Lakish inscriptions: syllabic and consonantal
The West Semitic inscriptions from Lakish (Tel Lachish in southern Israel) are presented as examples of:
West Semitic Syllabic and Consonantal Scripts
https://www.academia.edu/12894458/The_origin_of_the_alphabet
Lakish (Tel Lachish, Tell ed-Duweir) has yielded examples of the four West Semitic writing systems in the evolutionary scheme that I have dubbed "The Quadrinity" (four in one):
Proto-syllabary >
Proto-consonantary >
Neo-consonantary >
Neo-syllabary.
Its somewhat familiar formula is:
E = [2M + 2C]2
E = 2M + 2C squared
E is Early Alphabet, M = Monosyllabary, C = Consonantary, and the four components can be neatly fitted into a square box.
The origin of the alphabet was fourfold (Quadruple and Quadratic).
A brief and simplified explanation of the stages of the development will be attempted here, but there are concepts that will be quite unfamiliar to anyone who knows only how the Alphabet is used to write the English language.
Imagine (doodle it!) a square, bisected by a diagonal line (running SW -> NE), producing two right-angle triangles with a shared hypotenuse (base line).
[M1] PROTO-SYLLABARY
On the top line of the figure.
This is a (mono)syllabic script associated with Byblos in Phoenicia (Lebanon); its characters are mostly borrowed Egyptian hieroglyphs; by the principle of "acrophony", only the first syllable of the West Semitic word that the sign represents is pronounced.
For example: a picture of a door, D, says daltu, so the door-sign represents DA; but a complication is that it can also say daltu, acting not simply as a syllabogram (syllable-letter) but also as a logogram (word-letter).
https://www.academia.edu/50903729/West_Semitic_Proto_Syllabary
[C1] PROTO-CONSONANTARY
On the line on the East side of the square
This is a consonantal script devised in Egypt, apparently; it is the prototype of the alphabet; its characters are mostly borrowed Egyptian hieroglyphs, and taken from its predecessor, the Proto-syllabary; for the most part, it simply accepted the -a syllable-signs to represent consonants without vowels. The acrophonic principle operates here again, but only the first consonant of the pictured word is sounded.
Examples: the well-known group 'Alpu (ox) BAytu (house) GAmlu (boomerang) DAltu (door), now become: ' (glotal stop) B G D; but a scribe may choose to employ any of the signs as a logogram, representing the whole word, not merely its initial consonant.
https://www.academia.edu/12894458/The_origin_of_the_alphabet
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2007/10/gordon-hamiltons-early-alphabet-thesis.html
[C2] NEO-CONSONANTARY
On the baseline on the South side of the square
This is a consonantal script and simply a shortened version of the Proto-consonantary
Example: the Proto-syllabary (M1) did not distinguish the consonants Sh and Th (sh as in shin, th as in thin); for SHA it had a human breast (\/\/) from shad/thad "breast"; for SHI it had shimsh "sun", represented by a circle (o) or by a sun-disc with serpents ( \o/); the Proto-consonantary (C1) employed SHA for Th, and SHI for Sh (a case of an -i syllabogram representing a consonant); the sign that survived was \/\/, which became Greek Sigma, and the first four letters took the names Alpha Beta Gamma Delta. The letters could still function as logograms at this stage.
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2015/11/h-l-h-m-order-of-alphabet-letters.html
[M2] NEO-SYLLABARY
On the West side of the figure
This is a syllabic script
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/abgadary
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/qeiyafa-ostracon-2
https://www.academia.edu/42283185/The_Lost_Link_The_Alphabet_in_the_Hands_of_the_Early_Israelites
[CC] CUNEO-CONSONANTARY
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/cuneiformalphabet
My detailed response to the publication of the Lakish lice-comb inscription now
appears in the bundle of blogs cited above; as I see it, all the claims made about it are incorrect: "oldest known sentence written in first alphabet"; the Sinai Turquoise mines have numerous sentences inscribed with the proto-alphabet; this comb-inscription is not proto-alphabetic ("first alphabet"); its letters are not
consonantal-alphabetic but syllabic (as shown by different stances or forms for the syllabograms).
The best available exemplification of the West Semitic neo-syllabic
script is the lengthy inscription on the Qeiyafa ostracon (the David and
Goliath oracle), which mentions
DA-WI-DI and GU-LI-YU-TU:
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/qeiyafa-ostracon-2
Likewise the three Yerubbaal shards, which
say, when joined together correctly, LA-YU-RU-BA-`A-LA GI-DI.... , "For Yerubba`al", naming the Judge Gideon who overthrew the invaders from Midian.
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/09/khirbet-ar-rai-inscription-lyrbl.html
Lakish was apparently unoccupied in the time of the Judges in Israel, when the Neo-syllabary flourished, but its lice-comb inscription is clearly neo-syllabic, and as this city was a centre of literacy, the Neo-syllabary may have been invented there; and this is possibly our earliest example of that type of writing.
Briefly, the comb-inscription is widely publicised as saying:
Y T Sh H. T. D L Q M L S ` [R W] Z Q T
"May this tusk root out the lice of the hai[r and the] beard"
My neo-syllabic reading finds more letters (some of the vowels are uncertain, so only the consonants are shown):
' K Sh R H R M K L Q M L M W L S ` R K W L Z Q N K
"I will effectively remove all the lice from your hair and also from your beard"
'akshir hérîm kull qamalim walisa`araka walizuqunaka
It is not the user speaking about the comb and its use, but the comb itself speaking to the user about its usefulness.
5 comments:
Would love to hear your take on the Lachish lice comb recently published.
Yes, I am working on my angry response to Daniel Vainstub's reading of it, which is replete with errors, but basically correct. They can not see the fish (S), the cord on stick (Q), the mouth (P),the hand (K, in KL QML, "every louse", not LQML "lice").
My ongoing response to the publication of the lice-comb inscription now appears in the bundle of blogs cited above. Actually there is no P-sign (mouth)in it, as stated in my earlier comment. It is not consonantal-alphabetic but syllabic; it offers another example of the West Semitic Neo-consonantary, like the Qeiyafa ostracon, which mentions DA-WI-DI and GU-LI-YU-TU, and also the three Yerubbaal shards, which say, when joined together correctly, LA-YU-RU-BA-`A-LA GI-DI....
In my previous comment I mistakenly wrote "West Semitic Neo-consonantary" instead of "Neo-syllabary". Incidentally, I am not sure whether the tiny curse "tablette" is syllabic; it seems that there are variant forms for the various letters, and this suggests syllabic writing.
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2023/12/ebal-curse-tablet.html
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