A Series of Dramatic Archaeological Finds
13:25 Nov 11, '05 / 9
Cheshvan 5766
By Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
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Archaeologists announced this week the
discovery of a 3,000-year-old Hebrew inscription. It is merely the latest of
a series of dramatic archaeological finds in Israel in recent months. |
Archaeologists have discovered a 40-pound stone
containing the oldest known example of the Hebrew alphabet. The stone,
inscribed with the Hebrew alphabet written out in its traditional order, was
found in the wall of a building dated from the 10th century BCE in Tel Zayit,
ancient Judea, south of Jerusalem. The building itself was part of a network
of structures at the site, indicating an important border town connected to
a centralized kingdom.
The discovery was made by Dr. Ron Tappy, a professor at the Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary, on the last day of a five-week dig at Tel Zayit. "This
is very rare," he said, "This makes it very historically probable there were
people [3,000 years ago] who could write." In an interview with the New
York Times, Dr. Tappy said, "All successive alphabets in the ancient
world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit."
In addition to constituting an important contribution in understanding the
history of writing, the inscription helps to counter claims that the Bible
could not have been written by Jews in ancient times, experts said. The
find, in its context, suggests literacy levels that support Biblical
writings of a unified Jewish kingdom.
Further details of the Tel Zayit discovery are to be reported next week
during a meeting of experts on Biblical literature in Philadelphia.
For Biblical scholars, the latest discovery dovetails with another ancient
Hebrew inscription found in August of this year in an archeological dig in
the City of David, adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem. The inscription
was on a royal seal dating to the period of the First Temple. The seal has
the name of Yehudi, son of Shelemiah, one of the top officials in the court
of the last Judean king prior to the destruction of the First Temple, King
Zedekiah. He is mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah.
The seal was found at the site of the palace of the Judean kings, according
to archaeologists under the supervision of Dr. Eilat Mazar of Hebrew
University. Several years ago, another circa-580 BCE royal seal was found in
the same area. It had the name of Gemaryahu, son of Shafan, who is also
mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah as a top official in the court of King
Zedekiah's predecessor, King Yehoyachim.
The discovery of the ancient alphabet in Tel Zayit was preceded last week by
the announcement of the discovery of a rare Christian religious structure
from the 3rd-4th centuries CE on the grounds of Megiddo Prison, in northern
Israel. Excavations at the site, carried out by the Israel Antiquities
Authority (IAA), included the discovery of an impressive mosaic floor and
three ancient Greek inscriptions.
IAA excavation supervisor Yotam Tefer said, "This is a unique and important
structure vis-a-vis our understanding of the early period of
Christianity..."
One of the inscriptions is dedicated to the memory of four women: Primilia,
Kiraka, Dorothea and Crista. Other inscriptions memorialize the people who
contributed to the church, including a military officer.
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NY TIMES VESION:
A Is for Ancient, Describing an Alphabet Found Near Jerusalem
Courtesy of The Zeitah Excavations and Israel Antiquities Authority
Detail of the "ABC" Inscription from Tel Zayit, showing
the letters waw through tet. Note that the letters are out
of the traditional order: going (right-to-left) waw, he, het, zayin, tet
rather than the expected he, waw, zayin, het, tet.
Published: November 9, 2005
In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a
scribe carved his A B C's on a limestone boulder - actually, his aleph-beth-gimel's,
for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent
Hebrew alphabet.
The New York Times
Letters on a stone found near Tel Zayit resemble
Phoenician.
Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the
inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the
layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known
specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of
writing, they said this week.
If they are right, the stone bears the oldest reliably dated example of
an abecedary - the letters of the alphabet written out in their traditional
sequence. Several scholars who have examined the inscription tend to support
that view.
Experts in ancient writing said the find showed that at this stage the
Hebrew alphabet was still in transition from its Phoenician roots, but
recognizably Hebrew. The Phoenicians lived on the coast north of
Israel, in today's
Lebanon, and are considered the originators of alphabetic writing,
several centuries earlier.
The discovery of the stone will be reported in detail next week in
Philadelphia, but was described in interviews with Ron E. Tappy, the
archaeologist at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary who directed the dig.
"All successive alphabets in the ancient world, including the Greek one,
derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit," he said.
The research is supported by an anonymous donor to the seminary, which
has a long history in archaeological field work. The project is also
associated with the American Schools of Oriental Research and the W. F.
Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, in Jerusalem.
Frank Moore Cross Jr., a Harvard expert on early Hebrew inscriptions who
was not involved in the research, said the inscription "is a very early
Hebrew alphabet, maybe the earliest, and the letters I have studied are what
I would expect to find in the 10th century" before Christ.
P. Kyle McCarter Jr., an authority on ancient Middle Eastern writing at
Johns Hopkins University, was more cautious, describing the inscription as
"a Phoenician type of alphabet that is being adapted." But he added, "I do
believe it is proto-Hebrew, but I can't prove it for certain."
Lawrence E. Stager, an archaeologist at Harvard engaged in other
excavations in Israel, said the pottery styles at the site "fit perfectly
with the 10th century, which makes this an exceedingly rare inscription."
But he added that more extensive radiocarbon dating would be needed to
establish the site's chronology.
The Tel Zayit stone was uncovered at an eight-acre site in the region of
ancient Judah, south of Jerusalem, and 18 miles inland from Ashkelon, an
ancient Philistine port.
The two lines of incised letters, apparently the 22 symbols of the Hebrew
alphabet, were on one face of the 40-pound stone. A bowl-shaped hollow was
carved in the other side, suggesting that the stone had been a drinking
vessel for cult rituals, Dr. Tappy said. The stone, he added, may have been
embedded in the wall because of a belief in the alphabet's power to ward off
evil.
In a study of the alphabet, Dr. McCarter noted that the Phoenician-based
letters were "beginning to show their own characteristics." The Phoenician
symbol for what is the equivalent of a K is a three-stroke trident; in the
transitional inscription, the right stroke is elongated, beginning to look
like a backward K.
Another baffling peculiarity is that in four cases the letters are
reversed in sequence; an F, for example, comes before an E.
The inscription was found in the context of a substantial network of
buildings at the site, which led Dr. Tappy to propose that Tel Zayit was
probably an important border town established by an expanding Israelite
kingdom based in Jerusalem.
A border town of such size and culture, Dr. Tappy said, suggested a
centralized bureaucracy, political leadership and literacy levels that
seemed to support the biblical image of the unified kingdom of David and
Solomon in the 10th century B.C.
"That puts us right in the middle of the squabble over whether anything
important happened in Israel in that century," Dr. Stager said.
A vocal minority of scholars contend that the Bible's picture of the 10th
century B.C. as a golden age in Israelite history is insupportable. Some
archaeological evidence, they say, suggests that David and Solomon were
little more than tribal chieftains and that it was another century before a
true political state emerged.
Dr. Tappy acknowledged that he was inviting controversy by his
interpretation of the Tel Zayit stone and other artifacts as evidence of a
fairly advanced political system 3,000 years ago. Critics who may accept the
date and description of the inscription are expected to challenge him when
he reports on the findings next week in Philadelphia at meetings of the
American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical
Literature.
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Bone Seal with Name Saul Found from 8th
Century BCE
Reported: 18:44 PM - May/19/09
(IsraelNN.com) Archaeologists reported Monday that they found a bone seal
with the biblical name Shaul (Saul) from the First Temple period (8th Century
BCE) in Jerusalem. The seal was found during an ongoing excavation in the City
of David, located right outside Jerusalem’s old city walls.
The seal contains the common Hebrew name Shaul, who was also the first King
of Israel. Archaeologist Ronny Reich explained that the find indicates that
names were placed on bone seals earlier than previously thought.
Today (Tuesday, 19 May 2009) the Knesset presidium, headed by Speaker Reuben
Rivlin, visited the City of David in Jerusalem. A Hebrew seal that dates to the
time of the First Temple was displayed for the first time during the visit. The
seal was found in an excavation that is being conducted in the Walls Around
Jerusalem National Park, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority and in
cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority, under the direction of
Professor Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and Eli Shukron of the IAA, and
underwritten by the ‘Ir David Foundation’.
The seal, which is made of bone, was found broken and is missing a piece from
its upper right side. Two parallel lines divide the surface of the seal into two
registers in which Hebrew letters are engraved:
לשאל
]ריהו
A period followed by a floral image or a tiny fruit appear at the end of the
bottom name.
The name of the seal’s owner was completely preserved and it is written in
the shortened form of the name שאול (Shaul). The name is known from both the
Bible (Genesis 36:37; 1 Samuel 9:2; 1 Chronicles 4:24 and 6:9) and from other
Hebrew seals.
According to Professor Reich, “This seal joins another Hebrew seal that was
previously found and three Hebrew bullae (pieces of clay stamped with seal
impressions) that were discovered nearby. These five items have great
chronological importance regarding the study of the development of the use of
seals. While the numerous bullae that were discovered in the adjacent rock-hewn
pool were found together with pottery sherds from the end of the ninth and
beginning of the eighth centuries BCE, they do not bear any Semitic letters. On
the other hand, the five Hebrew epigraphic artifacts were recovered from the
soil that was excavated outside the pool, which contained pottery sherds that
date to the last part of the eighth century.
It seems that the development in the design of the seals occurred in Judah
during the course of the eighth century BCE. At the same time as they engraved
figures on the seal, at some point they also started to engrave them with the
names of the seals’ owners. This was apparently when they started to identify
the owner of the seal by his name rather than by some sort of graphic
representation.”
It appears that the “office” which administered the correspondence and
received the goods that were all sealed with bullae continued to exist and
operate within a regular format even after a residential dwelling was
constructed inside the same “rock-hewn pool” and the soil and the refuse that
contained the many aforementioned bullae were trapped beneath its floor. This
“office” continued to generate refuse that included bullae, which were opened
and broken, as well as seals that were no longer used and were discarded into
the heap of rubbish that continued to accumulate in the vicinity.
Source:
http://www.physorg.com/news182101034.html
Most ancient Hebrew biblical inscription deciphered
January 7, 2010
Enlarge
A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew
scriptures has shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written.
Professor Gershon
Galil of the department of biblical studies at the University of Haifa has
deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King
David's reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery
makes this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough relates to
the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed hundreds of
years before the dates presented today in research and that the Kingdom of
Israel already existed at that time. Credit: Courtesy of the University of Haifa
Prof. Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa who deciphered
the inscription: "It indicates that the Kingdom of Israel already existed in the
10th century BCE and that at least some of the biblical texts were written
hundreds of years before the dates presented in current research."
A breakthrough in the research of the Hebrew scriptures has
shed new light on the period in which the Bible was written. Prof. Gershon Galil
of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa has deciphered
an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE (the period of King David's
reign), and has shown that this is a Hebrew inscription. The discovery makes
this the earliest known Hebrew writing. The significance of this breakthrough
relates to the fact that at least some of the biblical scriptures were composed
hundreds of years before the dates presented today in research and that the
Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time.
The inscription itself, which was written in ink on a 15 cm X
16.5 cm trapezoid pottery shard, was discovered a year and a half ago at
excavations that were carried out by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa
near the Elah valley. The inscription was dated back to the 10th century BCE,
which was the period of King David's reign, but the question of the language
used in this inscription remained unanswered, making it impossible to prove
whether it was in fact Hebrew or another local language.
Prof. Galil's deciphering of the ancient writing testifies to
its being Hebrew, based on the use of verbs particular to the Hebrew language,
and content specific to Hebrew culture and not adopted by any other cultures in
the region. "This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and
orphans. It uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as asah ("did")
and avad ("worked"), which were rarely used in other regional languages.
Particular words that appear in the text, such as almanah ("widow") are specific
to Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages. The content
itself was also unfamiliar to all the cultures in the region besides the Hebrew
society: The present inscription provides social elements similar to those found
in the biblical prophecies and very different from prophecies written by other
cultures postulating glorification of the gods and taking care of their physical
needs," Prof. Galil explains.
UPDATE
Prize Find: Oldest Hebrew Inscription Discovered in Israelite Fort on
Philistine Border
The letters are what scholars call Proto-Canaanite or Proto-Sinaitic.
Essentially, they are the same crude alphabetic letter forms derived from
Egyptian hieroglyphs, as described by Orly Goldwasser in her article
in this issue; that is, the letters are still pictorial, basically pictures.
Each of the five lines of text in the ostracon has a horizontal line beneath
it. Misgav notes that these display lines also appear in some of the
alphabetic inscriptions in the similar pictorial script from Serabit el-Khadem
(also in the article by Orly Goldwasser in this issue).
Misgav describes the subsequent development of this pictorial alphabetic
script found at Serabit el-Khadem and elsewhere:
The next phase in the development of the alphabetic system was identified in
Byblos, on the northern coast of Lebanon; this script was labeled
Phoenician. This was the phase during which the alphabetic script was
stripped of all its pictographic qualities.
Earlier scripts, like those described in Orly Goldwasser’s article, were
written in various directions, including vertical. The Qeiyafa inscription
appears to have been written left-to-right, although Hebrew later adopted a
right-to-left direction. The letterforms, too, of the Qeiyafa inscription had
not yet been completely standardized. The “A”-shaped aleph (א)
can be seen in three different places in the text—once pointing up (line 4),
twice pointing down (lines 1 and 2) and yet another time lying on its side
(line 1).
Although this is the longest inscription of its kind, it does not yield its
meaning easily. It is written in ink, rather than engraved like some other
inscriptions of this period, for example, the abecedary from Izbet Sartah.
b
The ravages of time are thus more evident in this five-line inscription than
in an engraved inscription.
Although we’re not sure what the text is, we can be sure what it is not. It is
not a commercial or business document. There is a missing letter in the first
line. Depending on what letter is reconstructed in this space, the word could
mean, on the one hand, “to exploit or abuse,” or, on the other hand, “to make
wealthy.” In either case, according to Misgav, this places the text “in the
realm of ethics and justice.”
Another phrase in this line includes a word formed from the root
תעש meaning “to do.”
c
(The phrase says, “Do not do.”) This, too, seems to indicate some moral matter
involving what is right—and wrong. More important, this root is found only in
Hebrew, not in other contemporaneous languages, enabling us to positively
identify the text as ancient Hebrew.
The closest language to Hebrew at this time was Phoenician. Another root in
the inscription (דבע) is quite common in both languages (meaning
“servant”), but in Phoenician it is never used as a verb as it is used here.
This is another indication that the text is Hebrew.
A word in the second line may be read “judge” or “rule” (שפט),
again indicating that the text has a moral theme.
A word in the third line reads “Baal” (
בעל), the name of the
well-known Canaanite deity. But these letters may simply be a part of a
person’s name. The theophoric element “baal” was frequently used in personal
names at this time, as in the name of Saul’s son Ishbaal (
1
Chronicles 8:30,
39).
The word melekh (מלך), “king,” is clear in the fourth line,
but its context is wholly unclear.
The fifth line is, as Misgav notes, “replete with damaged letters.”
In summary, Misgav concludes:
The inscription begins with several words of command which may be judicial
or ethical in content ... The end of the inscription contains words which
may relate to the area of politics or government. It is difficult to extract
more meaning from this text at the present stage. We can determine, however,
that the text has continuity of meaning, and is not merely a list of
unconnected words. It is phrased as a message from one person to another. We
cannot know if this is a private or public document, although it does appear
to be part of some correspondence.
Misgav continues:
The writer of the text was a professional. In light of this data, and
assuming this was a royal fortress from the early days of the United
Monarchy, such a letter found close to the gates of the city testifies to
the presence of literate administrators in the city despite its modest size.
In short, if this was all present in the tenth century at the site of Khirbet
Qeiyafa, out in the boonies, just imagine what was happening in Jerusalem.
The Jug of Menachem
| Israeli archaeologists in Jerusalem have discovered a
biblical-era handle of a water pitcher with an ancient Hebrew inscription of
the name “Menachem,” marking the first time such a handle bearing this name
has been found in Jerusalem. The discovery was made at the footprint of a
new girls’ school being constructed in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood in the
eastern part of the capital. The handle is estimated to originate somewhere
between the "Canaanite era" (an arguable term) (2200 – 1900 B.C.E.) and the end of the first
Temple period (the 7th – 8th centuries B.C.E.). Scientists at the Israel
Antiquities Authority are now trying to decipher the identity of the “Menachem,”
whose name is inscribed in ancient Hebrew.
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>3,000 year old Egyptian
“Ipuwer Papyrus”:
According to rabbi Michael Bar Ron and (and
also James Long - author of 'Riddle of the Exodus'), the Ipuwer Papyrus is
"dated to the end of the Old
Kingdom: the same final days of Pepi II and Neferkare the Younger (Malul and
Adikam)… and it reads like a newscast straight from the
scene of the Ten Strikes (Ten Plagues):
The Torah records:
7:20 "…all the waters of the river were
turned to blood."
7:21 "...there was blood thoughout all the
land of Egypt …and the river stank".
7:24 "And all the Egyptians dug around the
river for water to drink; for they could not drink of the water of the river."
Ipuwer laments:
"Plague is throughout the
land. Blood is everywhere."
"The river is blood."
"Men shrink from tasting - human beings, and thirst after water."
"That is our water! That is our happiness! What shall we do in respect
thereof? All is ruin!"
The Torah says:
9:23-24 ...and the fire ran along the
ground... there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous.
9:25 ...and the hail smote every herb of
the field, and broke every tree of the field.
9:31-32 ...and the flax and the barley was
smitten; for the barley was in season, and flax was ripe.
But the wheat and the rye were not
smitten; for they were not grown up.
10:15 ...there remained no green things in
the trees, or in the herbs of the fields, through all the land of Egypt.
Ipuwer writes:
"Forsooth, gates, columns
and walls are consumed by fire."
"Lower Egypt weeps... The entire palace is without its revenues. To it belong
[by right] wheat and barley, geese and fish."
"Forsooth, grain has perished on every side."
"Forsooth, that has perished which was yesterday seen. The land is left over
to its weariness like the cutting of flax."
The plague of pestilence:
9:3 ...the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field...
and there shall be a very grievous sickness.
9:19 ...gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field...
9:21 And he that did not fear the word of the Lord left his servants
and cattle in the field.
Ipuwer continues:
"All animals, their hearts
weep. Cattle moan..."
"Behold, cattle are left to stray, and there is none to gather them together."
Darkness:
10:22 And there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt
"The land is without
light."
The Slaying of the Firstborn:
12:29 And it came to pass, that at midnight the Lord smote all the
firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his
throne to the firstborn of the captive that was in the prison.
12:30 ...there was not a house where there was not one dead.
12:30 ...there was a great cry in Egypt.
"Forsooth, the children of
princes are dashed against the walls."
"Forsooth, the children of princes are cast out in the streets."
"The prison is ruined."
"He who places his brother in the ground is everywhere."
"It is groaning throughout the land, mingled with lamentations."
The Pillar of Fire:
13:21 ... by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way; and by
night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.
"Behold, the fire has
mounted up on high. Its burning goes forth against the enemies of the land."
The Spoiling of Egypt:
12:35-36 ...and they requested from the Egyptians, silver and gold
articles and clothing. And God made the Egyptians favour them and they granted
their request. [The Israelites] thus drained Egypt of its wealth.
"Gold and lapis lazuli,
silver and malachite, carnelian and bronze... are fastened on the neck of
female slaves."
One Jewish scholar writes: "There are many more parallels and proofs of the
Exodus (see James Long's Riddle of
the Exodus). Of course, the greatest proof is that for 3,000 years Jews
have sat down by the Seder table and repeated the exact same story to their
children. This is a chain of a direct unbroken tradition passed down from
fathers who saw the events, to their children who in turn passed it down to
their children, who passed it down to their children... As soon as the Jews
left Egypt, they were commanded to remember the Exodus. All of the holidays
are designed to commemorate the Exodus. Jews wear tefillin every morning which
records the Exodus and have mezuzot on every door to remember G-d passing over
the houses of the Jews."
Snippet view appears here:
Hatred for the B’nei Yisrael…
…Would that he [pharoah] perceived their nature in the first generation (of
men); then he would have repressed their evils, he would have stretched forth
(his) arm against it, he would have destroyed their seed and their inheritance…”
Not enough people have any awareness that the Egyptians apparently enshrined
the memory of the Exodus in the hieroglyphs covering an ancient, black granite
naos on display at Ismailia, in Egypt. It was a mystery until 1890, when it was
translated, but it shouldn’t be today. It reads:
“Evil fell on the earth…the earth was in great affliction…great
disturbance in the residence.”
“…neither man nor the gods could see the faces of those next to
them…”
It describes how the king and his men fight “the evil ones at the
Place of the Whirlpool,” whose location is described as Pi-Kharoti”
(= Pi ha-Hiruth, see Exodus 14:2,9, Leviticus 33:7). It relates how the pharoah
commands his men to follow him, and then disappears from their midst: “There
at Pi-Kharoti the Pharoah is thrown by a whirlwind high into the air and seen no
more.” (Consider the wind that blew the whole night, drying the
seabed.) He is referred to as Par’o “T’hom”, which sounds very much related to
“T:hom” in Hebrew, meaning “the depths”… i.e. “Pharoah of the Depths”! Note that
although the midRaShYc account takes on a mythical character at that point,
Pharoah’s disappearance from the scene is mentioned specifically in Sefer
haYashar (parashath beshallaH).
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