Alphabetic Inscriptions Research Articles

The Woman from Tekoa (2 Sam. 14) and the Character of Judicial Wisdom in Ancient Israel

Through the lens of comparative legal history, this study re-examines the story of the Wise Woman of Tekoa (2 Sam. 14.2–24) as a narrativized legal petition—an ancient Near Eastern epistolary sub-genre known from cuneiform and alphabetic inscriptions. This brief juridical parable offers a unique account of justice and adjudication largely independent of its ideological depiction in the Pentateuchal law codes, making it a critical text in the study of biblical law. In particular, it evokes two distinct forms of judicial wisdom in the context of legal self-help and royal adjudication. By comparing and contrasting this parable with other texts dealing with similar themes, I outline the diverse ways biblical writers explained the intersections of law, wisdom, and justice.

The West Semitic Alphabet in the Early Iron Age

In the hypothesis presented by the authors, stratified, nonmonumental inscriptions and their radiometric datings take center stage for the first time. It is in the living script of these texts rather than in the artificial alphabet of monuments that the evolution of the alphabet in Iron IIA can be studied properly. A key take-home lesson of the work is the significant ninth-century transformations of the alphabet from precursive Proto-Canaanite to supraregional cursive, thence to the well-known regional variants. Under the Omrides, the alphabet in Israel is attested minimally. No Omride texts were recognized at Samaria, nor Baashide texts at Tirzah. The newly founded West Semitic kingdoms since ca. 900 BCE will have constituted the cradle of the cursive, while papyrus or parchment and ink were the cursive’s likeliest vehicle. Alphabetic inscriptions on monuments, including Byblos, all cursive-inspired, will only have emerged in the last third of the ninth century.

Two Iron Age Alphabetic Inscriptions from Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, Israel

This paper presents two brief alphabetic inscriptions from Area D in the lower city of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, both deriving from Iron Age IIA contexts. The first is written in an Early Alphabetic script similar to an inscription previously published from the site (Maeir et al. 2008) and is interpreted as being related to the storage of wine. The second, written in later, “formalized” alphabetic script, is quite fragmentary and difficult to decipher, for which several possible interpretations are suggested. These two new inscriptions join the relatively large number of alphabetic inscriptions from Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, second only in number to contemporaneous Tel Rehov, and provide additional evidence to the outstanding role of the site during the early Iron Age.

The Newton Stones and writing in Pictland, part 2

This article re-evaluates the two inscriptions and the mirror symbol on the Newton Stone. The ogham is unusual in that it is read from the top rather than the bottom. The alphabetic inscription is intended to be read with, or to supplement, the ogham inscription. Close analysis demonstrates that the alphabetic inscription was painted onto the stone prior to carving. The carver may have followed an exemplum for the alphabetic inscription, possibly written on a wax tablet. Examination of the alphabetic script demonstrates that it is most closely related to informal scripts of the Late Antique period. The inscription is written in the Pictish language, and the stone probably dates to the 6th or early 7th century. The placement of the inscriptions and the mirror symbol may indicate that the two inscriptions were used in place of Pictish symbols.

The Newton Stones and writing in Pictland, part 1

In the grounds of Newton House near Insch in Aberdeenshire are two Pictish monuments. One is an inscribed stone that also has an incised Pictish mirror symbol, and the other is a Pictish symbol stone with a notched double-disc above a serpent and z-rod symbol. The inscribed stone, commonly referred to as the Newton Stone, has an ogham inscription on one edge that continues onto an added stemline, and on the top front is a unique horizontal, six-line alphabetic inscription. This article examines the documentary record for these two monuments, which were moved from their original location in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. Through analysis of the documentary evidence, and in comparison with the local geology, the area of the original findspot of the Newton Stone and associated symbol stone is identified. The original landscape of these stones is compared with the topographical features of other Pictish monuments, particularly those in Donside. This comparison reveals that the topographical and liminal features in the original vicinity of the Newton Stone and symbol stone correspond with the wider pattern of the siting of Pictish symbol stones and Pictish cemeteries, and the association between a potentially Pictish-age settlement and these monuments may be suggested through examination of local place-names.

Early alphabetic writing in the ancient Near East: the ‘missing link’ from Tel Lachish

The origin of alphabetic script lies in second-millennium BC Bronze Age Levantine societies. A chronological gap, however, divides the earliest evidence from the Sinai and Egypt—dated to the nineteenth century BC—and from the thirteenth-century BC corpus in Palestine. Here, the authors report a newly discovered Late Bronze Age alphabetic inscription from Tel Lachish, Israel. Dating to the fifteenth century BC, this inscription is currently the oldest securely dated alphabetic inscription from the Southern Levant, and may therefore be regarded as the ‘missing link’. The proliferation of early alphabetic writing in the Southern Levant should be considered a product of Levantine-Egyptian interaction during the mid second millennium BC, rather than of later Egyptian domination.

“Beloved of the Lady Are Those Who …”: A Recurring Memorial Formula in the Sinaitic Inscriptions

This paper proposes a revised interpretation of the recurring sequence ḏ t b ṯ n m ṯ found in the early alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem, an Egyptian turquoise mining facility located in the Sinai Peninsula. I argue that this sequence combines with the well-known phrase m(ʾ)hb(b)ʿlt “beloved of the Lady” in Sinai 351, 353, 360, and 361 to form a memorial formula meaning “Beloved of the Lady are those who tell people about Māṯ.” It thus expresses a sentiment similar to contemporaneous Egyptian inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem: the author of the inscriptions—in this case Māṯ—asks the reader to perform some action on his behalf. In return, he assures the reader that they will be beloved of the Lady (i.e., Hathor, the patron goddess of the mining district).

On Sippar’s Quay: Cuneiform Tablets with Aramaic Inscriptions from the Böhl Collection in Leiden

AbstractIn this article we publish and study three Neo-Babylonian cuneiform texts from the Böhl Collection that contain Aramaic inscriptions. Deriving from the same archival context, these tablets bring to life the complex social fabric of Sippar’s entrepreneurial harbour community and its multilinguistic landscape. We argue that the appearance of alphabetic inscriptions in this setting is not a coincidence and tells us more about the role of Aramaic in Babylonian society at the time.

Egyptian Centres and the Distribution of the Alphabet in the Levant

The article contends that the adoption of the alphabetic script in the Levant in the LB II–early Iron Age is best explained by the scribal activity of the Empire’s representatives in the Egyptian centres of government and by the display of artefacts written in the hieroglyphic script in these centres. The early alphabetic inscriptions clustered mainly in regions located near the Egyptian centres of Gaza, Joppa, Beth-shean and Kumidi and the city-states of Lachish and Byblos. The latter was the first city that developed extensive writing in the alphabetic script and the first to form a scribal school under the patronage of its royal court. Although the Egyptian display inscriptions and scribal culture inspired the local Canaanite elites, the latter, rather than adopting the prestigious Egyptian script and language, absorbed only the idea of writing, and applied it to their culture in the revolutionary medium invented hundreds of years earlier in the Sinai Peninsula.

Facts Matter


 
 
 Although D. Petrovich’s recent book The World’s Oldest Alphabet: Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script advances several claims about the origin of the alphabet and biblical history, its main arguments are linguistic. In particular, Petrovich identifies the language of the early alphabetic inscriptions as Hebrew as part of a larger argument for the historicity of the biblical Exodus tradition. In this review essay, I will summarize and critique Petrovich’s linguistic arguments. Along the way, I will consider two important questions in the classification of the Canaanite languages
 
 

NAJSTARSZE HEBRAJSKIE INSKRYPCJE ALFABETYCZNE (ANALIZA EPIGRAFICZNA)

Today, science has six of the oldest Hebrew alphabetic inscriptions: ostracon from ʼIzbet Ṣartah (about 1200 BC), inscription from Tel Zayit (/ 11th / half of 10th century BC), ostracon from Chirbet Qeiyafa (decline 11th - the first half of 10th century BC – reign of Saul ); a new inscription from Chirbet Qeiyafa (dated as the previous one); new ostracon form Ophel, Jerusalem (11th or half of 10th BC – reign of Solomon, it is also the oldest Hebrew inscription from the area of Jerusalem); Gezer Calendar (second half of 10th BC – reign of Solomon or the first half of the ninth century BC). This article discusses the contemporary state of research on early Hebrew inscriptions. It also presents the author's own findings and related issues on ancient Hebrew epigraphic.

Egipski kontekst wynalezienia alfabetu (inskrypcje z Serabit Al-Chadim oraz Wadi Al-Hôl

The article presents the beginnings of alphabetic writing in Sinai (Serabit al-Chadim) in the context of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing and the subsequent early alphabetic inscriptions from Wadi al-Hol (Egypt) and Wadi Arava (Israel). In the light of the present state of research it can be concluded that the oldest alphabet (type: abgad) was established Semites working in the copper mines in Sinai under the rule of Egypt, probably in the nineteenth century BC. Direct effects on Semitic alphabetic writing had Egyptian hieroglyphs. Discovered in recent years alphabetic inscriptions in the Wadi al-Hol and Wadi Arava turned out to be younger than the Sinaic inscriptions and are another element in the early development of alphabetic writing

Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

This article presents a new theoretical framework for computer-assisted decipherment of ancient alphabetic inscriptions. This framework is based on regular expressions, a widely used computer science formalism for encoding text strings with partially unknown characters. We then present a new software called Scrypt, which applies our framework to the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon, an important Proto-Canaanite inscription recently discovered in Israel, as a first case study. Several new anthroponymic readings for the Qeiyafa ostracon, found with the help of our software, are presented as part of that case study. The software, freely available online ([www.ScryptApp.com][1]), enables users to encode all possible readings for a given grapheme in the ostracon and provides fast automated dictionary searches for lexemes. [1]: http://www.ScryptApp.com

Sinai 357


 
 
 Although Sinai 357 is one of the longest and best-preserved early alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem, these characteristics have not made it any easier to interpret. Most scholars read it as a command from a mining foreman to one of his subordinates, but this reading creates logical and contextual problems. To avoid these problems, I read Sinai 357 as a votive inscription to the Hurrian deity Teššob that employs language similar to first-millennium Northwest Semitic dedicatory inscriptions. Such a reading reflects cultural and linguistic contact between speakers of Egyptian, Hurrian, and a Northwest Semitic language at the site of Serabit el-Khadem.
 
 

Le paysage des théonymes en Crète et à Chypre

This article is based on epigraphic documents coming from the islands of Crete and Cyprus, where theonyms were organized around a central god (Zeus in Crete and Aphrodite in Cyprus). The use of divine names reveals two contrasting notions of Greek political power : the nomos in Crete, the archè in Cyprus. A special study is devoted to an early Cypriot alphabetic inscription with the word Paphia : it shows that the divine name was significant on three levels (civic, insular, and Greek). Moreover, this inscription belongs to a series of epigrams related to the last Cypriot kings. Its early dating can be sustained by the examination of a very similar inscription from Paphos, which we propose to date to the reign of Ptolemy Sôter rather than Philadelphus. If correct, this last document gives the earliest to date evidence (306 B. C.) of the use by Ptolemy Sôter of the title of basileus.

The swan-song of Proto-Canaanite in the ninth century BCE in light of an alphabetic inscription from Megiddo

The paper presents a sherd with the remnant of an inscription, unearthed at Megiddo in the 2014 excavation season in a level affiliated with either the transition from Stratum VB to Stratum VA-IVB, or with Stratum VA-IVB. This is the earliest alphabetic text from the site. The continuation of Proto-Canaanite into the ninth century is then addressed, and other questions concerning the development of the West Semitic alphabet in the tenth-ninth centuries.

The Lachish Jar Sherd: An Early Alphabetic Inscription Discovered in 2014

The article presents a 12th-century b.c. alphabetic inscription unearthed at Lachish, Israel, during the 2014 excavation season.

FROM GABII AND GORDION TO ERETRIA AND METHONE: THE RISE OF THE GREEK ALPHABET

AbstractThe three longest inscriptions from Methone, which all seem to be in Eretrian script, are an important testimony to the diffusion of literacy across the Mediterranean world. They help us to reconstruct the prehistory of the Greek alphabet, which according to internal evidence went through three phases, from the simplest ‘Cretan’ script to Euboean, Roman and ultimately Ionian. Yet the earliest alphabetic inscriptions seem to come from Gabii in Latium and Gordion in Phrygia, a fact which contradicts the internal evidence that Greeks adapted the Phoenician script. Consistency returns only if one accepts a recent proposal to raise the chronology of the Middle and Late Geometric periods. The finds from Methone confirm that Euboean script was already well adapted to the recording of complex texts such as epic poetry.

Drinking the fifth cup: notes on the drunken Indian image in colonial Mexico

The stereotypical image of the drunken Amerindian in Mexico dates back to the decades following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec state in 1521, and is present in New-Spanish (colonial Mexican) visual culture that was jointly produced by native artists and Spanish friars of the sixteenth century. Along with Spanish religious and historical chronicles of the period, and official colonial documents, these early pictorial works comprise a larger body of historical works that construct the colonial image of the drunken Amerindian. This essay examines the earliest textual and visual evidence that documents drunkenness among New Spain’s native population, and situates these sources in a colonial context in which culturally distinct methods of recording knowledge — native-produced, pictographic images and Spanish alphabetic inscriptions — were combined for Spanish friars and colonial officials to understand the customs and histories of New Spain’s indigenous groups. In particular, this essay critically analyzes the unions and disjunctions between early colonial native manuscript images of intoxication and the Spanish inscriptions that commented on them. It argues that the stereotypical image of the drunken native in New Spain’s early visual record was due not only to the evangelical goals of Spanish friars and the propensity of colonialism to render its subjects as unruly, but also to the complex relationship between European alphabetic text and native-made images, and partial correlations between elite indigenous and Euro-Christian ideologies.

A New Approach to Authenticating the Writing on an Unprovenanced Steatite Vessel as an Early Alphabetic Inscription

Previous articleNext article No AccessA New Approach to Authenticating the Writing on an Unprovenanced Steatite Vessel as an Early Alphabetic InscriptionGordon J. HamiltonGordon J. HamiltonHuron University College, Emeritus Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 21, Number 1-22014וְאֵת שֵׁם אַהֲרֹן תִּכְתֹּב: “And Inscribe the Name of Aaron”: Studies in Bible, Epigraphy, Literacy and History A journal of ASOR Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/MAR201421112 © 2017 American Society of Overseas Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.