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December 15, 2005
How We Learn
I'm working on the short cuneiform alphabetic text from Sarepta in Lebanon and I just finished reading "A Phoenicaina Inscription in Ugaritic Script" by Edward L. Greenstein. It is published in the Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University. This is not the most popular journal in the world and I had to go out to the University of California at Riverside Library today to get it. That trip and Christmas shopping this morning have limited blogging a little bit. Things may not be too much better tomorrow.
What I want to point out is that sometimes extremely learned errors can lead others to a better interpretation of a text (and I imagine many other things as well). Greenstein was the first to point out that the inscription on the Sarepta jar handle was likely in the Phoenician language. Others had thought it Ugaritic or just didn't hazard a guess as to the language. Greenstein had three reasons for thinking it was Phoenician.
- A sign that he and others read as a g seemed to be written in the Phoenician linear alphabet rather than the short cuneiform alphabet.
- Based on other formulae that appear in Phoenician texts (and other texts as well) he thought that what he read as a word divisor was in the position where he expected a relative pronoun and that the lack of such a pronoun was best explained by a common scribal error that happens when a scribe does not write a letter (or sometimes a lot more) because he thinks he is duplicating something that shouldn't be duplicated. Since the "word divider" looks more like the old Phoenician relative pronoun z than the Ugaritic relative d, he surmised that the very absence of the pronoun was modest supporting evidence that the language was Phoenician.
- He took the verb p‛l to be Phoenician because if it were Ugaritic it would be b‛l.
It turns out that only his last point is still thought correct. And, oh yes, everyone who studies this inscription thinks it is in Phoenician or something very like Phoenician and certainly not Ugaritic.
Most scholars that read this text think it is Phoenician for Greenstein's last and strongest reason and (this is where it gets weird) a significant modification of his second reason. How is that reason modified? Well most recent studies actually read the old Phoenician relative pronoun z where Greenstein and his predecessors read a word divider. You see, Greenstein was correct that the letter z should be there, he was only wrong in seeing it as a word divider. What was weak evidence to Greenstein has turned into strong evidence by the improved reading. By the way, P. Bordreuil is to be credited with the correct reading of the text. What about Greenstein's first piece of evidence? Well, no longer do scholars read this as a linear g. Now everyone I have read, again starting with Bordreuil, sees a perfectly fine alphabetic cuneiform g with something strange after it. The current argument is over what that "something strange" is.
And so we progress. I'll have more on all this when I post my complete study of this amazing two-line inscription.
References:
Greenstein, E. L, "A Phoenician Inscription in Ugaritic Script" JANES, 8, 1976, 49-57
Posted by Duane Smith at December 15, 2005 8:49 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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