Carians as Skilled Masons in Israel and Mercenaries in Judah in the Early I Millennium B.C.E.

Abstract

In recent studies the Carians of pre-Hellenistic times are described as sailors and mercenaries. It is true that the inscriptions they made when serving as mercenaries in Egypt under the command of pharaoh Psammetichus I (664–610 B.C.E.) or II (595–589 B.C.E.) speak of that. We learn this also from Herodotus I.12 and 171. But now we know that the Carians in Egypt were not only men of military professions, but skilled stonecutters and masons. This most important discovery and explanation was made by Sh. L. Gosline. The author identified 37 masons' marks, which came from buildings, or from quarries, with signs of the Carian alphabet. Most of them came from the terrace of the temple of Khnum at Elephantine, and they can be dated to the VII or VI centuries B.C.E. Such Carian signs – masons' marks – are also known from Persepolis and Pasargadae of the Achaemenid times. Taking the above given material into account, N. Franklin identified 17 masons' marks as Carian letters in the wallstones of Samaria and Megiddo, cities of the Israeli kingdom at the levels of the IX century B.C.E.