Sunday, July 03, 2011

PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY AND ALPHABET

The science of paleogrammatology 
and the evolution of the alphabet

                I am not here to blind you with SCIENCE but with SIGNS.

Anyone who knew me during my years as a lecturer at Massey University (1970 till 2001) thinks of me as a teacher of religion. Certainly, in 1970, I came from Melbourne University with a masterate in Hebrew Bible theology and a doctorate in Syriac Christian mysticism, to establish Religious Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at Massey University in Palmerston North. First it was a non-entity without a department to belong to, then a sub-department, next a thriving little independent department (when small was beautiful and in this case rationally economic), and finally as an unmentionable segment of the School of History, Philosophy, Politics, and Classical Studies (no space left for including Religious Studies). In this same connection, in the years 1962 and 1963, I was a lecturer in a theological college in South Australia.
    However, at Massey university I endeavoured to present my subject not as theology but as “phenomenology of religion”, and as a science, Religionswissenschaft (religion-science) as it is known in German. And yet it has often been observed that I do not go around spouting religion so much as languages and scripts, or to be technical, talking about linguistics (the scientific study of languages and their structure), epigraphy (the study of inscriptions), and palaeography (study of ancient writings and inscriptions, which involves dating, deciphering, interpreting).
    Originally, however, I was a secondary school teacher at Granville Boys High School in Sydney, from 1959 to 1961 (Crocodile Dundee alias Paul Hogan was a pupil there, but not in my time); my teaching subjects were Latin, French, English, and Ancient History; and subsequently in other states of Australia I gave instruction in German, and also ancient Hebrew and Greek. Along the way I have learnt many other ancient and modern languages in order to read original texts and academic literature in my fields of study, which are many and various. So I can claim to be a linguist and an antiquarian (I live more in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age than in the current Gas Age).
     Now, the subject of this discourse is “paleogrammatology” (a word I have invented and which you have now discovered), and paleogrammatology is not about ancient languages but about ancient letters (Greek paleo, old; and grammata, written characters, from the verb grapho, write or draw). So we will be talking, in the English language, about scripts or writing systems, rather than about languages.
    In 1964, I was teaching English, French, and German in Launceston, in Tasmania, and on the side I was studying extramurally for a London University degree in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac (its title was Master of Theology, and I failed it). This also involved reading ancient inscriptions in Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite (all dialects of the same language, which I call Canaanian, the language of Canaan (Kana`an), which the benighted English blithely pronounce as Keinen. I had already been delving into the ancient languages and scripts of the Bible lands in 1958, while I was supposed to be studying for my Diploma in Education at Sydney University.
    While I was at Granville Boys High (it had been Granville Tech, before I came and introduced foreign languages into the curriculum, and it was still a tough environment) I organized a linguistics club after school hours, with some of my brightest students. By digging deeply and archaeologically in my filing cabinet (which has traveled over land and sea with me since then) I have found the exercise book in which I kept notes, including the name of the group as the “Granville Linguistic Society”.  We also talked about “writing”, which is not strictly a part of linguistics, and we had as one of our resources a table of the development of many of the letters of the alphabet from Egyptian hieroglyphs, taken from the back of a breakfast-cereal packet (corn flakes, to be scientifically accurate, probably Kellogg brand). Looking at that incomplete and inaccurate chart now, in my humble capacity as an expert on the original alphabet (the proto-alphabet, I have dubbed it) I see that it did not do too much damage to the minds of those eager young learners.
    I hope they remember me with affection, and likewise those fifty (quinquaginta, cinquante, fünfzig) good keen lads in my Ancient History class; this was my most glorious year in education; if any of those twelve-year-olds misbehaved in the classroom the rest would hiss him; and whenever I arrived to begin each lesson there was always someone waiting at the door for me with something to show and tell; antiquarianism is such fun. I now feel, with regret, that when I had to take detention classes after school, instead of making them sit there in silent penance for their disruptive behaviour in other people’s classes, I should have encouraged them to practise yoga meditation, or stimulated them with the origin of the letters of the alphabet. But my knowledge was rudimentary and as imprecise as any other expert’s opinions in those unenlightened times, as the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica show. They still have not got it right.
    During my year in Tasmania (1964), teaching English, French, and German at Scotch (sic!) College in Launceston (sick indeed, as tuberculosis had raged there before I joined the staff), I also began reading seriously about decipherment of mysterious scripts (including the proto-alphabet). For resources, I only had my own books, purchased by mail from Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford, and those available in the local public library.
    One thing I remembered ever after from that search (it was not yet research of my own): some of the great decipherers, having cracked the code of one particular script, then thought they had obtained the key to open other doors leading to the decoding of more undeciphered scripts, and in the process they made idiots of themselves. So in my own sleuthing in this treacherous minefield, I have trodden warily, with that warning in mind. (A related anecdotal real-life experience: once, at the Suez Canal in Egypt, I got out of the bus and went running over the landscape for exercise; I was called back urgently by a local Arab, because there were bombs in the ground.)
     Nevertheless, in spite of that caveat about thinking you have discovered the key, when I eventually worked out the origins of the alphabet, I became more audacious. After identifying the source of each letter (Aleph and Alpha an ox; Bayt and Beta a house; Gaml and Gamma a boomerang; Dalt and Delta a door, and so on), building on the “experiments” and discoveries of my predecessors, I did begin trying to unravel other enigmatic scripts, because I had in fact found the key to open their locked gateways. In a word: ACROPHONY, also known as “the acrophonic principle”.
    My first lecture on the subject of ancient scripts (particularly the proto-alphabet) was presented at a language and literature conference in Christchurch in January 1987; it was ground-breaking (though not earth-shaking. like their recent devastating earthquakes); it was published in 1988 as “Recent discoveries illuminating the origin of the alphabet”. Strange to say, it did not contain the word acrophony, nor the term acrophonic principle, though this was the underlying unstated assumption of my thesis.
    The word acrophony (as distinct from cacophony, “bad sound”) is apparently not in common or decent usage, since it is absent from my Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (1990); but acrophobia is there as “fear of heights” (from Greek akron, “summit”), and, more significantly, acronym, which refers to a noun or name constructed from the initial (or “top”) letters of other words (radar from radio detection and ranging;  RADA from Royal Academy of Dramatic Art). Accordingly, acrophony is “summit sound”, and refers to taking the initial letter of a word that goes with a particular depiction of some object or symbol.


ACROPHONY the key to ancient syllabaries and the original alphabet (a consonantary)

Step 1 REBUS (whole word) > a syllabogram (Mesopotamia, logo-syllabary) (ab, ba, bat)

Step 2 REBUS (first syllable) > a syllabogram (Canaan, and then Crete, Anatolia, Mesoamerica)

Step 3 REBUS (initial consonant) > a consonantogram (Canaan, proto-alphabet)

The results of my research show that the original letters of the proto-alphabet (Canaanian logo-consonantary) could act as:

(1) an acrophonic consonantogram (picture of snake > nakhash > N)

(2) a complex consonantogram (N–Kh-Sh + T = “copper”)

(3) a logogram (snake > nakhash)

See further on this subject:
http://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/alphabetevolution
Also available there is a typology of scripts and my table of signs charting the development of the alphabet out of the Canaanian syllabary that preceded it, and with the assistance of Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is something to print out and hang on the wall.

Is Paleogrammatology a science?

Establishing TAXONOMY with TYPOLOGY should make it a scientific procedure. Right?

Like paleontology and paleobotany we have FOSSILS to work on, in the form of clay tablets (and even papyrus rolls), and these stones still cry out.

PALEOGRAMMATOLOGY study of ancient writing systems

GRAMMATOLOGY study of scripts and their components

EPIGRAPHY study of inscriptions

PALEOGRAPHY study of ancient writings: involves dating, deciphering, interpreting

Linguistics, the scientific study of languages and their structure (cp physics, mathematics)

Grammatology, scientific study of writing systems, not “grammatics” or “graphics” (cp geology, biology)


TYPOLOGY OF ANCIENT SCRIPTS

SEMASIOGRAPHY communication through Sematograms or Ideograms

LOGOGRAPHY communication through Logographs/Logograms, Morphographic

PHONOGRAPHY communication through Phonograms (have sound-value but no meaning)

SYLLABARY a system of Syllabograms  (ba bi bu)

LOGOSYLLABARY a system of Logograms and Syllabograms (Mesopotamia, Canaan)

CONSONANTARY a system of Consonantograms (b g d) Abgad (Abjad)  (Phoenician alphabet)

LOGOCONSONANTARY a system of Logograms and Consonantograms (Egypt, proto-alphabet)

VOCOCONSONANTARY (ALPHABET) includes vocalic letters (vowel-signs)  (Greek alphabet)

ALPHASYLLABARY a special system of syllabograms (each basic sign has the vowel /a/ built into it, but appendages indicate the other vowels [(Abugida) Abagada Abagidu]  (Ethiopic, Indic)


Logography is practically impossible; English and Chinese texts are virtually logographic but both provide some phonetic assistance; generally, look at each word and say it (from memory: to too two), not sound it out, as is possible with Mâori or Suomi (Finnish).



TYPOLOGY OF CHARACTERS

GRAMMATA = Characters or Letters

LOGOGRAM or LOGOGRAPH represents a word

XENOGRAM a sign borrowed from another system (& =et = and)

PHONOGRAM represents a sound, single or syllabic, but has no meaning

REBOGRAM a phonogram used to represent other words or parts of words (rebus)

ACROPHONOGRAM says only the first consonant (a consonantogram) or syllable (syllabogram) of the word that goes with a particular image (depiction or symbol)

SYLLABOGRAM represents a syllable, bu, gi, du

CONSONANTOGRAM represents a consonant

VOCALOGRAM represents a vowel

ORTHOGRAM a determinative sign, written but not spoken,

PICTOGRAM or PICTOGRAPH? A picture telling a story?

SEMATOGRAM (IDEOGRAM) signs not attached to speech (heart-sign for love)

PALEOGRAM  could mean an ancient letter or sign?!

POLYPHONOGRAM more than one possible reference (Mesopotamia)

A sign may belong to more than one category, and function in more than one way in different settings

(one sign as acrophonogram/syllabogram and also logogram).

The original letters of the proto-alphabet (Canaanite logo-consonantary) could act as:

(1) an acrophonic consonantogram (picture of snake > nakhash > N)

(2) a complex consonantogram (N–Kh-Sh + T = “copper”)

(3) a logogram (snake > nakhash)


ALPHABET here defined as a minimal set of signs for writing a language (whether vowels are represented or not) BEC 1996 (Contributions) 69

It is an informal word, and technical terms need to be used or created for the various types. Peter Daniels has offered ABJAD and ABUGIDA, but I think these are not formal terms

Incidentally, just because a writing system is complex does not mean there will be low literacy in the land. The Babylonian logosyllabary had hundreds of signs but a writer could get by with less than a hundred.

The Japanese writing system, (syllabic and logographic) is extremely complicated, and yet Japan has a higher literacy rate than France. Then there is the English logographic orthography

(Seed cede, supersede or supercede?)

What was the original form of each letter?

Which of the original signs (logograms, consonantograms) have disappeared over time?
What happened to the fish (Samek), the wick (a double helix, a hank of thread, H), and the grape-vine (Gh)?

Monday, April 26, 2010

PHAISTOS DISK



This is a printed document, from around 1700 before the current era, 
long before printing was invented!
 Detailed photographs are available here.
 
The Phaistos disc was discovered in 1908 in a Bronze-Age building, 
at Phaistos (Festos) in SW Crete. It is indeed a 'provenanced' find, 
but it could have been 'planted'
(deliberately inserted into the soil

to be uncovered/discovered in situ the next day)?
Could the Phaistos disc be a forgery? 
   That would be a very elaborate hoax to perpetrate: making 45 little stamps
to imprint on clay, on both sides of the object, and printing 30 clusters of
signs (words or phrases ?) on one side and 31 on the other.
   I know personally two different scholars (out of a host of hopefuls) who have
published confident attempts at decipherment (both read it as Hellenic, but
produce entirely different transcriptions and translations).
    My observations on it, after looking at all the other scripts of Crete (and
Cyprus) is that it does not belong to the same family as Linear B (used for
Mycenean Greek texts).
    There is a line of development in Crete from a set of pictographs to
stylized Linear A characters (language arguably West Semitic) and even more stylized
Linear B; and on Cyprus a derived syllabic script from the same source
(through Linear A), used for a Hellenic dialect and other languages.

My judgement is that the Cretan pictographs and the Phaistos pictographs 
(in spite of similarities and apparent correspondences) do not belong to the
same system. And they are not Egyptian, Sumerian, Luwian, or Cana'anite
(neither the proto-alphabet, nor the logo-syllabary best-known from the
Byblos texts).

If the characters on the Phaistos Disc do not have any known counterparts,
what would be the purpose of such fakery? Our analogy cannot be with the
forgeries from Israel, which use scripts and languages that are known, and
can fetch a good price because of their pseudo-historical connections.

We must accept the Phaistos document on trust, hoping that a companion will
be found for it to aid in its elucidation. (Well now: there's a motive and a
project for a forger!)
Jerome M. Eisenberg, The Phaistos Disk: A 100-Year-Old Hoax? Minerva 19, 4 (2008)
However, a claim has been made that the object was forged by its discoverer, and 
Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in fake ancient art, has pointed the finger at 
Luigi Pernier, the Italian archaeologist who found it in the Phaistos palace. 
A motive would possibly have been to compete with the remarkable discoveries 
being made at Knossos by Arthur Evans (whose drawing of the two sides of the disc 
is reproduced above).
Eisenberg sees the forger's error in creating a terracotta 'pancake' with a clean-cut 
edge and firing it. Cretan clay tablets (as evidenced at Knossos and Phaistos) were 
rough and ready, and not deliberately fired, though it could happen accidentally 
(when the buildings containing them were destroyed by fire). 
Perhaps so, but if the Phaistos Disc really is ancient, and if its maker considered it 
to be a significant or sacred object then it may well have been purposefully baked.
Eisenberg has given us nothing but speculation, so far, and his idea could be verified 
or falsified by thermoluminescence dating, but because of the risk involved (the
object could be damaged) his request has been refused by the Heraklion Museum
Actually this method of dating determines the latest time the object was fired,
and if it had been put in an oven to dry it out in 1908 or later , the original date 
would have been obliterated.
Eisenberg has given a quite a few suggestions for sources the forger could have 
used to copy various signs from, notably Linear A. My answer to that is to see two 
different but related writing systems on the island of Crete:
 the Knossos script (northern), a picto-phonetic syllabary > Linear A and B;
 the Phaistos script (southern), a picto-phonetic syllabary.
Looking at the 30 accountancy tablets from Phaistos (as distinct from adjacent
Hagia Triada, where the Linear A script was used, a stylized form of the northern 
picto-phonetic script), most seem to be Linear A, but some (PH 8, 9, 13, 15, 17, 26
have signs known from the Phaistos Disc, and notably PH 12:
 
 
PhD sign 14 (fetter, Greek pedé, Linear B PE), 
PhD 1 (striding man), 
PhD 22 (cuttlefish, Greek sépia, Linear B SA), 
PhD 27 ( hide, talent?).

PH 13 has a fish (Phaistos Disc sign 35), which is not found in the northern 
picto-syllabary or its descendant, Linear A. 
Thus the Phaistos script has its own set of signs, but some of them are shared 
with the Knossos  syllabary.
 
 The 45 characters on the Phaistos Disc (after Arthur Evans)
 
If this is a discovery I have made, it will still not help us read the Phaistos Disc! 
Or perhaps it will. If enough signs are common to both systems, and we substitute 
the known values from Linear B, then we are on our way with a flying start.
I could argue for at least 20 correspondences out of 45 (the number of separate 
signs on the Disc), and I will do that in another article. This was the approach of 
StevenFischer in his attempt at decipherment.
But the fact remains that the Phaistos script is represented on other documents from 
Phaistos, and  so the forgery hypothesis is unnecessary. 
We have other evidence to draw on. The comb sign (PD21 on the table above) was 
found on a lump of clay in the Phaistos palace (document HM 992). 
And the Arkalokhori Ax has 15 characters, some of them duplicates, with apparent 
connections to the Phaistos Disk set of signs, and/or to the Knossos inventory.
With regard to the general question of the scripts, languages, and ethnic groups 
of Crete in the Bronze Age, I would tentatively respond to  genetic evidence 
offered by Tristan Carter et al:
    Differential Y-chromosome Anatolian influences on the Greek and Cretan Neolithic’     Annals of Human Genetics 72(2) (2008): 1-10 (205-214).
They posit newcomers from Syria-Palestine and East Aegean/NW Anatolia.
This suggests Semitic-speaking people (let's call them Semites!), and Trojans or Etruscans (!), or even Hellenes. I am struck by the possibility that Greek words
fit with the syllabograms (two examples are given above: pedé, sépia).
 I surmise that the Semites went south to Phaistos (and Hagia Triada), where the accountancy documents use the term KU-RO for 'total', possibly Semitic kull (Cyrus Gordon). There are Semitic words and names on the Linear A tablets from the south (example: TINITA could be the West Semitic goddess).

Knossos, on the northern part of the island, would have been the home of the other  group, from the far north-east of the Aegean. They devised the picto-syllabic script that became Linear A, and then Linear B (used by Mycenean Greeks).

How the very ancient Phaistos Disc, with its picto-phonetic text, fits into this picture is a puzzle, but it might be Semitic rather than Anatolian or Hellenic.

It has a script that was inspired by the West Semitic logo-syllabary (23rd C BCE),
I presume, but it is not the same as the similar picto-phonetic syllabary found in the north of Crete (the ancestral script of Linear A and B, and of the Cyprus syllabary).

My hypothesis looks untidy, but I am arguing for two scripts in Bronze-Age Crete, invented by the two groups of settlers. The model they both used was not the Egyptian hieroglyphic consonantal script (no vowels represented, as in the original alphabet) but the acrophonic syllabary of Byblos (vowels built into the characters, based on the initial syllable of the word that goes with the picture).

For the moment, in the light of the new genetic evidence I am thinking once again that a Semitic approach should be taken to some, most, or all of the religious texts written in Linear A script on cultic objects. Cyrus Gordon and Jan Best have published studies on this possibility.

An East Semitic as well as a West Semitic test should be applied (Cyrus Gordon wavered between both), since Akkadian (Babylonian) was the international language in those times.
For an examination of the Phaistos script see Phaistos Syllabary.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

TIMNA INSCRIPTIONS



 Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah
Antiguo Oriente 8 , 2010 (expanded version of this essay)

The copper mines at Timna (in the Wadi Arabah/Arava, in Israel) have yielded a number of West Semitic inscriptions, and here are some interesting and instructive examples. They assist us in solving the problem of the identification of Sh, Ss, and Q in the proto-alphabet.

TIMNA ROCK INSCRIPTION

In August 2009 Joseph Otto of Stonewatch reported an inscription, and published a photograph of it; he would not reveal its precise location, but added that the Egyptologist Stefan Jakob Wimmer was working on it. It looks very Egyptian, with two 'cartouches', one showing an eye (of Horus?), and the other displaying a double serpent, protecting the sun, which could say Shimsh ('sun') in Canaanite, or simply be the letter Sh.

In the right-hand set of symbols, the circle under the eye (and its two lines) might represent the sun-disc. Or it may be a human head, R.

The two wavy lines symbolize water, and could the Canaanite MM (Hebrew mayim).

Is that a seated human person, or a human head (R) with a dot above it? As a logogram R'Sh ('head') it could say 'top-class' or 'prime quality' (as I have argued in two instances on the Wadi el-Hol inscription); hence it says "excellent water".  On the other hand, if it reads M MR, it becomes "bitter water". The eye at the top could thus be a logogram, or a rebogram, standing for `ayin 'spring'; three examples of such usage can be invoked from the Sinai mining region.

The other set of symbols is puzzling: 3 horizontal parallel lines, 3 oblique lines, and a character resembling the Egyptian nfr symbol (the lower part depicts the heart), standing for goodness and beauty, and borrowed in the proto-alphabet for T.et, and in the syllabary for T.A, or as a logogram t.ab 'good'. The trio of strokes might represent the spinal column (the Egyptian djed, 'stability'), used for the letter Samek ('support'), though the fish-symbol is more often found for Samek, until the Phoenician alphabet settled for the column S (and then into the Greek alphabet for Xsi).

The cartouches suggest that an important person  would be named in the text. But is this actually a 'sign' saying: "spring",  "excellent water", "good support"?

As always, we cannot be sure about the writer's intended meaning. But on Vladimir's photograph there are more marks: possibly N (snake) and G (throwstick), and others below them, not completely in the frame. If we can read GN (gan 'garden') then we would have a counterpart for the Garden of the Sun at the Sinai turquoise mines (Sinai 353), and this could explain the sun-symbol here.

If this hypothesis is correct, the site should have an ample patch of ground for a vegetable garden, and be near the camp of the miners. The Sinai horticultural inscriptions were on the exterior wall of a mine, indicating that the garden plot was right there. If this supposition fails, a new context for this inscription must be sought. The possibility remains that it is marking a well, but again the feasibility of this idea needs to be tested by an examination of the site.

Stefan Wimmer has now provided a full description of the place and the text, in JOURNAL OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN INTERCONNECTIONS (online,  http://jaei.library.arizona.edu| Vol. 2:2, 2010| 1–12 pdf).


 Stefan Wimmer's photographs show that there is ample space for an irrigated vegetable garden; and the inscription (its position is indicated by the white arrow on the left, and the seated man on the right, who is in a pose similar to that of the human figure in the inscription) is actually horizontal (not vertical, as other pictures of it may have suggested) and situated on a tabletop rock (about 2 metres high). Whether there was ever a spring on this spot is not a question I can answer.

Here is a copy of his drawing.


Stefan's interpretation is interesting and authoritative: the two ovals are not Egyptian cartouches enclosing royal names (they lack the mandatory horizontal line at the bottom); the writing is not Egyptian but belongs to the same family as the pictorial characters from the Sinai turquoise mines, the so-called 'Proto-Sinaitic' script, but  I would refer to it as  the West Semitic proto-alphabet or the Proto-Canaanite pictophonographic consonantary, represented by numerous inscriptions in Syria-Palestine, Egypt, and Sinai (including Timna and Har Karkom), from the Bronze Age.

The ovals could depict tablets (like the two tablets of Moses), and SJW proposes to find a word for 'tablet'  in the one on the left; or else footprints, with the name of the person engraved on them (and this might make it a 'Kilroy was here' graffito).

The oval on the right has the following signs: `(ayin), Z (properly Dh), R (head), M M, and the human figure is a classifier borrowed from the Egyptian repertory, indicating a male person.  So we would have a  man's name: ` Z R M M.

The other oval has the sun symbol at the top (Sh, from shimsh 'sun', hieroglyph N6B, two uraeus serpents encompassing the sun, though here the sun-disc is omitted), and Stefan has accepted my argument (first published in 1988 and reiterated and reinforced ever since, but almost totally ignored by scholars in this field) for seeing hieroglyphs representing the sun (r`) as the source of proto-alphabetic Sh-signs. He compares the character appearing twice on the Wadi el-Hol inscription (see my notes on Sh-signs there) with two circles joined by a curved line (which he has always thought to be Sh, but without making this connection), and he sees that as a variant of what we have here: the  two snakes without the sun disc. However, whereas here the serpents have heads of the same size, there the scribe has in each case made the circle on the right considerably smaller than the one on the left, suggesting that one represents the sun-disc and the other is the head of the snake. Thus, as I see it,  there we have an example related to hieroglyph N6, with only one serpent, but here we have N6B with two.  This is a crucial point for dating: the hieroglyph with two snakes (N6B) is perennial (known in the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom), but the single-serpent icon does not appear before the New Kingdom, and this means that the Wadi el-Hol inscription can not be assigned to the Middle Kingdom, where everyone wants it to be,  so that it can maintain its supposed position as the oldest alphabetic inscription. 

Now, the typical Sh-sign in the Sinai collection does not include the sun-disc, and because it curls round at each end, the two-serpent hypothesis seems to fit the case admirably, rather than seeing a head at one head and a curly tail at the other; N6 has a straight tail, and this does not appear on the Wadi el-Hol examples.

However, the disc is not always omitted, as shown on the inscribed Timna stone that I am examining here (see below): head, sun, and straight tail.



Or on this potsherd from the Valley of Queens in southern Egypt.


My reading for the two lines (right to left):
' M H T (maidservants), ' Sh T (women)
The lower line should be viewed vertically to see the ox-head (`aleph), the sun with a single serpent (Sh), and the cross (T).
(See Benjamin Sass, Genesis of the Alphabet, 1988, figure 286, and p.104, but he disallows this as proto-alphabetic, contra Leibovitch, Albright, van den Branden, and myself).

Then an example from Thebes (5th character from the left), which (although it is in a syllabic inscription, as ShI) seems to show how the form without the disc came into being.

[Thebes+6.jpg]

(William Flinders Petrie, in the frontispiece of his book The Formation of the Alphabet, 1912 )

Of course, even though this Timna inscription could not be a hoax (see Stefan's arguments, p. 7-8), we might actually be looking at two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, and all this agonizing over the origin of Sh (which, incidentally, did not find its way into the Phoenician and Grecian alphabets) crumbles to dust. On the other hand, if it is correct, then all the speculative theorizing about Sh as a thorn and Sh/Th as a composite bow (following W. F. Albright, most recently in Gordon Hamilton's The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet, 2006, 123-125, 231-244) collapses in ruins.

However, the three horizontal lines below the sun-symbol are not a mouth but a hand, in the simplified three-finger form often used for K; Stefan has observed (on the site) a line joining the three digits on the right, and this is included in his drawing.

Significantly, the failure to recognize the solar connections of the sign for Sh/S (cp Hebrew Shin/Sin) caused the exponents of the composite-bow hypothesis to read Th every time it occurred, producing Dh T B Th N 'the serpent woman' in Sinai inscription 351, instead of Dh K B Sh N M Sh 'this melt-furnace' (Hebrew kibshan 'furnace', with Shin; and mss 'melt', with Sin); the K has three fingers, pointing down. The same term reappears in other inscriptions, in a material context of metal-working equipment, and this is one of the keys to the decipherment of these documents.

Moving on, the sign on the bottom left  is understood as L, a crook (like Hieroglyph S38 rather than S39 which is simpler, not curved backward), though it is inverted here; it is not so likely to be in imitation of V1, the coil of rope favoured by Hamilton (126-137).

Finally, the three oblique strokes are provided with a stem, and instead of making a connection with the Egyptian djed column (R11) and the letter Samek (as I suggested above), or interpreting it as another K, he invokes the hieratic version of V28 (ooo<) with strokes not circles for this double-helix sign. This is an original idea and worthy of consideration. However, there is a serious mistake here: although this hieroglyph stands for Egyptian Hh (dotted h), it does not have this value in the proto-alphabet, but Kh (see Hamilton, 57-60). He seems to imply that this is the sign used for Hh in Sinai, but not in Canaan. However, this character (a hank of thread or a wick) represents Kh in proto-alphabetic inscriptions in Egypt, Sinai, and Canaan, and also in the cuneiform alphabet, where Kh is a cluster of three vertical wedges, obviously based on this pictophonogram (see the Kh and Hh lines on my table, at the end of this article).

The resulting sequence is stated as Sh K L Hh (properly Kh).
The proposed interpretation is S´K L (L) Hh 'tablet-expert' (cp Hebrew s´kl 'have insight'; luah. 'tablet')
The difficulty is that the Ugaritic evidence clearly  has LHh not LKh for 'tablet'. Nevertheless, there may be a way out of this dead-end:  in the shorter 'linear' version of the pictorial alphabet the sign for Kh disappeared, and Kh coalesced with Hh, but in the shorter cuneiform alphabet Kh replaced Hh.
This inscription is presumably from the  Ramesside period, when the Bronze Age is ending and the Iron Age is commencing, and things are in a fluid state in the evolution of the alphabet and the phonology of the Canaanite dialects.

This principle could be used to cover the Kh for Hh here in oval L, and the Dh for Z in oval R. The inscribed stone studied below has ShQL 'weight, shekel', but this should be ThQL in a Bronze-Age setting; but Th (breast) is the one that survives in the alphabet. This is a limited corpus to work with, but the Hh sign is lacking in it, and again this will be the one that remains, while the Kh (thread, wick) will disappear.

Now, it is a truism that only the writer of an ancient inscription knew what it meant, and I and Stefan have proposed two vastly differing interpretations. His was a typical autograph graffito: " `Az-romam the scribe". Mine was a notice concerning a spring in the immediate vicinity, and the state of its water.

SJW has achieved his reading by doubling the L, and for this he refers us to the sequence M'HB`L[T] on the Sinai sphinx statuette (S345), standing for M'HB B`LT 'beloved of Ba`alat'. But nobody ever mentions that the B (a square representing a house, bayt) has a dot in it, presumably indicating the double B (as in classical Hebrew writing).

 The L here possibly has such a dot beside it, but so does the K. Now, a Hebrew root ShKK appears in the Flood story in Genesis (8:1): 'the waters abated'. When we add to this the fact noted by SJW (5b) that three parallel straight lines (instead of wavy lines, as in oval R) is the hieratic form of mw 'water', we have the waters abating here also!

The first thoughts I had on this inscription might merit recording here. 

Allowing that the right side is telling us about a water-well (`ayin 'spring', M 'water'), the left side might contain a reference to an important piece of apparatus, namely a bucket for drawing water out of the well.  The Semitic root is DL (Akkadian dalu 'draw water', 'bucket'). The L is on the bottom left, and the two oblique lines beside it may have joining strokes, making a door, hence D (Dalet). The top line of this trio could be a simple snake, N, preceded by K and Sh. The combination ShKN produces the root that means 'put, place' or 'dwell' or 'be present'. The word MShKN (used for the 'tabernacle' of the Bible, the tent where the Shekinah 'presence' of God dwells) is found at the camp site of the Egyptian turquoise expeditions in Sinai (S365). Here it signals the place where the bucket is to be placed after use.

If there is no possibility of a well having been situated here in the remote past, then this line of interpretation must be rejected. Would that the author of this puzzle had left the solution under the rock.

INSCRIBED STONE





Beno Rothenberg, The Egyptian Mining Temple at Timna (London 1988)
Plate 116 : 4 and 5
Sandstone pebble (6.5 x 7.5 cm) with engraved signs on both sides; unstratified (p. 268b)

This is possibly a weight, and indeed the word shekel (ShQL) appears on it, apparently.  The Q (-o-) is in the middle of the object, on the first side. It is surely not necessary for me to go into a long defence of this identification, even though the handbooks on early West Semitic writing have overlooked it, and assigned the value q to the tied-bag sign, which is actually S.adey. Because S.adey and Qoph are relatively rare letters and difficult to identify,  this school of thought  takes the Hebrew name Qoph, meaning 'monkey', and turns the bag into an ape. However, Q survived (in the form seen here) in the old Arabian script; and moved into the Phoenician consonantal alphabet without the top projecting stroke (see the Q line on the table at the end). It represents a line (qaw), a cord wound on a stick, and it has an alternative form, imitating its borrowed  Egyptian hieroglyph (V24, V25): an end of the cord pokes out at the top (see the table), and this is found on the sphinx (Sinai 345) from the Sinai temple of Hat-Hor (an earlier counterpart to the shrine at Timna); it has been unrecognized by previous observers (but note the dot in the middle of the main stem, and the other projrcting line on the left). This later form does not appear till the New Kingdom in Egypt (Late Bronze Age), and this should mean that the inscription on the sphinx can not be dated to the Middle Kingdom (Middle Bronze Age), as many have assumed. The example we see here seems to have only one projecting line at the top, though it is easy to imagine another one among all the marks. The development of the letter Q involves elimination of all lines above the circle, as in Roman Q. There is another example on the inscribed plaque, below (in an unusual horizontal stance).

The Sh sign is the sun with a serpent; the tail is on the right, and the head on the left (see the Sh/Th secton of the table, below). The presumed  L stands next to the Q; it is a simple crook (see the L line on the table).

There is a fish below the Sh, which would represent S (not D for dag 'fish', as commonly supposed; D is from dalt 'door', and there may be one on the other side of the stone). To the right is a right-angle, presumably a boomerang, and thus G (gaml, not P).

On the other face, three signs are detectable. From the left: a door, D; an ox-head, 'alep; a hook, W, or a head, R (but the neck is too long), or another L with the top more curled than the other.

If the sequence is S G D ' L, then it can be analysed as SGD 'worship' and 'L 'El' (God), though a preposition l ('to') would be expected. As a guess, are these extra words somehow giving divine sanction to the trustworthiness of the weight?




INSCRIBED PLAQUE

Stone plaque from the Arabah
Photograph and drawing as reproduced by Sass (fig 276, 277)
See Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet, p. 103 for information
Assuming that this is another West Semitic inscription, and giving credence to the drawing: the bottom sign is T (+), beneath N (nahhash 'snake'), then Q (qaw, cord wound on a stick, as on the stone, above); the most likely identity for the next one is Ss (s.irar, a tied bag, see the Egyptian original on the table, below); the wavy line is a short M (water), or possibly Th (breast); at the top we have a sign shaped like H, which is a late example of Z (not Dh). There are other possible letters above and beside this Z.

There are more marks to the left of this column of writing. Level with the Q is possibly an eye (signaling another spring, as possibly in the rock inscription above?).

The sequence of signs on the drawing would be:  Z M Ss Q N T

In the light of the mining and smelting of copper that was done in this area, a connection could reasonably sought with the root ys.q (Y Ss Q, Ugaritic and Hebrew) 'pour' or 'cast' metal. If the MSsQ means "(place of) pouring" or "casting" (cp Hbr mus.aq), then NT could be analysed as a rebogram plus a consonantogram: NHhSh (the consonants of the word for 'snake') + T, producing NHhShT, "copper" or "bronze". If Z is 'this' (though Dh would be expected in the Bronze Age, but these mines belong in the Ramesside period, when some consonants are coalescing) we could interpret the statement thus:
  Z MSsQ N(HhSh)T
 "This is the copper-smelting (place)"

Incidentally, I trace the Z-sign to ziqqu 'manacle', and as a rebogram it can represent the root zqq 'refine'; this term appears in connection with refining gold on an inscription from Thebes (ostracon 4).

The snake rebus for copper (possibly also on Sinai 352) would show that the characters of the proto-alphabet could be used like Egyptian hieroglyphs, that is, as logograms and rebograms (rebuses).

CONCLUSION

These three inscriptions seem to be giving support to ideas I have been promoting for many years, notably that the proto-alphabet was in a way a simplification of the Egyptian writing system.

They also bolster my identifications of the controversial signs: there are two instances of the true Q (qaw, 'line', string on stick), and (on the plaque) one of them is right next to the false Q (tied bag) which is actually Ss, and occurs in the Sinai texts in such words as s.btm 'handfuls' (375), s.rp 'crucible' (372), s.rh. 'excavation chamber' (356), and ns.b 'foreman' (346, 349, 351). The choice made by Albright and his followers to read nqb 'piercer', supposedly meaning 'miner', instead of ns.b 'prefect', sent them off on a wrong track, on which they were compelled to overlook the occurrences of the real Q, in ql` 'inscribe' (376), qnt 'elegy' (363), nqy 'my offering' (345, the sphinx). 

The confusion of the door as D (dalt) with the fish as S (dag 'fish' is invoked to justify it as D) can be refuted when both are found in the same text; there is a faint possibility of such an occurrence on the small stone, but a clear case is on the wall above Bir Nas.b, the well where water was obtained for the turquoise and copper expeditions, in the words DWT 'sickness' and 'S' (Asa) (Sinai 376).

One way of confirming that D is a door is by examining the rectangular shape it has in the cuneiform  alphabet (see the full cuneiform table, and also the Canaan column of the table): D has 3 vertical wedges (the sections of the door) on 3 horizontal wedges (the door post); B, the square house, has four wedges, similarly arranged. Compare also the form for S, which has 3 wedges, representing the fish, very simply, with head and tail. Note that the alternative form of Samek (spinal column), which possibly appears in the rock inscription, also has a place in the cuneiform alphabet.

Comparing the cuneiform  S. and Q, the Q has a horizontal wedge (note the -o- form on the plaque, above) with a type of wedge that usually represents a circle in the original pictogram (it is employed for the eye of `ayin); S. has two vertical wedges, representing the bag standing upright, presumably.  Additional confirmation comes from the Arabian forms: Q has retained the cord-and-stick, and S. is the bag.

Sh (sun) and Th (breast) both have the wedge representing roundness; but Sh has 3 parts, for sun and serpent head and tail, or two snake heads; the form with two sun-serpents (N6B), seen on the rock inscription above (but with the sun-disc omitted), seems a better model for the typical form of Sh in the Sinai inscriptions, I would now say. Nevertheless, on the stone above we see a form of N6A, with one head and a tail. The 2 examples on the vertical inscription of Wadi el-Hol (shown on the chart) both have a small head and a large sun, and no tail. This version resembles the Arabian Th (o-o), and it appears that Sh and Th have exchanged places in the Arabian script.

Click on this table for an extra-large version

A darker version may be viewed here



Wednesday, March 10, 2010

TWO GOLIATH OSTRACA?



2021
This is an early attempt to interpret the Gath sherd and the Qeiyafa ustracon. For an update go straight to the end of the essay.

 Having already made a survey of the text on the ostracon from Khirbet Qeiyafa (or  Sha`arayim, "Two Gates", and the object was discovered in a room attached to a gate, a gatehouse), I want to look again at the characters on that shard, in the light of what others have claimed to see there, and after further scrutiny of the various photographs and drawings now available here and there (pdf). The interpretation I will present here differs from those proposed in my earlier account: I am now  contemplating the possibility (mentioned in passing there) that GL[ ] at the beginning of line 3 is the name Goliath.

At the same time, I would like to examine the Gath ostracon, which has been touted as "the Goliath inscription".
I will raise the possibility of the presence of S (Samek) in the text. S (Samek) can be a fish or a spine [ -|-|-| ], and the Izbet Sartah abagadary seems to have the fish. The oval character on Qeiyafa line 3 might be a fish (S); and it looks as if there is another S further to the right. The Gath inscription possibly has a fish lurking unnoticed in the second half of its line of writing.
With regard to Samek, here is a significant principle I have noticed: when  the national scripts arose in the Levant in the ninth century BCE (Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Moabite), the telegraph-pole Samek (the Egyptian djed column, now recognized as a spine, the backbone that gives a person stability, the ability to stand up straight, hence West Semitic samk, 'support') became the standard Samek, and the fish (cp Arabic samak, 'fish') disappeared. Previously the spinal sign had been known on the Lakish dagger (as S), and in the West Semitic syllabary (as SA), but the fish had been ubiquitous (Canaan, Sinai, Egypt), and it represented S, not D (as commonly supposed, invoking dag, 'fish'). The Samek on the  Beth-Shemesh ostracon occurs in SB' ("carousing", followed by BT YN, "in the winehouse"). However, the Gezer calendar and the Tel Zayit abagadary have the column with three crossbars for Samek.

Fishes (with fins and tails) are readily recognizable in the Bronze Age texts, but they are wrongly assigned to the D section on the tables of Benjamin Sass (1988) and Gordon Hamilton (2006); consequently these scholars (as also their teachers and their followers) can not give an instance of S in the Bronze Age: they will not even admit the Djed Samek on the Lakish dagger, because it has only two crossbars, though this is a possible form in the Byblos syllabic texts (as SA).

The door-signs (Dalet, D) are shifted to the Het box, and the real instances of Het (Hh, H.) are left dangling or placed in the house-category B (they are houses, but they have an additional courtyard, h.asir, hence H.).

They also choose the Sadey character (a tied bag, s.rr) as Q, overlooking the true Qaw (cord on a stick), and they seize on one particular form of K to serve as Ss (presumed to be something in the flora category).

They claim (preposterously) that there is only one Proto-Canaanite attestation of Sh (what I understand as a triangular D, in Sinai 357; eventually the triangle Dalet will become Delta); they mistakenly catalog the numerous Sh-signs as Th (the true Th, from Thad 'breast', occurs in the word ThLThT 'three' in Sinai 375); it will in time become the letter Shin, also encompassing Th.

They take all the bomerangs or throw-sticks (which properly represent G) and call them P, failing to recognize the cases where a mouth-sign stands for P

[This is my website so I can speak freely here: Sass and Hamilton are the ones who are always cited for reference, but in my opinion the S/D, Hh/D/B, /Ss/Q/K, G/P, Sh/Th confusion nullifies their system (which is largely borrowed from W.F. Albright); and neither has offered a "linguistic decipherment" (Hamilton), with readings of the texts, as is found on the Cryptcracker and Collesseum sites, and in my series of studies in Abr-Nahrain, 1988-1998.]

Other scholars do not notice fish-signs in Paleo-Canaanite texts, because they are observing them from an Iron Age perspective, whereas I am approaching them from a Bronze Age point of view, based on Proto-Canaanite texts. I would apply the term Proto-Canaanite to the West Semitic logo-consonantary (the proto-alphabet) as evidenced in inscriptions from the Bronze Age (before the 12th century BCE), and Paleo-Canaanite ('Old Canaanite') to texts in the stylized and simplified form of the script, which has the number of signs reduced to twenty-two, in the first period of the Iron Age (extending into the 10th century).

The Izbet Sartah, Beth-Shemesh, Gath, and Sha`arayim ostraca are Paleo-Canaanite (exhibiting 22 letters); the Qubur el-Walaydah bowl apparently has the signs for Sh and Th, and stands on the dividing line between Proto-Canaanite and Paleo-Canaanite.

For a survey of the range of signs employed over the centuries, a copy of my table could be useful.

In my previous study of the Qeiyafa text I catalogued the possible letters represented. Here I want to emphasize that the process of decipherment is expected to include a table of frequency of the letters in a typical text in the language under examination.

Here, then, is my list of the 22 letters in order of frequency based on Ugaritic texts and Sinai inscriptions, though not Biblical Hebrew (in which T is less frequent, and W is more prevalent):

L T B M R ' N K ` Y Sh/Th H D Hh/Kh P Ss W Q S G Tt Z/Dh

REVIEWING THE GATH OSTRACON

Having looked at the Qeiyafa letters closely for a long time, I have some ideas about what is on the similar Gath ostracon, and I have caught a fish (S), with two hooks (W) in its mouth (P), by hand (Y), and also an ox ('A) with a boomerang (G) and two crosses (T). The official reading of the text (BASOR 351, 54a) has seven letters, but I count ten (excluding a few marginal marks).

Instead of  'A L W T | W L T
let us try  'A Y G L W T | W S P T


Gordon Hamilton has released a preliminary account (p. 11-13) of his new study of the Gath ostracon:

 http://bibleinterp.com/PDFs/SealOfASeer.pdf

He allows the existence of a supralinear G (which I would also like to accept), and so he reads 'LWT as 'LGWT; but, while muttering  (n. 23) about "the sensationalistic connection" made with 'LWT and the biblical name golyat, 'Goliath', he does not see that the G could give us GLWT, a possible Philistine form of GoLYaT, and that is what I propose to do with it (that is, be sensationalistic).

Sequencing along such lines of letters yields all sorts of weird words and wondrous wisdom. Reading from right to left we see 'A, of the type found at the start of Qeiyafa lines 4 and 5 (refer to the drawing below), where the ox-head is inverted, like Alpha, though the original form is used at the end of line 1 and in the middle of line 2, and the reclining head appears as the first character in the text; remember, this scribe does not practise consistency but prefers variety. However, in the Gath text, if the incised line extending as far as the L is merely a "slip of the pen" (50b), and if we removed the crossbar of the 'A, then we would have a G (/\), and GLWT would do nicely for Goliath. On the other hand, if we accept the existence of the 'A, and consider the stroke as significant, combining it with the two parallel vertical marks pointing downwards at the right end and the oblique mark at the left end, then we have a typical Y (yad, arm with hand and elbow), similar to the Qeiyafa examples (in lines 4 and 5). We are told that T (+) is not possible here (50b), so 'AT "you" is out of the question; but 'AY could be "Where?" or "Woe" (as in Oy veh). If for some technical reason I am not permitted to have this Y (which stands out so clearly on red and black photographs alike), I will still be arguing for the text opening with the interjection "Woe!".

A possible letter G for Goliath is sitting above the L; it is a more obtuse angle than the 'A, and a believable boomerang (to be compared with the the G in the top left corner on side 1 of the Beth-Shemesh ostracon, and a whole armoury of them can be seen on the table). The head is thus separated from the body ... as happened to the giant in the story: young David severed Goliath's head from his corpse (1 Samuel 17:51). I am prompted to make such a silly suggestion because half a century ago, one of my Latin lecturers at Sydney University loved rehearsing such a line contained in some Latin poem (I would be grateful if any reader could remind me what it was). We may be dealing with black magic here: this could be an execration ritual (see further below).

The first Waw is not exactly the same as the second, and in the past, working only from drawings, I have thought that this was Y and the other was W; but having accepted the second sign in the sequence as Y (equivalent to the Sha`arayim Y), and admitting it is  different from the long-stemmed Y of the Izbet Sartah ostracon, which is obscure, but apparently has only ) at the top, not \/, then I acknowledge it to be W, and allow GLWT to be a valid form for GLYT (Goliyat, "Goliath"), perhaps an Anatolian name *Gulwatta. Versions of the name are: Goliath (Greek, Septuagint), Gôlôt (Greek, inscription),  Jâlût (Arabic). However, if we disallowed the first Y, this would still be a possible Y; but if the name has an Anatolian form in this (presumably) Philistine text, the regular change from w to y in Hebrew can be invoked to explain the difference.

The second half of the inscription ( after the separating stroke) could be a verb ending in -t, a possibility envisaged by the editors, and offering "interesting implications for furthering our understanding of the Philistine language" (BASOR 351, 59b). Judging from the interpretation proposed here (which is by no means certain), the language is the West Semitic dialect used by the Philistines, and seems to be the same language as found on other inscriptions from the time, including the Qeiyafa ostracon.

The initial W would be "and"; the verb is not LT but SPT. I arrived at this hypothetical reading from comparing the P in the word ShPTt ("judge") at the start of Qeiyafa line 2.  The P is the remnant of a mouth: () becomes ( . The preceding letter would be the fish I mentioned earlier, apparently with a tail, not "most probably 'a slip of the pen' of the scribe", as the editors say (53a). Actually, it was one of the scholars who first edited this inscription (namely Stefan Wimmer) who taught me (in connection with the Shekem plaque) that what appears to be one letter may, on analysis, turn out to be more than one (two or even three).

SPT could be traced to two verbal roots: SWP 'end, perish'; SPH 'be taken away, perish'. The final -t marks it as 3rd person singular Qal perfect: "You are finished".

"Woe ('y), GLWT.  And (w) you have perished (spt)."
As mentioned above, these words might be an execration, used in a ritual in which the bowl was first inscribed, and then smashed. The incomplete letters to the right of the text could suggest that the bowl was inscribed before it was broken, not simply the shard; and the incomplete characters could be part of the original inscription (indeed, Hamilton suggests they are the end of this same inscription). The past or perfect tense could be 'proleptic', anticipating his death through black magic.

However, given that the document was found in Gath, the city of Goliath (if that is who this GLWT really is), then this should not be 'sympathetic magic' but pure sympathy for the departed.

This is a rather terse elegy, but Gordon Hamilton (p. 12) has made the attractive suggestion that the text continued right around the bowl, when it was intact, and the marks to the right of the 'Aleph are the end of the inscription, thus making it much longer.

If we are to be scientific about this, I need to be the first one to try to falsify my hypothesis. Aren Maeir has responded to Gordon Hamilton's proposed G, affirming that it is not part of the inscription, because it was not deliberately inscribed; it is accidental not intentional.  This would spell doom for the Y also, I presume. So we need to clean up the shard and remove all the intrusive material, which shows up so clearly on a white-on-black photograph the editors published (BASOR 2008, p. 49, fig. 8), and offered such interesting possibilities. But the universe is full of coincidences, as I always say.


And what about the fishy S? If we go to Stefan Wimmer's site:
www.stefan-jakob-wimmer.de/Philisterprojekt.html
we can see three helpful photographs, including this inverted one:
http://www.stefan-jakob-wimmer.de/img_4302.jpg

These photographs seem to show that the editors chose wisely in deciding that there are two examples of L in the text, and thus all four of the additional letters I proposed (G Y S P) are unlikely to be intended by the writer.

Hence we should read (from right to left)  'A L W T / W L T [ ... ?]
The final T (+) has a very short left arm, which could mean either that the scribe had not left enough space for it, or else it was originally complete when written on the vessel, but that part is now on some other remnant of the bowl, possibly with a longer line of text. 

One recourse for saving Goliath is to remove the crossbar of the A-sign (and the line it continues along, possibly continuing right through the L) and produce G L W T (which I suggested in November 2005).

September 2014
http://gath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/picture-of-safi-sherd-with-non-g-marked.pdf
However, that looks like a solid Aleph, an Alpha, even. The extension of its crossbar is puzzling: such protrusions on 'alep should be on both sides.  This photograph shows that the supposed G and similar extraneous marks are coloured (pink-orange), but the true letters are colourless. Now, the two strokes hanging down from the extension-line of the Aleph (which seem to form a Yod)  differ from each other in this regard; the one on the right is coloured and the one on the left is of the same hue (silver-white) as the inscribed letters, and it forms a  right-angle G! We are now looking at a sequence ` G L W T, possibly "Where is Goliath?" or "Alas, Goliath!"

But it is not clear from the photograph whether this vertical mark is incised or merely accidental.

It would appear that the phantom of Goliath has been playing ghostly games to get our attention (Look, this is about me, so I have put another G in, so you can find me more easily); but he was a great celebrity, and it would be reasonable to expect that somebody in his hometown Gath wrote his name down somewhere; it seems that we have not found such a document yet, and we are still in the dark when we try to interpret this one.

REVISITING THE QEIYAFA OSTRACON

 This new drawing of the ostracon from Sha`arayim (Khirbet Qeiyafa) differs in a few details from my earlier attempt at delineating the characters of its text of five lines (reproduced below).



The differences are based on closer scrutiny of  the available photographs, and comparing the drawings of  Haggai Misgav, `Ada Yardeni, and Gershon Galil; but none of us has achieved a complete and perfect reading yet.

It is generally agreed that each line of the text runs from left to right (the opposite of the order established later in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic).

Note my transcription system: ' or 'A ('aleph) ` or `O (`ayin "eye") Hh (H.et) Tt (T.et) Ss (Tsadey) Sh (Shin).

(1a)  '  L T ` N [Q] [ ]
The important point in this is the replacement of Sh by N; I think it is equivalent to the N in line 4, not presuming an extra piece at the top, to make it a pair of breasts (Sh/Th), but accepting it as a snake (N); this would destroy the widely publicized ' L  T ` Sh ("Do not do"), and the concomitant claim that the use of this root (`ayin Sin He) proves that the language is Hebrew; nor does it allow the tempting reconstruction T ` Sh Q, hence "Do not oppress", which fitted well with the idea of judgement in the next line. The N opens the way for 'LT as Elat "Goddess", and `N as from the root `anah "answer"; this would make it a plea for an oracle: "Goddess answer!". However, other possibilities are present. The 'curse' word (Hebrew 'alah) should be tried.  The root `NQ has to do with neck and necklace; and the presence of the giant Anakim (`nqym) is looming; and there could be a Mem between [Q] and W, hence `NQM. Only one N appearing in a West Semitic text is anomalous, as N sits in the first half of the table of order of frequency (see above); so the acceptance of this N brings the total to 2.

(1b) W `O B D 'A [L] [ ]
The root `abad is certainly in evidence, either as a verb "serve" or noun "servant", followed by 'A[L] (El, God) it could produce "Serve God" or "the servant of God", preceded by "and" (W).  I would find the same sequence in line 2a; and in line 5, I propose `OBDY "my servant".

(2) Sh P Tt [`O B [D 'A L M [T] [Sh P Tt
The root Sh P Tt "judge" was recognized at the beginning of this line when the ostracon was discovered; the second occurrence, at the end, was noticed by Yardeni and Galil. In each case the Tt is a cross in a circle, but each P has a different stance; and the second Sh has the \/\/ shape, whereas the first has the form like 3, which will eventually become Sigma. These are the only instances of Shin in the text, if N is accepted in line 1a; but its frequency is normally less than N (8th), with Sh in the middle of the scale (12th).

`O (circle with central dot) was resurrected by Gershon Galil; the D is my own reconstruction, from the W that others have seen; but Galil squeezes a small D into the space, using the left side of my D.
I have inserted T between M and Sh, allowing TShPTt 'thou shalt judge', but other possibilities remain. The MT has the scent of death about it, perhaps 'a dead man', or the noun meaning 'man' or 'warrior'.

It seems reasonable to accept with Galil that line 2 continues vertically into a space at the end of line 1, and the scribe has indeed made such a gap, by closing off the end of the writing in line 1. Earlier, based on Misgav's drawing, I proposed ZH, but I will now try TY, or YT (so Galil, YT[M] 'orphan'), with a possible G also in the picture (observable through wishful thinking) and producing GTY. I have said before that this YT could complement the GL (at the start of line 3) and produce Goliyat (again with his head separated from his body, lest they be united again and he rise up from the dead).

(3) [?] G L [  ] B ` L S [R S [. . . .]
 There may be a letter before G (Galil has a small W). The GL[. .] begs us to add [YT] (GLYT, as in the Hebrew Bible) or [WT] (GLWT, as on the Gath shard). (Notice that there may be a reason why the signs in the previous line (2) and the following line (4) have faded.) B`OL is 'Lord', perhaps the title of a deity (Ba`al, Hadad) or of a high-ranking human. This is where the fish apparently makes its appearance, in a pair, separated by a faded character consisting of a dot and a vertical stroke; following Galil, I would choose R (rosh 'head), with a triangular head, rather than Q, with a rounded top. This could be the sought-after srn, 'tyrant', the title of Philistine rulers; but SRS could be srys, a borrowing from Akkadian (meaning the one at the head [of the king]), found in Hebrew and Aramaic; it can mean 'eunuch', or 'high official'; David had some of these (1 Chronicles 28:1); the prophet Samuel warned Israel that if they accepted a king his srysym would receive their tithes (1 Samuel 8:15); in the Joseph story we meet "Potiphar, srys of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian" (Genesis 39:1). These are the four letters I would like to place in the gap at the end: P L Sh T ('Philistia); or even P L Sh T M ('Philistines'). There is yet another possibility instead of SRS, but it is so startling and controversial that I will save it till the end. But I will reiterate here that the missing YT for GLYT could be found in the far right corner (if we reject my hypothetical G (making gty 'Gittite'). I will also comment on this at the close of this essay.

(4) 'A [Q] M W N Q/R M Y Hh D M L K
This time I will retain MLK as 'king' (or 'kingship', less likely), and not have DM LK as 'blood for you'. 'A[Q]M is again "I will arise"' W is 'and''; NQM is generally accepted as the 'avenge' root, but the sign could be R (RM root 'be high'); YHhD could be 'the community' or 'together'. The Hh is not sure; it might be an unusual B, but Misgav considers Hh to be possible; it seems to revert to the original form, of a house with a courtyard.

(5) 'A R/Q M `O B D Y [Ss [D Q T
The last word is (I still maintain, without certainty) SsDQT 'justice' or 'righteousness', here apparetly used adverbially; the Ss is not clear; the D looks like a G, but Misgav's drawing accepts it as D; the Q has a round head (rightly); the T is not in doubt; whether the dots after it are significant remnants of signs is dubious. Ss and Q are at the far end of the frequency table, and R is among the most frequently occurring, so 5 instances of Q and only one R would be a suspect situation; therefore preference should be given to `ARM in this line and perhaps to NRM in the preceding line. Incidentally, I have set aside the possibility of two small letters (MM, MSh, ShSh) above the D of `BDY 'my servant', as shown on Misgav's drawing; but they may exist.

As a prelude to my interpretation of the text according to the Goliath motif, I offer these extracts from the Bible.
"Joshua wiped out the Anakim .... No Anakim (`nqym) were left in the land of the children of Israel; they survived only in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod" (Joshua 11:21-22).
"The champion, the Philistine from Gath, Golyath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines, and spoke ... "(1 Samuel 17:23).
"The Philistine cursed (qll) David by his gods" (1 Samuel 17:43).
"David said to the Philistine: ... I come to you in the name of YHWH of Hosts" (1 Samuel 17:45).
Through his servants Saul said to David: "The king (mlk) desires no marriage gift but a hundred foreskins of Philistines, so that he may be avenged (nqm) of the king's enemies" (1 Samuel 18:25).
"YHWH has said to David: By the hand of my servant (`bdy) David I will save my people Israel from the hand of the Philistines and all their enemies" (2 Samuel 3:18).
He lifts (mqym) the weak (dl) from the dust, he raises (yrym) the poor ('bywn) from the ash heap, to let them sit with nobles, and inherit a seat of honour" (1 Samuel 2:8, Hannah).

(1) The cursing ('lt) of the Anak (`nq) and the servant of God (`bd 'l):
(2) The servant of God (`bd 'l) has judged (sh-p-tt) a warrior (mt); he has judged (sh-p-tt) the Gittite (gty?) (3) Lord (b`l ) Goliyath (GL[..]), the general (srs) [of Philistia?] ([PLShT]) .
(4) I will arise ('qm) and (w) together (y-hh-d) we will avenge (nqm) (or: exalt, nrm) the king (mlk).
(5) I will exalt ('rm) my servant (`bdy) justly (ss-d-q-t).

Synopsis: the writer is apparently a prophet speaking in the name of God (a nabi', a religious role that was practised at that time, 1 Samuel 3:20, 10:10); an oracle announces the defeat ('judgement') of one of the giant Anakim (from Gath?), namely Lord Goliyath, at the hands of the servant of God (and this could be David, 2 S 3:18). God says he will rise up, and together with his assistant he will avenge the king (presumably Saul) of his enemies; God will also exalt his agent justly. 

I don't think too much sleight of hand was needed to achieve this result. It certainly belongs in the category "sensational" ("causing or intending to cause great public excitement"), and when the dust settles and the shouting is silenced we might be left with a contemporary account of the proverbial, legendary, and indeed factual encounter between David the shepherd-boy from Bethlehem and Goliath the giant from Gath.

The document (in an Israelian dialect of Canaanian language) exults in the victory.
(1) The cursing of the Anak and the servant of God:
(2) The servant of God has judged a warrior; he has judged the Gittite (?)
(3) Lord Goliyat, the general ...].
(4) I will arise and  together we will avenge (or: exalt) the king.
(5) I will exalt my servant justly.

Of course, this may be a case (two cases already) of mistaken identity; and Goliath, we are told, had a brother, among the giants in Gath (1 Chronicles 20:5).

We can suspect that the YT of GLYT is placed well away from the GL of line 3, in the space in the far corner, between the ends of lines 1 and 2, with an 'apotropaic' purpose, lest all the king's men try to put him together again. (As I said earlier, I was given an analogy for this when I was a student of Latin at Sydney University, but I can not remember which poet it was.)

September 2014
One is allowed to change one's mind, and I can now see that my presumed YT (top right corner) is actually YH (Yahu, YHWH); the YT for GLYT is found immediately after the GL, with the T written above the Y.


MY 2014 DRAWING


Note GLYT and DWD in line 3, and YH at the end of line 2

Finally (this is one of those surprise endings coming up, a twist in the tail): since this Israelite scribe did not supply a copy of all the letters of his alphabet (as on the Izbet Sartah shard), we cannot be certain that this writer would not have used the spinal-column for Samek, if this rather rare letter was required (note the late position of S on the spectrum of frequency provided earlier), then maybe we could dispense with the two fishes in line 3 (SRS) and read them as D, and the reconstructed R could simply be W (Y-shaped), and thus we would have DWD (David). Somebody is going to make this connection eventually, so I may as well sneak in first. The real fish, with dorsal fin, is actually lurking underneath DWD, in line 4, in the sequence YSD (foundation).

An inscription from the time of King Saul mentioning Goliath and David side by side? Fantastic, I say, and you can take that word in whichever direction you wish.

Remember: to achieve this result a mass/mess of largely illegible writing had to be probed with an unseemly amount of guesswork; never believe what you read in blogs.

July 2021
I have left this essay on the WWWeb to record my constant wrestling with these two documents.

The Gath sherd remains intractable.
The photograph clearly but deceptively offers us:
'Y GLWT / WLT (with a tempting serpent, N)


but the official drawing of the legitimate letters leaves us with:
'LWT / WLT (and a lone snake, N)
To find Golyat in this we could read the 'Alep as G, and achieve GLWT; or import to the WLT the analogy of Germanic W > Gallic G (as in Wilhelm > Guillaume)

With regard to the Qeiyafa ostracon, Golyat and David definitely appear in line 3 as GULUTU and DAWIDI. There is only one fish-syllabogram (SU), in line 4 (YISUDU foundation).

The next stages of my investigation can be viewed here:
https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/qeiyafa-ostracon-2 

The idea that the different forms and stances of letters are significant, indicating syllables:
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.co.nz/2014/04/early-hebrew-syllabary.html

Another earlier look at the Goliath inscriptions, for the record:
http://bonzoz.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/goliath.html