A Greek Abecedary Fragment from the City of David

Abstract

During the 2007 excavation season at the 'Givati Lot' in Jerusalem, an inscription bearing the fi rst six letters of the Greek alphabet was found. In this paper, we wish to describe the fi nd and its archaeological context, and to propose an interpretation regarding the phenomenon of abecedary inscriptions consisting of a simple enumeration of letters set in alphabetic order found in different archaeological contexts both in and outside Israel.The site is located on the eastern slope of the Tyropoeon Valley, some 30 m south of the Ottoman wall that encircles the Old City of Jerusalem. It consists mainly of the main parking lot ('Givati Lot') serving visitors to the City of David and the Old City, as well as a large terrace to its north. Excavations were carried out on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and fi nanced by the ELAD association. 1 The archaeological work at the site was started some forty-fi ve years ago under the directorship of K. M. Kenyon (Area M;Kenyon, 1963Kenyon, -1967, and resumed only in 2005 under R. Reich and E. Shukron of the IAA. In 2007, excavations at the site entered their third and fi nal phase as part of a large-scale project to be carried out here in the coming years, which intends to excavate the entire parking lot in year-round seasons.For the sake of convenience, we have decided to follow Kenyon's serial system and term the site 'Site M'.The current area, spread over the southwestern part of Site M (Area M1) was chosen to provide us with the archaeological sequence and periods represented in the site. During the 2007 season, bedrock was reached and twelve occupational strata were detected, some consisting of several subphases. The earliest stratum dates to the Iron Age II (Stratum XII) and the latest, to the Early Islamic period (Stratum I). The Byzantine (Strata V-VI) and the Late Second Temple (Stratum VII) periods comprise the most prominent remains at the site, and were sealed by the well-stratifi ed remains of the Islamic period (Strata I-IV). The architectural remains dated to the Early Hellenistic period (late 3-2 nd century bce; Stratum VIII) were not expected, and their presence should thus be viewed in light of the relative paucity of architectural remains of this period in the archaeological record of Jerusalem. The Iron Age is fairly represented by a sequence of four well deposited strata (Strata XII-IX), ranging from the very end of the Iron Age (seventh-sixth century bce) to the early Iron II.