albright: tablet it alphabetic cuneiform

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The Beth-Shemesh Tablet in Alphabetic CuneiformAuthor(s): W. F. AlbrightSource: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 173 (Feb., 1964), pp. 51-53Published by: The American Schools of Oriental ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1355586Accessed: 29-07-2015 09:48 UTC

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Number

173

February,

1964

THE

BETH-SHEMESH TABLET IN

ALPHABETIC

CUNEIFORM

W.

F.

ALBRIGHT

The successful

decipherment

of

the new

Taanach

tablet

by

D.

R.

Hillers has

led

me

to

try my

hand

at

deciphering

the

Beth-shemesh

tablet

found

in

1933

by

Elihu

Grant.?

When

I

studied it that

same

year

I

recognized

the

affinity

of its

script

to the

then

recently deciphered

Ugaritic alphabet

and

correctly

took

it

to be

some

kind

of

amulet,

but

was

totally

unable

to

make

any

sense

out of

it.

In

retrospect

it

is

obvious that the data

then

available were

insufficient in

every

regard;

G. A. Barton's attempt proved to be wrong throughout. The first new

light

on our

problem

came

several

months

ago,

when Hillers

pointed

out

to

me

that

the

little

"

pit

"

which I

indicated

in

my copy

ought

to

be

the

same as

the

corresponding

pit

in

the

right-to-left Ugaritic alphabet

on

three

tablets

discovered

since

1934

by

C. F.

A. Schaeffer.

After

he

had

shown me

his

final

decipherment

of

the

Taanach tablet

I

began working

seriously

on

the

Beth-shemesh

tablet. There were a

number

of

false

steps,

and

the

present

effort

lays

no

claim

to

be

definitive

except

in

recognizing

the

Kosharot or birth

goddesses.

The

long

break in

the

middle

of

the

text

and

a

shorter

break

at the end make

it

imprudent

to

be

dogmatic.

The

fact

that it

must have

been

impressed

from a

metal

(or

a

stone)

mould

and

the

mention

of birth

goddesses

make

its

amuletic character

certain.

A

parallel

in

function

is

represented

by

the first

Arslan

Tash

plaque,2

and a

parallel

to the

location of the

inscription

around

the

edge

of the

plaque

is

provided

by

the

15th-century

Shechem

plaque.3

In

studying

the

tablet

I

was

soon

drawn

to

the freehand

drawing (by

Grant)

and

subsequent

photograph

(at

a

different

angle)

published

in

Ain

Shems

III

(1934),

p.

29,

Fig.

2A,

and

Plate

XX. Here

we

have a

hasty drawing by a cuneiformist who was not acquainted with Ugaritic

script;

it

therefore

exhibits

impossible

wedges

as well as

a

valuable inde-

pendent

representation

of

what the

tablet

contains,

before

anyone

else

had

meddled

with

it. Thus

we have

two

early photos

from different

angles

and

two

drawings (including

my

own,

made

after

portions

of

the

surface

had

already

been

lost).

This

new

collation has enabled me

to

1

For

bibliography

see

Hillers'

article

above.

2

See

R.

du

Mesnil

du

Buisson

in

Mdlanges

syriens

...

Rend

Dussaud

(1939),

pp.

421-434,

my

paper

in

BULLETIN,

No.

76

(December, 1939),

pp.

5-11,

and

T.

H.

Gaster's

two

papers

in

Orientalia,

11

(1942),

pp.

41-79,

and Jour. Near East.

Stud.,

VI (1947), pp. 186 ff. I have been intending for years to publish a revised trans-

lation

and

commentary,

based on

Gaster's

results and

on more recent finds.

Published

by

F.

M.

Th.

Bahl,

Zeits.

Deutsch.

Pal.-Ver.,

LXI

(1938),

pp.

19 f.

For

several

years

I

have

been

reading

the

preserved

part

of

the

inscription

[t]b'

rgm

m'rt

[

],

rendering

it

roughly

as

"

[then

shall

be]

fulfilled the words of

[this]

curse."

Needless

to

say,

this

is

provisional.

I

have been

dating

the

plaque

between

about

1450

and

1350

B.

C.

instead of in

the 16th

century

with

the

reported

archaeological

context

(which

was in

debris).

This lowered

dating

is

naturally

based

primarily

on

the

script.

51






Bulletin

of

the

American Schools

of

Oriental Research

eliminate

initial

errors

and

to

produce

a text

which makes sense

through-

out,

though

it

may

need correction in

a

number

of

places.

Of

course,

the

fact

that

identical

groups

of

consonants

may

have

quite

different

mean-

ings

also warns

against

treating

this

decipherment

as

anything

but

tentative.

Like

other

Canaanite

incantations of

the

same

age

preserved

as

tricola

in

Egyptian

translation or

transcription,4

this incantation

is

a clear

tri-

colon,

though

without

an

obvious

repetitive pattern.

I read:

hl

htq

Ktrt

hqrnryl

['att(?)]

rdlt rwl

(?)

dm mt

[1]rhl

Truly,

O

birth

goddesses,

enter

(her

belly?),

Cause

this

[woman]

to

produce

(offspring),

And

drive

out

Death from

her

In colon 1 the first word appears also as Ugaritic hil in the same and other

senses

(cf. Gordon, Driver,

Aistleitner

on

its

meanings);

in

Amarna it is

written

al-lu-u. The second word

is also

quite

certain,

though

it does not seem

to

be

preserved

in

any

Semitic

language;

if

it

is

derived from the reflexive of

a

root

hq

(cf.

Heb.

t.q

=

Arab.

haqw

with

J.

Barth,

both

meaning

originally "belly,

loins,"

etc.)

it

might

have

the

suggested

denominative

sense.

The third word

was first

shown

to

mean

"birth

goddesses"

by

U. Cassuto

and

Shalom

Spiegel;

I

have

a

mass of

material,

gathered

since

1960,

to confirm

this

sense.

Incidentally,

the

Ugaritic

pantheon

to

be

published by

J.

Nougayrol,

includes

the Accadian

plural

sasurratu,

"

midwives."

Unfortunately,

the

Ugaritic

name

has

been

lost,

but

was

doubtless

Kathardtu.

The

Babylonian

number of birth

goddesses

was

usually

fourteen,

and

the Arslan Tash

incantation for child-birth

offers

the

graduated

number " seven +

eight,"

or fifteen. But Philo

Byblius

has

preserved

the number of

birth

goddesses

as

the "seven Titanides

or

Artemides"

(as

pointed

out

to

me

by

Hillers);

he has

also

preserved

the name

Thfro

(Egyptian

Thoeris,

earlier

Twfre)

as

the

equivalent

of Phoenician

Chusarthis

(for

older

Katartu),

the

goddess

of

birth.

These

goddesses

appear

in

Psalm

68:7

in

the derived sense

of

"

birth

pains."

Colon 2

starts with the

hif'il

imperative

of

the common

West-Semitic

verb

qny,

"

to

produce,

create"

(Ugaritic,

Hebrew, Arabic).

The

first

and third

letters

are

certain

(for

n see

Grant's

drawing

and

photo

in

Ain

Shems

III);

the

q

appears

certain

to me from

the

photos,

and a

third

of

the final

y

is

preserved

in

the

photos

and

Grant's

drawing.

The

verb

qny

is

found,

e.g.,

in

Gen

4:

1,

where Eve

says,

"I

have

produced

a man

with

(the

help

of)

Yahweh."

The

following

word

'att

is

entirely

restored;

it

would

be

pronounced

'attatu as

in

Ugaritic,

Old

Hebrew

'aS'atu,Accadian

agdatu;

the last word in the

second

colon is

apparently

dt,

"this

(fem.),"

older datu or

dati

(cf.

Heb.

z6t),

since

the corner of d

nearest the

rim

and the

following

letter seems

to

be

preserved

and

the

t

is

unmistakable

(even

though

reversed

in

direction).

Colon 3 seems

clear. W is

uncertain but seems

to underlie

the faint

traces

in

the

photo.

D

is

certain

from

my

own

inspection

in

1933,

when

this

form

of d was

still

wholly

unknown

in

cuneiform

alphabetic

texts,

and

the

two

following

occur-

rences

of

m

are

unmistakable,

despite

the

hitherto

unknown

archaic form

(which

presumably

underlies

standard

Ugaritic

as

well).

T is

certain,

and there is room

for

1,

whereas

the

top

of

h

is

clearly

preserved.

As is

well

known

today,

the

preposition

la

is

regularly

used

in

the

meaning

"from" in

Ugaritic

and

archaic

Hebrew.

The

preceding imperative

should

be

pronounced dd-mi;

it

is normal

from

the stem

ndy (also

wdy).

In

Ugaritic

it

is

used of

driving

or

casting

out

disease

and

other

evil

things.

The

personified

figure

of

Death

appears

repeatedly

both in

Ugaritic

literature

and

the

Bible.

4

See

R.

T.

O'Callaghan,

Orientalia,

21

(1952),

pp.

37-46,

and

especially

p.

39,

note.

A

number

of

the

spells

in

transcription

or

translation

(or

both)

brought

together

by

W.

Helck,

Die

Beziehungen

A-gyptens

zu

Vorderasien

im

3.

und 2.

Jahrtausend

v. Chr.

(1962),

pp.

580

f.,

appear

to

be

tricola.

52






Number

173

February,

1964

The

whole

tricolon

may

be vocalized

provisionally

as follows

(it

is

typically

South

Canaanite,

as

might

be

expected):

Hallhi

h(u)t(u)qUi

K6tar6tu

haqniyu2

['attata

(?)

]rddtal

[wa]-du2-mi

m6ta

rlahal

The date of the

Beth-shemesh tablet seems

to

be fixed in

the

14th

century by

the excavations of

Grant,

analyzed

stratigraphically

by

G.

E.

Wright."

It

may

easily

be

contemporary

with the oldest hitherto

pub-

lished

texts in

standard

Ugaritic

script,

and is

probably

not

much,

if

any,

older

than the

Taanach tablet

discussed

above

by

Hillers.

As

far

as

they

go they share the same standard Ugaritic phonetic values (including

d

for

d)

and the

same archaic

(?)

form of k. It is true that the Taanach

tablet

was

found in

good

late

12th-century

context,

but a

piece

of

such

rounded form

and

hardness

may

easily

have

been

preserved

intact

in

wall

filling

of the

12th

century

B.

C.,

but

be

itself

considerably

older.

The

direction of

the

original

mould used for

the Beth-shemesh tablet

was,

in

any

case,

left

to

right,

but we have no

way

of

knowing

whether this

had

been

purposely

reversed

or

not.

In

my

opinion

the

forms

of

m

and

k

alone

point

to a

date for

the

original

introduction of the cuneiform

alphabet

considerably

earlier

than

the

14th

century.

For reasons

into

which I cannot enter here, the three right-to-left tablets from Ugarit

presumably

date from

the middle

decades

of

the

13th

century

B.

C.,

by

which

time

the five

extra

graphemes

of the

earlier

script

had been

lost-or

conflated

with five

surviving

graphemes. (Read

"

phonemes"

for

"

graphemes

"

and

the

picture

is little

altered.)

We

may

plausibly

conjecture

that

the

extra letters

were

dropped

in

Phoenicia

in

the

13th

century

B.

C.

'

See

especially

Ain

Shems

V

(1939),

pp.

45

f.,

and

note

that

I

am

reducing

the

chronology

of

Palestinian

archaeology

between

MB

I

and LB

I

by

50-100

years;

see

BULLETIN,

No. 168

(December,

1962),

pp.

41

f.,

and

my

forthcoming

review

of

S.

Yeivin,

A

Decade

of

Archaeology

in

Israel,

in

Bibliotheca

orientalis,

with

reference

to the

new

lowering

of

Egyptian

dates

before

Tuthmosis

III

by

W.

Helck

and

R.

A.

Parker.

SHEKEL-FRACTIONMARKINGS ON HEBREWWEIGHTS

R. B.

Y.

SCOTT

In

addition

to the

well-known

Hebrew

stone

weights

inscribed

with

the

symbol

of

the

royal

standard

shekel

or

with

names

of

the

smaller

units

n-s-p,

p-y-m

and

b-q-',

more

than

twenty

small

weights

have

been

found with

distinctive

markings

which

seem

to

indicate

fractions of

one

or

other

of

these units.

They

range

in

weight

from

1.52

gm.

to 7.05

gm.,

and with

two

exceptionsthey are smallerthan the b-q-'. Study of the

markings

on these

little

weights

may

throw

light

on such

problems

as

53




albright: tablet it alphabetic cuneiform

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