The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times

240 Pages·1999·2.836 MB·English

by  Raphael Patai

The Children of Noah
JEWISH SEAFARING IN
ANCIENT TIMES
Raphael Patai
With Contributions by
James Hornell and
John M. Lundquist
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
Copyright © 1998 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
Chichester, West Sussex
All Rights Reserved
Third printing, and first paperback printing, 1999
Paperback ISBN 0-691-00968-6
The Library ofCongress hascataloged theclothedition of thisbook as follows
Patai, Raphael, 1910-
Thc children of Noah : Jewish seafaring in ancient times / Raphael
Patai ; with contributions by James Hornell and John M. Linquist.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Navigation—Palestine—History. I Hornell, James,
1865-1949. II. Lundquist, John M. III. Title.
VK113.P3P32 1998 387.5'0933—dc21 97-40059
ISBN 0-691-01580-5 (cl. : alk. paper)
This book has been composed in Galliard
An earlier version of the foreword by Howard M. Sachar
was first published inFields of Offerings: Studies in Honor of
Raphael Patai, copyright © 1983 by Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, East Rutherford, New Jersey
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper)
http://pup.princeton.edu (http://pup.princeton.edu)
Printed in the United States of America
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii
Foreword, byHoward M. Sachar ix
Preface: How ThisBook WasWritten xi
Introduction xv
CHAPTER 1
The Ark of Noah 3
CHAPTER 2
Ships and Seafaring in the Bible 12
CHAPTER 3
Construction and Parts 22
CHAPTER 4
Types of Ships 39
CHAPTER 5
The Crew 47
CHAPTER 6
Maritime Trade 53
CHAPTER 7
In the Harbor 60
CHAPTER 8
On the High Seas 64
CHAPTER 9
Naval Warfare 73
CHAPTER 10
Laws of the Sea and the River 85
CHAPTER 11
Similes and Parables 101
CHAPTER 12
Sea Legends and Sailors' Tales 109
vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER 13
Ports and Port Cities 132
CHAPTER 14
Lake Kinneret 160
APPENDIX
Biblical Seafaring and the Book of Mormon, by John M. Lundquist 171
Abbreviations Used in the Notes 177
Notes 185
Index 209
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES
1. Two-level Roman galley, second half of the first century BCE.Relief
found at Palestrina, now in the Vatican Museum. Reprinted by per-
mission from Lionel Casson, The Ancient Mariners, 2nd ed. (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1991), Plate 10 17
2. Sailing ship on a Hebrew seal, eighth to seventh centuriesBCE.
Photo courtesy of Nahman Avigad, from Lionel Casson, TheAn-
cient Mariners, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991), Fig. 26 20
3. Sketch of aship on the walls of the Beth Sh'arim catacombs (second
to fourth centuries CE) 24
4. Clay model of aboat from the Island of Cyprus 29
5. Sketch ofaship from Mareshah (third century BCE) 31
6. Roman merchantman, as shown on a mosaic found in Rome 33
7. Picture of aship on the Dead Sea, mosaic map of Palestine,found in
Madeba, Jordan 34
8. Another picture ofa ship on the Dead Sea, from the same Madeba
map 34
9. The ship of the Argonauts, on a Greek vase 36
10. The construction of apapyrus boat on an Egyptian wall painting 41
11. Picture of apontoon bridge on the Jordan from the Madeba map 45
12. A ship in the fleet of Egyptian queen Hatshepsut (sixteenth century
BCE) 49
13. Assyrian warship, depicted in the palace of Sennacherib (ruled 704-
681 BCE) 74
14. A coin of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (ruled 103-
76 BCE) 76
15. A coin of Herod, king of Judea (ruled 37-4 BCE), showing an
anchor 76
16. A coin of Archelaus (ruled 4 BCE-6 CE), showing a warship with
oars and a cabin 76
17. Another coin ofArchelaus,showing a warship with oars 77
viii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
18. A coin of Titus commemorating his victory over Judea (70 CE) 81
19. The Lake Kinneret boat. From the collection of Israel Antiquities
Authority. Photo credit: Duby Tal, Albatross. 168
MAPS
1. Ports and Port Cities along the Mediterranean Shore of Palestine in
Ancient Times 138
2. Settlements around Lake Kinneret in Ancient Times 163
FOREWORD
ON JULY20, 1996, Raphael Patai died, a mercifully short time after being
diagnosed with cancer. Thereby ended one of the most extraordinary ca-
reers in twentieth-century scholarship. Periodically, if rarely, there appear
on the cultural horizon those monumental figures whose intellectual
achievements serve as benchmarks for entire generations of colleagues
and students. Such a man, surely, was Raphael Patai. For over half a
century his career was a standing inspiration to those who toiled in the
vineyards of anthropology, sociology, and history, and a tacit reproach to
those, lacking his genius, who were unprepared to accept his own heroic
standards of disciplined, self-sacrificing research.
One need only measure the stunning prodigality of the man. The hun-
dreds of articles and the thirty-odd books that flowed from his pen would
have challenged the absorptive powers of all but a handful of scholars—
essentially those willing to devote their most vigorous years simply to a
critical evaluation of Raphael Patai's own life and work. Consider, as well,
the erudition, the plain and simple cultural and linguistic virtuosity reso-
nating in this accumulated Pataiana. The embarras de richesses extends
from studies of Shabbatai Zvi (in Hungarian), of the history of the Jews
in Hungary (in German and English), of Josephus (in French), of Moroc-
can Jewry (in Hebrew), to an explosion of books and articles in Hebrew
and English covering every facet of ancient and modern folk mores, from
Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual and The Jewish Al-
chemists, to Patai's more popular but equally acclaimed volumes on The
Arab Mind and The Jewish Mind.
Indeed, for academic "purists," fixated by disciplinary categorization,
there is a lesson to be learned in the awesome breadth of Raphael Patai's
terrain. Not for him artificial margins between the social sciences and the
humanities, between Middle Eastern and Western cultures. He erased,
devoured those barriers by force of will, stamina, and sheer intellectual
muscularity. Whether applying his talents to subjectsas diverse as "Hebrew
Installation Rites," "The Jewish Indians in Mexico," On Culture Contact
and Its Working in ModernPalestine, to Women in the Modern World,
The Republic of Syria,The Republic ofLebanon, or The Kingdom of Jor-
dan, he infused his works with an identical thoroughness and exactitude
of documentation, with a magisterial command of historical and regional
setting, and with an intuitive balance, perspective, and tolerance that,
one suspects, reflected Raphael Patai's character no less than his learning.
It is instructive, moreover, to recall that this overpowering mono-
graphic superstructure was erected on a career enjoying few of the luxu-
X FOREWORD
ries normally provided by Western academe. To be sure, Raphael Patai's
own academic training and teaching experience were as densely uphol-
stered as those of anyof his professional colleagues. Born in Hungary, the
son of the distinguished Zionist author and activist Joseph Patai, he
earned doctorates at both the University of Budapest and the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem (indeed, Patai's was the first Ph.D. to be awarded
by the latter institution), as well as ordination at the Rabbinical Seminary
of Budapest. Thereafter, he taught and acquired devoted proteges at the
Hebrew University, at Columbia, Princeton, New York University, the
New School for Social Research, the University of Pennsylvania, Ohio
State University, and Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Yet, by contrast with those legions of academicians who ceaselessly
bemoan the lack of fellowships and paid leaves of absence without which,
they insist, there can be no "free time" for research and publication,
Raphael Patai managed simultaneously to pursue his scholarship and to
shoulder numerous challenging administrative responsibilities. Over the
course of six decades, he served variously as research director of the Pal-
estine Institute of Folklore and Ethnology; as director of the Syrian-Jor-
dan-Lebanon Research Project; as administrative secretary of the Pal-
estine and later Israel Institute of Technology (the Technion); and, most
significantly, as research director of the Herzl Institute, in this latter ca-
pacity building the largest Zionist research center in the United States.
It was perhaps the confluence of these executive achievements, no less
than a vivid, unifying strand in his publications, that revealed the elan
behind Raphael Patai's intellect. There is, after all, a certain particularity
within the ambit of every cultural galaxy, and Raphael Patai was no ex-
ception to this rule. Notwithstanding his devotion to scholarship in its
broadest, most universalist dimensions, his transcending love affair un-
questionably remained with Jewish civilization. At once intricate and aus-
tere, tradition-freighted and dynamically adaptive, intellectually cosmo-
politan and ethnically defiant, that civilization is the coruscating penumbra
of one of history's most vibrant and protean peoples.
Those who venture to interpret this complex and multifaceted phenome-
non ideally should embody at least some of its characteristics. As it hap-
pened, Raphael Patai incarnated virtually all of them. In the most authentic
sense of the word, he was a protean human being. His death, like his life,
matters. "The wind blows through the stubble," wrote Theodor Herzl in
1901, aware that his time was running out. It is the wind that now has cut
down Raphael Patai, ideological heir of the great Zionist father, whose
majestic intellectual legacy signifies a comparable devotion to the fate and
fortune of hispeople.For two generations of his students and admirers, the
void left by his departure will not soon or easily be made good.
Howard M. Sachar
PREFACE
HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN
THE WRITING of this book spans a period of more than sixty years, many
times longer than it took me to write any other of the thirty or so books I
have authored in my lifetime. The next longest after thiswasmy The Jewish
Alchemists, on which I worked, on and off, for about ten years, and which
was published in 1994 by Princeton University Press. None of my other
books took longer than a period of one to two years to produce.
The history of the present book goes back to 1933, when I arrived in
Jerusalem from Budapest, became a graduate student at the Hebrew
University, and started to work on my doctoral dissertation, which dealt
with water in ancient Palestinian folklore. While gathering source mate-
rial for that book—I spent about two years doing little else beside read-
ing the Bible and the Rabbinic sources and taking notes—I also jotted
down what I found in those historical records on seafaring. I completed
my dissertation by the end of 1935 (it turned out to be close to a three-
hundred-page book, which was published in 1936 by the Dvir Publishing
House of TelAviv), and earned the Ph.D. degree from the Hebrew Uni-
versity in June of that year—incidentally, the first Ph.D. to be awarded
by that school. Right away I returned to my notes on seafaring, basing
on them my Hebrew book Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times, published
in Jerusalem in 1938 by the Jewish Palestine Exploration Society. A brief
English summary of it was published in 1941 in the Jewish Quarterly
Review.
This done, my interest turned from the sea to the land, and more and
more from historical to contemporary issues, resulting in a number of
Hebrew books, published in small editions.
In 1944 I became a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and
as such began to receive its journal, Man. In its March/April 1945 issue I
found an article written by James Hornell on "Palm Leaves on Boats'
Prows of Gerzian Age," the illustrations in which reminded me of a
sketch in the Jewish burial caves at Beth Sh'arim near Haifa, which had
been excavated shortly before. I sent in to Man a note on the subject,
which was published in its March/April 1946 issue under the title "Palm
Leaves on Boats' Prows in Palestine." In my note I pointed out the sur-
prising similarity between the palm leaves on the Gerzian boats discussed
by Hornell and those on the Beth Sh'arim ship, dating from the second
or third century CE.
Xll PREFACE
A few weeks later, to my great surprise, I got a letter from Mr. Hornell
(it was forwarded by the editorial office of Man), in which he expressed
his interest in the Beth Sh'arim find, and inquired whether I had more
material pertaining to Jewish seafaring in ancient times. Delighted in the
interest shown by a man who I knew was a foremost authority on ancient
seafaring and the author of many important studies on the subject, I sent
him a copy of my Hebrew book, and asked him whether he thought the
book could be published in an English translation or adaptation. His
answer was so positive that I felt encouraged to ask him whether he
would be willing to read the English version I would prepare, and con-
sider adding his own comments to it, or possibly even augment it with
data from other ancient cultures that would throw light on what the
Jewish sources have to say about seafaring. His answer again was positive,
and I went to work on translating my book into English, a language in
which by that time I was sufficiently at home, and in which I had even
published several scholarly papers.
In the fall of 1947 a fellowship from the Viking Fund (subsequently
renamed Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research) brought
me to America, but before I left Jerusalem I sent off the completed
manuscript of my English translation to Mr. Hornell. Several months
later I received the manuscript back from him in New York, in a revised,
retyped, and occasionally expanded form. However, at the time I was
totally involved in writing my book Israel between East and West: A Study
in Human Relations(which was to be published in 1953 by the Jewish
Publication Society), and was unable to tear myself away from problems
of the present and to return to issues of the remote past. Hence, al-
though I duly acknowledged to Mr. Hornell the receipt of the typescript,
I also informed him that it would take some time before I could go over
it and give him my reaction to the changes and additions he introduced.
Here things stood when, in 1949, the news reached me that Mr. Hornell
had passed away. He was eighty-four years old.
With Mr. HornelPs death the incentive to work on the seafaring book
disappeared, and I put the typescript at the back of my filing cabinet,
thinking that I would return to it once my current research engagements
eased up and I would be left with some time on my hands. However, I
got more and more involved in studies relating to the modern Middle
East, other contemporary Jewish communities, the Arab mind, and the
Jewish mind, so that the seafaring typescript remained untouched year
after year—in fact, decade after decade.
Then, in the late 1980s, I was asked by my friend Dr. John M. Lund-
quist, head of the Oriental Division of the New York Public Library, to
contribute a paper to the Festschrift he, together with Dr. Stephen D.
Ricks of Brigham Young University, planned to publish in honor of the