This book is dedicated to our colleague and friend Benjamin Sass, who retired from the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations at Tel Aviv University in October 2016, after over 45 years of scholarly activity at the Israel Antiquities Authority, the University of Haifa and Tel Aviv University.
Benjamin (Benny) Sass was born in Jerusalem on June 10, 1948, during Israel's War of Independence. Jerusalem at the time was besieged and daily life was dire; his parents were probably relieved when a day later a one month cease-fire was declared. Benny grew up in small, sleepy Jerusalem oppressed by a wall that divided between the Israeli and Jordanian parts of the city. His parents, Esther and Victor, who had immigrated to Palestine from Germany before World War II, were entrenched in the large "yeke" (nickname for German Jews) community of Jerusalem. Benjamin was brought up in a German speaking home, and in fact could hardly speak Hebrew until the age of six, when he was enrolled in elementary school. Thanks to this background Benny is known to his friends as "Herr Sass" or "the Yeke Sass."

Benny developed an interest in history and archaeology at a young age. As early as his high school days he became an expert on Ottoman coins and in 1969, at the age of 21 (!), he published an article in the Quarterly of the Israel Numismatic Society, titled “The Turkish Bronze Coins from the Reign of >Abd el-Mejid.” This was followed by a 1972 article in the American Numismatic Society Museum Notes, which was entitled “The Silver and Billon Coinage Minted at Constantinople under Sultan Mahmud II.”

Benny began his academic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1969 and was a student of the giants of the time— Nahman Avigad, Michael Avi-Yonah, Benjamin Mazar, Haim Tadmor and Yigael Yadin (and somewhat later, Sara Groll and Joseph Naveh). The time was just after the Six Day War, and hence in 1972, while still an undergraduate student, Benny was offered the job of Deputy District Archaeologist in the Sinai Peninsula, where he helped to administer many Israeli exploration projects. During his Sinai years he carried out a survey of the Serabit el-Khadem plateau, where he discovered two previously unknown Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions—a finding which has had a lasting impact on his academic career. The romantic Sinai experience left its mark on Benny and many of his generation, and the reserved, shy young man is remembered hanging around near his office in the area of St. Catherine's Monastery dressed like a Bedouin—in a white galabia and shoes without socks....

One of us (I.F.) met Benny for the first time in an “epic” survey of the isolated Tih Plateau in central Sinai—a relatively unknown area of the peninsula (1973). In 1982 Benjamin submitted his MA thesis on the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, including his own discoveries in Sinai (written under the supervision of Trude Dothan and leading epigraphist Joseph Naveh). Sass then moved to Tel Aviv University, where, three years later he submitted his Ph.D. thesis, The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium BCE (1985, under the supervision of Anson F. Rainey).
Benny worked in the Sinai until 1980, when Israel pulled out of the region in accordance with the peace agreement with Egypt. He was then engaged by Israel's Department of Antiquities, which became, during his posting, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Benny worked at the IAA until 1993; he was an instrumental figure in its publications department, in administering its archives and in the construction of the IAA’s computational abilities.

In 1988 Benny was offered a position at the University of Haifa and nine years later, in 1997, he moved to Tel Aviv University, where he became full Professor in 2006. At Tel Aviv University he taught courses in a variety of fields, which demonstrate his outstandinglybroad scholarly scope, such as archaeology of Israel, epigraphy, the relationship between Egypt and the Levant, the archeology of Phoenicia, the archaeology of the South Arabian Peninsula and Jewelry in the Ancient Near East.
Benny started his career as a field archaeologist. He excavated the Egyptian cemetery of Deir el-Balah with Trude Dothan; went on to Athienu in Cyprus with Trude Dothan and Amnon Ben-Tor; and then dug in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem with Nahman Avigad. He also conducted his own fieldwork at several sites in Sinai, most notably the excavation of Intermediate Bronze Age sites in Jebel Meghara in the northern part of the peninsula and the survey of the Serabit el-Khadem Plateau. But he soon turned to other fields of interest, among them Egyptology, epigraphy and art of the ancient Near East, and recently
also biblical studies.
All this drove him to establish strong cooperation with institutions and individual scholars abroad. As early as 1976 Benny travelled to London to assist Olga Tufnell in preparing her book on Middle Bronze scarabs. Starting in the 1990s he established strong relations with Othmar Keel and his team at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, with whom he cooperated in research of glyptic finds from the Levant. During these years and later he also worked in the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin in cooperation with Joachim Marzahn and others. In the 1990s Benjamin spent sabbatical time at Harvard University and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Starting in 1994, Benny developed special, close relationships with
French institutions and scholars dealing with the archaeology and history of the ancient Near East. He spent sabbatical years and years of leave from Tel Aviv University in Paris, at the Centre National
de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the École Pratique des Hautes Études. In 2003 he was nominated as an associé étranger in the Laboratoire des études sémitiques anciennes, which later became a part of the research group titled “Orient et Méditerranée” (UMR 8167). Indeed, in the past decade Benny spent part of his time in the library of the Collège de France in Paris. The Paris years broadened Benny’s circle of friends, among them two of the editors of this volume (C.R. and T.R.).
Benjamin Sass’s publications are listed below. First and foremost one is attracted to his highly important and influential books in the field of the genesis of the alphabet, which made him one of the leading figures in this field. Also noteworthy is the 1997 book, The Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals, by Nahman Avigad, “revised and completed by Benjamin Sass,” in which his impact was in fact one of co-author. No less important is his book, The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium, a classic which played a major part in the revolution of Iron Age chronology. These books, and his articles, represent his exceptionally broad knowledge. In order to demonstrate this, we would mention, among the latter, the studies on two previously unknown Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions (1978), inscribed Babylonian arrowheads (1989), early Iron Age Greco-Phoenician relations (1993), Post-Exilic Hebrew seals (1993), Arabs and Greeks in Jerusalem (1990), the Wenamun tale (2002), Wadi el-Hol and the alphabet (2008), Taita king of Palistin (2010), the Ördekburnu stele (2013, with André Lemaire), a reevaluation of the West Semitic alphabetic inscriptions (2013, with Israel Finkelstein), the biblical Asherah (2014) and Aram and Israel during the 10th and 9th centuries BCE (in press). The title of this book, Alphabets, Texts and Artefacts in the Ancient Near East, represents Benjamin’s exceptionally broad scope of interest, knowledge and research activity.
Benjamin Sass is a scholar in the true, full meaning of the word: his horizons are broad, his learning immense and his studies deep. He always strives to expand his knowledge, constantly ready to develop
new ideas even when they challenge conventional wisdoms. Benny never gives up: question follows question until the subject of his interest is fully explored to its last detail and a clear paradigm is established. It should come as no surprise, then, that Benny is referred to by some of his close friends in Israel as the ????? ?????? (urim and thummim), in the daily sense of modern spoken Hebrew, meaning “he
who has the ultimate knowledge”....
Finally, let us not forget one of Benny’s greatest qualities. Benny is a wonderful friend: attentive, generous, helpful and supportive. This, in fact, is the uniqueness of the present book among many other festschriften: all authors are not only colleagues; they are friends!

Israel Finkelstein, Christian Robin and Thomas Römer
October 2016