WEST SEMITIC SYLLABIC CYLINDER

Garbini, Giovanni; Maria Michela Luiselli & Guido Devoto (2004): "Sigillo di età amarniana da Biblo con iscrizione." Rendiconti dell'Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei 9/15, 377-390.

The remarkable little object we see at the top is a cylinder stamp or seal (the photograph shows an imprint of its features), apparently emanating from somewhere in Phoenicia, possibly Byblos (Gubla), and published by Giovanni Garbini (now deceased); he recognized two striking features: it imitates the family portrait of Pharaoh Akhenaton and Queen Nefertiti, with their three daughters (Egyptian Museum, Berlin, 14145), and it has inscriptions in the West Semitic syllabic script (whereas the Egyptian counterpart has hieroglyphic writing). Since Akhenaton reigned in the middle of the fourteenth century before the current era (BCE), the Semitic artefact could not be earlier than that. One typical detail in each image is the sun disc (Aton) with its rays having hands to distribute its benefits, which are celebrated in the Hymn to the Aton.
   Notice that the Phoenician image is reversed: the personage corresponding to Nefertiti (who is holding two children) is on the left side of the photograph, and the father (with one daughter) is on the right. It is not clear that the Semitic couple are meant to be Akhenaton and Nefertiti; the headdresses are not the same as those on the Egyptian royals. On the plaque the names of the Egyptian family members are recorded in hieroglyphs in columns and cartouches: the daughters are Meritaten, Meketaten, and Ankhesenpaaten; Tutankhaten (later King Tutankhamen, not a child of Nefertiti) is not in the picture. One suggestion is that the three columns of Semitic text provide the daughters' names (Michael Mäder), and this would assist us in deciphering this script.
   However, this is not the result we get when we apply the system of decipherment proposed by George Mendenhall in 1985, and adopted and adapted by myself as the West Semitic logo-syllabary.
   This exercise will be undertaken with the aid of a model prepared by Mäder.

Michael Mäder (University of Bern, personal communication) sets forth a prima facie case of circumstantial evidence, which is very attractive. This is an edited version of his statements (the original is reproduced at the end of this essay).
 On the Egyptian Familenstele Berlin, 14145 (Krauss 1991) there are three inscriptions which include the names Meketaton, Meritaton and Ankhesen-pa-Amun.
 On the Semitic seal, likewise, there are three short texts in corresponding positions, adjacent to the three daughters.
The names  would be read in Egyptian: Meritaton on the legs of father, Meketaton on legs of mother, Ankhesen-pa-Amun on shoulder of mother. 
 They have the same relative extension, i.e. Meketaton and Meritaton short, Ankhesen-pa-Amun longer.
The two shorter ones begin with the same syllable (me) and end with the same (ATON [Egyptogram]).
 In the longest of the names, Ankhesen-pa-Amun, has the expected syllable pa in its 4th position.
 The 4th sign in the Byblos version has the form of a cross or "bird with outspread wings". This suits the fact that pa in Egyptian syllabic writing has the form of a cross (originating from a bird with outspread wings).
The sign in the shape of a "2" would be me (in Meketaton and Meritaton)

The fact that one of the "2"-shaped signs is mirrored fits the Egyptian names which also are mirrored, see Krauss 1991:11.  (It was a habit of Egyptian scribes to place the signs in the same direction as the faces of the persons they describe are heading.)

This is certainly an impressive set of arguments.

In response, we might first ask: If the names of the personages on the seal were given, would it not be the King (Akhenaton) and the Queen (Nefertiti) who were named, rather than the children? The royal couple were the intermediaries between the Sun-deity and humans. If this was a personal seal, the name of its owner might be present.
Second, if the initial signs of the two M...Aton sisters are supposedly mirrored, or rather the signs are facing the depiction of the person who is named, according to the Egyptian convention, I would have to say that these "2" letters are not the same; and the one on the left is actually the second letter in the sequence.
And the signs at the bottom of the cartouches are similar but not the same; they are supposed to represent the Aton, the disc of the sun. The sun-sign in this West Semitic syllabary is found in the long text, in second position: a circle with a dot in it (equivalent to Egyptian hieroglyph N5).
 The proposed form Ankhesen-pa-Amun for the third sister comes as a surprise, but it can be validated: as noted above, Tutankhaten became Tutankhamen, when worship of the Aton was abandoned, and the same principle applies to Ankhesen-pa-aten; but I can not see her name on this cylinder seal. Incidentally, the Egyptian Ankh sign, representing "life", has a place in the West Semitic syllabary, as H.I (h.iwatu, life). It does not appear in these inscriptions, though it could perhaps have been used as logogram in her name.

Hence, I do not see this document as naming the children, but think it might relate to the boat in the upper half: solar barque, ship of the dead? The idea that a justified dead person could travel with the Sun in his ship?.

Columns Ra - Rc (vertical downwards)

[Ra]  HU (hudmu footstool) SHI (shimshu sun) LA (laylu night) KU (X) TU (turushu wine) SU (sukkatu booth)

[Rb] `A (`aynu eye) TI (tibbuttu harp) GA? (gamlu boomerang) DI (bolt)  WU (Egyp. hieroglyph)                

[Rc] NA (nah.ashu snake, or RU eagle-vulture) BA (baytu house) ZA (eyebrows or tail) TA (or HA?)

[Rd] (L-R?) NI (nigh.atu tusk)  SA SA (samku support) BU (bunduru reed)

hu shi la ku saved (passive-causative, root sh-l-k 2, Job 29.17)
tu su `a ti salvation (root Y/W Sh/S `)

gadi  good-fortune (or Gad, prosperity-deity)

wu and?

na ba za ta  document (cp. shi sa ni ba za ti on Gubla Spatula E; Akkadian nibzu)

ni sa sa bu  stand (Hbr ns.s.b, nip`al of NS.B) 

The seated god resurrects the suppliant?

Perhaps this is a seal or stamp  for making copies of an "indulgence" (Ablass) certificate.

It has apparent connections with my reading of the cylinders from Tuba
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2007/03/oldest-west-semitic-inscriptions-these.html

NUSHI`U "saved"
HLL "Celebrate"
NIKAWANA "he is established"
This reminds me of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, with the deceased passing through the hall of judgement and emerging "justified of voice" (his claim to be innocent has been accepted by the divine judges).

Here is the interpretation of Michael Mäder (University of Bern); he is forceful in his presentation, but he does not have a signary for the script (which he considers to be undeciphered, and after rejecting my solution he is determined to crack its code, following possible clues on this cylinder seal):

"- As on the Byblos seal, also on the Familenstele Berlin, 14145, there are three inscriptions which depict the names Meketaton, Meritaton and Ankhesen-pa-Amun.

- They are positioned at the exact same places respectively.

- The names without doubt read in Egyptian: Meritaton on the legs of father, Meketaton on legs of mother, Ankhesen-pa-Amun on shoulder of mother. (This is important, because when the Reader reads your blog he thinks this would be just a theory h-l-k...)

- They have the same relative extension, i.e. Meketaton and Meritaton short, Ankhesen-pa-Amun longer.

- The two shorter ones begin with the same syllable (me) and end with the same (ATON [Egyptogram])

- The longer one is the only one which ends on a different syllable, a fact which would fit to the (later) different ending of Ankhesen-pa-Amun (AMUN? not Aton? BEC)

- In the longest of the names, Ankhesen-pa-Amun, has the expected syllable pa in its 4th position.

-  The 4th sign in the Byblos version has the form of a cross or "bird with outspread wings". This suits the fact that pa in Egyptian syllabic writing has the form of a cross (originating from a bird with outspread wings)

- Based on these considerations Michael Mäder (University of Bern, personal information) suggests the reading of the two respective Byblos signs as me and pa: me is the sign in the shape of a "2", and pa is the sign in the shape of a cross.

- The fact that one of the "2"-shaped signs is mirrored fits to the Egyptian names which also are mirrored, see Krauss 1991:11.  (It was a habit of Egyptian scribes to place the signs in the same direction as the faces of the persons they describe are heading.)"

Krauss 1991 =

Krauss, Rolf (1991): Die amarnazeitliche Familienstele Berlin 14145 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Massordnung und Komposition. Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 33, 7-36.

Photographs by Jane Schwarting of Carthage, NC, from her vast collection of artefacts discovered on her own piece of land.

For comparison, here are three images from North Carolina, Cape Fear River region, Carthage (Phoenician QRTH.DShT, "new city: !!). Each of them apparently depicts a seated male adult (presumably a deity) holding a child (as on the nbzt cylinder seal, above). The red one (PICT0138) has lost some of its details, but the lower right area has some writing: | Y Sh ` | (arm with thumb and fingers, breast, eye); the two strokes show the beginning and end of the text, presumably, but not which is which; it is a single word, from the same root YSh` (meaning unclear, but basically "be free", I suggest) as in the inscriptions on the two proto-syllabic documents examined above. The same sequence of letters, running from left to right, is observable on the left side of the blue object (PICT4660), viewed on a printout on paper, with the light behind it! The third artefact (IMG8095)  bears the same image of two seated persons, and also two standing figures, with the YSh` text on the far right, running downwards; this could perhaps function as a stamp-seal, or as a personal memento.
   The YSh` in each case is proto-alphabetic, not proto-syllabic, and the script is probably the short neo-consonantary, not the long proto-consonantary; so no vowels are represented, only consonants. 

   YSh` could mean "he saves" (Hip'il, the god being the subject of the verb), or "he (the child) is  saved" (passive voice, but necessarily Hop`al, or Nip`al, as on the Tuba cylinders); or simply "salvation" (masculine noun).

   Another mysterious cylinder seal is begging to be brought into this discussion: it was published by A. Goetze in 1953 (BASOR 129: 8-11), and has received considerable attention since then, but nobody (including myself in 1991) has succeeded in cracking the code of its seven-letter proto-alphabetic inscription. It is variously known as the Grossman or Saint Louis or Goetze Seal, since it came into the possession of Edwin Grossman and his wife, residents of Saint Louis, MO. In the light of the documents we are examining here, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that this seal was also found in America; but it was purchased from an antiquities dealer in London, UK, and is now preserved in the Harvard Semitic Museum.
   The photograph I use is in Benjamin Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet (1988), fig. 252; and a sketch (a trustworthy tracing from a good photograph of an impression made by the seal) is available in Gordon Hamilton, The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet (2006), 397, fig. A.66. Sass is skeptical of anything that he is unable to read, and so he dismisses it as a forgery with a pseudo-inscription; but Hamilton reports that the price of the object was 5 English pounds, and a forger would have expected more than that for all his nefarious labour, and so we gladly accept its authenticity. However, our attempts at reading its text have all been wrong.
   Now, in 2023, with my long acquaintanceship with early West Semitic writing, and my theory of the Quadrinity enabling me to distinguish the four types (Protosyllabary, Protoconsonantary, Neoconsonantary, Neosyllabary), I can see that the script on this seal is the protoconsonantary, since it has Th (\/\/ thad breast) and Sh (O_o shimsh sun), as in the Wadi el-Hol protoconsonantal text. It has bars to indicate how the two lines run, as on the red object above:
   | L B Th  Y Sh R P | 
   L (For) B (Ba`al?) ThY (an offering) ShRP (of burning)
   The B could be a logogram, BAYT, "house", meaning "temple, house of a god, or else it is an abbreviation of the name of a god, probably Ba`al.
   So, we are looking at a "burned offering" (sic).
   With regard to the depiction on the cylinder, there are three persons standing before a seated dignitary, presumably a deity. Surprisingly, this is the same as the upper level scene on the other cylinder seal, though there is no hint of a boat on the Grossman seal, neither in the picture nor the text. A shared detail is the person immediately in front of the god has one arm up and the other arm down.
    The lower scene on the protosyllabic seal is certainly reminiscent of Akhnaton and Nefertiti at home with their daughters, and the Aton sun-disc with its characteristic rays reinforces this interpretation; but rather than a picture of domestic bliss, this may be a sinister portrayal of a god (Baal) and a goddess (Baalat) clutching children that have been offered as a sacrifice by their pious parents, who are present in most of the images shown here (and there are more).
   We know that this sort of human sacrifice was typical of West Semitic religion  notably in Carthage, Tunisia (offered to the goddess TNT), and apparently also in Carthage, NC.
  

JERUSALEM JAR INSCRIPTION (2)

The official photograph of the inscription is here.
The article announcing the discovery of the inscription (IEJ 63: 39-49) is here.

17 May 2019
My latest suggestion
 Reading syllabically from right to left:
... N  [YA] NU H.U LU QU (U?) M ...
"... sour (h.ulqu) wine (yanu) and (u?) water (M...)"
Discussion of this possibility at the end of the essay, under this same date.

This connects with my own practice of drinking water with added cider vinegar (to kill germs and receive other benefits).

From her excavations at the Temple Mount (more particularly the Ophel) near the southern wall, Dr Eilat Mazar has brought to light two pieces of a pithos (a neckless ceramic jar) bearing a short inscription. The artefact is or was described here (audio-visually) by Eilat Mazar and Shmuel Ahituv.
    At one point Eilat reaches for her grandfather's book, and I was able to take my own treasured copy of it from the shelf right next to me, and turn the pages with her (Benjamin Mazar, The Early Biblical Period, 1986; King David's scribe, 126-138).
    As usual a priority claim is made:  it is the "earliest" West Semitic (or even Hebrew) inscription from Jerusalem (though there is cautious hinting that it might be in an unknown Jebusite language).
    Actually, there is an older graffito from the Temple Mount that appears to belong to the Bronze Age. One suggestion I made for it was: YSh S.NR P, "There is a water pipe here", including the word used by David in 2 Sam 5:8, "water shaft".  But it might be from the Iron Age, and the central three letters could be DWD (David).
    I was pleased to hear Shmuel Ahituv pronounce "Canaanite" (with the stress in the middle instead of the crazy English-speakers' practice of hitting the first syllable), and glad to see him personally pointing out with a stylus what he thought to be the direction of writing  (left to right) and giving the identity of each letter:
   M, Q or R, P, H.(Het), N, break, L?, N (a reversed form of the previous N).
    (The R and Q on the Qeiyafa ostracon are also confusing to modern interpreters.)
    Allegedly, this combination of letters has no meaning in known West-Semitic languages.
    We'll see about that.
George Athas examined the picture and gave out his customary admonition : if you haven't seen the inscription itself, having only looked at photographs, you haven't seen the inscription. He proposed:  
n lmnḥṣrm (note his Sadey for the P/L, which is not probable).
   But the second high-resolution photograph sent out by Dov Smith allows for detailed scrutiny.
   George Athas tried reading it from right to left, but Shmuel Ahituv says that the writing runs from left to right, opposite to the Hebrew Bible and Hebrew newspapers.
   Dextrograde (left to right) seems to have been the prevalent direction at that time.
    The Izbet Sartah ostracon has its abagadary and text dextrograde (sinistrodextral).
    The lines of the Qeiyafa ostracon (the David and Goliath inscription from Sha`arayim) each start on the left side.

    Here is my first view of the Jerusalem inscription (before I saw the other readings that have been issued, which are discussed below):
    M R P H. N [N [L?]  N
The first sequence could be divided into three words:
    ... M  RP  H.NN
"NICE PURE WATER"
M logogram or mu  or [M]M 'water'
RP (root rp' "heal') 'pure, purified' (cp 2 Kg 2:21-22, Ezk 47:8-9, 'healed water')
H.NN (root h.nn 'favour') 'nice, favourable'
(LN could be 'for us')

   The characters seem to have been incised on soft clay, before the pot was fired. If so, the purpose of the vessel must have been known in advance.
   Incidentally, a Halif jar handle has on it (incised before firing) L N S. T ("for firing") (Colless, 1991, 50-51).
   Here Colless's cardinal rule of epigraphy must be reiterated: Only the person who wrote an ancient inscription knew what it means.
   And their shorthand system made it hard for us to get their meaning: there is usually no separation of words; there are no indications of vowels, only consonants; and this text is (typically) damaged, so we do not know whether the inscription is complete (there is certainly one vital piece missing from the text we have).  
    However, my proposed reading (NICE PURE WATER, subtext: this pot is for clean water only; do not put milk or flour or flesh or fish in it) is almost self-authenticating. (!)
    This makes a change from LMLK jars (for or belonging to the king). Shmuel Ahituv said that the Jerusalem inscription could refer to the owner, or else the contents.
    Examples of such labels on jars are found in the Bronze Age. From Gezer there are storage vessels with early alphabetic signs on them, engraved before baking: two of them (9 and 10)  have a single M, and another has two side by side (11-12) (Sass 1988, Fig. 248; Colless 1991, 20, 22; ); this might mean they were water pots. More on this below.
    There is a another early "Canaanian" inscription on a potsherd, from Beth-Shemesh, which has the word H.NN meaning gracious, but with reference to a voice, though there is a liquid connection; the voice is lubricated with wine (apparently YN, and not YYN, the Biblical Hebrew form).
     I have plenty of other suggestions in the bizarre category, for which I am famously infamous:
"Myrrh/bitterness for John" (H.nn) (taking the P as L, like the one on the Wadi el-Hol graffito, and the Aramaic Fekheriye inscription ). On the Hol inscription from the Egyptian desert, we know it is L, because P appears as a full mouth on the horizontal line [ (|) ].
  
Please note that my approach to Early Iron Age inscriptions is different from the method of other interpreters: they are working back from the first millennium forms of letters, while I am looking at the signs in their evolution from their pictorial beginnings in the second millennium BCE (see my table of signs below). Thus, P was originally (and obviously) a human mouth, and the lower lip was gradually lost, as perhaps we can see happening in the example here (perhaps P, possibly L, a herdsman's crook). My account of this development, with a chart showing all the letters, is available here.

[16th of July 2013 onwards]
   I am now in a position to respond to other suggestions that have been offered.
    Douglas Petrovich has collected various interpretations of the letters (Ahituv, Rollston, Demsky, Galil, himself, myself) and has placed them at our disposal here. [PS. This has been expanded and published in permanent print in PEQ 147, 2, 2015; my response is recorded below.]
   Looking back to get our bearings, here is an extract from the original announcement (sent by Dov Smith on 10th of July, and widely disseminated):
"The inscription is engraved on a large pithos, a neckless ceramic jar found with six others at the Ophel excavation site....The inscription was engraved near the edge of the jar before it was fired, and only a fragment of it has been found, along with fragments of six large jars of the same type. The fragments were used to stabilize the earth fill under the second floor of the building they were discovered in, which dates to the Early Iron IIA period (10th century BCE).  An analysis of the jars’ clay composition indicates that they are all of a similar make, and probably originate in the central hill country near Jerusalem."
     If the inscription was incised into the clay before baking, then the text must have the same age as the pot itself.
    And we may assume that the object must be older than the building under which it was discovered?

    Here is my response to Christopher Rollston, who also attempted to read it on the 11th of July, and posted it on his site as The Decipherment of the New ‘Incised Jerusalem Pithos’.
            M Q L H. N [R [Sh
   For the five complete letters, I think his reading is possible.
    QLH. is understood as "pot", and NR as the name of its owner.
    If  this pot is a pithos (a large storage jar, and note that in its Greek setting a pithos was usually for wine), what would be the Classical Hebrew word(s) for such an object?
    In any case, if this is not a cooking pot, then Christopher Rollston's QLH. should not work, as the meanings it has in its Hebrew history are "cauldron, kettle, pot for cooking".
    Also, whether in its original Egyptian setting, or in Coptic, or Ugaritic, or Hebrew, it has a final -t, and it is difficult to spot a Taw near the Het, except by deconstructing the Het and making its bottom right corner a cross (+), thus constituting a unique  ligature (not impossible, I suppose).
    Incidentally, that is a strange Het, with two horns and two legs, and only two crossbars (as I argue, it started as a H.asir, a mansion with a courtyard), and we need to resort to the 9th-C. Moabite stone of King Mesha` to find a peculiar counterpart with the three characteristics we encounter here; but Ahituv shows two other similar examples (Batash and Eshtemoa`) on his comparative table (viewable here).
    I tentatively preferred R to Q, and P to L, producing:
     ... M R P H. N [N] [  ] N ...
     "Nice (h.nn) pure (rp) water (M logogram, or mu, or [M]M) ...."
    Contra Chris Rollston's M Q L H. N [R [Sh
    He goes to the Fekheriye Aramaic inscription for his Lamed, which is quite abnormal for its time; elsewhere, so as to distinguish them, P is upright, while the hook of the original crook of Lamed is at the bottom.  That is the situation on the Qeiyafa ostracon, though there we find more than one form for P and for L.
    Rollston argues that there is indeed a Resh that can be distinguished from his Q, but it is a head with a large cleft in its top (a bit wider than on his drawing), and an unusually long neck. Actually, with these features it should be Waw, if only one letter is constructed from the remnants.
    In general, Q (a cord wound on a stick) is round at the top, whereas R (a human head) is angular; but the stem of Q sometimes moves into the circle.
    However, supposing it is W, not R, and the last letter is N, not Sh, and with a Yod between them, we have WYN "wine"(attested as WN on the Wadi el-Hol inscription of the Middle Bronze Age;  but in the Iron Age the West Semitic form was YYN (yayin), or YN (yayn) as on the Beth-Shemesh ostracon.
    Gershon Galil has a view of it which chimes in with his interpretation of the Qeiyafa ostracon (which he interpreted as a set of instructions for social compassion, regarding oppression of widows, orphans, aliens, slaves, and poor people). Reading from right to left:

[nt]n [tt]n ḥlqm  Give them their share

The reference would be to "poor brothers".

But he issued another conjecture (also recorded with more detail here), again from right to left:

      […], mem, qop, lamed, ḥet, nun, [yo]d, [yo]d nun  

       ... N  YYN  H.LQ  M … spoiled wine from…

Douglas Petrovich has taken up this idea here, together with analogies from Egyptian practice in labeling jars of wine,  adduced by Gershon Galil, and with speculation about additional words at either end. The text would have stipulated a regnal year of a king, and declared that this "smooth wine" (yyn h.lq) was "from" (m) a particular place.

   A difficulty with YYN (yayin) is (as noted above) that it has an additional Y,  whereas Ugaritic texts and the Beth-Shemesh ostracon (where we see bt yn for byt yyn, "wine house") have simply YN, and so the form yyn suggests written Hebrew that is later than we would expect in the 10th Century BCE. However, I have proposed to read BYT in two fragmentary LBA inscriptions from Lakish (Colless 1991, 40-41). It is a matter of diphthong contraction (or whatever) rather than use of matres lectionis ; the second Y is pronounced; it is not there to indicate î.
    The two hypothetical Yods are very large on Gershon Galil's drawing (perhaps on account of the stray line poking out from the gap and reaching lower than any of the other letters, which might belong to another letter or could be a mere scratch). The letter Yod began as a hand with its forearm (yad), and in the Iron Age it looks like a reversed F; the YYN conjecture has them both as an inverted form of this;  but the Qeiyafa ostracon has both types, as Galil would know.
   (Finally [January 2014], Gershon Galil has put his conclusions into print:
‘yyn ḫlq’ The Oldest Hebrew Inscription from Jerusalem, Strata 31 (2013) 11-26.
This seductive solution is discussed below, 25th of January 2014.)
     Another immediate attempt to reconstruct and transcribe the inscription was made by Reinhard Lehmann and Anna Elise Zernecke in KUSATU. The missing letters in the gap are possibly M and Sadey, hence:
     M Q P H. N M S. N   (or N S. M N H. P Q M)
The sequence S.N looks promising, as the name Siyyon (Zion) preceded by mi(n) "from"; so this would be the source of the contents of the pot? 
    Without the missing piece, the right-hand end of the text is a mystery. Can it be found, please?
    After our experience with the Tel Dan inscription, are we certain the join has been made correctly? It looks like a good connection to me.
    But there is no indication of word-separation, and so there are too many variables (including the gaps) for us to be reading this text completely, or to be dating it to its precise decade.
    We cannot tell (unless the missing pieces turn up) whether there were other letters preceding and following the part that we have.
   Thus Aaron Demsky supposes a Het on the left, and produces the word h.mr "fermenting wine"("for Hanan").
    But I think that the proverbial COOL CLEAR WATER is a good candidate for the contents of the vessel, and that this was stated on it when it was first made; it was not for milk or meat or fish.
   It needs to be added (as already intimated above) that I got this idea from a set of Bronze Age storage jars from Gezer, which were likewise inscribed before being baked (Colless 1991, 22, depictions; 31, discussion). Some have M (a vertical wavy water sign), others have MM; presumably, in both cases "water" is meant.
   Other inscriptions in this collection, all single letters, may be abbreviations of the commodities they contained:
   Y (yn wine) H. (h.mr fermenting wine) T (trsh new wine) Sh (shkr beer or shmn oil) H (hlb milk) S (smk fish).
    There are some other Bronze-Age vessels (of the pithos category) found in a cemetery near Tel Aviv (Colless 1991, 24, depictions; 51-52, discussion). One pithos has a vertical wavy line between a pair of strokes, possibly M, indicating that it was a water jar. Another has a long horizontal wavy line at the top, with a symbol below it: a cross inside a circle. This is an old form of Tet and Theta, and I presume it is a development of the Egyptian nfr sign (+o) which is attested in proto-alphabetic texts; it was used acrophonically for T. and logographically for T.ABU ("good and beautiful"); hence the Mem and Tet would say "good water".

    However, the contents of this rediscovered fragmentary Jerusalem jar are still to be ascertained.
    Nevertheless, there is another solution (bubbling up from a teeming source in my seething brain): if we accept the Sadey proposed by Lehmann and Zernecke, there are other possibilities besides "from Sion".
             M S. N [R]  "from the spout"
     As I said above, an older inscription from that area of Jerusalem may have mentioned the "water-pipe" (s.nr), which features in the capture of Jerusalem by David (2 Sam 5:8); on this interpretation, water would be collected there in or for this pot.
     Or, invoking the root S.NN, denoting coldness (with MS.N as a participle, or S.N or S.NN as an adjective or noun, and supposing H. N M S. N or H. N N S. N) we have a very seductive combination of hypothetical words:
             M  RP  H.N[N] [S.]N[N]
             NICE (h.nn) COOL (s.nn) CLEAR (rp) WATER (M) 

   In support of this reading, I could make the following case.
   There are many analogies for pots with the letter M for water marked on them (but there are examples of inscribed storage jars with indications of their contents, besides water).
   The direction of writing is not certain,  but the general consensus is that it is dextrograde, though Galil and Petrovich are convinced it is sinistrograde, and they produce a tempting reconstruction of the text. For syllabic writing in the Bronze Age and consonantal writing in the Iron Age, the orientation style in Byblos (and elsewhere in the north of Canaan) was right to left (sinistrograde). On the other hand, in the south (including Sinai and Egypt) it is hard to see a consistent direction, but the few substantial documents we have from southern Israel in the early Iron Age, namely the Qubur el-Walaydah bowl, the Izbet Sartah ostracon, and the Qeiyafa ostracon, run their lines of writing from left to right (dextrograde), but the Beth Shemesh ostracon has five columns (right to left with the last one running back horizontally and to the right. Then the Gezer calendar appears, and it is conforming to the Phoenician style, not only in line orientation but in the forms of the letters, and this becomes standardized in Israel.
    This adoption of the Phoenician form of the alphabetic script could have arisen from the diplomatic and commercial relations David had with Phoenicia (2 Samuel 5:11-12), and likewise Solomon (1 Kings 5), which did not happen in the time of King Saul; that is my working hypothesis, and I hope it works.
   The question is: on which side of the dividing wall is the Jerusalem pithos inscription standing? We would like to know whether it is an Israelite inscription like the two five-line ostraca (Izbet Sartah, Qeiyafa); but even if it is Canaanian or Jebusian, we would still like to establish its position on the spectrum, to decide whether it is before King David's capturing of Jerusalem or after; more particularly, whether it was written before the official changeover to the standard Phoenician alphabet for writing Hebrew, the language of Israel. We have a set of clues to assist us.
   Here are some of the differences between the characters on the three ostraca versus the calendar (as a representative of the newly adopted Phoenician style, observable to some extent on the table appended below):
   `ayin is everywhere a circle in the Iron Age, though it had a more natural eye-shape in the Bronze Age; it has a distinguishing dot in its circle on the three ostraca, but this point is lacking in the calendar, as in the Phoenician inscriptions;
    'alep will always have the original ox-head resting on its side with the snout pointing to the left (Qeiyafa has this, but pointing to the right, and also the original ox-head, and even the A that will turn up later as Alpha); the snout of the ox also indicates the direction of the writing, as does the triangular human head of the Rosh, and the two and three prongs of the Yod and He respectively;
    Shin now consistently has the shape W or VV rather than 3 (Qeiyafa has both in the second line);
    Lamed will not have the crook at the top (Beth Shemesh, Izbet Sartah, though not Qeiyafa) but will constantly be L or l;
    Pe  is a mouth that has lost part of one of its lips; it is consistently curved or angled at the top, and this should settle the question whether the Ophel letter is L or P; the early southern examples of L, whether the crook is at the top or at the bottom of the stem, generally have the round part curling right in (Walaydah, Beth Shemesh, Izbet Sartah, and Qeiyafa in most cases); the numerous instances of the Aramaic L in the long Fekheriye text also curl inwards, and do not really support reading the Ophel letter as L rather than P; but P occurs so rarely that there are few instances for comparison, and it has to be said that no known P bends round as much as this character; still, the next two letters, certainly identifiable as H. (Het) and N (Nun), are not conventional, as noted above;
    Qop was originally qaw, a cord wound around a stick, with the stick protruding at the top; in the Iron Age it was reduced to a circle atop a stem, and on the Gezer text the stem has penetrated right into the circle, which is a Phoenician feature;
    Rosh is indubitably a human head, and it is more triangular than circular (Q); but with only one of them present, R and Q are hard to separate in this case;
    Samek has a different letter (and here I am pointing out a significant detail that has been overlooked in the past): instead of the fish for S (as in the Sinai inscriptions, Beth Shemesh, and Izbet Sartah) the spinal column (Egyptian djed) becomes the standard Samek (the Qeiyafa ostracon apparently does not have this Samek,  but I think the fish is in line 4);
    Mem will always be vertical (falling water) not horizontal (level water).
    The M in the Ophel text is neither vertical  nor horizontal, but is leaning to the right, as also the presumed R (the head is facing rightwards, and yet all the heads in other inscriptions, except the one on the Beth Shemesh ostracon, are looking to the left). The first snake (actually a set of water-waves) is apparently looking where the writing is heading, even though this position is anomalously unique for the Iron Age. But the human head and the snake are perchance pointing in the right direction.
    Lacking 'alep, `ayin, shin, and especially samek, and with the Q/R and L/P confusion, as also the uncertainty over its traveling direction, this inscription is well and truly concealing its identity from us.
    For assistance in the inquest, we could call as witness the Kefar Veradim bowl (Rollston 27-33, with drawings of its inscription, and also the Gezer calendar and the Tel Zayit abgadary, and a discussion of their interrelationships). The bowl comes from a burial cave in northern Israel (between Akko and Hazor), and would date from the 10th C BCE (Iron Age IIA-B). Its inscription runs round in a circle, so it is hard to say whether its M is vertical or horizontal; it has the Phoenician features: Samek as spinal column, not fish; Shin as W not 3; K with no stem; but, to confuse the issue, its Het has no legs or horns, and surprisingly its `ayin has a central dot.

16th of November 2013
   Note that the final presumed N on the Ophel pithos inscription is a reversal of the previous one, and this could help us date the text. As I see it, there was a change in script in the time of David and/or Solomon, with the Hebrew version of the alphabet now conforming to the international Phoenician alphabet, which was a consistent consonantary with only one form for each letter, whereas in Israel in the era of the Judges and King Saul an inscription could contain two or three versions of a  particular letter; for example, the Beth-Shemesh ostracon has 'ayin as a circle with and without a dot in it, and two forms of B; similarly the Qeiyafa ostracon has three different stances for 'A (also D, W, Y, L, T). We know that the consonantal alphabet of the 1st millennium BCE did not indicate vowels; but it now appears possible that Hebrew inscriptions in early Israel (Iron Age I) used the alphabet as a syllabary, with forms for ba, bi, bu, and so on. Hence, with two versions of N (or else M), this inscription might belong to the time before King David occupied Jerusalem. But it depends on the dating of the pithos, if that is possible.

25th of January 2014
As noted above, Gershon Galil has put his latest ideas into print:
‘yyn ḫlq’ The Oldest Hebrew Inscription from Jerusalem, Strata 31 (2013) 11-26.
The wine (yyn) is no longer "spoiled" (or "smooth" as Douglas Petrovich had it) but "low-grade". A counterpart for Hebrew YYN H.LQ is found in Ugaritic YN HLQ, which could mean wine that is "lost" or "perished" or "gone sour", and not fit for the king's table, but good enough for the workers and the soldiers. As he did with his interpretation of the Qeiyafa Ostracon, Gershon  adds a wealth of background material, which will remain useful, even if his hypothetical reconstructions of the inscriptions turn out to be incorrect.
   Let us consider his summing up (p 22).
"The inscription also indicates that there were scribes able to write texts in Jerusalem as early as the second half of the 10th century BCE. These scribes may have been Canaanites or other non-Israelites since David and Solomon employed non-Israelites in their government, even in very senior positions, including the office of the Chief Scribe. David’s scribe was Shisha [or Shawsha or Shewa, perhaps a Hurrian name or title, and his Hebrew name Seraiah, BEC], and his sons were appointed as Solomon’s chief scribes (Mazar 1986: 111–138) [read 126-138, BEC]. So it would not be surprising that this inscription was written in the ‘Late Canaanite script’ (as was the Qeiyafa inscription), and that it indeed reflects the southern Hebrew dialect; but it also uses archaic technical terms like ḫlq to define this inferior wine.
"The forms and stances of the letters in this inscription (as well as in the Qeiyafa inscription) are not yet fixed – a phenomenon typical of pictographic scripts. But this inscription is written from right to left, while the Qeiyafa inscription runs from left to right. This fact may indicate that it is the beginning of the regulation of the reading direction."
    GG sets the pot and its inscription in "the second half of the 10th century BCE", because this is a Type B pithos, "dated by archaeologists not earlier than the late 10th–9th century BCE" (p 13). May we ask whether this is high or low chronology? It is supposed to be Iron Age IIA (starting around 1000). Can we get clarification on this? How can it ever be claimed that this is a Jebus inscription, if the pot dates from the time of Solomon?
   GG speaks of "the southern Hebrew dialect" and insists that this always has YYN for wine, not simply YN, overlooking the Beth-Shemesh Ostracon, which apparently has BT YN for "tavern (wine house)" (Colless 1991, 45-49).
"The similarity between this [Qeiyafa] inscription  and the new Ophel inscription is already well attested. Therefore, the following discussion will focus on the letter yod." (p 16)
   What similarity is meant? The two Yods on his drawing are hypothetical; the Nun, Het, and Lamed have no counterparts on his drawing of the Qeiyafa text (UF 41, p 196); and Mem is always a zigzag. No matching forms are observable on Phoenician inscriptions, either; nor on Hebrew inscriptions in Phoenician style, such as the Gezer Calendar and the Tel Zayit Stone. Perhaps this is the work of a scribe who had his own personal version of the alphabet, or else we are looking at forms that have not cropped up in extant inscriptions, but each has its place in a larger scheme, such as a syllabary with 66 signs, not merely the 22 letters we know from the Phoenician consonantal alphabet.
   GG says that the forms and stances of the letters "are not yet fixed", and he offers an analogy with "pictographic scripts"; true enough, but we are a long way from that stage of the alphabet (see the table below). As I have just suggested above, these variations in form and stance may not be arbitrary but significant: the alphabet was functioning as a syllabary in that period.
   I have already made detailed comparisons of the characters in the inscriptions from Iron Age I and IIA, and I have a tentative table in my work-in-progress sheets of paper. I would like to apply these syllabic values to the signs on this Jerusalem jar, as reconstructed by Gershon Galil. I do this in the spirit of Rabbinic discourse, where one scholar will give support to the arguments of his cobber (h.br), even though he himself is following a different line of reasoning, and, of course, I have argued here (but only hypothetically and tentatively, and without conviction) for a water-jar interpretation, rather than a wine-vessel approach.
   Reading from the right (but setting aside the M or N): YA YA NU  H.U LU QU.
The two Yods (as plausibly reconstructed) are not really different, and can indeed be compared with one of the three Qeiyafa forms (the Yod at the end of line 2, as GG says) the one which I propose as YA. But if the word is YAYIN, then we would expect the second Yod to be different. However, in syllabic writing when confronted by a word like YAYN it is customary to give the vowelless syllable the same vowel as a neighbouring syllable, and the same will occur in the accompanying word H.ULQU. The -u vowel on the end of each word signifies the nominative case (or it is a "dead vowel", if case endings had ceased to be used by then).
   The presumed LU-sign is an inversion of the standard Phoenician L. The QU with a sloping stem is actually found near the end of Qeiyafa line 5, but GG has chosen to identify it as R there, and he wants the R (with an upright stem) in line 4 to be Q. The forms of the two Mems do not match perfectly with the standard models
    Accordingly, the whole line could read: -ma yaynu h.ulqu mi-
And it tells us ("formulaicly") that this jar was made in a particular regnal year of a particular king to contain vinegary wine from a specified place.
    Regarding the direction of the writing, GG suggests "it is the beginning of the regulation of the reading direction", and so he apparently recognizes that the turnabout was the result of a decree. Nevertheless, the writing system in this inscription is still the old style, which I am inclined to call the Neo-syllabary (distinct from the original West Semitic syllabary, particularly connected with Byblos).
    My watered down version does not work so well, if RP is actually LQ.
   MI QU LU H.U NU .  . NI
    And forcing the root H.NN (be gracious) to apply to water is not natural or normal or nice (but "nice" is what I want it to say).

12th of July 2014. It has occurred to me that if Gershon Galil's proposed restoration of two yods is right, then we have another indication that this is before "standardization" (and thus neo-syllabic): that particular stance is not found in the international consonantary, but it appears on the Qeiyafa ostracon, and that is where Gershon got the idea. Also, given the possibility that the letter to the right of the YY could be N rather than M, a reading YYN is possible whichever direction the writing is running.

3rd of August 2014. A  reason for the oddness of the letters of this inscription (when treated as syllabic) is that there are so many -u syllabograms: QU LU H.U NU, which differ from the a-forms of the Izbet Sartah abagadary, and the i-forms of the standard consonantary.

   Much ingenuity has been applied by scholars to this bunch of ancient letters on the Jerusalem jar, but we can not attain certainty, because of the many variables (not least of which are the many missing letters) since the writer (who by my first principle was the only person who knew the meaning) has not obeyed my fundamental rule, that every early alphabetic inscription should be accompanied by a copy of the complete alphabet in the scribe's own handwriting, so that we can tell which letter is which (as in the  Izbet Sartah text, but even there we are still left with puzzles by its author, who actually says "I am learning the letters" [ ' LMD ' TT ]); and he should have shown us 44 more versions of the letters, if he was actually using the alphabet as a syllabary with 66 characters.
   However, this is what we have so far: an incomplete collection of scattered bones from which to construct a dinosaur. But, as I now see it, these are the clues to work with: the Izbet Sartah alphabet (abagadary) represents that scribe's set of -a syllable-signs; the Phoenician consonantal alphabet is using the -i signs to represent all the vowels (or vice versa); the remaining signs (including four on this Jerusalem jar) are the -u syllabograms. Those are the new rules for West Semitic epigraphy with regard to Iron Age I inscriptions. I have said more about this on the ASOR site, now being updated here.

15th of July 2015 As noted above (post-scriptually) Douglas Petrovich has published his study of the inscription: Palestine Exploration Quarterly 147, 2  (2015) 130-145.
   He is substantially supporting Gershon Galil's reconstruction and interpretation of the text (but "inferior wine" becomes "pseudo-wine", which might be going too far in downgrading the liquor):
  (L < R) ...N YYN H.LQ M...
"[In the firs]t [(regnal) year]: pseudo-[wi]ne from [the garden of ??]"
This is set out on one of his clever icons (Fig. 4) with transcriptions in Hebrew characters.
For bashana ("in the year") he rightly omits the final -h of the Massoretes as anachronistic, but his inclusion of ha- (definite article, in ha-ri'shona, 'the first') is also premature for this period of the Hebrew language (it is not yet attested at that time).
   He assumes the hypothetical "first year" would apply to Solomon's reign.
   For a comparative table of signs he reproduces in Fig.2 the chart of Shmuel Ahituv from IEJ. This is not entirely helpful; as there are only five complete letters, and two or three incomplete signs, the six consonants offered are insufficient to distinguish R/Q/ and P/L, and to illustrate the two reconstructed Yods. It is gratifying to see my own table of the evolution of the alphabet presented there as Fig. 5, but it lacks the details needed for this exercise.
   He has opted for two forms of Nun, and this suggests to me that the text is syllabic.
   He confuses language and script on p. 139, with regard to the terms Phoenician and late-Canaanite (as applied to types of script, not language). He insists that the language is Hebrew, as also on the Qeiyafa ostracon (with its SH-P-T., `BD, and MLK,  but Rollston has questioned this). However, it seems that all these new inscriptions are in the language of Canaan, which even Philistines (and presumably Jebusites) were using to communicate.  And on p. 142 he emphasizes his point that the newly-discovered inscriptions "represent an earlier phase of the Hebrew language". But he includes as evidence the alphabets (abecedaries) on the Tel Zayit stone and the Izbet Sartah ostracon, which can not tell us anything about language or dialects. (Not all texts written in Roman letters are Latin language.)
    Douglas admits (p. 141) that "several readings are possible", but his is "the best option". If I had to make a choice, I would put it first as the most plausible, but still hold that my own suggestions are not impossible. This is a nice defense of an attractive hypothesis (with a good discussion of the dating of the pithos), but the inscription, as we now have it, is illegible (incomplete letters) and unreadable (no correct interpretation is possible).

    Once again, when a cluster of scholars can not agree on the interpretation of an ancient text, we seem to have glaring proof that epigraphy, despite its refined academic jargon and its cautious technical methodology, is not an exact science. This new inscription has made fools of us all. Of course, if we had the missing pieces of the pithos puzzle we might be able to do better, so we live in hope that they may be found in the searching and sifting.
    Under the present circumstances it is absolutely impossible to read this incomplete inscription; but it is quite possible that my reading of it was on the wrong track (direction-wise and liquidly). No sour grapes, and no champagne, but my personal secret is that I drink my water with a dash of vinegar (apple not grape).

9th of  January 2019
Well, here I am, still alive: I have not perished (hlq) in the meantime.
Raz Kletter has published some notes on the Ophel pithos inscription, in PEQ (2018) 265-270.
   My first observation is that he misspells my name (as Colles, instead of Colless) on p.269, in his reference to this cryptcracker essay; that double S marks our family out distinctively amidst the Coles, Collis, Colles variants; but he has it right on p.265.
   While I am grateful for the mention, he is able to dismiss my contribution to the discussion, by declaring web-published readings as 'preliminary' (fair enough, mine are certainly tentative, and to be considered as work in progress); and my suggestion ('nice, cool, clear water') "finds no parallel in the form of Iron Age wares from Palestine inscribed with a label 'water' ". This sounds suspiciously like an argument from silence, and yet I gave two instances (five inscriptions in total) from the Late Bronze Age: from Gezer (M and MM for 'water') and Tel Aviv (M for 'water', and M T. as logograms or abbreviations for 'good' and 'water'). Recently I had occasion to read out in church the story of the wedding at Cana in Galilee, involving water jars having their contents turned into wine (Gospel of John, 2:7-9).
[problem: singular forms of adjectives with plural noun mayim?]

This script is not the Phoenician (or international) consonantal alphabet of the Iron Age (as on the Gezer Calendar and the Zayit Stone, and the Phoenicia column of my table, below): its letters are anomalous.
   First, the Het disqualifies it from that category; its lack of a third cross-stroke in the middle corresponds to the Het on the Moabite Stone, but none of the other letters has a  counterpart there.
   Second, the Nun next to the Het is the wrong way round, though the incomplete character on the far right could be the standard Nun, or else a Mem.
   Third, the stance of the letter on the left of the Het is  the reverse of the standard form of Pe, or else it is an inverted Lamed.
   Fourth, the Mem on the far left is almost correct, but it seems to have six strokes instead of five.
   Fifth, the two hypothetical Yods are only found on the Qeiyafa Ostracon, as one of three variant forms.

Although its presumed direction of writing (sinistrograde, right to left) fits the style of the international consonantal alphabet, its characters are so unusual that it could well be neo-syllabic.

17 May 2019
My latest suggestion
 Reading syllabically from right to left (sinistrograde):
 ... N  [  ] [YA] NU H.U LU QU (U?) M ...
"... bad/sour (h.ulqu) wine (yanu) and (u?) water (M...)"
This interpretation follows the line laid down by Gershon Galil and Douglas Petrovich: in their view the pot was  a vessel containing inferior wine, possibly for workers on building sites in Jerusalem.
   Perhaps the full text contained a word for "jar" or even "pithos"; Ugaritic dn (also Arabic and Aramaic) was a jar for wine (and vinegar, Yoma 28b, Jastrow 315a). But Raz Kletter (268) says "Galil's reading does not fit the Jerusalem pithos, since it is not a wine vessel", and Kletter maintains that position because it has "a very large, open mouth",  and this would allow the wine to have contact with oxygen and be ruined. This might support my first idea that it was for storing water, rather than wine; but if this was intended to be a container for spoiled wine, which was placed on open access for drinkers to put a ladle or cup into it, then there can be no objection.
   Kletter dismisses my water-jar solution because I cannot adduce such an inscribed vessel from the Iron Age, although I can find apparent examples in the Late Bronze Age (from Gezer, see above).
   Similarly, he points out that the term h.lq is not found with reference to wine in any other inscription in Palestine/Israel, nor in the Bible. But this could be an isolated and welcome instance of that usage, already attested at Ugarit; and maybe the language of Yebus (Yerushalayim) was closer to Ugaritic than to Israelian Hebrew. At the same time he ridicules the thought that a container of wine could be labeled as "inferior" or "bad". But that would only apply if the commodity was for sale, not if it was being offered gratis. This jar was perhaps made and marked as a receptacle for such liquid, and so it would probably not have royal references on it.
   Precisely what was meant by yn hlq remains unclear. If the primary sense of hlq is 'perish', parallel with mt 'dead', and the opposite of t.b (Cyrus Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook, Glossary, 969, p. 403) then such wine (a 'perishable' food) would be 'perished', 'gone bad', or 'become rotten', no longer 'good' (sweet) and thus 'sour' (vin aigre, vinegar). Biblical Hebrew h.lq does not offer obvious assistance, expressing ideas of smoothness or apportioning; but Petrovich leans towards associating the term yyn h.lq with deception (as in smooth-tongued), and proposing the improbable 'pseudo-wine' as the solution. He does mention Ah.ituv's note on h.ms. (vinegar) in Arad Ostracon 2 (Echoes from the Past, 98): Roman legionaries drank posca, "a mixture of vinegar and water, sometimes sweetened with honey". This reminds me of my own daily beverage of water with apple cider vinegar and honey. Of course, wine was customarily drunk with water. I am pondering whether these three ingredients can be found here: water (which I had first suggested as the contents of this vessel) with vinegar, and perhaps also honey.
   The water could easily be found in the final sequence  M[..], as Hebrew mayim, or simply M as a logogram, or an abbreviation. It is more difficult to make this a 'honey pot', finding a place for West Semitic dbs (debash) or nbt.
   But if we are to read the combination "vinegar and water", where is the conjunctive W (or P)?
(The conjunction wa often seems to be lacking: for example, in the Wadi el-Hol list of  sacrificial foods for the `Anat celebration.) It has occurred to me, that the missing WA is actually U (which would be expected here before labial M, in Hebrew) and this could not be represented in consonantal writing; if 'u was written, it would mean 'or'.
   I still need to justify the syllabic reading [YA]NU H.ULUQU, as opposed (but not violently so!) to [YY]N H.LQ.
   For his YYN, Gershon Galil posits two cases of Yod in the style of a character that appears three times on the Qeiyafa ostracon (though Yod also has two other stances in that neo-syllabic text): the arm has the hand (two strokes) pointing downwards, and that would make a total of four vertical lines, one of which is visible, emerging from the gap. However, these reconstructed figures are huge in comparison with the Qeiyafa model; that is not impossible, and its plausibility could be tested if the missing piece of the pot turns up; but I am proposing the alternative prototype of Yod with the hand at the top (as apparently on the Izbet Sartah ostracon, and on the Lakish bowl sherd); the two strokes of the hand (looking like pincers) are partly discernible above the empty space, with the end of the arm protruding at the bottom. However, this leaves a space before the Yod, increasing our frustration that the missing pieces are not available for inspection. There could have been another Yod there, as Gershon Galil suggested, indicating the southern Hebrew form of the word yayin.
   Regarding the syllabic reading, most of the letters are not the standard forms of the international alphabet, and by my calculation there is a preponderance of -u syllabograms in [YA]NU H.ULUQU.
Cyrus Gordon (Glossary 402b) has an Akkadian form hulqu (equated with la t.âbu, 'not good'), and  H.ULUQU is a correct syllabic transcription of that.
   One little defect remains to defeat us: there is a space before the incomplete YA, and it could be another YA, producing [YAYA]NU, yaynu, 'wine' (Judean style). To achieve [YAYI]NI, yayin, the text would have to be read in the opposite direction, but this would annihilate H.ULUQU.
   If the first letter on the right is N, rather than M, and if it is syllabic and not simply the standard Phoenician Nun, then it possibly represents NI, having the reverse form of the other N, which I take to be NU. Could it have been preceded by the syllabic sign HI? Possibilities are: HINI hin measure? hén? hinnè? "Here is" or "This is"?
   The letter He appears twice on the incomplete Beth-Shemesh vertical inscription, engraved on two shards from a vessel. The second is in a sequence HN, accepted by P. Kyle McCarter as the measure hin. The first H has the form of Greco-Roman E. The second H seems to be the same, though the photographs show a projection from the bottom of the spine; this would make it the same as the standard Phoenician form, though reversed (its three strokes could point in the direction of the writing, to the right or to the left, along a horizontal line).
   Kyle McCarter's drawing shows the projecting line as a surface defect in the clay (although it seems to be attached to the letter in photographs)  (McCarter, 188, Figure 5, and 185, n.2). He favours a meaning hin (measure) for the word, and this syllabic sign would provide the HI syllable. When there are a few letters only, it is difficult to establish whether the text is syllabic or consonantal, and that is likewise the problem with the Ophel pot.
    From all the sifting of ancient debris of Jerusalem, the missing pieces of the puzzle might turn up, but we shall probably  never know what the scribe intended. Meanwhile I am holding onto my guess that this was an open-mouthed jar for containing water mixed with vinegar,  for the refreshment of troops of soldiers, and/or gangs of workers. If it is syllabic it is Iron I, like the Qeiyafa ostracon; if it is simply consonantal, but not conforming to the the standard international (Phoenician) alphabet, then it is to be classed with the Eshbaal jar from Khirbet Qeiyafa (Shaarayim), to be dated in late Iron I rather than Iron II, in the time of King Saul, not King David, nor King Solomon, and specifically in the Yebus period of Yerushalayim, before David annexed it to his united kingdom.
   For clarification, let me state my present position on Khirbet Qeiyafa and its two inscriptions: the text of the ostracon is neo-syllabic, and its subject is the victory of David (not King David) over the `Anaq named Guliyut;  the Eshbaal jar inscription is consonantal, but its letters are not in conformity with the international alphabet used in the Levant, of which the characters tend to be the -i syllabograms in the neo-syllabary. The archaeological evidence from Khirbet Qeiyafa (Shaarayim) shows that its existence as a fortress in the Iron I period was of short duration; the presence of Eshbaal, a son of King Saul, on this site indicates that this town was built by King Saul, not King David, as a bastion against the Philistines of Gath and Ekron; but it was apparently destroyed by them, together with the capital city Gibeah (Tell el-Ful), at the time of the battle of Mount Gilboa (1 Samuel 31:1-7); less probably, it might have been a casualty in the war between the house of Saul and the house of David (2 Samuel 3:1). David chose not to rebuild Shaarayim, but moved further down the road  to make Yerushalayim his stronghold.

   My continuing struggle with the Qeiyafa inscriptions is available for inspection:
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/qeiyafa-ostracon-2

27.6.2023
Daniel Vainstub has an interesting take on the Ophel jar: he reads the letters as Arabian, which is not impossible, and he finds a reference to incense from Saba.
https://www.academia.edu/99586646/Incense_from_Sheba_for_the_Jerusalem_Temple


References:
Benjamin Sass, The Genesis of the Alphabet (1988)
Brian E. Colless, The Proto-alphabetic inscriptions of Canaan,  Abr-Nahrain (Ancient Near Eastern Studies) 29 (1991) 18-66.
Gershon Galil, ‘yyn ḫlq’ The Oldest Hebrew Inscription from Jerusalem, Strata 31 (2013) 11-26.
Douglas Petrovich, The Ophel Pithos Inscription: Its Dating, Language, Translation, and Script, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 147, 2  (2015) 130-145.
Raz Kletter, Notes on the Jerusalem Iron IIA pithos inscription, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 150, 4 (2018) 265-270.
P. Kyle McCarter et al, An Archaic Ba`l Inscription from Tel Beth-Shemesh .......

http://cryptcracker.blogspot.co.nz/
https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/

Brian Colless
School of Humanities, Massey University, NZ


(Click on this table of the evolution of the alphabet to view it in enlargement)

Georgeos Diaz-Montexano said...

Mr. Brian Edric Colless:

I hope that this could be your interest: (In Spanish: La enigmática inscripción del Templo De Salomón. ¿El más antiguo testimonio de paleohebreo?)

Kind regards,
Georgeos
https://www.facebook.com/georgeos.diazmontexano

AEGEAN SYLLABIC SIGNS

INVENTORY OF CRETAN AND CYPRIAN SYLLABOGRAMS

P: Pictophonograms (“hieroglyphs”) pictorial glyphs.[1]

PD: Phaistos Disc script (pictophonic, and linear).[2]

A: Linear A syllabary.[3]

B: Linear B syllabary.[4]

AB: Linear A signs identified with their B counterparts.[5]

CA: Cyprian Archaic syllabary (derived from Linear A).[6]

CC: Cyprian Cuneiform (Cypro-Minoan).[7]

C: Linear C, the Cyprian syllabary.[8]

[1] P: Olivier and Godet 1996 (Corpus): 17, 19, 386-429.

Colless: https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/cretanscripts

[2] PD: Evans 1909: 22-28, 273-293, 276 (table of signs); Duhoux 1977; Fischer 1988; Faucounau 1999: 10 (table), 65-105 (signs). Colless:https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/phaistosscript

[3] LA: Godart and Olivier 1976-1985 (Recueil) Vol. 5, XXII –LVII.

Colless: https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/cretansigns

[4] LB: Ventris and Chadwick 1973 (Documents): 41, 385.

[5] AB: Godart and Olivier 1976-1985 (Recueil) Vol. 5, XXII.

[6] CA: Emilia Masson’s numbering is revised for citation purposes in Olivier 2007: 412 (Nos 1-21).

[7] CC: E. Masson1974: 12-15, Figures 2-4; Olivier 2007: 413-415; Ferrara 2012: 255:Table 5:10, “A tentative standardized signs repertoire”; both Olivier and Ferrara have arbitrarily reduced the number of signs on their tables; but until we know the sound-value of every sign and can dispense with numbering, Masson’s full set of numbers must remain in use.

Colless, tables and charts: https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/cyprusscripts

[8] LC: O. Masson 1983: Figures 1-6.

 

   A (P42, AB8, CA2, CC101, 102, C A) is an ax (axinê), with triangular or curved blades, but these were squared in the stylization process.

   A/HA (B25) arrow?

   AI (A306, B43) possibly a goat (aiks) or an eagle (aietos); cp. QI and ME.

   AU (P17 13a, AB85) a pig.

   E (P28, AB38, CA17, CC38, C E; also PD2) can be related to etheira, “hair” or “horse hair crest on helmets” (Homer).

   I (P31, A28a, AB28, CA21/104, CC104. C I) appears to be an olive branch, hence ‘iketêria (elaia), a suppliant’s olive branch, wound around with wool, and the end of the thread is shown on some of the A28a forms; this causes confusion with the thumb of NO, and these are both mistakenly catalogued under A28; see NO below.

   O (P5, AB61, CC64 84 66, C O) is an eye, still detectable in some Linear A glyphs (HT Wa 1279 shows the pupil and the eyelashes); it has been confused with the BEER sign (AB123) on TL Za 1a

   U (P95, AB10, CC19 20 79, C U) apparently began as ‘ustrix, a porcupine or hedgehog, but its features were lost, and, like KU (dog), it was wrongly seen as a bird.

   BA/PHA (AB56) a ladder with 3 or 4 rungs (not klimaks, but bathron, a set of steps or ladder).

   BU (see PHU)

   DA (P27, P29, AB1, CA18, CC4, C TA) is a leafy twig (thallos) but reduced to a stick form (|-).

   DE (P37, P94c, AB45; CC97, C RO) is a dwelling on legs; its equivalent character on the Phaistos Disc (PD24) is more detailed, with a dome-top and a protruding plate; it resembles some of the later tombs in Lykia; perhaps thêkê, “grave” (or demein, “build”). Because Linear A RO (the + sign) was used for Cyprian LO, a new RO had to be found for the Cyprian syllabary, and apparently DE was adopted for RO.

   DI (P39, AB7) seems to be a net, perhaps on a pole in the present case, and Greek diktuon, “net” comes to mind; P39 represents network and would be the original sign.

   DO (P50, A304, B14) looks like a spear, and doru has that meaning.

   DU (P59, P60, AB51, CC32 46 47 106, C SU) can be seen as a man with a crook, though some of its developed shapes are enigmatic; its original pictogram would be the crook alone (P59, and P60, which has an angle rather than a curve at the top). The staff could be a symbol of power (Greek dunamis, dunasteia); the man (dunastês, potentate) must have been added for clarity, but this detail was obscured in the Linear B version; it reappears in Cyprian SU.

   DWE (B71, P4?)

   DWO (AB118) is a pair of scales, symbolizing “weight”.

   KA (P47, AB77, CA9, CC25, C KA) appears regularly as a cross (+) within a circle, like Tet in the Phoenician alphabet, and Theta; its source would be P47, a cane basket with a handle, sometimes with elaborate cross-hatching, but more often with no weaving indicated; the AB form has omitted the handle and simplified the wickerwork; the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph (V31) of a wickerwork basket with a handle is viewed from the side; it represents k, but the reason is unknown; Kaptarian KA can readily be connected with Greek kaneon, “cane basket”. The Alashian KA (CA9) started as the encircled cross but the lower part of the circle was pruned.

   KE (P36, AB44, CA19, CC107 105, C KE) is a structure, possibly a booth or a shrine, or a stage for actors, skênê (initial s in a consonant cluster would not be represented in this writing system); the disc above it may be the sun, suggesting skias, a shady covering, “pavilion”.

   KI (P57, AB67, CC70, C KI) is obviously a stringed musical instrument (though it came to look like a drinking vessel), and thus kithara, “lyre”,

   KO (P62, AB70, CA10, CC21, C KO) flat-headed nail, gomphos, equivalent to alphabetic Waw.

   KU (P18, AB81, CC110, C KU) looks like a bird in flight (in its AB form), but on closer examination it must be the head of a dog in profile, with an eye and a protruding tongue (P18); the Greek word for “dog” is kuôn. The Cyprian form is on its side, with the tongue pointing upwards.

   KRA (P82, AB34, A308?) represents an eye with its pupil, Greek glênê.

   KRO  (P63 64, A326? 329? B35) depicts a cord wound on a stick (the origin of Q in the alphabet, from qaw, a line); the stick was eventually bent to make B35 (KRO) look like B34 (KRA), but they have opposite forms; they are usually regarded as unidentified.

   LA (CC87, from A60 RA).

   LE (CC76, a new creation; C LE resembles 8).

   LI (CC 9, from A53 RI).

   LO (CC5, from A2 RO).

   LU (CC 24, a new formation).

   MA (AB80, CC43, 49, 52, 53, C MA) is undoubtedly a cat (as also PD29) and the MA might be the sound of its mewing (mao); ME, MI, and MU apparently have a similar origin in animal vocalisation); but there are not many cat-glyphs in the pictophonic inventory (*P97); possibly the ma-syllable was first represented by a breast-glyph (P34a, see also PE, P34b), mastos or malon (Doric).

   ME (P16, AB13, CC35, C ME) the head of a sheep with horns; perhaps mêlon “sheep” (or sometimes goat), or mêkas (mêkaomai,“bleat”, of sheep or goat), as MA (cat), MI (bird), MU (cow) are apparently derived from animal sounds. The P16 collection of goats and sheep may include AI and QI.

   MI (P13b, AB73, CC91 89 90, C MI) is a bird with its beak open and vocalising, evoking minurisma, “warbling”; note that the P13 collection includes some animal heads, notably pig (P13a, P17, AB85, AU) and some bovines (P13c, P14).

   MO (P68, A321?, B15, CC73, C MO) is enigmatic; P68 might be a variant of TE (tree), but it could be a spine with ribs, like the Egyptian djed column, symbolizing “stability”, and this would match Greek monimos, “stable, steadfast”; the Cyprian forms support this view.

   MU (P12, AB23, CA5. CC55, 39, 42, 54, C MU) is a bovine head in profile, with horn and ear, and suggests mukêma, “bellowing”; the Cyprian forms seem to have moved to a frontal view; see QO.

   NA (P78, AB6, CA4, CC8, C NA) represents an eye with a flow (nama) of tears (Sophocles: dakruôn therma nama); the Phaistos Disc equivalent (PD3) has a man’s head with two tears on his cheek, and it also appears on PH Wc 45.

   NE (P52, AB24, CA20, CC2, 18, 34, 56, C NE) is a libation vessel with handle and spout; possibly from nektar, the drink of the gods; on KH 53 it stands beside the BEER mug with strainer.

   NI (P24, AB30, CA16, CC99, 100, 65, C NI) a fig tree, Cretan Greek nikuleon, “fig”. Perhaps this is an indication that the Aegean writing system originated in Crete, rather than elsewhere, and the language it was based on was a Cretan dialect of "Danaic" (Greek).

   NO (P8, A28b, (A)B52, CC17, C NO) is an upraised hand, showing fingers and thumb, and this is clear enough in the Linear B forms; but Linear A NO  and I have been catalogued together in slot 28; they may now be distinguished as AB52 and AB28 respectively; the acrophonic origin may be in nomos, “law”, specifically kheirôn nomos, “law of force” (kheir, “hand”, hence the hand-sign for NO).

   NU (P9, AB55, CA12, CC68, 103, C NU) is a pair of vertical lines joined at the halfway point by a pair of horizontal bars, but also found with curved strokes; it seems to be derived from a hand pictogram (P9) with thumb but no fingers shown, and having two horizontal lines at the base, and so it looks like a mitten (cp. PD8); another example (P83) is closer to the stylized forms of AB55.

   NWA (P6, B48) two hands.

   NAU? (AB36).

   PA (P40, AB3, CC6, C PA) is possibly P40, a ship with its rigging (baris, “an Egyptian boat”?) but it is reduced to a mast with two strokes.                                                                                                  

   PE (P34b? A305, B72, CC11, C PE) appears to be a fetter (cp. PD14), Greek pedê; but its features are lost in transition.

   PI (P20 21 22 79 90, AB39, CC51, 52, C PI) is a bee (Indo-European *bhi, Latin apis); also PD34.

   PO (P43, AB11, CC12, 14, C PO) is certainly an ax (cp. A as a double ax, and PD15); pelekus is a word for “ax” that may or may not be relevant here; likewise bolis, “missile”.

   PU (P49, AB50, CC61, 23, C PU) is a stringed musical instrument; possibly phormingx, a seven-stringed lyre; or burtê, a rare synonym for lyra,“lyre” (Hesukhios). The Cyprian sign may be a development of  AB29; see PHU.

   PHU/BU (P30? AB29) from phulia, “wild olive’?

   PTE (P168? B62) pteruks, “wing”?

   QA (P44, AB16) could be a sauce boat, end view, with the two handles protruding (also PD44?).

   QE (P73 74 75, AB78) a circular object, either a ring or a circle with one or more dots, suggesting a ring, a shield, a pancake (cp. Luwian glyph 181 PANIS), and it may have a connection with kyklos (kwekwlo) “circle”, with extended meanings such as ring and shield.

   QI (AB21) apparently a goat; cp. AI and ME, and also PD30.

   QO (P11, B32, A345?) frontal view of a bovine head (cp. MU, profile), from bous (gwou), “ox, bull. cow”.

   QU (not attested?).

   RA (P7, AB60, CA1, CC87, 88, C LA) a human arm, with the forearm and hand horizontal; Greek brakhiôn means “arm”, but the initial b might block this as supplying acrophonic RA.

   RE (P23, AB27, CC33, C RE) a lily (leirion); neither Cyprian LE nor RE looks like the AB sign.

   RI (P10, AB53, CC9, C LI) a human leg (cp. PD28, an animal leg).

   RO (P70, AB2, CA7, CC5, C LO) is a cross; A2 is usually +, but B2 has the centre line elongated at both ends; P70 is the corresponding pictograph; the acrophonic source could be rhombos, something that can twirl, such as a spinning top; B68 (RO2, ryo) could be the same thing.

   RU (P92, AB26) is a lampstand (lukhnia) with two branches. In the Cyprus syllabary, RU (CA 11, CC 28) has an umbrella shape (rather than an umbrella blown inside out, in the Cretan form); Cyprian LU (CC24) is similar, but apparently a new creation.

   RAI (B76)

   RYA (P69, P71, A314, AB76) apparently a flowing stream, rheô (“flow”).

   RYO (B68) see RO.

   SA (P19, AB31, CA3, CC82, 57, 16, 48, C SA) is a squid, a cuttle-fish (sêpia).

   SE (P26, P3?, AB9, CA14, CC44,45, C SE) a plant, perhaps parsley (selinon), used for a victor’s crown in games (see P3, where it is on a human head).

   SI (P55, AB41, CC27 58, C SI) a tripod vessel containing a stalk of wheat (sitos).

   SO (P46. P80, P87, A301, A324, AB12, CC67, 60, C SO) has long remained unrecognized, but the adz of the craftsman is detectable; sophia means skill in arts and crafts, as well as wisdom. The Cyprus sign apparently has the tool turned on its side.

   SU (P35. AB5) appears to be a pig-sty (supheos). For Cyprian SU, see DU.

   SWA? (B82)

   SWE? (AB49)

   SWI? (B64)

   TA (P56, AB59) is a writing tablet; Greek tabella and tablion are perhaps too late, but trapeza might suffice. For Cyprian TA, see DA.

   TE (P25, AB4, CA13, CC7 62, C TE) is a tree (as perhaps in terebinthos, turpentine-tree, or possibly connected to dendron), originally with branches reaching upwards, but eventually outwards (like a telegraph pole).

   TI (P49, P93, AB37, CA15, CC23, C TI) is a pointed instrument, conjuring up the stig root (stigeus, “brander”, stigma,“puncture mark”, stizô, “prick” or “brand”).

   TO (P48, AB5, CC13 78, C TO) is a bow (toxon) with an arrow, but the curve was straightened, and the string was reduced to a small stroke (cp. PD11, a bow with no arrow).

   TU (P77, AB69, CC26 30 31 32, C TU) is a depiction of hanging fruit, ripe and ready for gathering (trugê); the verb trugaô means “gather in ripe fruits” (including grapes and grains); but a better acrophonic source might be found.

   TWE (B87)

   TWO (B91)

   TYA (P84? AB66)

   WA (P41, AB54, CA6, CC95, C WA) looks like cloth on a loom, so a connection with a weave word (root wa-?) seems likely.

   WE (P61, A319, B75, CC 1, C WE) seems to be a worm or snake (P61) and Latin vermis has the required WE (cp. PD42, a caterpillar?); B75 has the shape of a reversed S; and A319 is like capital I, the form that appears consistently in the Cyprus scripts; both are derived from an original oblique Z form.

   WI (P85, AB40, CC41 37, C WI)

   WO (P2? AB180, B42, CC29 41, C WO) a razor (cp. PD44)?

   WU (not found)

   YA (P38, AB57, CA8, CC69 71 72?, C YA) is clearly a door, and Latin ianua has to be invoked here for the ancient root ya (“go”), which occurs as ienai (“go”) in YE (AB46, a person walking).

   YE (P4?, P91?, AB46, CC36) a walker (cp. PD1); see YA.

   YI (AB47?, CC40?) a combination of o and X, with the arms protruding.

   YO (P54, A349, B36, CC98, C YO) a vessel with two handles.

   YU (uncertain, possibly AB65; no Cyprian syllabogram); YU is found together with U on tablets HT 117a and 122b.

   ZA  (AB17) the Egyptian symbol of life (‘ankh), Greek zaô, “live”, zôê, “life”.

   ZE (P45, AB74, CC88 86 93 92, C ZE) a saw (kseô, “plane”?) or a comb (ksainô, “card wool”?).

   ZI (not identified)

   ZO (P51, A312, AB20) a sculptor’s chisel (ksois)? (CC59 and C ZO are different).

   ZU (P81? AB79)

---

[1] P: Olivier and Godet 1996 (Corpus): 17, 19, 386-429.

Colless:https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/cretanscripts

[2] PD: Evans 1909: 22-28, 273-293, 276 (table of signs); Duhoux 1977; Fischer 1988; Faucounau 1999: 10 (table), 65-105 (signs). Colless:https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/phaistosscript

[3] LA: Godart and Olivier 1976-1985 (Recueil) Vol. 5, XXII –LVII.

Colless: https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/cretansigns

[4] LB: Ventris and Chadwick 1973 (Documents): 41, 385.

[5] AB: Godart and Olivier 1976-1985 (Recueil) Vol. 5, XXII.

[6] CA: Emilia Masson’s numbering is revised for citation purposes in Olivier 2007: 412 (Nos 1-21).

[7] CC: E. Masson1974: 12-15, Figures 2-4; Olivier 2007: 413-415; Ferrara 2012: 255:Table 5:10, “A tentative standardized signs repertoire”; both Olivier and Ferrara have arbitrarily reduced the number of signs on their tables; but until we know the sound-value of every sign and can dispense with numbering, Masson’s full set of numbers must remain in use.

Colless, tables and charts: https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/cyprusscripts

[8] LC: O. Masson 1983: Figures 1-6.

My studies on the ancient scripts of the lands in and around the Mediterranean Sea (West Asia, North Africa, Europe, Cyclades, Crete, Cyprus) have been life-long, but my first publication on the subject dates from 1988: it is an attempt to identify the original picture-signs (pictophonograms,  picture-symbols representing a unit of speech, either a syllable or a single sound) that produced the various letters of the Semitic (Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabian) and Greco-Roman alphabets. Preceding this simple writing system, which was a consonantary (indicating consonants but not vowels), and which I call the protoalphabet, there was also a pictophonographic syllabary used in the West Semitic region (notably at Byblos), and this syllabic system was in use in the 23rd century BCE, before the invention of the West Semitic protoalphabet and before writing appeared in Crete. My working hypothesis is that the West Semitic syllabary provided the model for the Aegean systems, and also for the Luwian script ('hieroglyphic Hittite') of Anatolia, and even the Meso-American writing systems, including the Mayan logosyllabary.
   There were four syllabic scripts used on Crete in the Bronze Age (before 1200 BCE approximately). In the subsequent Iron Age, the Phoenician and Greek alphabets were employed, and the syllabaries were discarded (though in Cyprus a syllabary based on the Cretan script, specifically Linear A, continued to flourish).
The three main Cretan systems were related, as a genealogical family.
(1) Pictophonographic syllabary (PA) > (2) Linear A syllabary (LA) > (3) Linear B syllabary (LB).
(4) The fourth script was another pictophonographic syllabary (PB), which is found on the Phaistos Disc and on other documents, and which seems to be related to the other family (at least to the extent that they have many of their pictorial characters in common).
We can speak of a northern pictophonographic script (KnP, particularly connected with the palaces of Knossos and Mallia) and a southern pictophonographic script (PhP, connected with the Phaistos palace). When the Linear A syllabary was established (as a stylized simplified form of the pictophonographic system) it became universal over the island, and (somewhat paradoxically) the largest corpus of administrative tablets (that have so far been discovered) comes from Hagia Triada, near Phaistos.
   I refrain from applying the term 'hieroglyphic' to the pictophonographic signs; it is a word that should be restricted to Egyptology; it leaves the Phaistos pictophonographs out of the picture; they are all pictorial signs, with nothing 'holy' (hieros) about them.

   It must also be remembered that the three main systems (northern PG, LA, LB) are found beyond Crete, and it is not inconceivable that the original Aegean script was invented on the mainland (Greece) or on another island. An example of the northern pictophonographic writing was found in Kea/Keos, an island east of Athens; it is an impression on a hearth rim; and also Linear A inscriptions. This fact provides support for my hypothesis that this system was constructed acrophonically on the basis of a Hellenic dialect (examples: A axinê 'ax', O ops 'eye', TO toxon 'bow'; NI nikuleon 'fig', a Cretan word, which might imply that Crete was in fact the locus of the invention of the script).

   The signs in the 'linear' forms (LA, LB, and Linear C in Cyprus) are known to have functioned as 'syllabograms' (and also as 'logograms' in LA and LB).

   Two tables are offered here: the first (Cretan Syllabograms) shows my attempt to match up the signs of the three northern systems (PG, LA , LB, as P, A, B), on the principle that the pictorial signs become stylized in the Linear A inventory, and even more so in Linear B; the second table (Cretan Pictosyllabograms) presents the signs of the northern pictophonographic syllabograms.
The P standing for pictophonographic is actually KnP (Knossos P) in the northern context; when it has to be distinguished from the southern script, KnP and PhP (Phaistos P) will be used.
A paradox is that although the Linear A script evolved out of the northern picto-syllabary, the largest collection of Linear A administrative tablets comes from Hagia Triada, adjacent to Phaistos; while Knossos and Mallia have yielded only a few fragmentary clay tablets. However, at Phaistos there are tablets exhibiting the southern script (Phaistos syllabary) as well as the northern Linear A script.
Notice that I reject the defeatist nonsense that there were not many Consonant+O signs in Linear A; supposedly lacking were so, do, dwo, mo, qo, yo, wo, no, two, ryo, zo, though o, po, to, ko, ro were grudgingly accepted onto the table; but it is true that they were not used frequently, and this says something about the language or languages in the Linear A texts.

NORTHERN CRETAN SYLLABOGRAMS
       
A    AB8     P42  (ax)  [axinê]
AI    B43 A306 [aix goat?] (cp ME and QI?) (#016 AI-TA-TI?)
AU  AB85 P17 P13b (pig) [hus? autoboulos, self-willed, pig-headed?!]
HA  B25 (cp Phaistos 10, arrow?) A368?
E    AB38   P28   (hair, crest) [etheira]
I    AB28    P31    (olive) [hiketeria elaia suppliant olive branch]
O    AB61    P5    (eye) [ops, omma, oculus]
U    AB10    P95   (hedgehog) [hustrix]
YA   AB57   P38   (door) [Latin ianua, Sanskrit yâ go]
YE   AB46   P4?   (walking) [ienai going, Sanskrit yâ go]
YI   AB47?
YO  B36 A349  P54 (amphora)
YU   AB65?
WA   AB54    P41    (cloth)
WE    B75 A319      P61  (worm) [werm]  
WI    AB40    P85?       
WO   B42/AB180?  A363? A364? P2? (razor)
WU   
RA    AB60       P7   (arm) [brakhiôn ?]
RYA    B76        P69?   (water-course)     (cp reô flow, roê stream?)
RAI   B33  (same as saffron logogram)
RE    AB27       P23   (lily) [leirion]
RI     AB53       P10   (leg)
RO    AB2         P70   (cross) [rhombos?]
RYO   AB68      P40   (ship? spinning top?) [rhombos?]
RU    AB26       P92    (lamp) [lukhnia menorah]
MA    AB80 (cat) P34 (breasts?) [masta, mala breasts] replaced by P97 (cat) [ma, meow]?
ME    AB13        P16  (sheep) [mêlon, mêkas bleating]
MI     AB73       P13a?  (bird-head?) [minurisma bird-warbling] (or P7 [arm] is not RA?) 
MO    B15  A321 A327 (cp Cyprian MO, and Egyptian djed)  P68 (spine?) [monimos stable]
MU    AB23        P12    (cow) [mukaomai, mukêma, moo-cow bellowing]
NA    AB6          P78    (tearflow) [nama] (dakruôn therma nama Sophokles)
NWA   B48       P6    (crossed arms) (neozeuktos newly-yoked, newly-wed?!)
NE    AB24        P52 + P53 (libation vessel) [nektar divine drink]
NI     AB30        P24    (fig) [nikuleon] (a Cretan word)
NO    B52 A28b P8    (hand) [nomos law] (kheirôn nomos law of force)
NU    AB55        P9 +83?  (glove?) 
PA    AB3          P40? (ship) [baris Egyptian boat]
PE    B72 A305?     P34b? (fetter) [pedê]
PI     AB39        P20 21 22 79 90  (bee)
PO    AB11        P43  (ax)  [pelekus?]
PU    AB50 A369?    P58  (lyre)  [burtê]  
TA    AB59        P56 (tablet) [trapeza, tabula] 
TE    AB4         P25   (tree) [tere-, as in terebinthos]
TI     AB37       P49 +93 (brander) [stigeus puncturing tool]
TO    AB5        P48 (bow and arrow) [toxon]
TU    B69        P77  (fruit)
DA    AB1        P27, 29    (twig) [thalos]
DE    AB45      P37, 94?   (house/tomb) [demein build; thêkê container, grave]
DI     AB7        P39? (= B64?) (netting?) [diktuon]
DO    B14 A304?   P50    (spear?) [doru]
DU    AB51        P59 +60? (crook) [dunastês power-wielder]
KA    AB77        P47    (cane basket)  [kaneon]
KE    AB44        P36    (pavilion)  [skênê]
KI     AB67       P57  (lyre) [kithara]
KO    AB70       P62    P51   (nail)  [gomphos, wedge-shaped nail]
KU    AB81       P18     (dog) [kuôn]       
QA    AB16       P44  (bolt-pin for bar of gate? or key?) [balanos, balanagra key]?
QE    AB78       P73-75   (circular object) [kuklos, kwekwlo]
QI     AB21       P14? P54b?   (animal?)   
QO    B32 B18?  A333? A345? A347?    P11 (bull)  [bous, gwou]
QU
SA    AB31       P19 (cuttlefish, kalamari) [sêpia]
SE    AB9         P26 +3? (parsley, for victor's crown) [selinon]
SI     AB41       P55    (grain in container) [sitos]  
SO    B12 A301? P46 +80 +87   (adz) [sophia craftsmanship? skeparnon adz?]    
SU    AB58       P35 (enclosure) [supheos pig-sty]  
ZA    AB17  B19?      (Egyptian `ankh symbol, life) [zaein, zôê]
ZE    AB74        P45   (saw? comb?) [xainô comb, card; xeô plane, carve)
ZI   
ZO    AB20  A312?      P51? P85 (WI)?  (chisel? sword?) [xois sculptor's chisel]  P51=LA36
ZU    AB79?        P81?        (sun with rays?)
RYA    B76        P69?        P69
RYO    B68                    P40
NWA   B48    006    P6    P6
NAU    B86?            P40?     P40
PA3     AB56    [bathron ladder]      P39
PU2     B29            P30? P32?
TYA      B66            P84, P72?
KRA     B34            P82  [glênê eyeball, pupil]
KRO    B35            P63 P64  [klôstêr thread, line]         
SWI?    B64            P39? DI?

NORTHERN CRETAN PICTO-SYLLABOGRAMS
                               
    CHIC  Brian Colless   (John Younger)
    001    seated human
    002    head? (razor? WO cp P88?)       
    003    head +026     SE (= 026)?
    004    upright human YE? DWE?     
    005    eye    O    (Rv)
    006     *X*  2 arms  NWA      (NWA)
    007    bent arm   RA/LA  (MI)    [MI 013? 057?]
    008    hand  NO  (A3)
    009    glove?  NU 009 +083? (A2)
    010    leg     RI  (RI)
    011    bovine head  (front)  QO (SI2) [11-16 mixed animals]
    012    bovine head  (side)   MU (MU)
    013    bird with open mouth (mixed)  MI (MU2) [some 013? +015?]
    014    animal head    QI?  (I)
    015    animal head? (1x)   +013?  (DU?)     
    016    horned head    ME   (KI2)
    017    pig head  +013    AU (AU)
    018    dog head + tongue  KU  (RA)           
    019    cuttlefish, sepia      SA  (SA)
    020    bee      PI  (AI)     [PI 020-022 +033? 079? 090?]
    021    bee      PI  (PI)
    022    bee      PI 
    023    lily flower? RE/LE   (TO)
    024    fig tree?     NI  (NI)
    025    tree?          TE  (TE)
    026      _(_(_(_(   SE             [SE 026 +003?]
    027      |/ (3x)     DA? (= 029?)
    028    hair crest    E  (KU2)
    029    double twig DA (MA)   [DA 27 + 29?]
    030    \}/  (1x)     DA? PU2 (phu)? (PU2)
    031    \|/    I 031? +032?  (RE)     
    032    \!/ (9x)       PU2 (phu)?  (RE2)
    033    }.{ (3x)      ZU? +81
    034    fetters? breasts?  PE +ME? (TA)
    035    pig-pen?       SU (SU)
    036    pavilion         KE (SA2)
    037    house/tomb   DE 037 + 094? (Rv)  [cp PhDisc 24]
    038    door + post    YA (JA)
    039    netting/trellis  DI  (PA3)             DI 039? (=LinB64?)
    040    ship               PA  (RO2)          
    041    cloth?            WA (WA)
    042    double ax       A  (A)
    043    ax                 PO (SO)
    044    metal object   QA (KO)
    045    saw                ZE (ZE)
    046    adz                SO 046 + 080 + 087  ( )
    047    cane basket    KA (QE)
    048    bow & arrow   TO [1x]  ( )                    
    049    /|\                 TI      (RO3)      TI 049 + 093?
    050    spear?            DO  (TI)
    051    dagger? chisel? ZO? (KI3)
    052    ewer                NE  (NE)            
    053    jug                  NE      (KI?)
    054    amphora (2 rams?) YO?     (DE)     YO? +MA? +QI? 
    055    grain vessel?     SI   (KE)              
    056     talent? tablet?  TA    (KU)           
    057      V+  kithara      KI  (KI)          
    058     lyre                  PU (PU)              
    059     crook                DU                DU 059 +060?
    060        |\                  DU?
    061     snake? worm?   WE   or = RI 010?
    062    ___.     KO

  (NA)
    063    _._        KRO?
    064    --o--        KRO?  (DA)
    065    .__.        ?
    066    ||          PA?
    067    *||*        HA?
    068    spine?     MO     (Rv)                  
    069    ZZ        RYA?
    070   cross  +  x             RO (RO)          
    071    }}}       RYA?
    072    triangle   TYA??         (KA)
    073    circle        QE 073? +74 +75
    075    circle (dotted)      QE 075 (1x) + 074 (1x)
    076    ?        YU?
    077    fruit      TU   (RU2)                       MA? ME? NI?
    078    eye and tear-flow?  NA (DO)                             
    079    bee?        PI? (= 020)    
    080    adz        SO (= 046)
    081    (1x)        ZU?
    082    eyeball?        KRA?
    083    (=009?) (1x)        NU?
    084            TYA? TWO?
    085     /+\    WI? (WI)
    086            QO? (= 068?)
    087    adz        SO (= 046)
    088         [razor?     WO? RI =002?
    089    X         YE? PE? RI?
    090    bee?        PI? (= 020)
    091    ^^^        ?
    092    lamp?       RU    (RU)
    093    /|\        TI (= 049) (TI)
    094    /=\        DE? (= 037)
    (097)     (cat)        MA? (MA)


What you see here is a host of hypotheses struggling to become a grand unified theory.

This is a revised and expanded version of my release entitled "Table of Cretan pictoglyphs" (28 July 2003), providing a description or drawing of the characters, and an attempt to match them with their counterparts in the Linear B inventory.

The prefix 'P' stands for 'pictosyllabogram' (or 'pictophonogram'), with the CHIC numbering.