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February 14, 2007

What Isn't Written in Stone

I just finished a preliminary reading of Tappy, McCarter, Lundberg and Zuckerman, "An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century B.C.E. from the Judaean Shephelah." I was as interested in what the paper didn't tell me as what it did. There have been persistent rumors, which I will not repeat here, that the stone on which the abecedary was written had additional things written on it. And it may but it does not seem to be that which was commonly rumored.

Because of the state of the stone, it is not at all certain that anything other than an abecedary was written on it. The authors say this in a footnote,

In view of the shallowness of the incisions of the abecedary and the numerous collateral problems that afflict the face of the stone as a whole - accidental scratching and gouging, incrustation by mineral deposition, deliberate abrasions for the surface preparations and modification for secondary use, etc. - it is easy to imagine that other writing, it if existed might easily go undetected. . . . During his preliminary, in situ examination of the stone, Professor Tappy noticed the apparent form of a well-incised zayin at a point roughly in the middle of the flat surface of the stone. . . . Our further examination of the stone in Jerusalem showed that this zayin is preceded by incisions consistent with the form of ‛ayin and followed by the vertical stem and possible head-strokes of a reš. . . . The resulting "reading," ‛zr could easily be interpreted as a word if it does not in fact turn out to be a configuration of accidental marks. (P. 26, n. 42)

They go on to speculate that if this is indeed a word it might be part of the personal name, perhaps even the name of the scribe.

I'll have more to say about this inscription and how it relates to other abecedaries and scribal schools in subsequent posts. But I thought I'd address the issue of there being something other than an abecedary now. Sure, there might have been other stuff on the stone but insofar as it can be read, it doesn't seem nearly as interesting as some of the rumors. Oh, how often that is the case!

Reference:

Tappy, Ron E., P. Kyle McCarter, Marilyn J. Lundberg and Bruce Zuckerman, "An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century B.C.E. from the Judaean Shephelah," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 344, Nov. 2006, 5-46

Posted by Duane Smith at February 14, 2007 12:05 PM | Read more on Scribal Schools |

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