A Proto - Canaanite Abecedary Dating from the Period of the Judges and its Implications for the History of the Alphabet

Demsky, Aaron

doi:10.1179/tav.1977.1977.1-2.14

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The latest known example is dated to the Early Muslim period. Most scholars interpret these inscriptions as scribal exercises (Demsky 1977;Lemaire 1978;Hestrin and Dayagi-Mendels 1979;Millard 1985). This may serve as an ultimate explanation if the alphabetic inscriptions were restricted to ostraca or scrolls only.…”

Section: Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Greek Abecedary Fragment from the City of David

Ben-Ami¹,

Tchekhanovets²

2008

Palestine Exploration Quarterly

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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.

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Section: Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A complete abecedary, consisting of 22 letters of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, written from left to right, was found at 'Izbet Sartah (Demsky 1977;Kochavi 1977;Lemaire 1978). The abecedary was a part of a long inscription written in ink on an ostracon.…”

Section: Early Abecedariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Greek Abecedary Fragment from the City of David

Ben-Ami¹,

Tchekhanovets²

2008

Palestine Exploration Quarterly

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“…This would be arguing in an obvious circle. One can, of course, adduce the clzbet Sarta inscription, part of which more or less corresponds to our idea of the Hebrew alphabet; and one can go farther afield and identify cognate alphabets in Ugaritic and ancient Aramaic and Ammonite epigraphs (see Demsky, 1977 andLemaire, 1985, p. 39). But without a prior notion of what an alphabet looks like one could not have found alphabets in these extra-biblical texts either.…”

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Theory and Argument in Biblical Criticism

Greenstein¹

2020

Essays on Biblical Method and Translation

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It is the viewpoint that creates the object." (de Saussure, 1966, p. 8) Israeli archaeologist Gabriel Barkay has recently published a preliminary report and reading of Hebrew inscriptions incised on two thin silver strips (Barkay, 1986, esp. pp. 29-31). Each has been identified as a version of the so-called priestly benediction that appears in the Masoretic Text in Num 6:24-26. The larger text is said to contain traces of the three benedictions that we read in the MT. Contrary to what an innocent reader might suppose from any of a number of newspaper accounts of the discovery and deciphering of the texts, the paleographer, Ada Yardeni, did not identify the famous passage by simply reading the ancient Hebrew characters. She had, at first, considerable difficulty in distinguishing the Hebrew letters from other scratches in the silver. She could, however, make out three instances of the tetragrammaton, YHWH. She proceeded to identify, decipher, and read additional letters and words only after a friend had suggested that, in view of the three occurrences of YHWH, the text might correspond to the threefold priestly benediction (Rabinovich, 1986, p. 12). The delicately engraved

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A Proto - Canaanite Abecedary Dating from the Period of the Judges and its Implications for the History of the Alphabet

Cited by 2 publications

References 13 publications

A Greek Abecedary Fragment from the City of David

A Greek Abecedary Fragment from the City of David

Theory and Argument in Biblical Criticism

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