not necessarily monotheistic), aniconic in representation, and lived out or actualized in a manner that rejected earlier West Semitic deities and yet embraced their cultic objects and actions, whether maṣṣēbôt and tent sanctuaries or treaties and blood sacrifices. In Iron Age I the polytheism of the earlier periods continues with no mention of Yahweh in the extrabiblical texts. The archaeology at first attests to a largely egalitarian culture for twelfth-century BC Israel. It is not governed