Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions

The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions,^[3] are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the society and history of the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, pottery ostraca, ornaments, and range from simple names to full texts.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7] The older inscriptions form a Canaanite–Aramaic dialect continuum, exemplified by writings which scholars have struggled to fit into either category, such as the Stele of Zakkur and the Deir Alla Inscription.^[8]^[9]^[10]^[11]

The Northwest Semitic languages are a language group that contains the Aramaic language, as well as the Canaanite languages including Phoenician and Hebrew.

^ Lehmann, Reinhard G. [in German] (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 427. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter: 209–266. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Alas, all these were either late or Punic, and came from Cyprus, from the ruins of Kition, from Malta, Sardinia, Athens, and Carthage, but not yet from the Phoenician homeland. The first Phoenician text as such was found as late as 1855, the Eshmunazor sarcophagus inscription from Sidon.
^ Turner, William Wadden (1855-07-03). The Sidon Inscription. p. 259. Its interest is greater both on this account and as being the first inscription properly so-called that has yet been found in Phoenicia proper, which had previously furnished only some coins and an inscribed gem. It is also the longest inscription hitherto discovered, that of Marseilles—which approaches it the nearest in the form of its characters, the purity of its language, and its extent — consisting of but 21 lines and fragments of lines.
^ Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. 1961. Seit dem Erscheinen von Mark Lidzbarskis "Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik" (1898) und G. A. Cooke's "Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions" (1903) ist es bis zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt nicht wieder unternommen worden, das nordwestsemitische In schriftenmaterial gesammelt und kommentiert herauszugeben, um es Forschern und Stu denten zugänglich zu machen.... Um diesem Desideratum mit Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse von Forschung und Lehre abzu helfen, legen wir hiermit unter dem Titel "Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften" (KAI) eine Auswahl aus dem gesamten Bestände der einschlägigen Texte vor {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
^ Mark Woolmer (ed.). "Phoenician: A Companion to Ancient Phoenicia". A Companion to Ancient Phoenicia, ed. Mark Woolmer: 4. Altogether, the known Phoenician texts number nearly seven thousand. The majority of these were collected in three volumes constituting the first part of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (CIS), begun in 1867 under the editorial direction of the famous French scholar Ernest Renan (1823–1892), continued by J.-B. Chabot and concluded in 1962 by James G. Février. The CIS corpus includes 176 "Phoenician" inscriptions and 5982 "Punic" inscriptions (see below on these labels).^{[self-published source?]}
^ Parker, Heather Dana Davis; Rollston, Christopher A. (2019). "Teaching Epigraphy in the Digital Age". In Hamidović, David; Clivaz, Claire; Savant, Sarah Bowen (eds.). Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture. pp. 189–216. doi:10.1163/9789004399297_011. ISBN 978-90-04-39929-7. JSTOR 10.1163/j.ctvrxk44t.14. S2CID 182624532. p. 190: Of course, Donner and Röllig's three-volume handbook entitled KAI has been the gold standard for five decades now
^ Suder, Robert W. (1984). Hebrew Inscriptions: A Classified Bibliography. Susquehanna University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-941664-01-1.
^ Doak, Brian R. (2019-08-26). The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean. Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-19-049934-1. Most estimates place it at around ten thousand texts. Texts that are either formulaic or extremely short constitute the vast majority of the evidence.
^ Kaufman, Stephen A. (1986). "The Pitfalls of Typology: On the Early History of the Alphabet". Hebrew Union College Annual. 57: 1–14. JSTOR 23507690.
^ McCarter Jr., P. Kyle (1 January 1991). "The Dialect of the Deir Alla Texts". In Jacob Hoftijzer and Gerrit Van der Kooij (ed.). The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Leiden, 21–24 August 1989. BRILL. pp. 87–. ISBN 90-04-09317-6. It may be appropriate to observe at this point that students of the Northwest Semitic languages seem to be becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the usefulness of the Canaanite-Aramaic distinction for categorizing features found in texts from the Persian Period and earlier. A careful reevaluation of the binary organization of the Northwest Semitic family seems now to be underway. The study of the Deir 'Alla texts is one of the principal things prompting this reevaluation, and this may be counted as one of the very positive results of our work on these texts… the evidence of the Zakkur inscription is crucial, because it shows that the breakdown is not along Aramaic-Canaanite lines. Instead, the Deir 'Alla dialect sides with Hebrew, Moabite, and the language spoken by Zakkur (the dialect of Hamath or neighboring Lu'ath) against Phoenician and the majority of Old Aramaic dialects.
^ KAUFMAN, STEPHEN A. (1985). "המיון של הדיאלקטים השמיים הצפוניים-מערביים מתקופת המקרא" [THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE NORTH WEST SEMITIC DIALECTS OF THE BIBLICAL PERIOD AND SOME IMPLICATIONS THEREOF]. Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies. ט: 41–57. JSTOR 23529398. The very term "Canaanite" is meaningful only vis-a-vis something else – i.e. Aramaic, and, as we shall see, each new epigraphic discovery of the early first millennium seems to contribute further evidence that the division between Canaanite and Aramaic cannot be traced back any distance into the second millennium and that the term "Canaanite," in a linguistic as opposed to an ethnic sense, is irrelevant for the Late Bronze Age. Ugaritic is a rather peripheral member of the Late Bronze Age proto-Canaanite-Aramaic dialect continuum, a dead-end branch of NW Semitic, without known descendants. Our inability to reach a universally acceptable decision on the classification of Ugaritic is by no means due only to our less than total knowledge of the language. As witnessed by the case of the Ethiopian dialects studied by Hetzron, even when we do have access to relatively complete information, classification is by no means a certain thing. How much more so, then, in the case of dialects attached in a few short, broken inscriptions! The dialect of ancient Samal has been the parade example of such a case within the NW Semitic realm. Friedrich argued long and hard for its independent status; of late, however, a consensus seems to have developed that Samalian is Aramaic, albeit of an unusual variety. The achievement of such a consensus is due in no small part to the ongoing recognition of the dialectal diversity within Aramaic at periods much earlier than previously considered, a recognition largely due to the work of our main speaker, Prof. J.C. Greenfield. When we tum to the dialect of the language of the plaster texts from Deir 'Alla, however, scholarly agreement is much less easy to perceive. The texts were published as Aramaic, or at least Aramaic with a question mark, a classification to which other scholars have lent their support. The savants of Jerusalem, on the other hand, seem to be agreed that the language of Deir 'Alla is Canaanite – perhaps even Ammonite. Now frankly I have never been much interested in classification. My own approach has always been rather open-ended. If a new language appears in Gilead in the 8th century or so, looks somewhat like Aramaic to its North, Ammonite and Moabite to its South, and Hebrew to its West (that is to say: it looks exactly like any rational person would expect it to look like) and is clearly neither ancestor nor immediate descendant of any other known NW Semitic language that we know, why not simply say it is Gileadite and be done with it? Anyone can look at a map and see that Deir 'Alla is closer to Rabbat Ammon than it is to Damascus, Samaria or Jerusalem, but that doesn't a priori make it Ammonite. Why must we try to squeeze new evidence into cubbyholes designed on the basis of old evidence?
^ Garr, W. Randall (2004). "The Dialectal Continuum of Syria-Palestine". Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E. Eisenbrauns. pp. 205–. ISBN 978-1-57506-091-0.

[Lehmann2-1] Lehmann, Reinhard G. [in German] (2013). "Wilhelm Gesenius and the Rise of Phoenician Philology" (PDF). Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. 427. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter: 209–266. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2015-04-08. Alas, all these were either late or Punic, and came from Cyprus, from the ruins of Kition, from Malta, Sardinia, Athens, and Carthage, but not yet from the Phoenician homeland. The first Phoenician text as such was found as late as 1855, the Eshmunazor sarcophagus inscription from Sidon.

[Turner-2] Turner, William Wadden (1855-07-03). The Sidon Inscription. p. 259. Its interest is greater both on this account and as being the first inscription properly so-called that has yet been found in Phoenicia proper, which had previously furnished only some coins and an inscribed gem. It is also the longest inscription hitherto discovered, that of Marseilles—which approaches it the nearest in the form of its characters, the purity of its language, and its extent — consisting of but 21 lines and fragments of lines.

[3] Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften. 1961. Seit dem Erscheinen von Mark Lidzbarskis "Handbuch der Nordsemitischen Epigraphik" (1898) und G. A. Cooke's "Text-Book of North-Semitic Inscriptions" (1903) ist es bis zum gegenwärtigen Zeitpunkt nicht wieder unternommen worden, das nordwestsemitische In schriftenmaterial gesammelt und kommentiert herauszugeben, um es Forschern und Stu denten zugänglich zu machen.... Um diesem Desideratum mit Rücksicht auf die Bedürfnisse von Forschung und Lehre abzu helfen, legen wir hiermit unter dem Titel "Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften" (KAI) eine Auswahl aus dem gesamten Bestände der einschlägigen Texte vor {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)

[Woolmer-4] Mark Woolmer (ed.). "Phoenician: A Companion to Ancient Phoenicia". A Companion to Ancient Phoenicia, ed. Mark Woolmer: 4. Altogether, the known Phoenician texts number nearly seven thousand. The majority of these were collected in three volumes constituting the first part of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (CIS), begun in 1867 under the editorial direction of the famous French scholar Ernest Renan (1823–1892), continued by J.-B. Chabot and concluded in 1962 by James G. Février. The CIS corpus includes 176 "Phoenician" inscriptions and 5982 "Punic" inscriptions (see below on these labels).^{[self-published source?]}

[5] Parker, Heather Dana Davis; Rollston, Christopher A. (2019). "Teaching Epigraphy in the Digital Age". In Hamidović, David; Clivaz, Claire; Savant, Sarah Bowen (eds.). Ancient Manuscripts in Digital Culture. pp. 189–216. doi:10.1163/9789004399297_011. ISBN 978-90-04-39929-7. JSTOR 10.1163/j.ctvrxk44t.14. S2CID 182624532. p. 190: Of course, Donner and Röllig's three-volume handbook entitled KAI has been the gold standard for five decades now

[Suder1984-6] Suder, Robert W. (1984). Hebrew Inscriptions: A Classified Bibliography. Susquehanna University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-941664-01-1.

[Doak2019-7] Doak, Brian R. (2019-08-26). The Oxford Handbook of the Phoenician and Punic Mediterranean. Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-0-19-049934-1. Most estimates place it at around ten thousand texts. Texts that are either formulaic or extremely short constitute the vast majority of the evidence.

[8] Kaufman, Stephen A. (1986). "The Pitfalls of Typology: On the Early History of the Alphabet". Hebrew Union College Annual. 57: 1–14. JSTOR 23507690.

[HoftijzerKooij1991-9] McCarter Jr., P. Kyle (1 January 1991). "The Dialect of the Deir Alla Texts". In Jacob Hoftijzer and Gerrit Van der Kooij (ed.). The Balaam Text from Deir ʻAlla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium Held at Leiden, 21–24 August 1989. BRILL. pp. 87–. ISBN 90-04-09317-6. It may be appropriate to observe at this point that students of the Northwest Semitic languages seem to be becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the usefulness of the Canaanite-Aramaic distinction for categorizing features found in texts from the Persian Period and earlier. A careful reevaluation of the binary organization of the Northwest Semitic family seems now to be underway. The study of the Deir 'Alla texts is one of the principal things prompting this reevaluation, and this may be counted as one of the very positive results of our work on these texts… the evidence of the Zakkur inscription is crucial, because it shows that the breakdown is not along Aramaic-Canaanite lines. Instead, the Deir 'Alla dialect sides with Hebrew, Moabite, and the language spoken by Zakkur (the dialect of Hamath or neighboring Lu'ath) against Phoenician and the majority of Old Aramaic dialects.

[10] KAUFMAN, STEPHEN A. (1985). "המיון של הדיאלקטים השמיים הצפוניים-מערביים מתקופת המקרא" [THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE NORTH WEST SEMITIC DIALECTS OF THE BIBLICAL PERIOD AND SOME IMPLICATIONS THEREOF]. Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies. ט: 41–57. JSTOR 23529398. The very term "Canaanite" is meaningful only vis-a-vis something else – i.e. Aramaic, and, as we shall see, each new epigraphic discovery of the early first millennium seems to contribute further evidence that the division between Canaanite and Aramaic cannot be traced back any distance into the second millennium and that the term "Canaanite," in a linguistic as opposed to an ethnic sense, is irrelevant for the Late Bronze Age. Ugaritic is a rather peripheral member of the Late Bronze Age proto-Canaanite-Aramaic dialect continuum, a dead-end branch of NW Semitic, without known descendants. Our inability to reach a universally acceptable decision on the classification of Ugaritic is by no means due only to our less than total knowledge of the language. As witnessed by the case of the Ethiopian dialects studied by Hetzron, even when we do have access to relatively complete information, classification is by no means a certain thing. How much more so, then, in the case of dialects attached in a few short, broken inscriptions! The dialect of ancient Samal has been the parade example of such a case within the NW Semitic realm. Friedrich argued long and hard for its independent status; of late, however, a consensus seems to have developed that Samalian is Aramaic, albeit of an unusual variety. The achievement of such a consensus is due in no small part to the ongoing recognition of the dialectal diversity within Aramaic at periods much earlier than previously considered, a recognition largely due to the work of our main speaker, Prof. J.C. Greenfield. When we tum to the dialect of the language of the plaster texts from Deir 'Alla, however, scholarly agreement is much less easy to perceive. The texts were published as Aramaic, or at least Aramaic with a question mark, a classification to which other scholars have lent their support. The savants of Jerusalem, on the other hand, seem to be agreed that the language of Deir 'Alla is Canaanite – perhaps even Ammonite. Now frankly I have never been much interested in classification. My own approach has always been rather open-ended. If a new language appears in Gilead in the 8th century or so, looks somewhat like Aramaic to its North, Ammonite and Moabite to its South, and Hebrew to its West (that is to say: it looks exactly like any rational person would expect it to look like) and is clearly neither ancestor nor immediate descendant of any other known NW Semitic language that we know, why not simply say it is Gileadite and be done with it? Anyone can look at a map and see that Deir 'Alla is closer to Rabbat Ammon than it is to Damascus, Samaria or Jerusalem, but that doesn't a priori make it Ammonite. Why must we try to squeeze new evidence into cubbyholes designed on the basis of old evidence?

[Garr2004-11] Garr, W. Randall (2004). "The Dialectal Continuum of Syria-Palestine". Dialect Geography of Syria-Palestine, 1000-586 B.C.E. Eisenbrauns. pp. 205–. ISBN 978-1-57506-091-0.

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