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October 23, 2006
The Mazar Festchrift, One Paper Down, 54 More to Go
While Paul James Cowie of Ancient Near East.net and Jim West are talking about the Ami Mazar Festchrift, I Will Speak the Riddle of Ancient Times, my two volumes actually arrived today. I've only read one paper, "A Provenance Study of Hebrew Seals and Seal Impressions (757-771)." In this paper Andrew Vaughn and Carolyn Dobler develop a statistical argument that reinforces the otherwise reasonable suggestion that some/many unprovenanced seals and seal impression just might not be authentic. Of course, this methodology cannot determine which are and which are not authentic, only that the unprovenanced group does not appear to represent the same population of variant features as the provenanced group. All of this is interesting and I like studies that apply math to problems in the humanities.
One point is worth repeating here,
On a more general note, the findings presented in this essay raise the level of suspicion even higher regarding inscriptions of unknown provenance beyond those found on seals and seal impressions. For example, two recent published ostraca mention a judicial plea and a gift to the house of Yahweh. Once again, these inscriptions may or may not be authentic, but the findings in this essay suggest that there are modern artisans who are capable of forging inscriptions with a high degree of sophistication.
But what really interested me was the small number of seals and seal impressions that lack the preposition lamed. I knew that such seals existed but I never knew how many or how few. Having or not having this preposition, which, in this context, means something in the vicinity of "belonging to" was one of several features that Vaughn and Dobler used in the study. Of those known provenance, 93% of the seals and 95% of bullas had the preposition. That means that 7% of the seals and 5% of the bullas didn't. One might expect them to have identical percentages but the sample size is small enough to account for the difference. However, I believe that in every case the preposition is implied. Take a look at this text from Ugarit. I present only the first five lines. The text is KTU 149.
1) kd . bt ilm a pitcher (for?) house of the great gods
2) rbm
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3) kd l ištnm a pitcher for the "fire tenders"
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4) kd l hty a pitcher for the Mahadian Hittite
5) mahdh
If you're wondering, these pitchers likely contained wine. Here I translate the preposition "for" because this text appears to be an allocation of some type but "belonging to" might also work. I'm not so sure the ancients made that clear a distinction between the two in these kinds of contexts. If it was for you, it belonged to you. Notice that the preposition is implied but not expressed in the first line. Lines 13, 17 and 18 also imply the preposition without writing it while other lines have the preposition.
To be sure, the seals and impressions studied by Vaughn and Dobler are more than 500 years more recent than this text from Ugarit. Even so, the same infrequent but optional use of an implied preposition is still seen.
Several arrowheads with Phoenician inscriptions also have the preposition missing. For example the text on the Ruweise arrowhead reads, ħş’d’ | bn‛ky, "Arrowhead (belonging to) the son of ‛Akiya." Sure, the cases where the preposition is missing may be read as in a genitive relationship. But even if they are in the genitive, they still mean "belonging to."
Where is this going? I'm not sure just now. Stay tuned for more on this scintillating topic and more on the truly exciting Mazar Festchrift.
Posted by Duane Smith at October 23, 2006 3:34 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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