I always read the weekly parashah with an archaeological eye. Unlike historical archaeology, which aims to corroborate or disprove a text through scientific research methods, I understand the Torah as a holy text that is beyond the realm of archaeology. But using an archaeological lens can enhance our understanding of the compilers of the text and adds richness to our imagining the experiences described within it. Thinking archaeologically and linguistically can bring colour and texture to the world contained within the Torah. When I worked in an Egyptology museum, my favourite artifacts to point out were drawers of jewelled necklaces. I’d ask visitors to think about the work that goes into creating these items: knowledge of mining, smelting, and carving, and for the rarer stones, extensive trade networks.
Tetzaveh starts with extensive descriptions of the hoshen, the priestly breastplate. This parashah, and others describing the mishkan, feature long lists of materials that can be the bane of any leyner finding themselves in unfamiliar Hebrew territory. Each pasuk between Exodus 28:17 to 28:20 contains three names of stones. From a material culture perspective, this is a literal treasure trove. Each mention of a gem is an insight into this ancient world.
Exodus 28:11 calls on a harash even, a stone-worker, to carve the names of the bnei Yisrael onto shoham. In different editions, shoham is translated as lapis lazuli or as onyx. As any amateur gemologist knows, these are two very different colours of stone, one vibrant blue and one midnight black with white layers. Onyx was used in the Roman period to make cameos and intaglios, and in ancient Egypt was used for the eyes in mummy masks. It would have been mined in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, a geologically-rich environment that produced many minerals as it’s part of the rift between the Arabian and African tectonic plates. It was highly esteemed within the cultural context that the Israelites were leaving. The presence of a stone-worker amongst the tribes evokes a civilisation that included artisans knowledgeable about jewellery and metallurgic technology who brought artisan’s tools into the desert.
Each of the four rows of stones in the hoshen contained three individual gems. The first mentioned in Exodus 28:17 is odem, related to the word for red – so at least we know what colour this one is! Stones in the ancient world were named for their colour or origin, resulting in much confusion for later translators. The most likely candidate is carnelian, a red stone found at sites throughout Egypt, Nubia, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. (The image is a carnelian bead I excavated in Sudan, from around the fifth century BCE.) The only formally-identified carnelian mine was located at Gebel el-Asr, in the Aswan region, though it is likely that carnelian found earlier than 1550 BCE eroded out of the Nile’s sandstone cliffs. Unlike lapis and onyx, it’s more common and is found in the graves of commoners as well as royalty.
The next stone in the row is pit’dah, generally translated as topaz. However, the ancient Middle East didn’t have topaz! Although the Red Sea island Topazios – now called Zabargad – produced a light green stone, this is actually peridot. Asian topaz is only produced in Sri Lanka, and there are no attested trade routes between there and Mesopotamia or Egypt in the 1st or 2nd millennium BCE.
This row has another green stone, bareket, translated as an emerald. Egypt produces many beryls (the stone type of which emerald is the best-known and clearest) in the Red Sea Hills, which have been mined since around 2000 BCE, though most are poor quality and are found in archaeological contexts as pigment granules. Egypt is the only eastern hemisphere source for emeralds, in an area called the Mines of Cleopatra.
The second row begins with nofech, which lacks a Hebrew etymology so poses difficulty in translation. It’s close to the Egyptian mfkꜢt, and references to mining mfkꜢt in the Sinai desert narrows it down to turquoise or malachite, both aqua-green stones; but Egyptians tended to prize only turquoise, and it appears frequently in high-value jewellery, mummy masks, and amulets. Lower-value jewellery made of faience, a composite material of white clay and tin or copper oxide, emulates the colour of turquoise and can be found in graves of commoners throughout Egypt. It’s followed by saphir: although it sounds like the English sapphire, linguists argue it’s actually lapis lazuli. The etymology is quite complex, but fascinatingly it’s also the origin of the surname of linguist Edward Sapir (of the disproven Sapir-Whorf hypothesis). Lapis is from much further abroad – the mines are in the Badakhshan region of modern Afghanistan, and Egyptians acquired it through long-distance trade with Mesopotamia. In Egypt it was associated with royalty and used in amulets and death masks (including that of King Tutankhamun) as well as ground into pigment.
The rest of the stones in the hoshen have equally fascinating etymologies and origins. Many of the stones have origins in the Egyptian Eastern Desert (amazonite), Nubia (red jasper), Mesopotamia (agate), Iberia (amber). We can also rule out some misnomers, like one stone commonly translated as a diamond, as the trade routes didn’t exist nor the technology to carve them. Research on the stones examines mining, archaeology, advanced laser techniques, linguistics, and comparative analysis with later texts, including Prophets. In Exodus 12:36, God inclined the Egyptians to act favourably with the Israelites and give them their gold, so perhaps they also generously included their precious gems that came from all around the region and beyond. Archaeology shows us that these stones were the result of human trade networks, mining expeditions, and technological skill. The Kohen ha-Gadol would have been wearing jewels representative of the entire known world, from Nubia to Badakhshan, each with its own trade history and value. The stone-worker’s carving changed the gems from items of the known world into symbols of the tribes, transforming individual high-value objects into a ritual garment uniting the bnei Yisrael. The entire world in one piece of clothing, using the most precious stones, worn in service to God at the mishkan: what a wondrous thing to think about as a piece of material culture.
Dr Stacy Hackner, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.