Balaam Inscription from Tell Deir 'Allā

The Tell Deir ʿAllā inscription, also known as the Balaam inscription, describes a series of ink on plaster fragments which survive from the site Deir ʿAllā in the Valley of Succoth in ancient Gilead (modern Jordan). The plaster text was originally displayed on the inner walls of a building that was subsequently destroyed by an earthquake. Discovered by H. Franken in 1967 and later published by J. Hoftijzer and G. van der Kooij in 1976, scholars piece together the fragments into two combinations (see esp. the editio princeps by Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1976 as well as Caquot and Lemaire 1977; Hackett 1980). The text was originally dated to the Persian period (Franken 1967), but the date was quickly refined on paleographic grounds to the mid-8th century or earlier (already Naveh 1967; Cross 1969). While the script can be classified as Aramaic, the dialect has been much disputed in previous scholarship. The options include Aramaic (Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1976), Canaanite (Hacket 1980; 1984; Rendsburg 1992; Pat-El and Wilson-Wright 2015), a local dialect (McCarter 1991), or a separate branch of Northwest Semitic (Huehnergard 1991). Regardless of its technical linguistic classification, some scholars employ the term "Gileadite" on the basis of its distinct local character (Kaufman 1988; Greenfield 1991; Rendsburg 1992). Since its discovery, the Deir ʿAllā inscription has piqued scholarly interest because the inscription mentions a certain "Balaam son of Beor" (בלעם בר בער) who appears also in the biblical book of Numbers and subsequent biblical and Jewish tradition. According to Num 22-24, Balaam (called בִּלְעָם בֶּן־בְּעוֹר 'Bilʿām son of Bəʿōr') was a non-Israelite diviner from Pethor who was hired by the Moabite king Balaq son of Ṣippor to curse Israel but instead blesses them in four separate discourses (מָשָׁל) according to the word of the Lord. The Deir ʿAllā inscription confirms the biblical tradition that Balaam was a diviner as it calls him "a seer of the gods" (חזה אלהן) and recounts a nocturnal theophany which he received "according to the utterance of El" (כמשא אל). However, although it contains parallels with the biblical traditions about Balaam, the Deir ʿAllā text is not itself an extrabiblical portrayal of the biblical narrative. Combination I describes the report of Balaam's nocturnal vision which he received from the gods (אלהן) at the behest of El (אל), a Semitic word meaning "god" but also a well-known deity in the ancient Near East, especially among Levantine religions such as in ancient Israel, Phoenicia, and Ugarit. Distraught from the contents of the theophany (lines 1-4), Balaam fasts and weeps, then recounts the vision to his companions. He tells them about the "council" (מועד) of the "Shaddai-gods" (שדין = šaddāyîn), a word undoubtedly related to the Hebrew theonym El-Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי). Although its etymology is debated, the negative portrayal of the Shaddai-gods in the Deir ʿAllā inscription suggests the possibility of associating it with a Northwest Semitic word for "demons" (Heb. שֵׁדִים, Aram. שֵׁידִין‏; cf. Akk. šēdu) and/or a verb meaning "to destroy" (√šdd). Another widely accepted alternative for El-Shaddai, however, is to understand the element šad(d)ay as meaning "mountain, wilderness," thus rendering "God of the Mountain/Wilderness" (Delitzsch 1896; Albright 1968; Cross 1973; Knauf 1999). Regardless of the correct etymology, the biblical tradition (Num. 24:4, 16) situates Shaddai (often translated as "the Almighty") as the source of Balaam's theophany rather than its subject matter. In the Deir ʿAllā inscription, the Shaddai-gods have commissioned a deity called Šagar-wa-Ištar to sew up and block out the heavens (line 6) which in turn creates darkness and chaos on earth. Interpretations of the second half of the first combination diverge significantly, but according to one interpretation, incantations were used to ward off the impending doom and thus the land is saved (Levine, COS 2.27). The contents of Combination II and its relationship to the first combination are much less certain given its highly fragmentary state, but it seems to have something to do with El's construction of a necropolis and/or the netherworld, called the "house of eternity" (בית עלמן). Moreover, Balaam's name does not appear in Combination II. In conclusion, the Deir ʿAllā inscription is ultimately our best example of a (semi-)mythological text from the Iron Age Transjordan. While scholars continue to debate aspects of its linguistic classification and interpretation, there can be no doubt that it serves as an important source for reconstructing the history of religion in the ancient Levant.