Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions

The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions,[3] are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the society and history of the Ancient Hebrews, Phoenicians and Aramean people. Semitic inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, pottery ostraca, ornaments, and range from simple names to full texts.[4][5][6][7] The older inscriptions form a Canaanite-Aramaic dialect continuum, exemplified by writings which scholars have struggled to fit into either category, such as the Stele of Zakkur and the Deir Alla Inscription.[8][9][10][11]

The Eshmunazar II sarcophagus was the first of this type of inscription found anywhere in the Levant (modern Jordan, Israel, Lebanon and Syria).[1][2]

The Northwest Semitic languages are a language group that contains the Aramaic language, as well as the Canaanite languages including Phoenician and Hebrew.

Languages

Phoenician alphabet

Aramaic alphabet

This article lists the notable inscriptions written in Canaanite (previously known as "Phoenician" and today split into Phoenician-proper, paleo-Hebrew, Punic etc), as well as Old Aramaic. These inscriptions share an alphabet, as shown in these 1903 comparison tables.

The old Aramaic period (850 to 612 BC) saw the production and dispersal of inscriptions due to the rise of the Arameans as a major force in Ancient Near East. Their language was adopted as an international language of diplomacy, particularly during the late stages of the Neo-Assyrian Empire as well as the spread of Aramaic speakers from Egypt to Mesopotamia.[12] The first known Aramaic inscription was the Carpentras Stela, found in southern France in 1704; it was considered to be Phoenician text at the time.[13][14]

Only 10,000 inscriptions in Phoenician-Punic, a Canaanite language, are known,[7][15] such that "Phoenician probably remains the worst transmitted and least known of all Semitic languages."[16] The only other substantial source for Phoenician-Punic are the excerpts in Poenulus, a play written by the Roman writer Plautus.[7] Within the corpus of inscriptions only 668 words have been attested, including 321 hapax legomena (words only attested a single time), per Wolfgang Röllig's analysis in 1983.[17] This compares to the Bible's 7000–8000 words and 1500 hapax legomena, in Biblical Hebrew.[17][18] The first published Phoenician-Punic inscription was from the Cippi of Melqart, found in 1694 in Malta;[19] the first published such inscription from the Phoenician "homeland" was the Eshmunazar II sarcophagus published in 1855.[1][2]

Fewer than 2,000 inscriptions in Ancient Hebrew, another Canaanite language, are known, of which the vast majority comprise just a single letter or word.[20][21] The first detailed Ancient Hebrew inscription published was the Shebna inscription, found in 1870.[22][23]

List of notable inscriptions

The inscriptions written in ancient Northwest Semitic script (Canaanite and Aramaic) have been catalogued into multiple corpora (i.e. lists) over the last two centuries. The primary corpora to have been produced are as follows:

Hamaker, Hendrik Arent (1828). Miscellanea Phoenicia, sive Commentarii de rebus Phoenicum, quibus inscriptiones multae lapidum ac nummorum, nominaque propria hominum et locorum explicantur, item Punicae gentis lingua et religiones passim illustrantur. S. et J. Luchtmans.: Hamaker's review assessed 13 inscriptions[24]
Gesenius, Wilhelm (1837). Scripturae linguaeque Phoeniciae monumenta quotquot supersunt edita et inedita. 1–3. In the 1830s, only approximately 80 inscriptions and 60 coins were known in the entire Phoenicio-Punic corpus[24][25]
Schröder, Paul (1869). Die phönizische sprache. Entwurf Einer Grammatik, Nebst Sprach- und Schriftproben.: The first study of Phoenician grammar, listed 332 texts known at the time[24][26]
CIS: Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum; the first section is focused on Phoenician-Punic inscriptions (176 "Phoenician" inscriptions and 5982 "Punic" inscriptions)[4]
KAI: Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften, considered the "gold standard" for the last fifty years[5]
NSI: George Albert Cooke, 1903: Text-book of North-Semitic Inscriptions: Moabite, Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Nabataean, Palmyrene, Jewish [27]
NE: Mark Lidzbarski, 1898: Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik, nebst ausgewählten Inschriften: I Text and II Plates [27]
KI: Lidzbarski, Mark (1907). Kanaanäische Inschriften (moabitisch, althebräisch, phönizisch, punisch). A. Töpelmann.
TSSI: Gibson, J. C. L. (1971). Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions: I. Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-813159-5.

The inscriptions listed below include those which are mentioned in multiple editions of the corpora above (the numbers in the concordance column cross-refer to the works above), as well as newer inscriptions which have been published since the corpora above were published (references provided individually).

Name	Image	Discovered	Date	Location Found	Current Location	Concordance
Name	Image	Discovered	Date	Location Found	Current Location	KAI	CIS / RES	NE	KI	NSI	TSSI	Ref.
Ahiram Sarcophagus		1923	850 BC	Byblos	National Museum of Beirut	1					III 4
Byblos Necropolis graffito		1922		Byblos	in situ	2					III 5
Byblos spatula				Byblos	National Museum of Beirut	3					III 1
Yehimilk inscription		1930		Byblos	Byblos Castle	4					III 6
Abiba’l inscription		1895		Byblos	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	5	R 505				III 7
Osorkon Bust		1881	900 BC	Byblos	Louvre	6					III 8
Safatba'al inscription		1936		Byblos	National Museum of Beirut	7					III 9
Abda sherd graffito				Byblos		8					III 10
Son of Shipitbaal inscription			400s BC	Byblos	National Museum of Beirut	9
Yehawmilk Stele		1869	400s BC	Byblos	Louvre	10	I 1	416	5	3	III 25
Batnoam inscription				Byblos	National Museum of Beirut	11					III 26
Byblos altar inscription				Byblos		12
Tabnit sarcophagus		1887	500 BC	Sidon	Museum of the Ancient Orient	13	R 1202	417,1	6	4	III 27
Eshmunazar II sarcophagus		1855		Sidon	Louvre	14	I 3, R 1506	417,2	7	5	III 28
Bodashtart inscriptions		1858, 1900-2	300s BC	Sidon	Louvre and Museum of the Ancient Orient	15–16	I 4, R 766, 767		8–9	6, Appendix I
Throne of Astarte		1907		Tyre	Louvre and National Museum of Beirut	17	R 800		12		III 30
Baalshamin inscription		1864	132 BC	Umm al-Amad	Louvre	18	I 7			9
Masub inscription		1885	222 BC	Masub	Louvre	19	R 1205	419e	16	10	III 31
Phoenician arrowheads				various		20–22					III p.6
Hasanbeyli inscription		1894		Hasanbeyli	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	23
Kilamuwa Stela		1893		Sam'al	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	24					III 13
Kilamuwa scepter				Sam'al		25					III 14
Karatepe bilingual		1946		Karatepe	Karatepe-Aslantaş Open-Air Museum	26					III 15
Arslan Tash amulets		1933		Arslan Tash	National Museum of Aleppo	27					III 23
Ur Box inscription		1927		Ur	British Museum	29					III 20
Archaic Cyprus inscription				Cyprus		30					III 12
Baal Lebanon inscription		1877	700s BC	Cyprus	Cabinet des Médailles	31	I 5	419	17	11	III 17
		1860	341 BC	Cyprus	Louvre	32	I 10	420,1	18	12
Pococke Kition inscriptions		1738	300s BC	Cyprus	Ashmolean Museum	33, 35	I 11, 46	420,4	19, 23	13, 16	III 35
Kition Necropolis Phoenician inscriptions		1894	300s BC	Cyprus	British Museum	34	R 1206	420,3	22	21
Kellia inscription		1844		Cyprus		36	I 47	420,5	24	17
Kition Tariffs		1879	300s BC	Cyprus	British Museum	37	I 86A-B		29	20	III 33
Idalion bilingual and Idalion Temple inscriptions		1869	254-391 BC	Cyprus	British Museum	38-40	I 89-94	421,1-3	31-33	24-27	III 34
Tamassos bilinguals		1885	363 BC	Cyprus	British Museum	41	R 1212-1213	421c	34	30
Anat Athena bilingual		1850	300s BC	Cyprus		42	I 95, R 1515	422,1	35	28
		1893	200 BC	Cyprus	Louvre	43	R 1211	422,2	36	29	III 36
Rhodes inscriptions				Rhodes		44					III 39
Nora Stone		1773		Sardinia	Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cagliari	46	I 144	427c	60	41	III 11
Cippi of Melqart		1694	100s BC	Malta	Louvre and National Museum of Archaeology, Malta	47	I 122	425f	53	36
Memphis inscription		1900		Memphis	Egyptian Museum	48	R 1, 235		37
Abydos graffiti		1868		Abydos	in situ	49	I 99–110, R 1302ff.
Madrid inscription				unknown		52	R 1507	424	44		III 37
Athenian Greek-Phoenician inscriptions		1795 etc		Athens, Piraeus	British Museum, Louvre, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Archaeological Museum of Piraeus	53–60	I 115–120, R 388, 1215	424,1–3, 425,1–5	45–52	32–35	III 40–41
Mdina steles		1816		Malta	National Museum of Archaeology, Malta	61	I 123A-B	426,2	54	37	III 21,22
Gozo stele		1855		Malta	Gozo Museum of Archaeology	62	I 132	426,4	56	38
				Sicily	Regional Archeological Museum Antonio Salinas	63	I 138		57
		1877	200 BC	Sardinia	Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Cagliari	64	I 139	427a	58	39
		1861		Sardinia	Turin Archaeology Museum	66	I 143	427b	59	40
		1870		Sardinia	Museo nazionale archeologico ed etnografico G. A. Sanna	67	I 158		62
				Sardinia		68	R 1216
Marseille Tariff		1844	300s BC	Marseille	Musée d'archéologie méditerranéenne	69	I 165	428	63	42
Avignon Punic inscription		1897		Avignon	Musée d'archéologie méditerranéenne	70	R 360		64		III 18
Douïmès medallion		1894	700 BCE	Carthage	Carthage National Museum	73	I 6057, R 5	429,1	70
Carthage Tariff		1858	300 BC	Carthage	British Museum	74	I 167	429b	66	43
				Carthage		75	I 3916
		1872	300 BC	Carthage	lost	76	I 166	430,3	67	44
				Carthage		77	I 3921
				Carthage		78	I 3778
				Carthage		79	I 3785
		1871		Carthage	British Museum	80	I 175	430,4	68	46
		1898	200 BC	Carthage	Carthage National Museum	81	I 3914		69	45
		1881		Carthage	Turin Archaeology Museum	82	I 176		71
		1873		Carthage		83	I 177	430,6	72	47
		1860		Carthage	British Museum	84	I 178	430,7	73
				Carthage	Carthage National Museum	85	I 184		74
		1874		Carthage		86	I 264		76
				Carthage		87	I 221		80
				Carthage		88	I 1885		83
Punic Tabella Defixionis		1899	200 BC	Carthage	Carthage National Museum	89	I 6068, R 18, 1590		85	50
		1904		Carthage	Carthage National Museum	90	I 5953, R 537		87
		1899		Carthage	Carthage National Museum	91	I 5991, R 1227		88
		1902		Carthage	Carthage National Museum	92	I 5948, R 768		89
		1905		Carthage	Carthage National Museum	93	I 5950, R 553		90
				Carthage		94	I 2992
				Carthage		95	R 786, 1854
				Carthage		96	I 5988, R 183, 1600
Euting Hadrumetum inscriptions		1867		Sousse		97–98		432,1–3	91–92
Punic-Libyan Inscription		1631		Dougga	British Museum	100
Lazare Costa inscriptions		1875	300-200BCE	Constantine		102–105	R 327, 334, 339, 1544	433,8 and 434,10	94–99	51
		1894		Remada		117		435b	101
				Breviglieri		118	R 662
Bourgade inscriptions		1852		Carthage and wider Tunisia		133–135		436,3–12
Baal Hammon inscription		1908		Bir Bouregba		137	R 942, 1858
				Bou Arada		140	R 679
		1873		Henchir Brigitta	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	142		435,2		53
Maktar and Mididi inscriptions		1890s		Maktar and Mididi		145–158	R 161–181, 2221	436,11		59a-c
		1873		Altiburus	Louvre	159		437a		55
		1870s		Cherchell		161		439,2		57
Guelma inscriptions		1843		Guelma	Louvre	166–169		437		58
Sant'Antioco bilingual		1881		Sardinia	Museo archeologico comunale Ferruccio Barreca	172	I 149	434,1	100
Mesha Stele		1868		Dhiban	Louvre	181		415f	1	1	I 16
Gezer calendar		1908		Gezer	Museum of the Ancient Orient	182	R 1201				I 1
Samaria Ostraca		1910		Sebastia	Museum of the Ancient Orient	183–188					I 2–3
Siloam inscription		1880		Jerusalem	Museum of the Ancient Orient	189			3	2	I 7
Ophel ostracon		1924		Jerusalem	Rockefeller Museum	190					I 9
Shebna inscription		1870		Shebna	British Museum	191					I 8
Lachish letters		1935		Tel Lachish	British Museum and Israel Museum	192–199					I 12
Yavne-Yam ostracon		1960		Mesad Hashavyahu	Israel Museum	200					I 10
Melqart stele		1939		Bureij	National Museum of Aleppo	201					II 1
Stele of Zakkur		1903		Tell Afis	Louvre	202					II 5
Hama graffiti		1931–38		Hama		203–213					II 6 I-V
Hadad Statue		1890	700s BC	Sam'al	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	214		440-2		61	II 13
Panamuwa II inscription		1888	730s BC	Sam'al	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	215		442		62	II 14
Bar-Rakib inscriptions		1891	730s BC	Sam'al	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin and Museum of the Ancient Orient	216–221		443, 444		63	II 15–17
Sefire steles		1930–56		As-Safira	National Museum of Damascus and National Museum of Beirut	222–224, 227					II 8–9, 22
Neirab steles		1891	600s BC	Al-Nayrab	Louvre	225–226		445		64–65	II 18–19
Tayma stones		1878–84	300s–400s BC	Tayma	Louvre	228–230	II 113–115	447,1–3		69–70	II 30
Tell Halaf inscription		1933		Tell Halaf	destroyed	231					II 10
Arslan Tash ivory inscription		1931		Arslan Tash	Louvre	232					II 2
Assur ostracon		1921		Assur		233					II 20
Kesecek Köyü inscription		1915		Kesecek Köyü	Peabody Museum of Natural History	258					II 33
Gözne Boundary Stone		1907		Gözne		259					II 34
Sarıaydın inscription		1892	400 BC	Sarıaydın	in situ	261		446a		68	II 35
Limyra bilingual		1840		Limyra		262	II 109	446b
Abydos lion weight		1860	500 BC	Abydos (Hellespont)	British Museum	263	II 108	446c		67
Aramaic Saqqara Papyrus				Saqqara		266					II 21
Saqqara Aramaic Stele		1877	482 BC	Saqqara	destroyed	267	II 122	448a1		71	II 23
Serapeum Offering Table		1855	400 BC	Saqqara	Louvre	268	II 123	448a2		72
Carpentras Stela		1704		Carpentras	Bibliothèque Inguimbertine	269	II 141	448b1		75	II 24
Elephantine ostraca			300s BC	Elephantine	Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin	270–271	II 137–139			73–74	II 26
Blacas papyri				Saqqara	British Museum		II 145			76
Ankh-Hapy stele		1860	525–404 BCE	unknown	Vatican Museums	272	II 142	448b2			II 7
Aramaic Inscription of Taxila		1915		Taxila	Taxila Museum	273
Stele of Serapeitis		1940		Armazi	Georgian National Museum	276
Pyrgi Tablets		1964		Pyrgi	National Etruscan Museum	277					III 42
				Bahadırlı		278					II 36
Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription		1958		Chil Zena	National Museum of Afghanistan	279
Baalshillem Temple Boy		1963–64		Sidon	National Museum of Beirut	281					III 29
Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription		1996		Tel Miqne	Israel Museum	286
Çebel Ires Daǧı inscription		1980		Çebel Ires Daǧı	Alanya Archaeological Museum	287
Tekke Bowl Inscription (Knossos)				Crete		291
Hellenistic Greek-Phoenician bilingual				Kos		292
Demetrias inscription				Demetrias		293
Seville statue of Astarte		1958		Seville	Archeological Museum of Seville	294					III 16
				Carthage		302	I 5510
Aedilian inscription		1964		Carthage	Carthage National Museum	303
El-Kerak Inscription		1958		Al-Karak	Jordan Archaeological Museum	306
Amman Citadel Inscription		1961		Amman	Jordan Archaeological Museum	307
Tel Siran inscription		1972		Amman	Jordan Archaeological Museum	308
Tell Fekheriye bilingual inscription		1979		Tell Fekheriye	National Museum of Damascus	309
Tel Dan Stele		1993		Tel Dan	Israel Museum	310
Deir Alla Inscription		1967		Deir Alla	Jordan Archaeological Museum	312
Daskyleion steles		1965		Dascylium	Museum of the Ancient Orient	318					II 37
Letoon trilingual		1973		Xanthos	Fethiye Museum	319
Assyrian lion weights		1845		Nimrud	British Museum		II 1–14
Çineköy inscription		1997		Çine, Yüreğir	Adana Archaeology Museum							[28]
Kuttamuwa stele		2008		Sam'al	Gaziantep Archaeology Museum							[29]
Ataruz altar inscriptions		2010	c. 800 BCE	Khirbat Ataruz								[30]
Ishbaal Inscription		2012	1020–980 BCE	Khirbet Qeiyafa								[31]
Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon		2009	c. 1000 BCE	Khirbet Qeiyafa								[32]
Hashub Inscription		1957	400s BCE	Tel Zeton	Old Jaffa Museum of Antiquities							[33]

Bibliography

Röllig, Wolfgang. The Phoenician Language: Remarks on the Present State of Research. Atti del I Congresso Internazionale di Studi Fenici e Punici. pp. 375–385. 2, Rom 1983

References

Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. 427: 209–266. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Alas, all these were either late or Punic, and came from Cyprus, from the ruins of Kition, from Malta, Sardinia, Athens, and Carthage, but not yet from the Phoenician homeland. The first Phoenician text as such was found as late as 1855, the Eshmunazor sarcophagus inscription from Sidon.
Turner, William Wadden (1855-07-03). The Sidon Inscription. p. 259. Its interest is greater both on this account and as being the first inscription properly so-called that has yet been found in Phoenicia proper, which had previously furnished only some coins and an inscribed gem. It is also the longest inscription hitherto discovered, that of Marseilles—which approaches it the nearest in the form of its characters, the purity of its language, and its extent — consisting of but 21 lines and fragments of lines.
Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. Worvort zur 1. Auflage, p.XI. 1961. Seit dem Erscheinen von Mark Lidzbarskis "Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik" (1898) und G. A. Cooke's "Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions" (1903) ist es bis zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt nicht wieder unternommen worden, das nordwestsemitische In schriftenmaterial gesammelt und kommentiert herauszugeben, um es Forschern und Stu denten zugänglich zu machen.... Um diesem Desideratum mit Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse von Forschung und Lehre abzu helfen, legen wir hiermit unter dem Titel "Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften" (KAI) eine Auswahl aus dem gesamten Bestände der einschlägigen Texte vor
Mark Woolmer (ed.). Phoenician: A Companion to Ancient Phoenicia. p. 4. Altogether, the known Phoenician texts number nearly seven thousand. The majority of these were collected in three volumes constituting the first part of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (CIS), begun in 1867 under the editorial direction of the famous French scholar Ernest Renan (1823–1892), continued by J.-B. Chabot and concluded in 1962 by James G. Février. The CIS corpus includes 176 "Phoenician" inscriptions and 5982 "Punic" inscriptions (see below on these labels).
Parker, Heather Dana Davis; Rollston, Christopher A. (2019). "9". In Hamidović, D.; Clivaz, C.; Savant, S. (eds.). Teaching Epigraphy in the Digital Age. Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture: Visualisation, Data Mining, Communication. 3. Alessandra Marguerat. LEIDEN; BOSTON: Brill. pp. 189–216. ISBN 9789004346734. JSTOR 10.1163/j.ctvrxk44t.14. Of course, Donner and Röllig's three-volume handbook entitled KAI has been the gold standard for five decades now
Suder, Robert W. (1984). Hebrew Inscriptions: A Classified Bibliography. Susquehanna University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-941664-01-1.
Doak, Brian R. (2019-08-26). The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean. Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-19-049934-1. Most estimates place it at around ten thousand texts. Texts that are either formulaic or extremely short constitute the vast majority of the evidence.
KAUFMAN, S. (1986). The Pitfalls of Typology: On the Early History of the Alphabet. Hebrew Union College Annual, 57, 1–14. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507690
McCarter Jr., P. Kyle (1 January 1991). "The Dialect of the Deir Alla Texts". In Jacob Hoftijzer and Gerrit Van der Kooij (ed.). The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Leiden, 21–24 August 1989. BRILL. pp. 87–. ISBN 90-04-09317-6. It may be appropriate to observe at this point that students of the Northwest Semitic languages seem to be becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the usefulness of the Canaanite-Aramaic distinction for categorizing features found in texts from the Persian Period and earlier. A careful reevaluation of the binary organization of the Northwest Semitic family seems now to be underway. The study of the Deir 'Alla texts is one of the principal things prompting this reevaluation, and this may be counted as one of the very positive results of our work on these texts… the evidence of the Zakkur inscription is crucial, because it shows that the breakdown is not along Aramaic-Canaanite lines. Instead, the Deir 'Alla dialect sides with Hebrew, Moabite, and the language spoken by Zakkur (the dialect of Hamath or neighboring Lu’ath) against Phoenician and the majority of Old Aramaic dialects.
KAUFMAN, Stephen A., 1985, THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE NORTH WEST SEMITIC DIALECTS OF THE BIBLICAL PERIOD AND SOME IMPLICATIONS THEREOF. Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 41–57. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23529398: "The very term "Canaanite" is meaningful only vis-a-vis something else – i.e. Aramaic, and, as we shall see, each new epigraphic discovery of the early first millennium seems to contribute further evidence that the division between Canaanite and Aramaic cannot be traced back any distance into the second millennium and that the term "Canaanite," in a linguistic as opposed to an ethnic sense, is irrelevant for the Late Bronze Age. Ugaritic is a rather peripheral member of the Late Bronze Age proto-Canaanite-Aramaic dialect continuum, a dead-end branch of NW Semitic, without known descendants. Our inability to reach a universally acceptable decision on the classification of Ugaritic is by no means due only to our less than total knowledge of the language. As witnessed by the case of the Ethiopian dialects studied by Hetzron, even when we do have access to relatively complete information, classification is by no means a certain thing. How much more so, then, in the case of dialects attached in a few short, broken inscriptions! The dialect of ancient Samal has been the parade example of such a case within the NW Semitic realm. Friedrich argued long and hard for its independent status; of late, however, a consensus seems to have developed that Samalian is Aramaic, albeit of an unusual variety. The achievement of such a consensus is due in no small part to the ongoing recognition of the dialectal diversity within Aramaic at periods much earlier than previously considered, a recognition largely due to the work of our main speaker, Prof. J.C. Greenfield. When we tum to the dialect of the language of the plaster texts from Deir 'Alla, however, scholarly agreement is much less easy to perceive. The texts were published as Aramaic, or at least Aramaic with a question mark, a classification to which other scholars have lent their support. The savants of Jerusalem, on the other hand, seem to be agreed that the language of Deir 'Alla is Canaanite – perhaps even Ammonite. Now frankly I have never been much interested in classification. My own approach has always been rather open-ended. If a new language appears in Gilead in the 8th century or so, looks somewhat like Aramaic to its North, Ammonite and Moabite to its South, and Hebrew to its West (that is to say: it looks exactly like any rational person would expect it to look like) and is clearly neither ancestor nor immediate descendant of any other known NW Semitic language that we know, why not simply say it is Gileadite and be done with it? Anyone can look at a map and see that Deir 'Alla is closer to Rabbat Ammon than it is to Damascus, Samaria or Jerusalem, but that doesn't a priori make it Ammonite. Why must we try to squeeze new evidence into cubbyholes designed on the basis of old evidence?"
Garr, W. Randall (2004). "The Dialectal Continuum of Syria-Palestine". Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E. Eisenbrauns. pp. 205–. ISBN 978-1-57506-091-0.
Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na’ama (2005). The Semitic Languages. Oxon: Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 0415057671.
Gibson, J. C. L. (30 October 1975). Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions: II. Aramaic Inscriptions: Including Inscriptions in the Dialect of Zenjirli. OUP Oxford. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-19-813186-1. The Carpentras stele: The famous funerary stele (CIS ii 141) was the first Syrian Semitic inscr. to become known in Europe, being discovered in the early 18 cent.; it measures 0.35 m high by 0.33m broad and is housed in a museum at Carpentras in southern France.
Daniels, Peter T. (31 March 2020). "The Decipherment of Ancient Near Eastern Languages". In Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (ed.). A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-1-119-19329-6. Barthélemy was not done. On 13 November 1761, he interpreted the inscription on the Carpentras stela (KAI 269), again going letter by letter, but the only indication he gives of how he arrived at their values is that they were similar to the other Phoenician letters that were by now well known… He includes a list of roots as realized in various languages – and also shows that Coptic, which he conjectured was the continuation of the earlier language of the hieroglyphs, shares a variety of grammatical features with the languages listed above. The name "Semitic" for those languages lay two decades in the future, and the group "Aramaic," which from the list includes Syriac, Chaldaean [Jewish Aramaic], and Palmyrene, as well as the Carpentras stela, seems to have been named only about 1810 though it was recognized somewhat earlier (Daniels 1991)
Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. 427: 209–266. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Quote: "Nearly two hundred years later the repertory of Phoenician-Punic epigraphy counts about 10.000 inscriptions from throughout the Mediterranean and its environs."
Rollig, 1983
Rollig, 1983, "The Phoenician-Punic vocabulary attested to date amounts to some 668 words, some of which occur frequently. Among these are 321 hapax legomena and about 15 foreign or loan words. In comparison with Hebrew with around 7000–8000 words and 1500 hapax legomena (8), the number is remarkable."
Ullendorff, E. (1971). Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 34. University of London. pp. 241–255. JSTOR 612690.
Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 427: 210 and 257. ISBN 978-3-11-026612-2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-02-21. Soon thereafter, at the end of the 17th century, the abovementioned Ignazio di Costanzo was the first to report a Phoenician inscription and to consciously recognize Phoenician characters proper... And just as the Melitensis prima inscription played a prominent part as the first-ever published Phoenician inscription... and remained the number-one-inscription in the Monumenta (fig. 8), it now became the specimen of authentic Phoenician script par excellence... The Melitensis prima inscription of Marsa Scirocco (Marsaxlokk) had its lasting prominence as the palaeographic benchmark for the assumed, or rather deduced "classical" Phoenician ("echtphönikische") script.
Millard, A. (1993), Reviewed Work: Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions. Corpus and Concordance by G. I. Davies, M. N. A. Bockmuehl, D. R. de Lacey, A. J. Poulter, The Journal of Theological Studies, 44(1), new series, 216–219: "...every identifiable Hebrew inscription dated before 200 BC... First ostraca, graffiti, and marks are grouped by provenance. This section contains more than five hundred items, over half of them ink-written ostraca, individual letters, receipts, memoranda, and writing exercises. The other inscriptions are names scratched on pots, scribbles of various sorts, which include couplets on the walls of tombs near Hebron, and letters serving as fitters' marks on ivories from Samaria.... The seals and seal impressions are set in the numerical sequence of Diringer and Vattioni (100.001–100.438). The pace of discovery since F. Vattioni issued his last valuable list (Ί sigilli ebraici III', AnnaliAnnali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientate di Napoli 38 (1978), 227—54) means the last seal entered by Davies is 100.900. The actual number of Hebrew seals and impressions is less than 900 because of the omission of those identified as non-Hebrew which previous lists counted. A further reduction follows when duplicate seal impressions from different sites are combined, as cross references in the entries suggest... The Corpus ends with 'Royal Stamps' (105.001-025, the Imlk stamps), '"Judah" and "Jerusalem" Stamps and Coins' (106.001-052), 'Other Official Stamps' (107.001), 'Inscribed Weights' (108.001-056) and 'Inscribed Measures' (109.001,002).... most seals have no known provenance (they probably come from burials)... Even if the 900 seals are reduced by as much as one third, 600 seals is still a very high total for the small states of Israel and Judah, and most come from Judah. It is about double the number of seals known inscribed in Aramaic, a language written over a far wider area by officials of great empires as well as by private persons.
Graham I. Davies; J. K. Aitken (2004). Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance. Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0-521-82999-1. This sequel to my Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions includes mainly inscriptions (about 750 of them) which have been published in the past ten years. The aim has been to cover all publications to the end of 2000. A relatively small number of the texts included here were published earlier but were missed in the preparation of AHI. The large number of new texts is not due, for the most part, to fresh discoveries (or, regrettably, to the publication of a number of inscriptions that were found in excavations before 1990), but to the publication of items held in private collections and museums.
Avigad, N. (1953). The Epitaph of a Royal Steward from Siloam Village. Israel Exploration Journal, 3(3), 137–152: "The inscription discussed here is, in the words of its discoverer, the first 'authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah', for it was discovered ten years before the Siloam tunnel inscription. Now, after its decipherment, we may add that it is (after the Moabite Stone and the Siloam tunnel inscription) the third longest monumental inscription in Hebrew and the first known text of a Hebrew sepulchral inscription from the pre-Exilic period."
Clermont-Ganneau, 1899, Archaeological Researches In Palestine 1873–1874, Vol 1, p.305: "I may observe, by the way, that the discovery of these two texts was made long before that of the inscription in the tunnel, and therefore, though people in general do not seem to recognise this fact, it was the first which enabled us to behold an authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah."
Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. 427: 240. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Basically, its core consists of the comprehensive edition, or re-edition of 70 Phoenician and some more non-Phoenician inscriptions... However, just to note the advances made in the nineteenth century, it is noteworthy that Gesenius' precursor Hamaker, in his Miscellanea Phoenicia of 1828, had only 13 inscriptions at his disposal. On the other hand only 30 years later the amount of Phoenician inscribed monuments had grown so enormously that Schröder in his compendium Die phönizische Sprache. Entwurf einer Grammatik nebst Sprach- und Schriftproben of 1869 could state that Gesenius knew only a quarter of the material Schröder had at hand himself.
"Review of Wilhelm Gesenius's publications". The Foreign Quarterly Review. L. Scott. 1838. p. 245. What is left consists of a few inscriptions and coins, found principally not where we should a priori anticipate, namely, at the chief cities themselves, but at their distant colonies... even now there are not altogether more than about eighty inscriptions and sixty coins, and those moreover scattered through the different museums of Europe.
Rollig, 1983, "This increase of textual material can be easily appreciated when one looks at the first independent grammar of Phoenician , P.SCHRODER'S Die phonizische Sprache Entuurf einer Grammatik, Halle 1869, which appeared just over 110 years ago. There on pp. 47–72 all the texts known at the time are listed — 332 of them. Today, if we look at CIS Pars I, the incompleteness of which we scarcely need mention, we find 6068 texts."
Bevan, A. (1904). NORTH-SEMITIC INSCRIPTIONS. The Journal of Theological Studies, 5(18), 281–284. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/23949814
Tekoglu, R. & Lemaire, A. (2000). La bilingue royale louvito-phénicienne de Çineköy. Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions, et belleslettres, année 2000, 960–1006. Important additions to the interpretation of the Luwian version were made in I. Yakubovich, Phoenician and Luwian in Early Iron Age Cilicia, Anatolian Studies 65 (2015), pp. 40–44
Schloen, J., & Fink, A. (2009). New Excavations at Zincirli Höyük in Turkey (Ancient Samʾal) and the Discovery of an Inscribed Mortuary Stele. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, (356), 1–13. Retrieved September 16, 2020
Adam L. Bean (2018). "An inscribed altar from the Khirbat Ataruz Moabite sanctuary". Levant. 50 (2): 211–236. doi:10.1080/00758914.2019.1619971. S2CID 199266038.
Yosef Garfinkel, Mitka R. Golub, Haggai Misgav, and Saar Ganor (2015). "The ʾIšbaʿal Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. The American Schools of Oriental Research. 373 (373): 217–233. doi:10.5615/bullamerschoorie.373.0217. JSTOR 10.5615/bullamerschoorie.373.0217. S2CID 164971133.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Aaron Demsky (2012). "An Iron Age IIA Alphabetic Writing Exercise from Khirbet Qeiyafa". Israel Exploration Journal. Israel Exploration Society. 62 (2): 186–199. JSTOR 43855624.
Jacob Kaplan (1958). "The Excavation in Tell Abu Zeitun in 1957". Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society (in Hebrew). Israel Exploration Society. 22 (1/2): 99. JSTOR 23730357.

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[Lehmann2-1] Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. 427: 209–266. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Alas, all these were either late or Punic, and came from Cyprus, from the ruins of Kition, from Malta, Sardinia, Athens, and Carthage, but not yet from the Phoenician homeland. The first Phoenician text as such was found as late as 1855, the Eshmunazor sarcophagus inscription from Sidon.

[Turner-2] Turner, William Wadden (1855-07-03). The Sidon Inscription. p. 259. Its interest is greater both on this account and as being the first inscription properly so-called that has yet been found in Phoenicia proper, which had previously furnished only some coins and an inscribed gem. It is also the longest inscription hitherto discovered, that of Marseilles—which approaches it the nearest in the form of its characters, the purity of its language, and its extent — consisting of but 21 lines and fragments of lines.

[3] Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. Worvort zur 1. Auflage, p.XI. 1961. Seit dem Erscheinen von Mark Lidzbarskis "Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik" (1898) und G. A. Cooke's "Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions" (1903) ist es bis zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt nicht wieder unternommen worden, das nordwestsemitische In schriftenmaterial gesammelt und kommentiert herauszugeben, um es Forschern und Stu denten zugänglich zu machen.... Um diesem Desideratum mit Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse von Forschung und Lehre abzu helfen, legen wir hiermit unter dem Titel "Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften" (KAI) eine Auswahl aus dem gesamten Bestände der einschlägigen Texte vor

[Woolmer-4] Mark Woolmer (ed.). Phoenician: A Companion to Ancient Phoenicia. p. 4. Altogether, the known Phoenician texts number nearly seven thousand. The majority of these were collected in three volumes constituting the first part of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (CIS), begun in 1867 under the editorial direction of the famous French scholar Ernest Renan (1823–1892), continued by J.-B. Chabot and concluded in 1962 by James G. Février. The CIS corpus includes 176 "Phoenician" inscriptions and 5982 "Punic" inscriptions (see below on these labels).

[PR-5] Parker, Heather Dana Davis; Rollston, Christopher A. (2019). "9". In Hamidović, D.; Clivaz, C.; Savant, S. (eds.). Teaching Epigraphy in the Digital Age. Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture: Visualisation, Data Mining, Communication. 3. Alessandra Marguerat. LEIDEN; BOSTON: Brill. pp. 189–216. ISBN 9789004346734. JSTOR 10.1163/j.ctvrxk44t.14. Of course, Donner and Röllig's three-volume handbook entitled KAI has been the gold standard for five decades now

[Suder1984-6] Suder, Robert W. (1984). Hebrew Inscriptions: A Classified Bibliography. Susquehanna University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-941664-01-1.

[Doak2019-7] Doak, Brian R. (2019-08-26). The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean. Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-19-049934-1. Most estimates place it at around ten thousand texts. Texts that are either formulaic or extremely short constitute the vast majority of the evidence.

[8] KAUFMAN, S. (1986). The Pitfalls of Typology: On the Early History of the Alphabet. Hebrew Union College Annual, 57, 1–14. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23507690

[HoftijzerKooij1991-9] McCarter Jr., P. Kyle (1 January 1991). "The Dialect of the Deir Alla Texts". In Jacob Hoftijzer and Gerrit Van der Kooij (ed.). The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Leiden, 21–24 August 1989. BRILL. pp. 87–. ISBN 90-04-09317-6. It may be appropriate to observe at this point that students of the Northwest Semitic languages seem to be becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the usefulness of the Canaanite-Aramaic distinction for categorizing features found in texts from the Persian Period and earlier. A careful reevaluation of the binary organization of the Northwest Semitic family seems now to be underway. The study of the Deir 'Alla texts is one of the principal things prompting this reevaluation, and this may be counted as one of the very positive results of our work on these texts… the evidence of the Zakkur inscription is crucial, because it shows that the breakdown is not along Aramaic-Canaanite lines. Instead, the Deir 'Alla dialect sides with Hebrew, Moabite, and the language spoken by Zakkur (the dialect of Hamath or neighboring Lu’ath) against Phoenician and the majority of Old Aramaic dialects.

[10] KAUFMAN, Stephen A., 1985, THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE NORTH WEST SEMITIC DIALECTS OF THE BIBLICAL PERIOD AND SOME IMPLICATIONS THEREOF. Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, 41–57. Retrieved September 29, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23529398: "The very term "Canaanite" is meaningful only vis-a-vis something else – i.e. Aramaic, and, as we shall see, each new epigraphic discovery of the early first millennium seems to contribute further evidence that the division between Canaanite and Aramaic cannot be traced back any distance into the second millennium and that the term "Canaanite," in a linguistic as opposed to an ethnic sense, is irrelevant for the Late Bronze Age. Ugaritic is a rather peripheral member of the Late Bronze Age proto-Canaanite-Aramaic dialect continuum, a dead-end branch of NW Semitic, without known descendants. Our inability to reach a universally acceptable decision on the classification of Ugaritic is by no means due only to our less than total knowledge of the language. As witnessed by the case of the Ethiopian dialects studied by Hetzron, even when we do have access to relatively complete information, classification is by no means a certain thing. How much more so, then, in the case of dialects attached in a few short, broken inscriptions! The dialect of ancient Samal has been the parade example of such a case within the NW Semitic realm. Friedrich argued long and hard for its independent status; of late, however, a consensus seems to have developed that Samalian is Aramaic, albeit of an unusual variety. The achievement of such a consensus is due in no small part to the ongoing recognition of the dialectal diversity within Aramaic at periods much earlier than previously considered, a recognition largely due to the work of our main speaker, Prof. J.C. Greenfield. When we tum to the dialect of the language of the plaster texts from Deir 'Alla, however, scholarly agreement is much less easy to perceive. The texts were published as Aramaic, or at least Aramaic with a question mark, a classification to which other scholars have lent their support. The savants of Jerusalem, on the other hand, seem to be agreed that the language of Deir 'Alla is Canaanite – perhaps even Ammonite. Now frankly I have never been much interested in classification. My own approach has always been rather open-ended. If a new language appears in Gilead in the 8th century or so, looks somewhat like Aramaic to its North, Ammonite and Moabite to its South, and Hebrew to its West (that is to say: it looks exactly like any rational person would expect it to look like) and is clearly neither ancestor nor immediate descendant of any other known NW Semitic language that we know, why not simply say it is Gileadite and be done with it? Anyone can look at a map and see that Deir 'Alla is closer to Rabbat Ammon than it is to Damascus, Samaria or Jerusalem, but that doesn't a priori make it Ammonite. Why must we try to squeeze new evidence into cubbyholes designed on the basis of old evidence?"

[Garr2004-11] Garr, W. Randall (2004). "The Dialectal Continuum of Syria-Palestine". Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E. Eisenbrauns. pp. 205–. ISBN 978-1-57506-091-0.

[12] Huehnergard, John; Pat-El, Na’ama (2005). The Semitic Languages. Oxon: Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 0415057671.

[Gibson1975-13] Gibson, J. C. L. (30 October 1975). Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions: II. Aramaic Inscriptions: Including Inscriptions in the Dialect of Zenjirli. OUP Oxford. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-19-813186-1. The Carpentras stele: The famous funerary stele (CIS ii 141) was the first Syrian Semitic inscr. to become known in Europe, being discovered in the early 18 cent.; it measures 0.35 m high by 0.33m broad and is housed in a museum at Carpentras in southern France.

[Hasselbach-Andee2020-14] Daniels, Peter T. (31 March 2020). "The Decipherment of Ancient Near Eastern Languages". In Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (ed.). A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 7–8. ISBN 978-1-119-19329-6. Barthélemy was not done. On 13 November 1761, he interpreted the inscription on the Carpentras stela (KAI 269), again going letter by letter, but the only indication he gives of how he arrived at their values is that they were similar to the other Phoenician letters that were by now well known… He includes a list of roots as realized in various languages – and also shows that Coptic, which he conjectured was the continuation of the earlier language of the hieroglyphs, shares a variety of grammatical features with the languages listed above. The name "Semitic" for those languages lay two decades in the future, and the group "Aramaic," which from the list includes Syriac, Chaldaean [Jewish Aramaic], and Palmyrene, as well as the Carpentras stela, seems to have been named only about 1810 though it was recognized somewhat earlier (Daniels 1991)

[15] Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. 427: 209–266. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Quote: "Nearly two hundred years later the repertory of Phoenician-Punic epigraphy counts about 10.000 inscriptions from throughout the Mediterranean and its environs."

[16] Rollig, 1983

[Rolligvocab-17] Rollig, 1983, "The Phoenician-Punic vocabulary attested to date amounts to some 668 words, some of which occur frequently. Among these are 321 hapax legomena and about 15 foreign or loan words. In comparison with Hebrew with around 7000–8000 words and 1500 hapax legomena (8), the number is remarkable."

[18] Ullendorff, E. (1971). Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 34. University of London. pp. 241–255. JSTOR 612690.

[Lehmann-19] Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH. 427: 210 and 257. ISBN 978-3-11-026612-2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2014-02-21. Soon thereafter, at the end of the 17th century, the abovementioned Ignazio di Costanzo was the first to report a Phoenician inscription and to consciously recognize Phoenician characters proper... And just as the Melitensis prima inscription played a prominent part as the first-ever published Phoenician inscription... and remained the number-one-inscription in the Monumenta (fig. 8), it now became the specimen of authentic Phoenician script par excellence... The Melitensis prima inscription of Marsa Scirocco (Marsaxlokk) had its lasting prominence as the palaeographic benchmark for the assumed, or rather deduced "classical" Phoenician ("echtphönikische") script.

[20] Millard, A. (1993), Reviewed Work: Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions. Corpus and Concordance by G. I. Davies, M. N. A. Bockmuehl, D. R. de Lacey, A. J. Poulter, The Journal of Theological Studies, 44(1), new series, 216–219: "...every identifiable Hebrew inscription dated before 200 BC... First ostraca, graffiti, and marks are grouped by provenance. This section contains more than five hundred items, over half of them ink-written ostraca, individual letters, receipts, memoranda, and writing exercises. The other inscriptions are names scratched on pots, scribbles of various sorts, which include couplets on the walls of tombs near Hebron, and letters serving as fitters' marks on ivories from Samaria.... The seals and seal impressions are set in the numerical sequence of Diringer and Vattioni (100.001–100.438). The pace of discovery since F. Vattioni issued his last valuable list (Ί sigilli ebraici III', AnnaliAnnali dell'Istituto Universitario Orientate di Napoli 38 (1978), 227—54) means the last seal entered by Davies is 100.900. The actual number of Hebrew seals and impressions is less than 900 because of the omission of those identified as non-Hebrew which previous lists counted. A further reduction follows when duplicate seal impressions from different sites are combined, as cross references in the entries suggest... The Corpus ends with 'Royal Stamps' (105.001-025, the Imlk stamps), '"Judah" and "Jerusalem" Stamps and Coins' (106.001-052), 'Other Official Stamps' (107.001), 'Inscribed Weights' (108.001-056) and 'Inscribed Measures' (109.001,002).... most seals have no known provenance (they probably come from burials)... Even if the 900 seals are reduced by as much as one third, 600 seals is still a very high total for the small states of Israel and Judah, and most come from Judah. It is about double the number of seals known inscribed in Aramaic, a language written over a far wider area by officials of great empires as well as by private persons.

[DaviesAitken2004-21] Graham I. Davies; J. K. Aitken (2004). Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Concordance. Cambridge University Press. p. xi. ISBN 978-0-521-82999-1. This sequel to my Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions includes mainly inscriptions (about 750 of them) which have been published in the past ten years. The aim has been to cover all publications to the end of 2000. A relatively small number of the texts included here were published earlier but were missed in the preparation of AHI. The large number of new texts is not due, for the most part, to fresh discoveries (or, regrettably, to the publication of a number of inscriptions that were found in excavations before 1990), but to the publication of items held in private collections and museums.

[22] Avigad, N. (1953). The Epitaph of a Royal Steward from Siloam Village. Israel Exploration Journal, 3(3), 137–152: "The inscription discussed here is, in the words of its discoverer, the first 'authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah', for it was discovered ten years before the Siloam tunnel inscription. Now, after its decipherment, we may add that it is (after the Moabite Stone and the Siloam tunnel inscription) the third longest monumental inscription in Hebrew and the first known text of a Hebrew sepulchral inscription from the pre-Exilic period."

[23] Clermont-Ganneau, 1899, Archaeological Researches In Palestine 1873–1874, Vol 1, p.305: "I may observe, by the way, that the discovery of these two texts was made long before that of the inscription in the tunnel, and therefore, though people in general do not seem to recognise this fact, it was the first which enabled us to behold an authentic specimen of Hebrew monumental epigraphy of the period of the Kings of Judah."

[Lehmann240-24] Lehmann, Reinhard G. (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter. 427: 240. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Basically, its core consists of the comprehensive edition, or re-edition of 70 Phoenician and some more non-Phoenician inscriptions... However, just to note the advances made in the nineteenth century, it is noteworthy that Gesenius' precursor Hamaker, in his Miscellanea Phoenicia of 1828, had only 13 inscriptions at his disposal. On the other hand only 30 years later the amount of Phoenician inscribed monuments had grown so enormously that Schröder in his compendium Die phönizische Sprache. Entwurf einer Grammatik nebst Sprach- und Schriftproben of 1869 could state that Gesenius knew only a quarter of the material Schröder had at hand himself.

[25] "Review of Wilhelm Gesenius's publications". The Foreign Quarterly Review. L. Scott. 1838. p. 245. What is left consists of a few inscriptions and coins, found principally not where we should a priori anticipate, namely, at the chief cities themselves, but at their distant colonies... even now there are not altogether more than about eighty inscriptions and sixty coins, and those moreover scattered through the different museums of Europe.

[26] Rollig, 1983, "This increase of textual material can be easily appreciated when one looks at the first independent grammar of Phoenician , P.SCHRODER'S Die phonizische Sprache Entuurf einer Grammatik, Halle 1869, which appeared just over 110 years ago. There on pp. 47–72 all the texts known at the time are listed — 332 of them. Today, if we look at CIS Pars I, the incompleteness of which we scarcely need mention, we find 6068 texts."

[Bevan-27] Bevan, A. (1904). NORTH-SEMITIC INSCRIPTIONS. The Journal of Theological Studies, 5(18), 281–284. Retrieved August 1, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/23949814

[28] Tekoglu, R. & Lemaire, A. (2000). La bilingue royale louvito-phénicienne de Çineköy. Comptes rendus de l'Académie des inscriptions, et belleslettres, année 2000, 960–1006. Important additions to the interpretation of the Luwian version were made in I. Yakubovich, Phoenician and Luwian in Early Iron Age Cilicia, Anatolian Studies 65 (2015), pp. 40–44

[29] Schloen, J., & Fink, A. (2009). New Excavations at Zincirli Höyük in Turkey (Ancient Samʾal) and the Discovery of an Inscribed Mortuary Stele. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, (356), 1–13. Retrieved September 16, 2020

[30] Adam L. Bean (2018). "An inscribed altar from the Khirbat Ataruz Moabite sanctuary". Levant. 50 (2): 211–236. doi:10.1080/00758914.2019.1619971. S2CID 199266038.

[31] Yosef Garfinkel, Mitka R. Golub, Haggai Misgav, and Saar Ganor (2015). "The ʾIšbaʿal Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. The American Schools of Oriental Research. 373 (373): 217–233. doi:10.5615/bullamerschoorie.373.0217. JSTOR 10.5615/bullamerschoorie.373.0217. S2CID 164971133.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

[32] Aaron Demsky (2012). "An Iron Age IIA Alphabetic Writing Exercise from Khirbet Qeiyafa". Israel Exploration Journal. Israel Exploration Society. 62 (2): 186–199. JSTOR 43855624.

[:0-33] Jacob Kaplan (1958). "The Excavation in Tell Abu Zeitun in 1957". Bulletin of the Israel Exploration Society (in Hebrew). Israel Exploration Society. 22 (1/2): 99. JSTOR 23730357.

Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions

Languages

List of notable inscriptions

Bibliography

See also

References