An Alphabet from the Days of the Judges, Aaron Demsky and Moshe Kochavi, BAR 4:03, Sep-Oct 1978
At a site called Izbet Sartah, now believed by some scholars, to be Biblical Ebenezer, a recent excavation by Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan Universities has uncovered a small clay potsherd—unrelated to the Biblical story—which, however, is the most important single find of the excavation. The sherd contains the longest proto-Canaanite inscription ever discovered.a
The unimpressive looking sherd measures only 3 ½ by 6 inches, but it contains a dramatic addition to the study of ancient Hebrew epigraphy and to the early history of the alphabet.
Inscribed on the sherd are five lines of letters. Most of the letters on the first four lines have been identified, but make no sense as words. We suspect that they are random exercises in writing letters by a student scribe.
The fifth line is, with minor deviations, the Hebrew alphabet, consisting of 22 letters! Unlike modern Hebrew, which is written from right to left, this alphabet was written from left to right (like English). At the time it was written, the writing direction had not yet been fixed.
Read the rest of An Alphabet from the Days of the Judges in the online Biblical Archaeology Society Library.
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