Friday, January 15, 2010

Rollston on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

THE KHIRBET QEIYAFA OSTRACON HYPE is taken down a notch or three by epigrapher Christopher Rollston in his blog post Reflections on the Qeiyafa Ostracon. It could be earlier than the tenth century; it's in Early Alphabetic/Proto-Phoenician script, not Old Hebrew; the only-attested-in-Hebrew words aren't; the scribe was not terribly sophisticated; Rollston isn't ready to say what he thinks it says but he doesn't think it will turn out to be startling; and he's not even sure in which direction the script runs.

Background here.