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This dissertation explores connections between early Iron Age alphabetic writing culture in the southern Levant (13th – 6th centuries) and Egyptian writing practices, both to posit the direct inheritance of various aspects of the former from the later and to shed light on documentary and writing practices in the southern Levant from the much well understood, and better materially attested, corpus of Egyptian. The dissertation combines anthropological and sociolinguistic views of writing, viewing writing as both human technology and visual communicative media, as broad theoretical frameworks for the investigation of writing as a “culture” and to provide some framework for beginning an investigating into its “origin” in the southern Levant.As human technology, written objects are here viewed as emblematic of the choices of actors in deliberate engagement with the material world. As such, epigraphs are viewed as material culture and themselves pieces of writing as a technological system. Thus, evidence is not limited to the epigraphs for their linguistic content but expands to include linguistic evidence related to writing and the evidence of writing associated material culture that shed light of the activity of writers (weights, seals, etc.). Aspects of production and use of materials are integral to understanding written objects as material culture. As such, linguistic, technological, and material data are brought together to describe the material processes of bringing a text into being, with a focus on the ways in which particular materials both index and generate socially significant meaning in the community of writers.As visual communicative media, written objects are here viewed as the creative products of writers who make distinct choices about the way in which a written object appears and how a text ultimately comes into being. As such, the letters on written objects become emblems of the techniques writers use, the postures they embody, and assumptions that they must make in constructing a written text. The method of drawing a letter (orthography; ductus), the final appearance of the letter (typography; allography), the use and integration of notation systems and associated symbols (numerical, metrological, and mathematical), the color and size of the letters (semiotics of typography), the direction of the letters, and the organizational plan of letters and written sigla (format and layout) are all valuable evidence for understanding writing culture as indwelt and shaped by writers themselves. These two aspects of writing culture undergird parts one (material) and two (practice) of the dissertation, respectively.The dissertation argues that Egyptian influence can be shown in both regards. From the material basis for writing, which includes the distinct writing lexicon (pen, ink, and palette) to the meaning and organization of visual aspects of writing, the influence of Egyptian writing culture on the communities responsible for proliferating the early alphabet at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 1st millennium was pervasive and original. Appreciating the depth and breadth of the influence of Egyptian writing practice on alphabetic writing communities in the southern Levant during Late Bronze and Iron ages encourages further inquiry into cross-cultural exchange between Egypt and the Levant at the level of literature and religion.

Given its abundance of dialects, varieties, styles and registers, Arabic lends itself easily to the study of language variation and change. It is spoken by some 300 million people in an area spanning roughly from northwest Africa to the Persian Gulf. Traditional Arabic dialectology has dealt predominantly with geographical variation. However, in recent years, more nuanced studies of inter- and intra-speaker variation have seen the light of day. In some respects, Arabic sociolinguistics is still lagging behind the field compared to variationist studies in English and other Western languages. On the other hand, the insight presented in studies of Arabic can and should be considered in the course of shaping a crosslinguistic sociolinguistic theory. Variationist studies of Arabic speech communities began almost two decades after Labov's pioneering studies of American English and have flourished following the turn of the twenty-first century. These studies have sparked debates between more quantitatively inclined sociolinguists and those who value qualitative analysis. In reality, virtually no sociolinguistic study of Arabic that includes statistical modeling is free of qualitative insights. They are also not flawless and not always cutting-edge methodologically or theoretically. But the field in moving in a positive direction, which will likely lead to the recognition of its significance to sociolinguistics at-large.

Con permiso de la revista, The present contribution reassesses the main aspects of the epigraphic sources found in the so-called tophet in order to demonstrate how they are significant and how they undermine the funerary interpretations of these precincts. The inscriptions decisively define the tophet as a place of worship, a sanctuary where sacrifices were made to specific deities in specific rites. The epigraphic evidence combined with literary and archaeological data show how these sacrifices consisted of infants and small animals (either as substitutes or interred together), sometimes commemorated by the inscriptions themselves.

This article does two things. First, it corrects things in the book, Identifying Biblical Persons in Northwest Semitic Inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. (2004), abbreviated IBP below: • Regarding potential forgeries, the article applies the principles for treatment of unprovenanced inscriptions set forth in Christopher A. Rollston, “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic,” Maarav 11 (2004): 71–76. • It disqualifies proposed IDs in eight (8) inscriptions that are forgeries or probable forgeries, notably including the two bullae frequently attributed to the biblical Baruch. Second, it evaluates 32 proposed identifications (IDs) of biblical persons in inscriptions of 1200-539 B.C.E. Doing this updates the book, IBP, from its original coverage through mid-2002, to July 31, 2008. In order to evaluate these proposed IDs, it uses the protocols set forth in the book, IBP, pp. 9-89. Resulting IDs and non-IDs appear in six categories of strength or weakness, from unmistakable to disqualified. • Constructively, it makes eleven strong, reasonable, or possible IDs of biblical persons in provenanced Northwest Semitic inscriptions and two reasonable IDs in inscriptions written in other languages (one in Egyptian hieroglyphics and one in Babylonian Akkadian). • It gives page-by-page corrections to the book, IBP, if they affect IDs. These corrections end with a summary of the results of the book as corrected by this article on pp. 125-126. A summary and an index only of the results in the article appear on pp. 126-132.