Early ‘Golden Calf’ Figure Found Near Tel Aviv

Archeologists excavating an ancient fortress-city have discovered a figurine they believe was a precursor to the biblical golden calf that enraged Moses when he descended from Mt. Sinai.

The archeologists said the tiny statue, which predates the biblical Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, suggests that the Hebrews drew upon an ancient Canaanite tradition when they betrayed Moses by worshiping a pagan deity in his absence.

“Hebrews came out of the Canaanite milieu,” said Laurence E. Stager, a Harvard University archeologist. “This figurine shows the calf was a religious object in the area centuries before Moses.”

Stager, who is in charge of the dig where the figurine was found, said it was discovered June 26 and that he and his colleagues have been working since to date the figurine and establish its significance.

The team has concluded that the bronze-and-silver figurine, 4 1/2 inches high and 4 1/2 inches long, dates from the 16th Century BC, he said.

It was discovered almost entirely intact with a shattered pottery vessel in the remains of a pagan temple adjoining the gate of the ancient Canaanite port city of Ashkelon. The area is about 35 miles south of modern Tel Aviv.

The calf’s parts were cast separately and joined together with metal pins. Stager said the legs are made of silver and the body of bronze. The statue was most probably burnished to look golden, he said.

Stager said the calf was the first of its kind and age to be discovered.

“There have been discoveries of similar figurines, but they date 300 years later and were bulls, not calves,” he said. He said the Bible specifically mentioned male calves.

The figurine was found by a 20-year-old volunteer on the dig, Rachael Stark of Princeton, N.J. The four-room temple where the figurine rested was most probably a shrine for pagan worshipers making processions to and from Ashkelon, according to Stager.

During the 16th Century BC, Stager said, the port of Ashkelon was a regional power whose influence stretched as far as Egypt. Ashkelon was destroyed by an Egyptian army soon after the calf was cast, and the Canaanites were pushed out of the area over the next 300 years.

The best known case of Israelite idolatrous transgression is related in Exodus 32:1-6.

After fleeing Egypt into the desert, the people of Israel fashion a golden calf in despair at the delay in Moses’ return from receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.

Moses, ordered by God to return and right his people’s sin, descends the mountain “and as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf . . . (his) anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets . . . and broke them at the foot of the mountain.”