JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

embalming
by any special individual, whether priest or king. In the Bible,
Moses and Aaron have leading ritual roles, depending on the
context, but the spring and fall festivals never specify the role
of a priest, even in the Holiness and Priestly versions of Leviticus
23 and Numbers 28–29. All the accounts of Israel’s primary
festivals emphasize the gathering of the populace. At Emar, the
most striking comparison again is found in the zukru, “given”
by “the sons of the land of Emar” together and with feasting
by “the people” as a whole. The feasting takes place outside the
city walls, where all the gods of the town have gathered to witness
Dagan’s procession between sacred stones. Although the
king’s financial commitment to the festival is impressive, no
ritual role is attributed to him. Likewise, the diviner is absent.
Only the gods have individual roles, and we are never told who
moves them or manipulates their statues. What is important
is the participation of all the people and all their gods, the human
and divine population of Emar. The same full participation
characterizes the ideal of the Torah festivals.
The continuities between the worlds of Emar and of
the Bible have more to do with the structures of their societies.
At the same time, the ritual calendar and emphasis on the
collective at the ritual expense of the king, for example, are
not universal Near Eastern traits. Somehow, both Ugarit and
Emar show different expressions of a cultural kinship that
reached north and south along the Mediterranean and inland.
The overlapping preoccupations of Torah instruction and
the Emar ritual texts allow glimpses of this common cultural
foundation beneath the superstructures of their separate developments.
These glimpses warn us neither to treat the Bible
and its religion as a world unto itself nor to explain points of
similarity by the notion of borrowing, especially by contacts
with conquering Mesopotamian powers. Rather, these similarities
are hints of a massive commonality, from which the
distinct features of particular peoples developed. The commonality
itself is not uniform across the ancient world, and
the north-south axis is striking, even as lines of distinction
will not often be sharp. Emar, like Ugarit and other Syrian
sites with cuneiform archives from the Bronze Age, suggests
a depth to the cultural traditions embedded in the Bible that
is too easily neglected. Evaluation of the stories and the events
they describe is a problem that requires other comparative
evidence.
Bibliography: M. Adamthwaite, Late Hittite Emar (2001); D.
Arnaud, Recherches au pays d’Astata, Emar VI. 1–4 ( 1985–87); idem,
Textes syriens de l’âge du Bronze Recent (1991); G. Beckman, Texts from
the Vicinity of Emar in the Collection of Jonathan Rose. 1996; Z. Ben-
Barak, in, M. Heltzer and E. Lipinski (ed.), Society and Economy in
the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1500–1000 B.C.) (1988), 87–97; D. Beyer,
Emar IV. Les sceau. ( 2001); M. Chavalas, (ed.). Emar: The History, Religion,
and Culture of a Syrian Town in the Late Bronze Age (1996); U.
Finkbeiner, et al. in: Baghdader Mitteilungen, 32 (2001) 41–110; ibid,
33 (2002), 109–46; ibid, 34 (2003) 9–100; D. Fleming, The Installation
of Baal’s High Priestess at Emar (1992); idem, in, Ugarit-Forschungen
24 (1992) 59–71; idem, in, RB 106 (1999) 8–35; 161–74; idem; Time at
Emar (2000); J.-C. Margueron, (ed.), Le Moyen-Euphrate (1980); Articles
by Arnaud, Laroche, and Margueron; idem, in, BA, 58 (1995)
126–38; E. Pentiuc, West Semitic Vocabulary in the Akkadian Texts
from Emar (2001); R. Pruzsinszky, Die Personennamen der Texte aus
Emar (2003); S. Stephano, L’accadico di Emar. (1998); A. Tsukimoto,
in, Acta Sumerologica, 12 (1990) 177–259; (II), 13 (1991) 275–333; (III)
14 (1992) 311–15; (IV) 16 (1994) 231–36; J. Westenholz, Cuneiform Inscriptions
in the Collection of the Bible Lands Museum: The Emar
Tablets (2000).
[Daniel Fleming (2 nd ed.)]
EMBALMING. The natural drying out of the body by solar
heat (mummification) is the oldest method of preserving
a corpse. The ancient Egyptians may have simply tried to
dry corpses in the hot desert sands, or as in one of the chambers
found at Thebes, in rooms which were artificially heated.
Embalming is the artificial treatment of a corpse to prevent
or delay its putrefaction. In ancient Egypt the technique
consisted, according to Herodotus, of using an iron hook
to draw out the brain through the nostrils, and then making
a cut along the flank to remove the abdominal contents,
which were washed and soaked in palm wine and infusions
of spices, and then stored in “canopic” jars. The heart, as seat
of intelligence, was removed, wrapped in linen, and replaced
into the chest cavity. The cavity was filled with myrrh, cassia,
and other spices before being sewn up; the body was then
washed and wrapped from head to foot in fine linen. The Bible
describes embalmers as “physicians” (Gen. 50:2), and mentions
it (perhaps to provide local color) only with reference to
Jacob and Joseph (Gen. 50:2–3, 26), who both died in Egypt.
The statement that the process required 40 days (Gen. 50:3)
is at variance with Herodotus’ statement that it required 70,
the period which the Bible assigns to the Egyptians’ mourning
for Jacob. In actuality, the mummification process might range
between 30 and 200 days. The strong belief in an afterlife was
what made preservation of the body so important in Egypt, in
marked contrast to the situation in ancient Israel.
Today embalming before burial is widely practiced in the
United States by undertakers, who inject a formalin solution
into the blood vessels; but in Israel it is rare, being confined
entirely to bodies being sent abroad for burial (in conformity
with international regulations).
Bibliography: H.E. Sigerist, A History of Medicine (1951),
353–54; I. Thorwald, Science and Secrets of Early Medicine (1962), index.
Add. Bibliography: L. Lesko, in: CANE III, 1764–66.
[Heinrich Karplus]
EMBDEN, GUSTAV (1874–1933), German biochemist. Born
in Hamburg, Embden was appointed professor of physiology
at Frankfurt University in 1914, where he carried on his productive
investigations into the chemistry of muscular contraction.
Recognizing that muscle glycogen is not directly
oxidized for energy, he helped to elaborate the metabolic
pathways by which carbohydrate is degraded within the cell.
This biochemical pattern, which bears his name, is characteristic
of most living cells. Embden also stressed the significance
of phosphoric acid in the intracellular metabolism of
sugars. Other research contributions were in the area of fat
390 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6