Recently, various press outlets have run stories about a stone artifact with a very fragmentary Old Hebrew Inscription on it (e.g., https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/bibles-reliability-further-affirmed-as-king-hezekiah-inscription-deciphered/ , citing the proposed restorations and interpretations of Gershon Galil and Eli Shukron), discovered ca. 15+ years ago on an excavation. I would like to make some brief comments on this inscription and the proposed interpretation.

Here are the facts: two fragmentary lines are present. The preserved letters are: (1) […]qyh[…] (2) […]kh.b[…]. The first preserved line may very well contain the end of a personal name, namely, the letter qop, followed by the Yahwistic theophoric element, or a portion thereof. The second preserved line consists of a kap and a hey. After the hey, there is a word divider (indicating that the hey was the last letter of the preceding word) and then a bet (as the first letter of the next word). That’s it. And we don’t know how many lines this inscription consisted of, and we don’t know where in this inscription the two preserved lines fall. And we don’t have the left side or the right side of the inscription.

Although it has been claimed that there are traces of a zayin prior to the qop on the first preserved line, I only see a fractured area of a stone prior to the qop, and if there are traces, they certainly don’t strike me as those of a zayin. In short, the first line just has qyh. The second line just has kh. b .

In terms of the date of the script, the morphology and stance of the letters is consistent with excavated inscriptions hailing from the late 8th or early 7th centuries BCE.

In any case, it has been claimed (as per the link cited above) that the royal name “Hezekiah” can be restored in the first line and that the word “pool” can be restored in the second line, as can also the place-name “Jerusalem” (after the bet). Such a proposal had also been proposed a number of years ago by Peter van der Veen (but without gaining the attention in the press that Galil and Shukron’s proposal has received)

In other words, Galil and Shukron propose to restore two thirds of the root of the name “Hezekiah” (i.e., they restore the het and zayin). And they also propose to restore two thirds of the root word for “pool” (i.e., the bet and resh of the word brkh). And in addition, they propose to restore every single letter of the word for Jerusalem. Mathematically speaking, that’s a high percentage of restoration (i.e., restoring more than twice as many letters as are preserved!). I should add that although the bet in line two is arguably the preposition bet, that’s not the only possible option.

A relevant little anecdote: Long ago, in a doctoral seminar on the Dead Sea Scrolls at Johns Hopkins University, I mentioned some restoration that some scholar had proposed for a lacuna in the scroll which we were reading. Lawrence Schiffman was the professor and I was among the students. I thought that the restoration was reasonable. I will never forget Professor Schiffman’s response: “I don’t spend time discussing restorations” (or something along those lines). At that moment, I recognized the wisdom of Professor Schiffman’s position on restorations, and I adopted it immediately and forever. That is, unless one has very good grounds for a restoration (e.g., boiler-plate phrasing in a legal text, or a text that is repeating something from earlier or later in the document, or something that is citing some other source-document which we also have, etc.), restorations are speculation, and often as foundationless as quick sand.

Naturally, if we had two letters of a tri-literal root, we would be on better footing….but still not necessarily on absolutely secure footing. But we don’t even have two root letters for a single word of this fragmentary inscription! Again, in line one, I see no traces that are demonstrably those of a zayin. Thus, we only have one letter (other than the letter of the theophoric). And the same is true for line two. We don’t have a bet or a resh preserved (or anything else). We only have the final root letter (a kap), and a hey after that. And, as noted, the place-name Jerusalem is entirely absent.

Someone might suggest that restoring a het and a zayin in the first line is good. Well, let’s think about that, and let’s especially think about some other possible personal names, based on personal names attested in the Hebrew Bible and in Old Hebrew inscriptions, personal names which have a qop as the final root letter (as in line one of this inscription). And we could cast our net even further if we wished, that is, personal names in Phoenician and Ugaritic, for example, with qop as the final root letter. But it should be sufficient simply to use Biblical and Epigraphic Old Hebrew (i.e., Old Hebrew inscriptions from the First Temple Period), in order to make the point that there are plenty of other possible personal names that could be restored.

Here are some of them: Bqy, Bqyahu, Bzq  (and ‘Adnybzq), Drqwn, Ḥbqwq, Ḥlq, Ḥlqywh, ‘Zqy, Ṣdqyhw, (and ‘Adny-ṣdq, Yhwṣdq, Mlky-ṣdq), Bqbwq, Yṣḥq, ‘zbwq, ‘mwq, ‘šq, Rbqh, Šwbq, Ššq. And this list is certainly not exhaustive. There are more.

And, of course, the same could be said in spades for the proposed restoration of the word for “pool” in line too. Indeed, too much is missing to begin to hazard a guess as to what that word might be. There are scores of possibilities.

Of course, if the question is “could these restorations be correct?,” the answer is yes. But there is a vast difference between suggesting something is “possible” and suggesting it is “probable,” “compelling,” or “certain.” Someone might say, “well, is it plausible?” The answer to that may be yes as well. But there is also a lot of distance between something being “plausible” and something being probable, compelling, or certain.

Well, what’s the best course of action in a case like this? After all, based on ancient evidence, the Siloam Tunnel was something that King Hezekiah commissioned. And it is located in Jerusalem. True enough. But the fact remains that this is a fragmentary stone inscription, it was not found in situ, and in terms of size, the preserved fragment is about the size of the palm of a hand. And since there are many things that it could be, I’d prefer to leave it at that. I wish that this inscription weren’t so fragmentary, but it is. In sum, sensational claims have been made, on the basis of six preserved letters, which are portions of three different words. That is, we don’t even have a single actual word preserved. It’s a bridge too far to draw too many conclusions about this.

Although I do not really like the “could it be” game, it may be useful for me to play this game for just a moment. Thus, if line one does contain a personal name, could it be the name of a stone-mason responsible for the inscription (as some have suggested for the name ‘Oniyahu of Khirbet el-Qom), or could it be the name of some high official (e.g., of the palace, as in the Royal Steward inscription, or of the temple), or could it be some military official of Judah, or could this even be the fragmentary remains of a list of officials (we do have such lists in the book of Kings)? Could it be some sort of a memorial inscription, mentioning some great figure of the past (known to us, or not known to us)? Or again, in terms of date, must this inscription be from the time of the completion of the tunnel (late 8th century), or, since this water tunnel was used for some time after the late 8th century, could it be the name of someone (e.g., from one of the above categories) from the early 7th century (as the script would allow)? Ultimately, the answer to all of the above questions is certainly yes, at least at the theoretical level. And that’s the problem with speculation. We just don’t know. And in addition to all of this, the content of inscriptions, even monumental ones, sometimes surprises us (within the broader field of Northwest Semitic)…making speculations particularly precarious. On top of all this, we do not have a full list in the Hebrew Bible of all the officials of the palace, temple, or military of ancient Judah in the 8th or early 7th centuries. Thus, I prefer not to speculate about such things [nota bene: I added this paragraph on November 10 around 7:00 am eastern, about twelve hours after the original post, as a reply to Danel Kahn’s very useful comment].

One final note is perhaps useful, before I conclude this post. According to the Israel Today article (cited above), Gershon Galil stated that “since until today it was commonly accepted that the kings of Israel and Judah, unlike the kings of the ancient Middle East, did not make themselves royal inscriptions and monuments… to commemorate their achievements.”

It is true that some scholars have suggested this. But quite a few have stated that Israel and Judah did produce monumental inscriptions. Indeed, in my volume entitled “Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age,” I cite a few inscriptions that, although fragmentary, qualify as monumental inscriptions in Old Hebrew. In other words, some of us have contended (long ago) that Israel and Judah did produce monumental inscriptions and also referred to some that qualify.

Well, such are my brief methodological musings about these recent claims regarding a particularly fragmentary inscription, with the six preserved letters that constitute the partial remains of three different words.

Christopher Rollston, George Washington University (rollston@gwu.edu)

Review of Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, Volume II: Caesarea and the Middle Coast, 1121-2160, edited by W. Ameling, H. M. Cotton, W. Eck, B. Isaac, A. Kushnir-Stein, H Misgav, J. Prince, and A Yardeni. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011.

This epigraphic series (of volumes) will definitely be one the most important of the twenty-first century, certain to be used profitably and cited for decades to come. The entire corpus is slated to consist of nine volumes, organized according to major geographic divisions and major historical periods in ancient Judaea-Palestine. The chronological periods that constitute the focus of these volumes are the late fourth century BCE (i.e., beginning with the rise of Alexander the Great) to the early seventh century CE (i.e., to the rise of the Prophet Muhammad). The languages included in this series are Greek and Latin as well as Hebrew, Phoenician, the various Aramaic dialects (e.g., Jewish Aramaic, Samaritan, Nabataean, Northern Syriac and Southern Syriac), Thamudic, Safaitic, Armenian, and Georgian. It is also important to note in this connection that Early Arabic inscriptions are in the process of being collected and edited by Moshe Sharon for the Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae (and so they are not included in CIIP). The basic geographic parameters for the nine volumes are as follows: Jerusalem (and its surroundings); the Middle Coastline (including especially Caesarea and its surroundings), the Southern Coastline; the Northern Coastline (including especially the Galilee, along with Acco); the Golan Heights; Samaria; Judaea (without Jerusalem); Idumaea; the Negev; a final volume focusing on milestones from the entire territory. Parts of modern Syria and Jordan which were at different times part of the administrative unit which included Iudaea/Palaestina (i.e., Batanea, Aurantis and the Peraea) are not included in this series since they belong to territories covered by the Inscriptions Grecques et Latines de la Syrie or de la Jordanie, respectively. CIIP I. Part 1 (focusing on Jerusalem) was published in 2010 and contains inscriptions numbered 1-704. CIIP I. Part 2 (focusing on Jerusalem) was published in 2012 and contains inscriptions numbered 705-1120 (this volume, that is, CIIP I. Part 2, will be reviewed separately). That is, volume one consists of two parts, each published as a discreet volume, but classified as “volume one” (because all of the inscriptions hail from Jerusalem and its environs).

The volume herein reviewed is CIIP II, and contains inscriptions numbered 1121-2160. The lion’s share of the inscriptions in this volume come from Caesarea and its environs (inscriptions 1128-2107), while some of them (namely, inscriptions 1121-1127) )come from Apollonia-Arsuf (located on a sandstone ridge in the north-west section of the modern town of Herzliya, some seventeen kilometers north of Jaffa and thirty-four kilometers south of Caesarea), some of them (namely, inscriptions 2108-2114) come from Castra Samaritanorum (Khirbet Qastra, a site that is about three kilometers south-east of Sycamina and extends across several terraces on the lower slopes of Mount Carmel), some of them (namely, 2115-2145) come from Dor (near the modern site of Tantura, on a headland off the coast between Mount Carmel and Caesarea, more than eleven kilometers south of Tel Megadim and more than nine kilometers south of ‘Atlit), some of them (namely, inscriptions 2147-2160) come from Sycamina (= Shikmona = Tell es-Samaq, a settlement about one kilometer south of the promontory of Mount Carmel) and one inscription (inscription number 2146, called the “Seal of Georgius”) was found at Mikhmoret ( a site located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea around eight kilometers north of Netanya and around eleven kilometers south of Caesarea).

For the site of Caesarea, there are subdivisions, something that is quite useful because so many inscriptions hail from this site. The major categories of inscriptions are: (A) Res Sacrae (Pagan Inscriptions, Synagogue Inscriptions, Christian inscriptions); (B) Imperial Documents, (C) Emperors; (D) Imperial Officials and the Two Praetoria (Governors and Senators, Praetorium of the Governor; Equestrian Officials; Praetorium of the Procurator and the Late Antique Governor); (E) Bathhouse; (F) Military People; (G); Decuriones and Inscriptions of the Colonia Caesariensis; (H) Varia; (I) Funerary Inscriptions; (K) Instrumentum Domesticum (Defixiones; Amulets and Rings, Weights, Lead Seals, Ostraca, Dipinti, and Graffiti); (L) Fragments, both Latin and Greek; (M) Vicinity of Caesarea (Binyamina, Crocodilopolis, Hadera; Kefar Shuni, Ramat , Hanadiv).

The standard entry for each inscription consists of the following sorts of data: a descriptive title and approximate date (e.g., “Corinthian capital with Greek monograms, 5- 6 century CE,” or “List of the twenty-four priests courses in Hebrew, 4-5 century CE”), reference to the find spot, a black and white photograph, readings (and for the Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions a transliteration as well), a hand-drawing, a translation, a brief but detailed commentary, and rather copious reference to the most relevant secondary literature. It is important to note that within this volume, there are a fair number of inscriptions never before published. Also, some of the inscriptions that are included in this volume are now lost, but normally there were photos available of even these inscriptions and so these inscriptions are included in this volume, along with an accompanying photo (see p. vii). This fine volume also contains some really good discussions of things such as demographics (e.g., Jewish presence, Christian presence, Samaritan presence), discussions of roads, discussions of ancient territorial divisions. For sites that have been excavated, there is consistently a brief but very useful discussion of the history of excavation. Of particular importance is the fact that this volume contains an “Index of Personal Names” for Volume One (both parts) and Volume Two.

Readers will notice that the dates that are given for inscriptions are often fairly broad (e.g., “3rd-6th century CE”; or “4th-7th century CE”). This is, of course, a result of the fact that few inscriptions contain (or preserve) date formulae, many do not come from a primary archaeological context, and there are often not sufficient palaeographic benchmarks (diagnostics) within these inscriptions. I should note that most of these inscriptions were (re)collated during the process of the research for this volume (i.e., the person writing the article actually personally collated the inscription, rather than attempting to rely on existing photographs or hand-copies) and the date of the collation (called “autopsy” in this volume) is given within the entry for each inscription that was collated. Methodologically, this is such an important step forward.

Ultimately, I consider this volume to be absolutely superb (there are some minor problems with stylistic consistency, but with a volume of this size, with so many contributors, this is entirely understandable). I recommend the volume very highly and without reservation. Indeed, from my perspective, I would suggest that no scholar can afford to ignore this volume. It is a peerless addition to the resources available for the ancient epigraphic realia.

Christopher Rollston, Visiting Professor of Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures, George Washington University.

I am very pleased to state that I have accepted a Visiting Professorship at George Washington University for the spring semester of 2013. I am very grateful to a number of people for orchestrating this, especially Dr. Eric Cline, Chair of the Department and Classics and Semitics at George Washington University. With regard to courses for the spring semester, I am delighted to note that I will be teaching a course entitled “Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East” and a course entitled “Dead Sea Scrolls.” During my post-doctoral appointments at Johns Hopkins University (1999-2001), I taught a number of undergraduate courses and found it very enjoyable; thus, I am very much looking forward to teaching these undergraduate courses at George Washington University. During my time at George Washington University, I will also be completing my monograph (tentatively) entitled “Forging History: A History of Epigraphic Forgeries from Antiquity to the Modern Period,” as well as several Festschrift articles. In short, I am very much looking forward to the coming months.

Most sincerely,

Chris Rollston

After much reflection, I have voluntarily resigned from Emmanuel Christian Seminary, having come to an amicable resolution with Emmanuel. For all of the support and encouragement I have received from many colleagues throughout the world, from several marvelous colleagues at Emmanuel, from many former students, and from many current students, I am so very grateful. Indeed, all of the support has been consoling, gratifying, and humbling. I wish that I would have been able to reply individually to all who sent notes of encouragement and support to me, but this was not possible. So please allow me to say here, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so very much. I am more grateful than words can express. At this juncture, it is most useful for me to be able to move on with my life, career, research, and writing. I look forward to finding a new and permanent academic home and I happily welcome assistance in that regard. As I depart, I also wish to verbalize my hope that Emmanuel will flourish in the future, as it has in the past.

Sincerely,

Christopher Rollston”

JUST PUBLISHED

Tel Aviv: Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University Volume 38, Number 1, 2011

CONTENTS
In Memoriam: Anson Rainey
Deborah Sweeney

Judahite Stamped and Incised Jar Handles: A Tool for Studying the History of Late Monarchic Judah Oded Lipschits, Omer Sergi, Ido Koch

The paper probes the distribution of the various stamped and incised Judahite jars with two criteria in mind: (1) their estimated date; (2) the assumption that in addition to Jerusalem, sites that yielded large quantities of stamped handles (mainly Lachish and Ramat Raḥel) served as major collection centres while sites that yielded only a few dozen stamped handles served as secondary administrative centres of the kingdom. Based on their findings, the authors reconstruct the evolution of the royal administrative system in the late 8th through the early 6th centuries BCE.

Tell Qudadi and Tel Gerisah: Two Early Bronze II Sites on the Yarkon River Ram Gophna, Yitzhak Paz

Tell Qudadi and Tel Gerisah are two multi-period sites located on the Yarkon River. Recent research has revealed that they were the only settlements along the central Coastal Plain that were inhabited during the Early Bronze Age II. Tell Qudadi and Tel Gerisah could have played important roles as an outpost and as a main inner anchorage site, respectively, in maritime activities between Old Kingdom Egypt and the North Levantine coast.

An Egyptian Mortuary Cult in Late Bronze II Canaan Katia Charbit Nataf

The paper re-examines the significance of the banquet scenes depicted on the Late Bronze Age II Megiddo and Tell el-Far>ah ivories. The author attempts to identify and link a set of characteristics on the panels—the lotus flower, the drinking vessels, the musical instruments and the Delta papyrus marshes—to the Egyptian goddess Hathor. She then proceeds to explore the hypothesis that mortuary Hathor worship, a direct legacy of Egyptian cultic belief, was adopted by the Canaanites during this period. The archaeological context of such a cult is discussed.

The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon: Methodological Musings and Caveats Christopher Rollston

The Qeiyafa Ostracaon is an important inscription from the late stage of Early Alphabetic. Regarding its language, some have argued that it is written in Hebrew. This article, however, contends that there are no discernable diagnostic features in the ostracon that mandate such a conclusion. Furthermore, the article also emphasizes that the script of this inscription is certainly not Old Hebrew, nor is it the immediate precursor of the Old Hebrew script. Rather the Old Hebrew script derived from Phoenician. Thus, there is some distance between the script of this inscription and the Old Hebrew script. Finally, the article contends that it would be difficult (because of the dearth of
data) for grand proposals about statecraft and literacy to be made on the sole basis of this ostracon.

Textual and Historical Notes on the Eliashib Archive from Arad Nadav Na’aman

The first part of the article discusses in detail some letters addressed to Eliashib, possibly the commander of the fortress of Arad.
New readings and interpretations are suggested for Ostraca Nos. 3, 5, 10, 12 and 18 and their structure and contents are clarified. The second part of the article offers new solutions for some problems in the history of the Negev in the late years of the Kingdom of Judah. It suggests that the elite troops of Kittiyim were hired by one of the last kings of Judah and sent to the Negev in an effort to curtail the Edomite danger. However, the efforts to defend the Negev failed and its centres were destroyed some time before the Babylonian 588–587 BCE campaign against the Kingdom of Judah. The heavy destruction brought about by the Edomites was deeply engraved in the collective memory and provides the background for the distinctive negative attitude to Edom in biblical prophecy of the exilic and post-exilic periods.

Egypt and the Levant in the Iron Age I–IIA: The Ceramic Evidence Shirly Ben Dor Evian

Traditionally, relations between Egypt and the Levant in the early phases of the Iron Age have been reconstructed based on the scant historical record and on biblical descriptions. This article introduces a new facet of Egyptian regional intervention into the
discussion: the presence of Egyptian pottery at Iron Age sites in Israel.

The Babylonia–Elam Connections in the Chaldaean and Achaemenid Periods—Part I Ran Zadok

The paper discusses the political and economic connections between Babylonia and Elam during the periods of the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid empires (626–539 and 538–332 BCE respectively). It is based on both published and unpublished sources in Neo/Late-Babylonian as well as in Neo-Elamite and Royal Achaemenid Elamite. These are mostly implicit, as pertinent chronicles and royal inscriptions are rare.
Therefore, the evidence for political history is minimal whereas the socioeconomic information is much more detailed. Nevertheless, even this information is chronologically uneven as most of it refers to the Chaldaean and early Achaemenid period with very few sources about the late Achaemenid period (483–332 BCE). An appendix is devoted to workmen from upper Mesopotamia and Syria (‘Assyrians’) in Elam including Arabians. They were—at least partly—subjects of the Neo-Babylonian empire before its demise.

Editors: Israel Finkelstein, Benjamin Sass Editorial Board: Nadav a’aman, Oren Tal, David Ussishkin Managing Editor: Myrna Pollak

Tel Aviv is Published by Maney Publishing for The Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology of The Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University

For more information, visit our website at http://www.tau.ac.il/humanities/archaeology/publications/pub_telaviv.html