When Father Mallon of the Pontifical Biblical Institute began digging at Teleilat el-Ghassul in the 1930’s he had no idea what controversies he would unearth. The name of the site means “mounds of ghassul”— ghassul being an Arabic term for a type of shrub. As the name suggests, the site covers several low-lying hills east of the Jordan River and approximately three miles north of the Dead Sea. Four or five levels of occupation were found at the site, measuring 13 feet thick in total, all of them belonging to a previously unknown culture named “Ghassulian.”

American Colony 1931/Library of Congress

Chronology

The prominent and influential archaeologist, William Albright (1944-1998), assigned the years 3700‒3300 BC to the Ghassulian culture and used the term “Chalcolithic” to refer to it.¹Albright 1965, 53 Albright seems to have coined the term “chalcolithic” to refer to a transitional phase between the Stone and Bronze Ages (Greek. chalcos, “copper” and lithos, “stone”) which lasted approximately the whole of the 4th millennium.²North 1982, 60 This general chronological framework found wide acceptance although a significant group of scholars, including Father Mallon, Pere L. H. Vincent, Maurice Dunand and John Garstang maintained that the Ghassulian culture should be placed in the Early Bronze period. Perrot was also inclined to date the Ghassulians “well into the 3rd millennium” while Roland de Vaux assigned a late date to the Ghassulian material, although “not so late as Perrot.”³See North (1982, 55 ff.) for a helpful summary of the controversy surrounding the dating of the Ghassulian material.

There is a general scholarly consensus today that the Ghassulian culture should be assigned approximately a millennium long span of time that extends from the beginning of the 5th millennium to the early 4th millennium C (c. 4800‒3800 BC), which is considerably higher even, than the dates proposed by Albright.⁴Golani 2013, 99; Rowan 2009, 12-14, Joffe and Dessel 1995 This high chronology, which is based primarily on the results of C14 dating, creates something of an anomaly for the chronology of the region.

If the Ghassulian culture ended around 3800 BC and the urban culture of the Early Bronze period arose c. 3300 BC then what do we do with the intervening half a millennium? There is very little in the way of monuments or artifacts that can be assigned to this period. The problem is even more acute at Jericho, where the gap is a millennium long, or even more more! Thus Kathleen Kenyon, the director of excavations at Jericho, lamented that the early dates assigned to the Ghassulian culture “leave us in Palestine with a nasty long period to fill.”⁵North writes, “If the Ghassulian levels date to the fifth millennium BC, that left Kenyon with a millennium long gap between the Neolithic and the Early Bronze (Proto-Urban A, B, and C).” (North 1982, 65) There is no reason why the southern Levant should have experienced a dark age when Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia flourished. Furthermore, there is mounting evidence for an overlap between the Ghassulian and Early Bronze cultures of the southern Levant (ie. Ghassulian pottery and objects are being found in the lowest levels of Early Bronze cities together with pottery traditionally assigned to the EB I).⁶Golani 2013 One is forced, therefore, either to lower the dates assigned to the Ghassulian by at least half a millennium or raise the beginning of the Early Bronze period by the same amount. Thus Golani agues that the beginning of the Early Bronze period should be raised to c. 3800 BC.⁷Golani 2013, 99-100 But we still don’t have enough butter for our slice of bread. Of course, the alternative is to lower the chronology of the Ghassulian culture to make it roughly contemporary with the Late Uruk period in Mesopotamia and the Late Predynastic period in Egypt.⁸North suggests that Proto-Urban A, B, and C at Jericho (which date to the EB I) might also be contemporary with the Ghassulian culture. See North 1981. This would place the Ghassulian culture in the Early Bronze I (EB I).

Length of Occupation

There is one final point which should be discussed with regards to the chronology of Teleilat el-Ghassul. Recent radiocarbon analysis of material from Teleilat el-Ghassul dates the period of its occupation to 4800-4000 BC, which adds up to approximately 800 years give or take.⁹Bourke et al. 2006, 1221 The Ghassulian period as a whole is generally though to have extended from 4800-3700 BC, with the occupation of Ghassulian villages in the Beersheva valley continuing after Teleilat el-Ghassul was abandoned. This is considerably longer than the dates assigned by Wright to the period (3600-3300 BC)¹⁰G. Wright, The Archaeology of Palestine in Wright 1961, 80ff. or Albright (3700-3300 BC).¹¹W. F. Alrbight, Some Remarks on the Archaeological Chronology of Palestine before about 1500 BC in Ehrich 1965, 49 ff. Likewise, the director of the 1959 excavation season at Teleilat el-Ghassul, Robert North, pointed out that no variation in pottery could be observed in the 20 feet of stratified occupation at the site.¹²Robert North writes, “My published report shows the basis for a judgement that from top to bottom of the longest continuous occupation in any trench, no real variation of pottery-types was observable.  Moreover, my section drawings show how difficult it was to trace any particular layer (homogeneous soil-color with pertinent artifacts) horizontally for more than a few feet.” (North 1982, 60) North further states that his view was shared by J.B. Hennessey who also excavated at Teleilat Ghassul.  North dryly notes that if Teleilat el-Ghassul were occupied for a millennium then you would have the unusual situation of a single pot lying in several layers of occupation, each layer representing a century or more span of time.¹³North 1982, 60 In fact, stratified layers of occupation may accumulate very quickly when the primary building material is mudbrick. (We will come back to this topic in our discussion of the Sin Temple at Khafajah.)

Houses

Teleilat el-Ghassul was an unwalled village for the entire period of its occupation. Houses were made from “loaf-shaped” mud bricks, impressed with multiple thumb marks down their back, and set on a stone foundation. The bricks answer to the description of the “cigar-shaped” bricks used at Jericho, although these are supposed to have belonged to a much earlier period. The houses had their entrance on the long wall, accessed through a courtyard—an architectural layout known as the “broadroom” type.

American Colony/LOC

Lime Plaster

Many of the buildings at Teleilat el-Ghassul were plastered and painted with colorful frescos executed with black, yellow, red, white, and brown paint on a white plastered surface.¹⁴Frescoes were found at Arslantepe in south-eastern Turkey and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt reminiscent of the ones at Teleilat el-Ghassul. These date to the Late Uruk and Late Predynastic respectively. Curiously, green and blue pigments derived from copper ore are absent at Teleilat el-Ghassul although they are the most common pigments used in Egypt. The walls were replastered with the passage of time, and new paintings produced, so that, in one instance, as many as twenty layers of plaster were applied to a wall.

The extensive use of lime plaster at Teleilat el-Ghassul is quite remarkable in light of the amount of labour and skill required to produce it. The process of producing lime plaster requires several steps, none of them easily discoverable: 1) the limestone was fired in kilns for 3 or 4 days at temperatures exceeding 1500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celcius), 2) the resulting powdery substance, known as quicklime, was rehydrated at a ratio of 3 units of quicklime to 1 unit of water, 3) the resulting “slaked lime” was buried in a sealed chamber for at least a month, but for as long as several years. The longer the slaked lime was left buried, the better the quality of plaster made from it.¹⁵Drabsch 2015

The whole process was time consuming (an estimated two tons of limestone were required to produce one ton of lime) and required a significant amounts of fuel (2 tons of wood per ton of quicklime). It was also potentially hazardous. Slaking lime (adding quicklime to water) produces a violent reaction that may result in severe burns and even blindness. But the end product was worth the effort. The bright, white substance has the consistency of a thick paste. When spread in a thin layer on walls and floors, it produced a clean, white surface that was no less hard than the limestone from which it was made. It was a definite upgrade from mudbrick walls.

Buon Fresco

The wall murals found at Teleilat el-Ghassul appear to have been proper frescos, produced using the method known as buon fresco (Italian. “true fresh”).¹⁶Drabsch 2005, 128 Color was applied to the plaster while it was still wet. As the plaster dried, the color was absorbed into its surface. The pigment is thus fixed into the very substance of the wall itself. The same method was used by Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. The alternative was to use a binder to make the paint adhere to the dry surface of the plaster (a secco) but no such binder was detected at Teleilat al-Ghassul.

The “Star of Ghassul” was one of the most impressive frescos discovered at the site. One possible interpretation of the star comes from Mesopotamia, where the eight pointed star (the dingir sign) has a the long association with the word for “deity” and Venus.¹⁷Black 2011, 169; Drabsch 2005, 147. Amihai Mazar thought the star might also symbolize the sun (Mazar 1990, 76).

The Procession

Another important fresco discovered at Teleilat el-Ghassul shows a procession of figures wearing masks. The leading figure is holding what appears to me to be a double flute.