More on the Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon

Jack Sasson’s Agade list notifies of a NY Times article relating to the new Hebrew inscription announced over a month ago. A couple of juicy tidbits:

October 30, 2008
Find of Ancient City Could Alter Notions of Biblical David
By ETHAN BRONNER

KHIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel — Overlooking the verdant Valley of Elah, where the Bible says David toppled Goliath, archaeologists are unearthing a 3,000-year-old fortified city that could reshape views of the period when David ruled over the Israelites. Five lines on pottery uncovered here appear to be the oldest Hebrew text ever found and are likely to have a major impact on knowledge about the history of literacy and alphabet development

[…]

What he has found so far has impressed many. Two burned olive pits found at the site have been tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University and were found to date from between 1050 and 970 B.C., exactly when most chronologies place David as king. Two more pits are still to be tested.

A specialist in ancient Semitic languages at Hebrew University, Haggai Misgav, says the writing, on pottery using charcoal and animal fat for ink, is in so-called proto-Canaanite script and appears to be a letter or document in Hebrew, suggesting that literacy may have been more widespread than is generally assumed. That could play a role in the larger dispute over the Bible, since if more writing turns up it suggests a means by which events could have been recorded and passed down several centuries before the Bible was likely to have been written.

[…]

So we have a letter or document written in the linear proto-Canaanite script presumably dating from 1050-970 BCE. Very interesting.

בלשנות