Mazar and Inscriptions

In my previous post, I assumed that Shmuel Ahituv, a well respected epigrapher, had contributed to the reading of the latest inscription found in Jerusalem since he is quoted authoritatively in the press release. However, the letter read as q is quite clearly r, an odd mistake. Then I remembered this:

“Archaeologist revises read of ancient seal impression”

Note that Mazar erred by reading the seal from right-to-left, but it was a reverse image (it was the seal itself, not the impression). As I think about it more, I think she has made the opposite mistake this time by reading from left-to-right as “Canaanite” in combination with the ridiculous Jebusite narrative. George Athas is correct that this seems to simply be Hebrew read right-to-left as one would expect. See my previous post for the problems with drawing conclusions about language or ethnicity from script typology.

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