud’s Narratives and their Historical Context (University of California Press, 2014). He has been a visiting professor at Hebrew Union College, Union Theological Seminary, and Yale University, and a faculty fel- low at the University of Michigan and the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University. Theodore Kwasman recently retired as Professor in the Martin-Buber-Institut für Judaistik, Universität Köln. x the contributors Dan Levene is Reader in Jewish History and Culture in the Department of History and the Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations of the University of Southampton. His research interests include late antique Jewish magic, Semitic languages, oriental and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianities and archaeometallurgy. Maria Macuch has been Professor of Iranian Studies and head of the Institut für Iranistik of the Freie Universität Berlin since 1995. She has been editor of the Series Iranica since 1993, a member of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum since 2007 and honorary member of the Ancient India and Iran Trust (Cambridge) since 2012. Her main area of research is Iran in the pre-Islamic period, including languages, religion and literature with special focus on the Zoroastrian/Sasanian legal system and its impact on other legal cultures, especially Christian, Jewish and Islamic law. Matthew Ponting is Senior Lecturer in Archaeological Materials in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. His main research interests are Roman silver coinage and the copper-alloys of the Classical and early medieval periods in the Near East. He has just completed work on a joint publication with Kevin Butcher, The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage: from the Reform of Nero to the Reform of Trajan, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2015. D.T. Potts is Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and History at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University. He is a specialist in the archaeology and early history of Iran, Mesopotamia and the Arabian peninsula and has excavated widely in the region. His most recent book is Nomadism in Iran: from Antiquity to the Modern Era (Oxford, 2014). Shaul Shaked is Schwarzmann University Professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently working on magic texts in Hebrew and Aramaic in Late Antiquity, Zoroastrianism, Early Judaeo-Persian texts. Recent publications include (with Joseph Naveh), Aramaic Documents from Ancient Bactria (London, 2012); (with James Nathan Ford and Siam Bhayro) Aramaic Bowl Spells. Jewish Aramaic Bowls, vol. 1 (Leiden & Boston, 2013).