**3. Iron Age Cultic Sites Excavated in Transjordan**

In the area east of the river Jordan, eight possible Iron Age cult places (temples or shrines) have been excavated: three in the Jordan Valley (part of ancient Ammon), four in Moab, and one in Edom (Figure 1).1 These buildings have been identified as cultic by their excavators, followed sometimes by much scholarly discussion. This paper will present the evidence as published so far and discuss the identifications, using the criteria of Zevit and Daviau outlined above (Figure 1).

<sup>1</sup> A complex interpreted as an Iron Age moon temple has recently been discovered at Rujm al-Kursi near Amman (see also the article by Tyson in this volume). A large building featured two stone reliefs at the entrance made of hewn white limestone blocks, each depicting a moon sickle on a pedestal. However, only the outlines of the building have been traced (it has not been excavated), and no Iron Age pottery from it has been published so far. Thus, both the dating and the plan of the complex remain uncertain, and in my view an interpretation as an Iron Age temple is premature. See further (Hübner 2009; Elkowicz 2014; and Tyson 2014, pp. 38–39).

**Figure 1.** Map of sites mentioned in the text.

#### *3.1. Deir Alla*

In the Jordan Valley, the most renowned cult place is at Tell Deir Alla. In 1967, a large text, painted on the plaster of a wall, was found in a small building. The text refers to the seer Balaam, son of Beor, known from the Bible (Numbers 21–24). The plaster was found in two heaps east and west of the wall on which the text was supposedly written, thrown there when an earthquake struck the village around 800 BC (Hoftijzer and van der Kooij 1976, 1991).

The text is clearly religious in nature and the room it belonged to (E335, 3 × 4.3 m) had benches on four sides. Benches in a building are often seen as a sign of its cultic nature. The benched room is part of a complex of rooms and courtyards in Phase IX. All in all, some forty rooms have been excavated in this unwalled village, forming 14 to 15 households. Ordinary household wares, bread ovens, storage facilities, and loom weights were found in every household. The benched room yielded no exotic or cultic materials, but some interesting finds were made in a nearby complex.

North of the benched room was an open courtyard with three bread ovens. From this courtyard one entered a complex of three rooms in which 18 loom weights were excavated. Boertien (2008) connects this weaving complex with the benched room and suggests that textiles were woven here for the goddess Shagar, the main goddess mentioned in the Balaam text. This interpretation is based on the special kind of textile made of hemp that was woven at Deir Alla and on a parallel with Kuntillet Ajrud, where another kind of rare textile was found in connection with a shrine.

Near the entrance of the weaving complex north of the benched room, an inscribed stone was found as well as a goblet and a very large loom weight, which all may have had cultic functions. The stone was inscribed with the words *eben shar'a* ("stone of shar'a"). Franken (2008, p. 44) connects the name 'shar'a' with the river Zerqa that runs close by the tell. The same words were incised on a jug found in another room of this complex.

Interpretations of the benched room vary from a Balaam height or cultic cave where people could come into contact with the gods while dreaming (Franken 2008) to a shrine for the goddess Shagar (Boertien 2008), with outlyers such as a classroom for the teaching of scribes (Van der Kooij 2002, p. 69) and "a meeting place of a group of prophets ... were the visions and deeds of that Balaam were remembered" (Wenning and Zenger 1991, p. 198).

Although the benched room and the building complex it belonged to did not yield many exotic or cultic materials, the benches, the special fabrics woven at the site, the inscribed stone and libation goblet and the outsize loom weight found in adjacent rooms as well as the content of the Balaam text undeniably point to the cultic nature of the building. There is no continuity with the Late Bronze Age temple excavated at the site which was located more to the west of the tell. The parallel with the shrine at Kuntillet Ajrud has been mentioned above. Zevit (2001, p. 250, n. 201) concludes that the Balaam inscription justifies the interpretation of the building as a shrine. Which rituals were performed in the shrine at Deir Alla remains unclear.
