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Tablet it Alphabetic Cuneiform
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The American Schools of Oriental Research is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of
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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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This content downloaded from 147.142.225.52 on Wed, 29 Jul 2015 09:48:44 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
7/18/2019 Albright: Tablet it Alphabetic Cuneiform
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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
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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
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7/18/2019 Albright: Tablet it Alphabetic Cuneiform
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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
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