KHIRBET QEIYAFA, Israel — A 17-year old volunteer found a broken piece of pottery in 2008 at an archaeological dig in Israel. He put it in a black plastic bucket and went on with his work, unaware he had just found something that would send shock waves throughout the scholarly community. It was five hours before a supervisor saw there was writing on the shard — a discovery of what some experts say might be the oldest known example of Hebrew writing.
The pottery shard, called an "ostracon" because it was written on, was found at Khirbet Qeiyafa in Israel. The site overlooks the Valley of Elah and may be near the camp where Saul sent David down to confront the giant Goliath of Gath.
"This inscription is an incredible milestone. However it reads, it will be one of the very oldest pieces of Hebrew writing that we have that has ever been discovered," said Jeffrey R. Chadwick, BYU Jerusalem Center professor of archaeology and Near Eastern studies and an associate professor of church history and doctrine (Jewish studies) at BYU. "It suggests that literacy, and even some of the codification of Biblical values … can be established far earlier than some of the more liberal-leaning scholars have modeled."
Chadwick has been to the site three times and knows one of the co-directors of the Khirbet Qeiyafa excavation, Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Sar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority is the other co-director). Chadwick is also an active field archaeologist at the ancient city of Gath site that is only a few miles away.
Scientists used carbon-14 dating on burned olive pits found at the site and concluded that the 6-by-61/2-inch shard is from around the time of King David's reign — about 3,000 years ago. The style of writing, the Canaanite alphabet, also matches the time period.
The Canaanite alphabet was used over a wide area, according to Chadwick. It was found from Lebanon, to Jordan, to ancient Canaan and Israel. The alphabet was used for writing different languages and dialects — Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Ammonite — that were related to each other in much the same way that modern Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are related to each other. Even the Philistines eventually used the Canaanite alphabet.
"The letters themselves don't tell you anything (about what language is being used), it is the words they spell and the sentences they form," Chadwick said.
Haggai Misgav, an epigrapher with the official excavation team at Khirbet Qeiyafa, wrote that some of the words indicate "the language of the inscription is Hebrew."
"There are words and there are usages and there are verb forms that are uniquely Hebrew," Chadwick said. "This is clearly Hebrew. And virtually everybody who has worked with it, no matter what their translation of it is, agrees that this is Hebrew."
Even before a translation of the text is addressed, the fact that the inscription is in Hebrew is significant.
"You've got a nice written text. And it's from one of the border sites of Israel. It's not in a palace in Jerusalem. It's not one of the elite, so to speak, that is writing on this piece of pottery. It was some person out in the hinterland. And that indicates that literacy was really more widespread in the 10th century B.C. than skeptics had been willing to admit," Chadwick said.
Deciphering the text on the ostracon has been difficult.
"It's not a settled issue. We are not really sure what this is going to turn out to be, because there are a number of the letters that are very very faint and difficult to read Whole words are not necessarily forming clearly enough to be read, so they have to be reconstructed — you have to guess what the combination of letters might have been," Chadwick said.
Misgav produced a preliminary translation (found in English on Aren Maeir's blog) in October 2009:
Do not do ( ) and servant a(…)
Judge … ( ) El(?) …
El(?) and Ba'all
Pe(rso)n will revenge, YSD king (of) G(ath(?))
Seren(?) a(…) from Gederot (?)
"The inscription begins with several words of command which may be judicial or ethical in content," Misgav said on the official excavation Web site. "The end of the inscription contains words which may relate to the area of politics or government. It is difficult to extract more meaning from this text at the present stage. We can determine, however, that the text has continuity of meaning, and is not merely a list of unconnected words."
A Jan. 10 press release from University of Haifa announced that Gershon Galil of Haifa's department of Biblical studies had a new translation of the ostracon's inscriptions.
Galil's translation ignited an online firestorm — some calling the translation "heavily reconstructed" and others "brilliant." "Galil has just taken his reconstructions in a different direction," Chadwick said. He goes beyond what Chadwick says other scholars can see. "It is a very interesting reassessment."
Galil argued that the ostracon shows that during King David's reign there could have been scribes who were "able to write literary texts and complex historiographies such as the books of Judges and Samuel."
The university's press release gave Galil's translation of the five-line text:
you shall not do (it), but worship the (Lord).
Judge the sla(ve) and the wid(ow) / Judge the orph(an)
(and) the stranger. (Pl)ead for the infant / plead for the po(or and)
the widow. Rehabilitate (the poor) at the hands of the king.
Protect the po(or and) the slave / (supp)ort the stranger.
The language in Galil's translation is similar to that found in Isaiah 1:17, Psalms 72:4 and Exodus 23:3, but according to the press release, "it is clear that it is not copied from any biblical text."
Chadwick, while respectful of Galil as a scholar, is skeptical.
"If this had been found on a piece of papyrus or a piece of leather parchment, Galil's translation would be easier for me to feel good about," Chadwick said. "Why write this type of text upon an ostracon?"
Chadwick said messages on pottery shards are usually very short and are things like business transactions, receipts, or military orders. He doesn't think Galil's translation fits: "What is this sort of message doing on a pot shard at a border site?"
Misgav's translation, on the other hand, does fit the setting better. "Although it doesn't have a lot of detail in it, because he didn't pretend to fill in all those gaps, the sense of what he was writing is much more in context with local geography," Chadwick said.
Galil's translation and his rationale for some of the character reconstructions have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Whether his translation of the ancient text or Misgav's will gain favor among their fellow scholars, only time will tell.
e-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com