As noted in the recent update from The Zeitah Excavations:
Last summer, The Zeitah Excavations at Tel Zayit, Israel, made a dramatic discovery: an inscription that bears the oldest known securely datable example of an abecedary, that is, the letters of the alphabet written out from beginning to end in their traditional sequence. The nearly eight-acre site of Tel Zayit lies in the strategic Beth Guvrin Valley in the lowlands region of ancient Judah approximately seven kilometers north and two kilometers west of Lachish, 30 kilometers east of Ashkelon, and 29 kilometers west of Hebron. Since 1999, exploration at the site has proceeded under the direction of Dr. Ron E. Tappy and the institutional sponsorship of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, with major funding from a generous private donor. The project is also affiliated with the American Schools of Oriental Research in the United States and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
On July 15, 2005, the final day of the 2005 season in the field, excavators found embedded in a wall a 38-pound limestone boulder with two lines of incised letters on one side and a large, bowl-shaped hollow on the other. The importance of this discovery derives not only from its archaic alphabetic text, which raises the possibility that formal scribal training at the outlying site of Tel Zayit was a result of a rapidly developing Israelite bureaucracy in Jerusalem, but also from the stone's firmly datable archaeological context -- an extremely rare occurrence among the few extant inscriptions of this nature.
The stone bearing the Tel Zayit Inscription comprised part of a wall belonging to a structure that dates to the late tenth century BCE and suffered heavy destruction by fire sometime in that period. (Ironically, the inscribed stone might have been built into the wall because of the ancient belief in the alphabet's magical or apotropaic power, that is, its ability to ward off evil.) Multiple deposits overlaying and sealing the destruction debris accumulated to a depth of over one meter and represent two distinct building levels (with the latest one also ending in a conflagration) and three related sub-phases ranging from the ninth through the early eighth centuries BCE. This secure archaeological context provides a firm date before which the stone-walled structure must have been built and the inscription must have been incised. Stratigraphy, ceramic studies, radiocarbon dating, evidence of tectonic activity (damage from an earthquake during the time of Amos the prophet), and now palaeography (the study of ancient writing) have combined to help determine a precise date for the archaeological level that yielded the inscription.
On November 20, 2005, Dr. Tappy (Director of The Zeitah Excavations and G. Albert Shoemaker Professor of Bible and Archaeology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) and epigrapher P. Kyle McCarter (William Foxwell Albright Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University) will, respectively, describe the archaeology relating to the discovery of the stone and analyze the writing on it at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Pennsylvania. Their lecture is titled "The Tel Zayit Stone: A New Tenth-Century BCE Inscription from the Judaean Shephelah." A question-and-answer period following the lecture will feature a panel that will include the epigraphic photography team of Bruce Zuckerman (University of Southern California) and Marilyn Lundberg (West Semitic Research Project), who will address questions related to the specialized techniques they employed in photographing the inscription. The evening presentation will take place from 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the Convention Center's Room 103-A. Professor Lawrence E. Stager (Harvard University) will preside.This is more than a little interesting. The invention and evolution of the alphabet was a major achievement, and to locate such a paleo-Hebrew alphabet a good distance west south-west of 10th Century BCE Jerusalem may be difficult for the minimalists to explain - if, indeed, the dating holds. I just wish that I could be in Philidelphia on the 20th.
The Tel Zayit Inscription:
An Archaeological Benchmark in the History of Writing
An Archaeological Benchmark in the History of Writing
Last summer, The Zeitah Excavations at Tel Zayit, Israel, made a dramatic discovery: an inscription that bears the oldest known securely datable example of an abecedary, that is, the letters of the alphabet written out from beginning to end in their traditional sequence. The nearly eight-acre site of Tel Zayit lies in the strategic Beth Guvrin Valley in the lowlands region of ancient Judah approximately seven kilometers north and two kilometers west of Lachish, 30 kilometers east of Ashkelon, and 29 kilometers west of Hebron. Since 1999, exploration at the site has proceeded under the direction of Dr. Ron E. Tappy and the institutional sponsorship of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, with major funding from a generous private donor. The project is also affiliated with the American Schools of Oriental Research in the United States and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research in Jerusalem.
On July 15, 2005, the final day of the 2005 season in the field, excavators found embedded in a wall a 38-pound limestone boulder with two lines of incised letters on one side and a large, bowl-shaped hollow on the other. The importance of this discovery derives not only from its archaic alphabetic text, which raises the possibility that formal scribal training at the outlying site of Tel Zayit was a result of a rapidly developing Israelite bureaucracy in Jerusalem, but also from the stone's firmly datable archaeological context -- an extremely rare occurrence among the few extant inscriptions of this nature.
The stone bearing the Tel Zayit Inscription comprised part of a wall belonging to a structure that dates to the late tenth century BCE and suffered heavy destruction by fire sometime in that period. (Ironically, the inscribed stone might have been built into the wall because of the ancient belief in the alphabet's magical or apotropaic power, that is, its ability to ward off evil.) Multiple deposits overlaying and sealing the destruction debris accumulated to a depth of over one meter and represent two distinct building levels (with the latest one also ending in a conflagration) and three related sub-phases ranging from the ninth through the early eighth centuries BCE. This secure archaeological context provides a firm date before which the stone-walled structure must have been built and the inscription must have been incised. Stratigraphy, ceramic studies, radiocarbon dating, evidence of tectonic activity (damage from an earthquake during the time of Amos the prophet), and now palaeography (the study of ancient writing) have combined to help determine a precise date for the archaeological level that yielded the inscription.
< -- snip -- >
On November 20, 2005, Dr. Tappy (Director of The Zeitah Excavations and G. Albert Shoemaker Professor of Bible and Archaeology at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) and epigrapher P. Kyle McCarter (William Foxwell Albright Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University) will, respectively, describe the archaeology relating to the discovery of the stone and analyze the writing on it at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature at the Philadelphia Convention Center in Pennsylvania. Their lecture is titled "The Tel Zayit Stone: A New Tenth-Century BCE Inscription from the Judaean Shephelah." A question-and-answer period following the lecture will feature a panel that will include the epigraphic photography team of Bruce Zuckerman (University of Southern California) and Marilyn Lundberg (West Semitic Research Project), who will address questions related to the specialized techniques they employed in photographing the inscription. The evening presentation will take place from 7:00-8:30 p.m. in the Convention Center's Room 103-A. Professor Lawrence E. Stager (Harvard University) will preside.
