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December 3, 2006
Frustration
While they were not the only things I did this weekend, they did take up the bulk of my time.
- Watched the USC/UCLA game.
- Tried to make sense of the various words and phrases that come before the letters lb‛lt in several of the so-called Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions.
I'll have more to say in detail about the second frustration in a day or two. For now, I'll simply note that these inscriptions come from three locations on the Sinai Peninsula: Bir en Nasb, Wadi Maghara and primarily Serabi el-Khadem. First discovered by Flinders Petrie in 1904, they were written on statues, on fragments of same, on mine walls and on the side of mountain faces (and fragments of same). While likely written in the mid second millennium BCE, the date of the writing is disputed. It is clear that they are written in an alphabet. However, they do not represent the oldest alphabetic writing. For example, the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions from Egypt, which are at least in part alphabetic, are certainly older. The language of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions is some kind of West Semitic. But whatever the language is, it is not Hebrew.
If you're wondering what the script looks like, to the left is a transcription of the letters lb‛lt from Sinai 346a. In case you are wondering, lb‛lt means "to Ba'alat" or "to the Lady." The Lady, in this case is likely the Egyptian goddess Hathor. This letter either appears or can be reconstructed with considerable reliability seven times in the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. The real problem is that the letters and words before them are often difficult to interpret. Sometimes they are missing or obscured. Sometimes it is not even clear what, if anything, does come before them. Sometimes, even when the letters are readable, it is not clear what they mean. We can be certain that they are not always the same letters, words and phrases. And like many things having to do with our understanding of poorly represented ancient material, the more you try to understand these inscriptions the less you are sure of.
As to my first frustration of the weekend, USC's defense and special teams played well enough to win and perhaps win big. But the offense, starting with the offensive line, didn't seem to be with the program, so we lost, and deservingly so, 9 to 13. We are now ranked 5th in the BCS and will hope for a better day at the Rose Bowl on January 1.
Posted by Duane Smith at December 3, 2006 7:55 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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