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We apply methodologies from the study of Greek poetry – theories about performance on the one hand and about the re-enactment of epigraphic poetry on the other – in order to better understand poetry on Phoenician inscriptions. We define formulae as semantic units that can change position within a poetic expression, using the metaphor of dovetail joinery, with some units that can even be omitted while still permitting comprehension. A limited range of formulaic units can combine into expression of certain lengths and rhythms, a syntax that pertains to inscriptions over a broad geographical and chronological range, found on dedications both public and private. In particular, names for the types of offerings poetically parallel each other, with this parallelism excluding interpretations that fall outside of their shared syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a repertoire of the currently identifiable zoonyms in the Phoenician language. The available data are collected, presented, and analysed. Several animal names are directly mentioned in Phoenician inscriptions, but they also are attested as constituting elements of personal names, names of plant and names of place. Some texts by classical authors are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the phenomenon of the so-called royal tamga signs issued on stone stelae in the Bosporan Kingdom in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Tamgas were symbols commonly used by Eurasian nomads throughout the first millennium BCE. The appearance of tamgas in the northern shores of the Black Sea in the 2nd/1st BCE, followed by their adoption into the Greek epigraphic culture of the kingdom, represents an intriguing example of symbolic integration and another step in the formation of Bosporan culture. Research on cultural interactions between the inhabitants of the Bosporus has rarely focused on epigraphic material in its own right. Analyzing a small group of public stone slabs that feature tamgas, this article contributes to existing studies on numerous private funerary reliefs. Furthermore, the current work aims to incorporate several examples of stelae with royal tamga signs into the growing interest in syncretism, which is occurring in other epigraphic cultures of the Greco-Roman world. The case of the Bosporan Kingdom shows that such processes can also occur in places where no literate culture had previously been firmly established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epigraphy is witnessing a growing integration of artificial intelligence, notably through its subfield of machine learning (ML), especially in tasks like extracting insights from ancient inscriptions. However, scarce labeled data for training ML algorithms severely limits current techniques, especially for ancient scripts like Old Aramaic. Our research pioneers an innovative methodology for generating synthetic training data tailored to Old Aramaic letters. Our pipeline synthesizes photo-realistic Aramaic letter datasets, incorporating textural features, lighting, damage, and augmentations to mimic real-world inscription diversity. Despite minimal real examples, we engineer a dataset of 250 000 training and 25 000 validation images covering the 22 letter classes in the Aramaic alphabet. This comprehensive corpus provides a robust volume of data for training a residual neural network (ResNet) to classify highly degraded Aramaic letters. The ResNet model demonstrates 95% accuracy in classifying real images from the 8th century BCE Hadad statue inscription. Additional experiments validate performance on varying materials and styles, proving effective generalization. Our results validate the model's capabilities in handling diverse real-world scenarios, proving the viability of our synthetic data approach and avoiding the dependence on scarce training data that has constrained epigraphic analysis. Our innovative framework elevates interpretation accuracy on damaged inscriptions, thus enhancing knowledge extraction from these historical resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A refutation of the claims by Scott Stripling et al. regarding the epigraphic analysis and paleographic contents of the folded lead object discovered on Mt. Ebal in 2019 during the wet-sifting of dump piles from a previous archaeological excavation by Adam Zertal. This piece of lead is often referred to as the "Mt. Ebal Curse Tablet". An article regarding this find, by Stripling et al., titled "You are Cursed by the God YHW:" an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal", was published on May 23, 2023, in the Heritage Science journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This general introduction serves as a preface to each author's contribution, outlining certain common standards and methods. These include the range of meanings we use for specific terms and the answers to basic yet often contested interrogatives relating to the precinct (the who, what, when, and where) and the history of polemical debates within the discipline (the why and how). By providing this background context here, oft repeated at the beginning of any study of tophet precincts, each author can instead focus on specific data and on analysis within their specialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phoenician and Carthaginian infant cremation sanctuaries (tophet), attested throughout the central Mediterranean (north Africa, Sardinia and Sicily, and perhaps Malta), up to this point lack convincing archaeological evidence in the Phoenician motherland and the far western Mediterranean. This study collects and re-examines the evidence of its Levantine origin of historical order, (the chronology of the settlements and the almost contemporary installation of tophet precincts in them), epigraphic (the inscription of Nebi Yunis) and literary (biblical testimonies and some Greek and Latin writers). Taken as a whole, this documentation strongly leads us to exclude an explanation of the tophet as a novelty introduced by the migrants, but an ancient traditional institution that derived in all probability from the city of Tyre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The god, "Elkunirsa" (written: SP d sp I el-ku-ni-ir-sa i */ l qn r /),[110] is the well-known West Semitic god El, who bears the epithet I qn r i "creator/begetter/possessor of earth."[111] The use of the cuneiform sign el in the majority of instances in the myth for the spelling of the first component in the theonym is significant.[112] At present, it is the earliest known attestation of the common word for god in combination with the West Semitic divine epithet, though there are other texts from attusa that mention the deity and are likely contemporary. All areas of knowledge belonged to him which meant that Iya/Ea was the deity of incantations, rituals, healing, medicine, dreams, and magic.[66] On this amulet, the snake in relief on the left side (i.e., to the back or behind this deity on the obverse) is a symbol stressing the chthonic nature of the male character. Due to the fluidity envisioned within the concept of divinity in the ancient context,[70] Isimu is an extension of Ea on the one hand; on the other hand, Ea's extention is Ea.[71] With the equation of Iya/Ea with El, the imagery invokes this conceptional move. For over two millennia (ca. 1400 bc-200 ad), the worship of a god known as Elkunirsa is attested. All of this underscores the significance of the appearance of the Janus-headed deity on Barrakib's orthostat at Zincirli.[73] The linkage of Iya/Ea with Syrian El may perhaps be envisioned on a number of levels.[74] The "craft" of the two deities is manifest in the creation of the life, whose culmination point is human beings.[75] Both deities are gods of magic and, therefore, the means for humans to obligate divinity through conjuration. [Extracted from the article]

This article presents contextual evidence for the interpretation of lead isotope analysis (LIA) of artefacts from the Archaic Greek Mediterranean. In particular, I make a response to Wood's suggestion in Archaeometry (2022, first view, 'Other ways to examine the finances behind the birth of Classical Greece') that the end of the production of lead votive figurines in Sparta might have been caused by Athenian restrictions to Laurion lead exports, drawing on new LIA of the Spartan lead votives and wider considerations concerning the trade, cost and volume of lead in the 7th to 5th century bce Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2019, an expedition on Mt. Ebal to examine the discarded material from Adam Zertal's 1982–1989 excavation yielded a small, folded lead tablet. The east dump pile, from which the object emerged, contained the discarded matrix from two structures that he interpreted as altars dated to the Late Bronze Age II and Iron Age I. The earlier and smaller round altar lay underneath the geometric center of the later and larger rectangular altar. The tablet could not be opened without damaging it. A team of scientists performed X-ray tomographic measurements with different scanning parameters. The tomographically reconstructed data were subjected to advanced processing to reveal the hidden text. Epigraphic analysis of the tomographic data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age II. The inscription falls within the literary genre of Chiastic Parallelism and predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 200 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most remarkable features of the language of early Greek writing is a pervasive rhetorical strategy which consists in personifying objects for the purpose of identifying humans closely associated with them. Such 'speaking objects' have no Semitic parallel; how, then, is their conventional status in the Archaic Age to be explained? This article first considers the formulaic language of speaking objects, which is no straightforward transcription of speech, and seeks to explain where it comes from. It then turns to the question of why writers employed the curious strategy of personification by setting it in the broader context of early Greek writing and literature. Variously analogous to herms, slaves and skytalai , speaking objects are shown to have been conceived as messengers acting on behalf of their senders by not speaking in their name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Nahum Slouschz's concept of "Hebraic Mediterraneità" and its role in Jewish nationalism. Topics include Slouschz's integration of philology, archaeology, and history in developing this vision, the influence of his ideas from Odesa to Paris, and how Itamar Ben-Avi expanded and popularized Mediterraneanism to support his cantonization plan for mandatory Palestine.

The book Ecclesiastes has been regarded as one of the most profound pieces of 'wisdom' literature in the ancient Orient. It rivals in depth and the courage to challenge the institutional status quo with the literature from Mesopotamia and Egypt. It has puzzled readers in the last three millennia with its unparalleled courage to ask uncomfortable questions about faith, Gods and humanity. Ironically, many of the questions that Ecclesiastes asked have found reverberations in the hearts of post-modern men and women today. On the one hand, the author affirms his belief that one can discern the 'hand of God' dispensing justice even in the most tragic of circumstances. On the other hand, Ecclesiastes confesses that, even though he applied his heart 'to know wisdom and to know madness and folly,' in the end he perceived 'that this also is but a striving after wind.' His conclusion? 'Vanity of vanities: all is vanity!' Statements like these have compelled us to approach Ecclesiastes in order to find the equilibrium in his vision between 'despair' and 'hope.' To do so, we will select a number of divine attributes that offer clarity not only to the vision of God in Ecclesiastes, but also to the sensitive issues of the meaning of life, suffering, justice, death and eternity. In the course of our analysis we will examine the views of contempoerary scholars who have written on this subject. We will show how Ecclesiastes' vision takes into account human suffering and despair, without sacrificing the integrity of hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New potentially Early Alphabetic finds from Umm al-Marra (Syria) and Sealand (Mesopotamia) require a reanalysis of traditional out-of-Egypt hypotheses of alphabetic origins. The present article considers the problems new discoveries introduce for traditional understandings of alphabetic invention and proposes to overcome these problems by endorsing a northern Levantine context for the Early Alphabet's initial adaptation from Egyptian hieroglyphs and its earliest usage. This proposal is contextualized among—and arguably supported by consideration of—other scribal experiments in the Levant during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the hypothesis presented by the authors, stratified, nonmonumental inscriptions and their radiometric datings take center stage for the first time. It is in the living script of these texts rather than in the artificial alphabet of monuments that the evolution of the alphabet in Iron IIA can be studied properly. A key take-home lesson of the work is the significant ninth-century transformations of the alphabet from precursive Proto-Canaanite to supraregional cursive, thence to the well-known regional variants. Under the Omrides, the alphabet in Israel is attested minimally. No Omride texts were recognized at Samaria, nor Baashide texts at Tirzah. The newly founded West Semitic kingdoms since ca. 900 BCE will have constituted the cradle of the cursive, while papyrus or parchment and ink were the cursive's likeliest vehicle. Alphabetic inscriptions on monuments, including Byblos, all cursive-inspired, will only have emerged in the last third of the ninth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important epigraphical finds of ancient Idumea, which has led scholars to believe that a Sidonian/Phoenician community was present in Marisa during the Hellenistic period (fourth-second centuries BCE), is the well-known inscription uncovered at the site in 1905, reading "Apollophanes son of Sesmaios, Chief of the Sidonians at Marisa." This inscription was discovered in a large, lavishly painted tomb in the city's necropolis, allegedly supporting a presence of a Sidonian/Phoenician community in Marisa. Following a comprehensive examination of the material culture from Marisa vis-à-vis that of other Phoenician sites, this commonly-held assumption is put to question. Phoenician pottery, very common in Phoenician cities of the Hellenistic period, such as 'Akko and Ashqelon, is absent from Marisa, and the Greek onomasticon of Hellenistic Marisa also lacks Phoenician names and includes mainly Idumean and Greek names common in the East. Also, the numismatic evidence from Marisa does not seem to support a Sidonian presence. In this paper I argue that the term 'Sidonians' in the Hellenistic context at Marisa implies an instrumental context rather than an ethnic one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to present a stamp seal on the handle of a Punic amphora manufactured originally in the Central Mediterranean and recovered in the fill of an abandoned silo at the Iberian site of Mas Castellar de Pontós (Girona, Spain) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discovery of anthropoid sarcophagi in the Near Eastern area has revealed different phenomena of emulation of a funerary tradition interested in preserving the bodily integrity of the deceased. The burial in monumental stone sarcophagi according to the Egyptian custom is not alien to the practices documented in the coastal region of the Levant as evidenced by the case of Ahiram of Byblos, attributable to the 10th century, but is part of a local tradition that dates to the Middle Bronze Age and seems to continue up to the Late Bronze Age. A similar funeral practice is documented in Phoenicia even later, as Egyptian anthropoid sarcophagi were re-used for burial by the kings of Sidon in the last quarter of the 6th century BCE. This example led to the spread throughout the region of the funeral practice of deposition in dorsal decubitus (i.e. with the body lying in a supine position) within a sarcophagus. This custom persevered among aristocratic and merchant classes for about two centuries, until the last quarter of the 4th century BCE. In this case, the emulation of Egyptian funeral practice was achieved through a ‘formal translation’ into a local taste, which evokes Hellenic art. The analysis illustrates how the progressive diffusion of the anthropoid sarcophagi and the adoption of theca-type sarcophagi in the local necropolises of Phoenicia were contemporary phenomena. The archaeological traces of the conservation treatment of the deceased, crossed with the inscriptions mentioning the use of aromatic gum-resins, have provided plausible documentary support to the thesis of a Phoenician practice of the embalming/mummification of the body of the dead, and in particular of that of sovereigns. This examination of the documentation has highlighted different historical modes and dynamics that testify the presence in the social upper classes (holding authority and wealth) of a strong cultural and ideological attraction (and openness) towards Egyptian culture in the Levant, traceable over a very long period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to recent osteoarchaeological publications, prominent historians, archaeologists and osteologists have reignited the debate over the practice of infant and child sacrifice at Phoenician sites in the central Mediterranean. In all previous studies, including osteoarchaeological approaches, the debate has been conducted on terms established by the Greco-Roman sources. Here, I move away from those sources and suggest a series of demographic models in order to understand better the effects of infanticide on population growth at Phoenician colonies in the Early Iron Age central Mediterranean. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents two brief alphabetic inscriptions from Area D in the lower city of Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, both deriving from Iron Age IIA contexts. The first is written in an Early Alphabetic script similar to an inscription previously published from the site (Maeir et al. 2008) and is interpreted as being related to the storage of wine. The second, written in later, "formalized" alphabetic script, is quite fragmentary and difficult to decipher, for which several possible interpretations are suggested. These two new inscriptions join the relatively large number of alphabetic inscriptions from Tell eṣ-Ṣâfi/Gath, second only in number to contemporaneous Tel Rehov, and provide additional evidence to the outstanding role of the site during the early Iron Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a new collation of the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon on the basis of the multispectral images produced by Gregory Bearman and William Christens-Barry in collaboration with a number of imaging labs in 2009. It proposes 59 letters in total, with 12 new readings, including 5 new partial reconstructions, all supported by an analysis of these detailed, high-definition images. This new collation permits a renewed attempt at translation of the ostracon, which is interpreted as a record of the summons of a defendant in a legal dispute. In the course of analysis, it is argued that if the decipherment is accepted, the language of the text appears to be an archaic, dialectal form of Hebrew. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Royal Steward Inscription is one of the more famous artifacts in biblical archaeology, but its original context and setting is less-known due to the circumstances following Charles Clermont-Ganneau's discovery in 1870. The acquisition and removal of the inscriptions from Silwan resulted in the fragmentation of the once prominent monolithic sepulcher of an important official. Today, the inscriptions are in the British Museum separated from the tomb they once adorned. The tomb in Jerusalem is surrounded by the modern residences of Silwan. The visible nature of the inscribed monument is lost. Recently identified nineteenth-century photographs of the Royal Steward Inscription in situ, however, shed light on the inscription's context and offer a rare window into the viewshed of the tomb. The photographs provide the impetus for a history of research that reveals many ironies surrounding the Tomb of the Royal Steward and the inscriptions it once bore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of silver, which was an important means of currency in the Levant during the Bronze and Iron Ages (~ 1950–600 BCE), provides a large and extendable dataset for silver provenance. In this paper, nine silver hoards from the Southern Levant dating to the Iron Age IIB‒C (eighth, seventh, and early-sixth centuries BCE) are discussed in an effort to determine the source/s of the metal. The results show that Iberia, which was exploited by the Phoenicians and provided silver to the Levant already in the ninth century BCE, continued to dominate the Levantine market for more than a century and was the main silver source for Judah and Philistia throughout the Iron Age IIB (eighth century BCE). Later, during the Iron Age IIC, hoards in the Levant reflect a momentous change, as they contain, for the first time since the Late Bronze Age, mostly silver from Laurion (mainland Greece) and Siphnos in the Aegean. This shift, which is dated to the 2nd half of the seventh century BCE, appears to be related to historic developments: After the Assyrian Empire retreated from Western Asia ca. ~ 640/630 BCE, it left behind a political and administrative void, which the Saitic Egyptians took advantage of, attempting to re-gain power in the Levant. As a result, the Phoenicians lost their privileged position as sole providers of silver to the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the market opened to new agents—especially East Greek traders. This shift probably affected the Phoenicians’ apparatus in the Western Mediterranean and may have been one of the factors that eventually contributed to their detachment from the homeland, in the sixth century BCE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the content of the ÇİNEKÖY and KARATEPE Inscriptions, the selection of scripts on the monuments, and the choices of iconography on the two statues of the Storm God. These monuments represent a regionally and temporally specific practice of representation that ambiguously blends elements of divine and royal imagery into a new form, while taking a similar approach to the semiotics of rulership as the Neo-Assyrian kings. The combined elements of the monuments suggest a unique cultural strategy in which the agency of the ruler is blended with that of the Storm God, exemplifying the specific worldview of Iron Age Cilicia that informed their composition. The rulers who created these monuments sought to assert their political identity through the combination of the figural representations, the visuality of the scripts, and the content of the inscriptions; the two monuments illustrate a drastic change in the political agenda of the kingdom of Hiyawa, reflecting a shift in power among opposing political factions. These identities also contain a sense of intentional ambiguity, as the various elements do not immediately support the same message, but rather work together to propagate a multifaceted message of military prowess, commercial interconnectedness, and royal legitimacy and kingship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines and synthesizes a diverse corpus of evidence relevant to the possible practice of mummification or embalming among some Levantine Phoenicians in the Achaemenid Persian period (ca. 500 – 300 BCE). Nineteenth- and twentieth-century descriptions of partially preserved corpses are discussed alongside mortuary inscriptions, anthropoid sarcophagi, and grave goods. The variety of preservative evidence described by excavators, the emphasis on the arrangement and permanence of the burial in inscriptions, the depiction of oil bottles on three sarcophagi, and the frequent inclusion of oil bottles in burials as grave goods combine to suggest a wider range of preservative actions than has previously been suggested. This evidence indicates that some elite Persian period Phoenicians may have been utilizing oils and resins in various ways to enact a kind of symbolic mummification—ritual acts that reflected the importance of the integrity of the burial but did not necessarily result in a well-preserved corpse. The possibility that oils and resins were similarly used in the interment rituals for adult cremations is also examined. This study supports recent scholarship on Phoenician mortuary practice that contends that both cremations and inhumations (partially embalmed or otherwise) are compatible expressions of a shared continuum of ideas held by Levantine Phoenicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fortieth issue of the Rivista di Studi Fenici, ten years ago, I presented a discussion of the Phoenician identity and of the “borders” of a Phoenician region, primarily through the analysis of the material culture. Over the last decade, many contributions have been published; some new acquisitions, including on the theoretical level, have changed the interpretative framework. Therefore, in the light of recent studies, the question discussed here is whether it still makes sense to go in search of the borders of Phoenicia, following the fil rouge of material culture, used as a cultural marker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is commonly accepted that the spelling of the pre-exilic books of the Bible was generally defective like that of contemporary epigraphy, and that the matres leclionis were inserted into the original texts by scribes during the first half of the Second Temple period. This article argues that the orthography of the ancient books of the Bible was from its beginning similar to that of the MT. The difference between the current biblical spelling and the defective spelling of the inscriptions should instead be understood as a matter of different registers., THE PRESENT STATE OF RESEARCH AND THE PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY The classical nineteenth- and twentieth-century works on biblical grammar had a common denominator in that they all addressed the [...]