Biblical Archaeology From the Ground Down: Artaxerxes & Nehemiah His Cupbearer

Welcome to our episode of Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, presented by Bible Interact and hosted by Dr. George Sparks. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of the Bible from leading experts in the field of archaeology. Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. David Graves, an experienced biblical archaeologist and CEO of Electronic Christian Media. I'm here today with another exciting episode on our Archaeology Discoveries channel, where we discuss important archaeological artifacts related to the Bible. Thanks for watching and be sure to like and subscribe to our channel. Well, good morning, good day, good evening to wherever you're at. This is Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact. My name is George Sparks. I have my special guest, Dr. David Graves. You see this PhD from Aberdeen University. He has more than 25 years' experience in excavations in the Near East, such as we have the Temple Excavation, also Shiloh, Tel Hamam in Jordan, and Kermit L. McCarter also in Israel, a candidate for biblical eye. Also, he was involved with excavating, along with Dr. Randall Price from Liberty University, the Dead Sea Scroll Caves. And they found information that their cave actually had, at one time, evidence of the Dead Sea Scroll. Very interesting. Also, he's the author of, I believe, 30 books. So great to have him on our program today. And our subject is going to be, Art Exercises the First, which we read about in the book of Nehemiah. Dr. Graves, glad to have you on our program. By the way, this is the tomb of Art Exercise the Third, not the First, just in case somebody's going to text me later on and say, hey, wait a minute, that's the wrong tomb. Well, basically, they were all cut on the side of a hill, mostly all look alike, and this is one of the best pictures I could get of tourists visiting a tomb. And it fit where I could put myself in along with the tomb. So that explains the picture. And when you're ready, Doctor. So we're going to talk about Art Exercise today, and we're going to talk about Nehemiah, who was Art Exercise's cupbearer, the Bible tells us. That's kind of interesting. So what does that have to do with Art Exercise? Well, we have a gentleman sitting in a chair here holding one of the rithons. It's a drinking cup. And we see another image here of a cup. It doesn't look like a cup, it looks like a platter, really, but we'll explain that in a few moments. So we're going to talk about Art Exercise. He also ruled over the Egyptians, and so here we have a cartouche with his name and Egyptian hieroglyphics, material that can be found in my book on the archaeology of biblical people. If you want to see in Amazon where that book is, just scan the QR code and it'll take you right there, and you can take a look at the book. Well, Nehemiah chapter 2, verse 1 says, in the month of Nisan, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. And so, Nehemiah was the cupbearer for King Artaxerxes, who was, Nehemiah, Nehemiah was a Jewish leader and cupbearer to Artaxerxes of Persia, who was compelled to return to Jerusalem around 445 BC, after hearing about the dire situation of the city and the city walls in Jerusalem, and Nehemiah secured the permission from Artaxerxes to rebuild Jerusalem's walls and to repair some of the destruction that had occurred over the many years prior. Upon arriving in Jerusalem, he faced opposition from some of the local people, but motivated the people to work together, and successfully they completed the wall in just 52 days, which was quite an achievement in and of itself, considering that you see the size of the stones in the walls of Jerusalem. The book highlights themes of leadership and faith and perseverance, as Nehemiah also initiates religious reforms and reinstates the covenant practices among the people. So it's a pretty big deal, the book of Nehemiah and the work that Nehemiah had done. His relationship with King Artaxerxes is significant as it exemplifies the support of the Persian rulers for Jewish endeavors and facilitating the return and the restoration of the Jewish community following the Jewish exile, and that was crucial for the preservation of the Jewish identity and Jewish worship during this particular period of time. Here is my drawing on the right of the area of Nehemiah's wall or city in white, the gates all in red, and then on the left is Lane Rittmeier, an archaeological architect's drawing of the site of what it looked like, more of a 3D type of drawing of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah. And so you can use those as you read the book of Nehemiah to help you sort of get around the city and see what they did with the repairs and so forth. We won't go into all the details of that now, but some of that material in the cultural background books that I have on the Old Testament. Now to put Artaxerxes and Nehemiah in the historical context of my timeline, right there in the red, so they would have lived from 465 to 424 BC, that's when Artaxerxes ruled in Persia, and so we place the life of Nehemiah around that same time period. Ezra returns to Jerusalem in 458 BC, and then Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem in 445 BC, and again there was a number of returns to the city and a number of different repairs that were done, but that's the general time period that we're talking about for this Persian king, who is depicted here in a relief on the right, with a bow at his feet, holding it, as depicted in one of the reliefs. And so he's listed, as we mentioned, as the cupbearer to Artaxerxes, so an important individual in the Persian empire. He's the son of Xerxes I, we talked about him in our last presentation. He was the son of Xerxes I, and following the assassination of his brother, he ascended to the throne. His reign is noted for significant political and military challenges, particularly in the vast territory of the empire and the growing influence of the Greeks. So there were the butting heads of the Greeks, and they ruled over the Egyptians, so an extensive empire that the Persians had. And Artaxerxes is remembered for his diplomatic strategies, including the Peace of Calais, which sought to stabilize the relations with the Greek city-states. That's pretty big. Additionally, his reign was notable in the development of art and architecture, alongside a strong emphasis on administration, which contributed to the legacy of the Archimedean empire. So the Persian empire was quite large and significant at this time period. It marks a blend of cultures and political achievements within an era of great complexity and challenges. So anyone studying this time period, the Persian empire was a significant empire of the time. We already looked at the jars of Artaxerxes before, but that's a map of the general area. Persia, Susa, it's modern-day Iran. So things have changed a lot in that region over the years. Now, some of the writing on the bowl is found in Aramaic, and so I just wanted to point out how this—we're talking about the Egyptians and their hieroglyphics, and then the Akkadian area, the Ugaritic, and the Phoenicians, those were Semitic languages, and they're related to Hebrew and Aramaic that we find on this bowl. So again, they're all kind of related, but you can see how they've developed here a little bit. This is the letter A. As we look at the timeline of the development of Semitic languages, here in the top you have the Akkadian, that's A in Akkadian, Eblite, that's A in Eblite, and then the Amorite is here, Ugaritic is here. Basically, you take the Akkadian, you lay it on the side with the cuneiform triangular-shaped letters, and then you have the development of the Aramaic and the Hebrew, and they're closely related to each other. And then over here, around 1000 AD, you have the development of Arabic, and this is the letter A in Arabic, just a straight line, basically. You can sort of see in the Hebrew the development of a triangle with a line through it, similar to the Ugaritic. So again, these are all kind of related as you see the development of the language. So the time period we're talking about right here is Hebrew, and it overlays the time period of Aramaic. The Persian Empire used Aramaic at this period of time for its alphabet, and it parallels the time period of the Hebrews using their alphabet. Now what's kind of interesting is that Ezra and Nehemiah are written in Aramaic. Why would you say is that the case and not Hebrew? Well, it's quite simple because, remember, Nehemiah is living in Persia, and so the people that would read this would be the Persians, and so that's why they wrote it in Aramaic. So Ezra 4, chapters 4 through 7 are written in Aramaic, whilst part of Ezra is written in Hebrew. And why is that the case? Well, because they're writing to the Hebrew people. They want them to understand the message of Ezra in the language, the alphabet, that they were familiar with. And the same thing can be said with parts of Daniel, chapters 2 through 7, and a little bit of Jeremiah, chapter 10, verse 11. What's also very interesting is that we find portions of the New Testament written in Aramaic. So Jesus probably understood and spoke Aramaic. You remember the movie, The Passion of the Christ, and how much of that is—not all of it, I think—is spoken in Aramaic with subtitles. And also the Semitic languages is a little different to the way they position their grammar. In English, you have verb, subject, and object. That is, parents love children. Whereas in the Semitic languages, you have it reversed. You have love, parents, children. So that can be a bit confusing. So it's a different type of language, and also written a little bit differently. But if you understand Hebrew, you can also understand, generally speaking, Aramaic. The letters are quite similar if you go down the list here of Aramaic compared to Hebrew. And the other thing to remember is that it's read from right to left, like Arabic. And there are no vowels in it originally. We see a manuscript here of the book of Isaiah, the Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. And there are no vowels in these letters. There's no dots or lines around it. Those are the vowels that were added later by the Masorites in the vowels so it could be read. So it was a language that was initially a spoken language, written down as you would hear it spoken, with just the consonants and no vowels. Now, the silver bowl that we want to talk about, bringing this to archaeology, is that there are four silver wine bowls that have been identified and discovered, with an identical inscription mentioning the name of Artaxerxes I, discovered before 1935. So this places the name of Artaxerxes that we read in the Bible on an artifact that has been confirmed. Nehemiah was listed, as we mentioned, as the cupbearer for Artaxerxes. And so the four of them are now on display at different museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired one in 1947. The Freer Gallery of Art in Washington has one. The British Museum in London has one. And the Reza Abbasi Museum in Tehran, Iran, has one. This is a close-up of it. You can see the writing around the edge of it. And this is where we discover the name of Artaxerxes I. Here's a better picture, I think more sort of 3D, showing how this is like a platter or a bowl. But that's a wine bowl or a wine cup here. Another cup here. So it gives you an idea of what these silver implements look like. And you can see the close-up of the writing around the edge of this bowl. And it's written in Aramaic. But with these kind of cuneiform style letters. The silver bowl here is from Iran. This one here is from the British Museum. And this one here is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There are three of the different bowls that are in existence with the name of Artaxerxes I. In case somebody thinks that these names are just made up and put in the Bible. No, it was a real historical individual who lived in Persia and ruled at that time period. Now the translation of the bowl reads, Artaxerxes, the great king, king of kings, king of countries. Of course, he was over the Egyptians and the Greeks. So king of countries, son of Xerxes, the king of Xerxes, who was son of Darius the king, the Archimedean, in whose house the silver drinking cup was made. So I know it's a drinking cup because that's what they describe on it. The one thing it didn't made in China. It's made in Iran, made in Persia. Here's another Archimedean silver cup of gold leaf, which I thought was just beautiful. This is the British Museum and you can see the Persians on the side of it with their quivers on their back. I'm not quite sure what they're holding there, but it looks like they might be holding one of those drinking bowls in their hands. The other thing we have from this time period are silver drinking cups. They're called rhytones and the silver ram. This one here is in silver with the head of a ram on it. You can see the beautiful horns. Another beautiful gold lion rhytone. They would put their beer inside of this or their wine inside of it and sometimes there would be a hole in the end of it. Think of it that way. There's more information on rhytones in my book on the Illustrated Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology. For anybody interested in getting a dictionary to know what we're talking about sometimes, there are lots of definitions in this very helpful dictionary for you. Here's one of the Greek terracotta drinking cups. We talked about Greece and so I wanted to show one of these. From a different time period. This is much later, 350 to 300 BC. This one has the head of a sheep or a goat on the front of it. On the side of it here you have Eros flying with a casket on the cuff. This one has the black and very distinctive black and yellow painting on it. Very Greek style of pottery. I just wanted to show a different style of rhytone. Here's another terracotta one. This is from the Persian Empire drinking cup. This one has a lion motif on it and this is from the Tehran Museum. In Iran. Courtesy of Todd Bolan. This is actually a silver drinking cup. It looks like it's gold but it's actually silver with probably gold plating on it. This is the gold drinking cup. There's a number of these. This one has the bull motif on it from Tehran. These are just absolutely gorgeous. I love the style of these. That's just a basic overview of some of the drinking cups that we might find in Persia. Any questions there, George? You know, those were absolutely beautiful. In all my years of acquiring artifacts for museums, I never once was able to acquire a rhytone. I call it rhytone. What did you call it? I said rhytone. It's a rhytone. Maybe it wasn't a rhytone. Maybe I only got leptons. I never got a rhytone. You never get a rhytone. Right on there, rhytone. But those are fantastic artifacts. They really are. I'm going to read a little bit about, let's say, the Book of Nehemiah. Just real quick here. I think some of this stuff is kind of interesting. It is interesting. The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible largely takes the form of the first person. Nehemiah, a Jew who is a high official at the Persian court concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the dedication of the city walls and its people to God's laws. This is interesting. I thought this was interesting right here because it talks about the development of the Book of Nehemiah since the 16th century. Now they're talking about Tom and Eric. Since the 16th century, it has generally been treated as a separate book within the Bible. Before then, it had been included in the Book of Israel. But in Latin Christian Bibles from the 13th century onwards, the Vulgate Book of Israel was divided into two texts called, respectively, the first and second books of Israel. This separation became canonized with the first printed Bible in the Hebrew and in Latin. Now this is, so we're going to the printing press, right? Printed, mid-15th century, probably Gutenberg style, mid-16th century Reformed Protestant Bible translated. Translations produced in Geneva were the first to introduce the name Book of Nehemiah for the text formerly called the Second Book of Israel. I just thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah. The development of how it became separated and it was introduced in the Geneva Bible, huh? Yeah, it was Jean Calvin that produced the Geneva Bible. He was the leader there in Geneva and he's the individual who had it translated into the language of the people as well as Luther. And so they broke it up a little differently than it was originally in the Hebrew text. And originally it was, as you mentioned, Ezra and Nehemiah combined together and then they split it up. And what is normally the tradition is you'd have the first words of the book used to describe the book. So, for example, in Hebrew you have, in the beginning, so you have the Book of Genesis, the same as you have the Enuma Elish. Those are the first two words in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian description of, the Sumerian description of creation. And in this case, they use the individuals, Ezra, the main characters, and Nehemiah, the main characters, for the titles of the book. So interesting points. And what I find fascinating with archaeology is that now we get to see what the actual cup in the household of Artaxerxes looked like with his name on it. And you can imagine that maybe one of those that we see in those four different museums, one of them was the ones that was handled by Nehemiah himself. That's a good point because he was the cup bearer. I never thought about that. He was the cup bearer. Yeah, that would be cool. That would be a cool study right there if you had, you know, the artifact or even a reproduction of the artifact and start in and say, you know, it's the right time. This, you know, is probably fifth century. So how can we relate this to the biblical text? And we talked about Nehemiah, the cup bearer, and on we go. That would be a fantastic way to beginning. Yeah. And I've seen them at the British Museum and they're quite large. And so the picture of the gold cup that I showed with a picture of the Persian on the side of it, he's holding something in his hand. It looks like a tambourine. And I think it was one of those, one of those cups. I haven't looked at it real close. It's just speculation at this point. But that would be a little something for some of our audience to pursue a little bit. What was that image on the side of that cup? Was it one of the cups the cup bearer was holding? And was that how they depicted it? That would just be something my curiosity piques me. You know, something else that I looked up before the podcast, a possible currency connection, a coin. Yes. For the province of Judah, they have what they call the Yehud coin. Very tiny, like the size of your fingernail. And for years, they were hard to find. You imagine trying to find something. They'd probably be thrown away if they were at an excavation. They'd be tossed with the debris because they're so tiny. But then when they started using like metal detectors, they were able to find more of these types of coins. But if you want another assignment, look up Yehud coin. And you'll find out it's from the Persian period. One of the earliest coins. But it's so tiny. Silver coins. I think I had an opportunity to hold a couple. You know, OK, this was neat. It came in a hoard of coins. So there was a container, like a dipping vessel. Now, this is not a dipping vessel. This is, of course, an alabaster vessel. The dipping vessel will probably have a much wider rim, you know, opening. But it'd be about this big. And it's a dipping vessel. So anyway, it was kind of large. And inside was a hoard of silver jewelry, like broken fragments of rings. All right. And little chunks of silver because they would weigh the metal right on a scale. And then they had those little dome weights. And they had other types of weights as well. But in the Iron Age period, this is Persian. I think they still might have been still using the little limestone dome weights. OK, but also, you know what? Included was really crusty. So I had to clean them for some Yehud coins. Now we got coins. Now we can date it. Make sense? Yes. And so, you know, then I called the individual that once owned the vessel and everything. I said, you're not going to believe this, that those little crusty coins that I cleaned off. Now, remember, they're very tiny. And in coins back then were not struck in a machine like today. So it's not even struck. Right. They could be always off center. But you can make out a portion, you know, and then identify it. And it had part of the Yehud on there and also the figure assigned with it. So, yes, as I said, most definitely Yehud coins. We can take this to the 4th century. So 4th century Ford, where they were still using, starting to use coins. I don't think coins were trusted yet. And they're also still weighing the metals. So we saw them combined together, probably somebody's little piggy bank. Right. And so if you want to look up Yehud coins, then you'll see the little Persian characters. Sometimes it has the lion. So there's a little fascinating studies. It combined all these things together. Once we find coins, though, it's easy to date. You can see the artifacts. So that was the giveaway right there. Also, you know what it also had in it? It had glass and it had the Phoenician glass. You ever remember that it's called Phoenician core glass? Very expensive if you can ever find one. All right. And it had a little chunk in the ring, right, of Phoenician core glass. And it was like a little starburst. So then we could say, well, it had Persian. You could say a symbolism of the Persian culture, the Yehud coin. And it was silver with other chunks of metal. So they're still weighing it. Ideally, something came probably from Persia. Thinking about Israel, Nehemiah came down to Judah. And I think it was a good way to assimilate the archaeology with the event written in the Bible. Where was it discovered at? Do you know? It was discovered in Jerusalem. Okay. So here we have Persian artifacts found in Jerusalem. What was our story about today in the Bible? About somebody from Persia traveling to Jerusalem and they brought their goods with them. Absolutely. And a good way to identify it. Now, of course, it's in a museum now where it should be. Sure. But when I was talking about it to the museum and why it would be important for the collection, I said, well, you have the core glass, right? And also you have Yehud coins. And they kind of look at you like, so? And there's another friend of mine. His name is David Hendon. And he's well known for his books on biblical coins. So I just get out my David Hendon, Guide to Biblical Coins. Persian period coins, Yehud. And I said, well, here you go, gentlemen. It's right here in this book. And then you start piecing together the connections. So I don't have any of that stuff with me now. Like I said, it's very rare. I don't have anything like that with me at the moment. And as we go off the scripture record, many people, many of the Jewish people who are living in exile from Israel all the way through to Artaxerxes returned to Jerusalem, returned to their homeland, and they would have brought their belongings with them. And so that's why we'd find some Persian items in Jerusalem dating to this later period. And they were the ones that were living there in Jerusalem. They're ones that traveled back to Jerusalem. And of course, we read the story about the opposition that they received from some people in Jerusalem. All of that, this is the background to this historical context and background to the cultural setting of the Bible that you can keep in mind as you're reading the text. Well, that's its importance. And that's why we do this stuff here on archaeology from the ground down. Exactly right. We can introduce artifacts along with the biblical narrative to give it more meaning and make it a little bit more entertaining. Of course, so I wrote down my notes right here, Yehud coins. So of course, we're not live. So I'll edit Yehud coins in there along with core glass. So everybody gets a picture of what I'm, you know, not just a mental picture, but an actual picture of what I'm talking about. Great. I wish I had a photo of the artifact. I wonder if I can find it. If I do, I'll add that into the hoard that was found inside the vessel. Well, Dr. Graves, this has been very, very interesting. I appreciate your time. Everybody out there, thanks for liking and subscribing. We're around 121,000 subscribers just received a notice from YouTube that we received their silver button award. I think it's a plaque, not a button. And Bible Interact will be receiving it within, I think, a week or two. And as soon as they do, be sure as soon as I get a copy of it, I'll be sure to share it with everybody. And Dr. Graves, a large part of it is because you're with us in your contributions with all your effort and your work. And I really appreciate it. Today, everybody, have a great day. Thanks for joining us wherever you're at. And Dr. Graves, you too. Thanks for joining us today. And the topic, Artaxerxes, he was the fifth king, right? To make sure he was the fifth king in the rule. And the connection with the book of Israel and Nehemiah. But this time it's Nehemiah. Have a great day.