Heilige Abfallgruben

The ritual burial of cultic objects is known worldwide, in the ancient Near East since 7 millennium BC. An object dedicated to a deity could not simply be removed from the sanctuary. Ever now and then useless, damaged or superfluous objects were buried in pits, so-called favissae (sg. favissa). Although many cultic objects and votive offerings have been excavated in Israel/Palestine the topic of ritual burial was not given much attention by Biblical archaeology. The archaeological part of the Nicole Straaburger's study (chap. 5-8) examines the development of this cultural practice, covering a period of 1200 years in the Southern Levant as an "histoire de longue duree". Attention is paid to regional and cultural peculiarities. The results of the archaeological examination are used in the second part (chap. 9) to contribute to the exegesis of a Biblical text: Gen 35,1-7 narrates Jacob's burial of "foreign gods" and earrings beneath the Terebinth of Sichem.