Gershon Galil’s Perspective on the Ceramic Inscription from Jerusalem

In a previous blog post I referred to Gershon Galil’s understanding of the new ceramic inscription from Jerusalem. Gershon and I have been in conversation about the new fragment and he has elaborated on his particular view. Gershon reads the inscription from right to left as follows:

נת]ן [תת]ן חלקם]

[nt]n [tt]n ḥlqm

Give them their share

Gershon argues that the inscription and the pithos on which it was inscribed may have had a function similar to the ‘AHK’ inscription published by Gabriel Barkay (‘Your Poor Brother’: A Note on an Inscribed Bowl from Beth Shemesh”, Israel Exploration Journal 41 [1991], 239-241). The ‘AHK’ (אחך, ‘your brother’) inscription was incised on the inside of a late 8th-century BC bowl found in an Iron Age cemetery at Beth Shemesh.¹ In Barkay’s opinion, ‘[I]t was apparently meant to contain food for the poor, who were called אחך — ‘your brother’.’

Accordingly, Gershon argues that it is possible that the first word in the new Jerusalem inscription was also אחך (‘your brothers’), and that the inscription as a whole may have served a similar function to that of the AHK bowl.

_______________________

¹The bowl was originally uncovered during excavations in 1911/12, but not published until 1991.

Related Articles

• withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/a-new-ceramic-inscription-from-jerusalem/
• withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/further-thoughts-the-ceramic-fragment-from-jerusalem/
• withmeagrepowers.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/gershon-galils-perspective-on-the-ceramic-inscription-from-jerusalem/