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Gershon Galil: A Second Alternative Reading of the Ceramic Inscription

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Gershon Galil has offered a second alternative reading of the ceramic inscription from Jerusalem, in addition to the first he offered a few days ago. He has also provided a drawing to illustrate the possibility of his second alternative, which I provide below along with his thoughts.

Gershon writes:

Here is another possible reading of the inscription from Jerusalem (from right to left):

[…], mem, qop, lamed, ḥet, nun, [yo]d, [yo]d nun

…נ [יי]נ חלק מ…
… Spoiled Wine from…

The term yn ḫlq is attested only once in a text from Ugarit (KTU 4.213:3): “…arb’m (kdm) yn ḫlq b gt sknm“. For the meaning of this classification of wine see the following translations: verdorbener Wein (Aartum); mauvais/perdu vin (Lemaire et al); vino estropeado (del Olmo Lete and Sanmartin). For a short discussion of this term see: K. Aartum, UF, 16 (1984), 1-52, esp. 26.

This is a very simple and possible reading but I prefer my first reading:

[Your poor brothers – You sh]all [gi]ve them their share

The Ophel inscription should be dated to the second half of the 10th century (it was absolutely not written in the 11th century). In the mid-late 10th century the house of David controlled Jerusalem, and I agree with Athas that:

“The language of the inscription is difficult to ascertain from so few letters, but there is good reason to think it is probably Hebrew” (although it is well known that the roots ḤLQ and NTN are clearly also attested in other West Semitic Languages).

The term yn ḫlq is not mentioned in the Bible or in any other extra Biblical Hebrew text. Moreover, the Ophel Inscription was inscribed on an open large size pithos jar, and it is not unreasonable that it contained wine.

Gershon Galil’s reconstruction of the ceramic inscription. (Original rendering by Ada Yardeni)

Update

At the biblical studies forum, Gershon adds:

A short note on the spelling of the word “wine” in West Semitic Languages: In Ugaritic, Old Canaanite, Phoenician (Shiqmona: IEJ, 18 [1968], 227B:2), Ammonite, and even in the Kingdom of Israel (The Samaria Ostraca) wine was always written with only one yod (yn; ka-ra-nu: ye-nu = Aphek-Antipatris: TA 3 [1976], 137:2). But in (southern) Hebrew the form is always yyn (Epigraphic Hebrew [Lachish, Arad and more], Biblical Hebrew [without any exception], Ben Sira, Qumran, and even in the Rrabinic [sic!] sources).

 

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Gershon Galil’s Persperctive on the ceramic inscription from Jerusalem

Gershon Galil’s Perspective on the Ceramic Inscription from Jerusalem

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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.

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

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