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August 30, 2006

Some Text from Kuntillet ‛Ajrud Pithos II

The September issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, page 66, has a very hard to read picture of three joined shards from the Kuntillet ‛Ajrud Pithos II and a very good transcription of the text. As far as I know, this is the first time such a detailed transcription of this text has been published. Because it may be relevant to the issue of scribal training in ancient Israel, I decided to attempt a transliteration and translation of the text. Gorel has a transliteration and translation of the central, blessing, portion of the text and I admit I took a look at it from time to time. She calls it K. Ajrud 15. And I'm still looking at line 4 of the central portion of the text. My line numbers do not match hers because I number the first, very lacunose, line in the central portion of the text line 1 while she calls the second, more complete, line line 1. My line numbers for right portion of the text roughly correspond to the line numbers in the central portion of the text and are intended for reference only.

The text is written as if it had three (or possibly two) columns but it is clear that at least the right "column" and the central "column" have little or nothing to do with each other. In fact, the central "column" is written over the continuation of a few lines from the right "column." It is for this reason that I use the more neutral term "portion" in the discussion. There are at least two hands that contributed to the text, likely more. See my notes below. I have used bold face type to indicate the hand of whomever wrote the blessing text in the central portion. I have also used a graphic rather than standard text for the transliteration and translation. This is because I wanted to be unambiguous about what letter I was intending in the transliteration and at the same time make it readable without asking the reader to install some special font. If you want my efforts in machine readable format, please leave a comment and I'll be happy to send them to you.

Notes:

Organization of the text:

A vertical line borders the right side of central blessing portion of the text and is, in my mind, associated with it. I use "|" to indicate this vertical line where it is helpful in understanding the distribution of the letters, particularly in the right portion of the text. The last several letters on line 4 and the last three letters in line 8 on the right portion cross under this line, which appears to be written over them. They are also overwritten by the first couple of letters in these lines of the central section.

The short line on the left portion is positioned about midway between lines 1 and 2 of the central portion

Line 11 of the central portion of the text begins just below the bottom end of vertical line and appears to be in a different hand.

Right portion of the text

There may well be several hands at work on the right portion of the text. The three abecedaries do not seem to be all in the same hand. It appears to me that lines 2 and 8 may be in the same hand and 6 and 7 in a different hand. Both hands are different from that seen in the central, blessing, portion of the text.

Line 4: This is the end of an abecedary of which tet is the first letter readable after the break in the shard. Note that the pe is before both the sade and the ‛ayin. The placement of the sade is clearly an error while the ‛ayin following the pe is very likely an instantiation of the alternative order I discussed the other day. The pe before ‛ayin order can be seen in the partial abecedaries of lines 6 and 8. The fact the line 4 has an error that appears to be corrected in subsequent lines lends support to the idea that these abecedaries were part of a training exercise. But why were students practicing on whole pithio. See my note at the end of the post "Always Read the Notes: Foot or End"

Line 7: This line seems a little out of place among the three abecedaries. It is also incomplete and likely ran into the area where the central portion was written. But traces of it are not visible in the picture or the transcription.

The central portion of the text

Line 1: The reconstruction is assured on the basis of a common formula in letters that is adopted here in a blessing. The b is not part of the central text and may be a continuation of line 1 of the right portion of the text.

Line 2: Note that the scribe used word dividing dots fairly consistently but had absolutely no qualms about going to the next line in the middle of a word. This can be seen in lines 2-3, 7-8 and even 10-11 where I would have expected the pronoun to be tightly associated with the noun.

Line 4: I spent more time staring at this line than any other. First, the abecedary, which starts on the adjacent right hand portion of the text, runs to nearly the end of the central portion of the text. In the course of this overlap, it is often hard to separate the two lines even though they are written by, what I take to be, different hands and have noticeably different line weights. The reading that I am having trouble getting out of my mind is hg? . ‛t. I have trouble seeing the š, the l or the m in the hand of the scribe who wrote the bulk of the central portion of the text. The problem is that my preferred reading makes on sense; a least none that I can think of. The image below illustrates the problem.

Pictured is a somewhat cleaned up segment of the transcription of line 4 starting with the first letter before the vertical line. Above the transcription, I have placed my readings of the continuation of the abecedary from the right portion of the text. Below the transcription, I have placed my reading of the central, blessing portion of the transcription. While I cannot see the šlm that Gogel saw so clearly, I can see the t that she set off in brackets. This makes me wonder if we are looking at the same text. So with a lot of questions, I accept Gogel's reading for the simple reason it makes sense and follows another well-known letter formula.

Line 11: As indicated above, this line is not part of the central blessing text. Much of the line is obscure. As it currently stands, the k is separated by several letter spaces from the remaining readable three or four letters. If my reading is correct, the only readable word may be mrq meaning perhaps "broth."

The left portion of the text

There is a string of five letters, klrdh, that can be read with reasonable certainty to the left and somewhat below line 2 of the central portion of the text. This may relate to the material on the right portion of the text but I am at a loss to explain how. For lack of any better idea, I read this kl rdh, "all dominion." I take rdh to be a nominal form based on *rdd. See for example Psalm 72:8. Other ideas are welcome.

Final Remarks

Now a lot has been said about the content of the blessing and particularly about the meaning of "YHWH of Teman and by his Asherah" or should I have translated "his asherah." And a lot more will no doubt be said. See the same article in the September issue of Biblical Archaeology Review from which I got the transcription that I used for this post if you want a flavor of the discussion. While I am interested in the many questions that surround that phrase and the blessing, for now I am abnormally interested in the Sitz im leben of the abecedaries and some of the other graffito than I am in the controversial phrase and the blessing itself.

Update: August 31, 2006:

I have posted, as a separate post, some additional notes on the abecedaries and line 4 of the blessing. I have also revised my reading of the line 4 of abecedary and, to some extent, line 4 of the blessing.

References:

Posted by Duane Smith at August 30, 2006 7:40 PM | Read more on Scribal Schools |

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