'Ain Samiya Goblet

The chalice from Ain Samia - flat rendering

The 'Ain Samiya Goblet is a silver cup from the

Middle Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

I (2300-2000 BC), found in a tomb at Ain Samiya near modern

Ramallah Ramallah ( , ; ) is a Palestinians, Palestinian city in the central West Bank, that serves as the administrative capital of the State of Palestine. It is situated on the Judaean Mountains, north of Jerusalem, at an average elevation of abov ...

. It was discovered in 1970 at Khirbet el-'Aqibat, located just before Ein Samiya on the road to

Kafr Malik Kafr Malik () is a Palestinian town in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate of the State of Palestine, located 17 kilometers Northeast of Ramallah in the northern West Bank. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), the t ...

. An extensive cemetery had been previously known to cover three adjacent hills: Khirbet el-'Aqibat, Khirbet Samiya and Dhahr el-Mirz, the latter of which had been excavated in the 1960s by Paul W. Lapp, the Director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. It depicts a double-headed god with an animal body planting crops and the dead body of a serpent, parts of whom are being held by two male figures. The scenes are purported to depict a proto version of the

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

n creation epic, the Enuma Elish and the defeat of

Tiamat In Mesopotamian religion, Tiamat ( or , ) is the primordial sea, mating with Abzû (Apsu), the groundwater, to produce the gods in the Babylonian epic '' Enûma Elish'', which translates as "when on high". She is referred to as a woman, an ...

by the Babylonian patron deity,

Marduk Marduk (; cuneiform: Dingir, ᵈAMAR.UTU; Sumerian language, Sumerian: "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) is a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of Babylon who eventually rose to prominence in the 1st millennium BC. In B ...

. The goblet demonstrates clear influences from Mesopotamia on

Proto-Canaanite Proto-Canaanite is the name given to: # The Proto-Sinaitic script when found in Canaan, dating to about the 17th century BC and later. # A hypothetical ancestor of the Phoenician script before some cut-off date, typically 1050 BC, with an undefin ...

culture and shares other parallels with contemporary depictions like the Khafaje plaque during

Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred ...

.Israel Museum The Israel Museum (, ''Muze'on Yisrael'', ) is an Art museum, art and archaeology museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world's leading Encyclopedic museum, encyclopa ...

References