Two Offering Dishes with Phoenician Inscriptions from the Sanctuary of ʿARAD

Abstract

In his splendid volume Arad Inscriptions, Yohanan Aharoni gave principal publication to two small offering dishes'bearing roughly scratched inscriptions.2 They were found in a notable context: at the foot of the altar of sacrifice (Locus 394) assigned by Aharoni to Stratum X and dated by him to the 9th sentury B.c. The inscriptions were read as Hebrew, i.e., the letter qop plus an obscure symbol, and compared with another graffito which reads in ordinary Hebrew characters qdS.3 The inscription, however, is not Hebrew. Both signs are letters, and both are characteristic Phoenician forms: qop followed by gin. Happily the duplication of the inscription gives the paleographer slightly variant forms of each of the two letters so that there can be no question of a single idiosyncratic form misleading us. The letters show strong cursive elements best paralleled in Phoenician graffiti and ostraca, (figs. 1, 2). The fin is a developed type which appears in Phoenician first in the second half of the 7th century; presumably it evolved in the cursive in the first half of the 7th century.4 The new form ousts the older lapidary form in formal scripts in the early 6th century, though the (archaizing) lapidary form may be used idiosyncratically in monumental inscriptions as late as the end of the century. The late 7thearly 6th century fin exhibits two slightly variant forms in Phoenician texts: a trident form, and a shallow form with more or less rounded