476 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



with a clay covering, over which a large curved fragment of pottery 

 had been placed. The heavy debris which had fallen on top of the 

 jars, when Period IV was destroyed, had resulted in the cracking of 

 the jar and the partial crushing of its top by the stone stopper. As 

 a result, the obviously valuable contents of the jar had seeped out 

 or evaporated. Another one of these storage jars was found to be 

 full of resin, as sweet smelling today as it was two and half millennia 

 ago. When this jar had been removed from the gi'ound and left 

 for a while at a tilted angle in the sun, the resin began to melt and 

 flow over the mouth of the jar. It is a matter of speculation for 

 what purpose this store of resin may have been intended in Elath. 

 Some of the resin may have been used, for instance, in the ship- 

 building industry which flourished at Ezion-geber and its successor 

 Elath. More of it was used, in all probability, in connection with 

 the smelting and refining and metal-manufacturing activities carried 

 on so intensively there. 



The settlements of Period IV were destroyed in turn, and a new 

 industrial village was built, with its walls, for the most part, on lines 

 entirely different from those of the previous ones. Not much of the 

 settlement of Period V is left, but it had possibly two phases. Its 

 history lasted from about the end of the sixth century or the first part 

 of the fifth century B. C. down to the fourth century B. C. To this 

 last settlement of Period V belong numerous sherds of Greek pottery 

 transported from Athens to Gaza by ship and sent then by camel 

 train to the north shore of the Red Sea, and reexported from there 

 to Arabia. 



In these Greek jars were contained wines and other products 

 shipped to Elath, and thence to Arabia, in return for the incense and 

 spices and other wares obtainable there. Aramaic ostraca were found 

 in this level during the previous season, belonging to the fifth-fourth 

 centuries B. C, and thus in part contemporary with the Attic wares 

 found with them. One of the ostraca was a wine receipt (pi. 8, 

 fig. 1). Another ostracon consisted of a fragment of an eighth- 

 seventh century cooking pot, with profiled rim and loop handle. 

 The ink inscription was on the inside surface of the sherd. It made 

 a very convenient piece of writing material, because the scribe could 

 grasp the handle of the fragment of pottery, while he dipped his 

 brush into the vegetable ink and brushed on the letters, many of 

 whose lines, unfortunately, are very faint. The inscription is Ara- 

 maic, and contemporary with the ostraca previously discovered, 

 despite the fact that the sherd itself belongs to an earlier age.^^ 



^ Glueck, Nelson, Ostraca from Elath. Bull. Ampr. Schools Oriental Res., No. 80, pp. 

 3-10, December 1940 ; No. 82, pp. 3-11, April 1941. 



