7. Month of pruning [vines].
8. Month of summer-fruit [figs].
This calendar, beginning in October, still conforms to the agricultural pursuits of the year. It also gives us archæological evidence of the culture of flax by the ancient Israelites. (See Josh. 2:6; Prov. 31:13; Hosea 2:5, 9.)
(12) Domestic Animals.—The domestic animals of ancient Palestine may be traced in part by their bones found in various excavations, and in part by the pictures of them drawn in caves and tombs. The domestic animals most often mentioned in the Bible are asses, cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. Bones, pictures, or models of these were found in all the strata of Gezer.[164] There seem to have been a variety of cows; the breeds varied in the different periods. No horse bones were found until the third Semitic period (1350-1000 B. C.). It was, perhaps, during that period that the horse was introduced by the Hittites, who appear to have brought it from Turkestan, where its bones have been found in much earlier strata.[165] The ass was, however, the common beast of burden in Palestine, and bones of horses are rare until the Greek period. A number of figures of horses’ heads with their bridles were found, as well as a horse’s bit, and the picture of a horse and his rider. The pig was a domesticated animal of the primitive cave-dwellers of Gezer, who appear to have offered swine in sacrifice, but pig-bones are rarely found in the Semitic strata. As swine were unclean to all Semites, this is not strange. The dog appears to have been half-domesticated, as the Bible implies, as his bones were employed for making prickers and similar tools, but no pictures or models of dogs are known to the writer. Probably they were of the half-wild pariah type. Certainly they were not held in high esteem. (See 1 Sam. 17:43; 2 Sam. 16:9.) For illustrations, see [Figs. 89-92].
(13) Bees.—A number of inverted jars, each pierced with a number of circular holes, were found. It seems probable that these were rude beehives. Before the Israelites settled in Palestine they knew it as “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. 3:8, 17; Num. 14:8; 16:13, 14; Deut. 6:3), and their view was, we are told, shared by others (2 Kings 18:32). It is not surprising, therefore, to find evidences of bee culture; (see [Fig. 95]).
(14) Birds.—As to birds, it is doubtful whether they had any domesticated ones before the Babylonian Exile. A rude picture of an ostrich painted on a potsherd was found at Gezer, as well as some painted fragments of ostrich-egg shell. The ostrich is mentioned in the Old Testament (Job 39:13; Lam. 4:3), but as a wild bird. The Palestinians knew it as a bird that might be hunted. They sometimes gathered the eggs of wild birds to eat (Deut. 22:6; Isa. 10:14). These were, perhaps, sometimes ostrich-eggs. The modern Arabs make a kind of omelette of ostrich-eggs. The ostrich was certainly not a domestic bird.
At Gezer, too, a clay bird was found, or, rather, a small jar made in the form of a bird. The object was so realistic that holes were left in the clay wings for the insertion of feathers; ([Fig. 93]). The bird bears some resemblance to a duck, figures of which were found at Megiddo,[166] but the duck may have been wild. One clay head of a goose or swan was also found, but had the bird been domesticated there would probably have been more traces of it.
(15) Hens.—The one domestic bird that can be traced in Palestine is the hen, and hens were not introduced until after the Exile. Hens seem to have been first domesticated in India. They are not mentioned in the Rig Veda, but the Aryans seem to have come into contact with them when they settled in the valley of the Ganges about 1000 B. C. The Yajur and Atharva Vedas mention the cock. The hen is a domesticated Bankiva fowl, which also exists in a wild state in India. From India the hen was domesticated eastward to China, and westward to Persia. There is a possible picture of a cock on a sculpture of Sennacherib, which would indicate that the bird was known in Assyria at the beginning of the seventh century before Christ. Another is pictured on some Babylonian gems from the time of Nabuna’id, about 550 B. C. Pictures of cocks, three of them somewhat doubtful, are found on Babylonian seals of the Persian period.[167] The domesticated hen, traveling by way of the Black Sea, reached Asia Minor as early as the eighth century B. C.[168]
There is, however, no evidence of the presence of the hen in Palestine before the Greek period. Neither hen nor cock is mentioned in the Old Testament. In a tomb discovered by Peters and Thiersch in 1902, near Tell Sandahanna, the Marissa of the Seleucid period and the Moresheth-gath of Micah 1:14, a number of cocks are pictured; ([Fig. 94]). The tomb, constructed about 200 B. C., contains a number of Greek inscriptions.[169] In agreement with this evidence is also the fact that at Taanach there was found in a late pre-Arabic stratum the skeleton of a hen with an egg.[170] Before New Testament times, then, the hen had become a domestic fowl in Palestine. Every one would accordingly understand the lament of Christ, “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). The cock was so universally kept at this time that one of the divisions of the night was called the “cock-crowing” (Mark 13:35). It was the mark of the progress of the night afforded by the habits of the cock that was used by Jesus in predicting Peter’s denial (Matt. 26:34; Mark 14:30; Luke 22:34; John 13:38), and it was the recalling of this prediction by the crowing of the cock that brought Peter to repentant tears (Matt. 26:74; Mark 14:68, 72; Luke 22:60; John 18:27).