Tatami: The Enigmatic Toponym of Western Judah, and Use of Suffixes in Dating Toponyms

Sometimes, all that remains from the history of a place is its name. Thus, toponyms may provide valuable information. Moving backward in time, we trace the ancient history of the Arab/Crusader village Bēt ˁAṭab in western Judea, with remains from Middle-Bronze II (MB II), Iron III and Hellenistic periods. In Roman times it was Eusebius’ Ēnadab, ‘Spring of ˁaṭab’, identified near the spring of this name mentioned in the Survey of Western Palestine. While missing from Masoretic Biblical town lists, Tatami of the Septuagint derives by dropping the b- from reconstructed batˁaṭami, traced to Northwest Semitic languages exhibiting the ay>ā diphthong contraction. The MB II final -i is analysed as an enclitic -mi, found also in the Execration Text (ET) Shechem, and as enclitic -ma in personal names from Alalaḫ VII. The ‘prince’ of nearby ET ‘Ashnah (=Beth Shemesh) had an identical name as later Niqmi-epuh, King of Yamḫad, suggesting settlers from Yamḫad/Alalaḫ during the early 2nd millennium bce. In Bronze Age Bēt-X toponyms X was a deity. Thus, batˁaṭami = ‘place of the vulture-goddess shrine’. This, and additional evidence, suggest that Egyptian king Senwosret III could have set a shrine to goddess Nekhbet on Bēt ˁAṭab’s summit during his Shechem campaign.