Category: Literacy and writing

Apologies

My apologies for the lack of recent posts. A combination of some busy committee assignments, a public lecture (just finished today), an unexpected grant proposal deadline, an unusually-busy reference letter writing season, and getting the book off to the publisher have occupied my days to an insane degree. Things should calm down over Thanksgiving and I will have some longer posts next week.

For now though, since it’s floating around the blogosphere, I wanted to draw your attention to the Atlas of True Names, which presents place-names by giving their etymology in English (e.g. “Hillfort” for London or “Sibling Love” for Philadelphia or just “Strait” for Detroit). It can be trite, and the etymologies themselves can be questioned. What I find most fascinating (as a Tolkienophile of some decades) is that they use the toponymy of Middle-Earth as an explicit model justifying the aesthetic quality of the enterprise. For me the most compelling aspects of Tolkien’s nomenclature were the untranslated Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdûl, and Adûnaic (among others), whereas formations like ‘Mirkwood’ were merely passably interesting. I freely admit that my old copy of Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-Earth quickly became so worn that I had to discard it a couple of years ago after years of abuse.

All of which reminds me of a sad story that I should get off my chest. In my first term at McGill I taught a class on the anthropology of writing systems and literacy, the last week of which was left open for student-directed topics, and the members of the seminar wanted to study constructed scripts, so I gave them a little piece to read on Tengwar (Elvish) and another on Klingon. But on the day we were to discuss those readings, I learned just hours before class that my mentor Bruce Trigger had passed away, and so I cancelled that class, which remains untaught to this day.

Semitic Luwians and other hybrids

After my complaining yesterday, my wife Julia Pope pointed me in the direction of a fascinating article by John Noble Wilford in the New York Times yesterday about the discovery of a stele (inscribed monument) at the site of Zincirli (known as Sam’al in antiquity) in southeastern Turkey. It was found this past summer during the excavations at Zincirli directed by David Schloen at the Oriental Institute, and will be discussed at the American Schools of Oriental Research / Society for Biblical Literature meetings which begin tomorrow in Boston.

The stele dates to the 8th century BCE, and suggests the existence of cultural hybridization between Luwians (Anatolian Indo-Europeans, speakers of a language related to Hittite) and Aramaeans (Semitic-speakers from the Levant). The stele contains Luwian personal names, but the script is Phoenician-Aramaic and records a language that the translator calls Sam’alian, but which is basically an archaic form of Aramaic. We have known for over a century that Zincirli was a major border region where cultural contact took place, but this is pretty good textual evidence that shows that speakers of Indo-European languages were using Semitic languages and writing systems for mortuary purposes (rather than merely for trading purposes, for instance).

And unlike the Shaanxi oracle bones or the paleo-Hebrew ostracon, in this news article we have a very interesting partial translation by Dennis Pardee at Chicago: “I, Kuttamuwa, servant of [the king] Panamuwa, am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it in an eternal chamber [?] and established a feast at this chamber: a bull for [the god] Hadad, a ram for [the god] Shamash and a ram for my soul that is in this stele.” One of the more interesting features is the use of the phrase ‘my soul that is in this stele’ – this is decidedly unusual for the Near East, to conceive of a soul separate from the body, entombed in stone. No tomb and no mortuary remains have been found at or near the stele, but its iconography depicts a man receiving offerings of food and drink, as is further suggested from the inscription. Whether this actually represents a previously-unidentified religious tradition, no one can say for sure, but the evidence is suggestive.

Although there are no numerals on the stele, I am quite enthused about this find as it relates to my research. I have thought for some years that the Hittite-Luwian written numerals may have played some role in inspiring the Aramaic-Phoenician numerical system that emerged in the 8th century BCE. The earliest numerical inscription ever described as Aramaic is on an 8th century ostracon from Tell Qasile, in which the numeral 30 is expressed as three horizontal strokes ( ≡ ), each stroke with the value of 10 (Lemaire 1977: 280). This is the representation found regularly in Luwian inscriptions (Hawkins 1986). However, it is not the normal form used in later Aramaic inscriptions, where the standard representation would be two horizontal strokes followed by a single stroke: written right to left, roughly -=).

But this isn’t a particularly strong argument, and I don’t make a great deal of this similarity in my forthcoming book – one artifact does not make an absolute case for a cultural borrowing, especially not when the ‘borrowing’ is simply the use of horizontal strokes for 10. The traditional wisdom is that while Anatolian Indo-European speakers received a lot of cultural influence from Mesopotamia and the Levant, their representational systems (writing systems, numerals, etc.) were quite distinct. However, given this new stele, if it turns out that contact between Anatolia and the Levant was greater than we previously anticipated, a Luwian borrowing becomes more strongly supported. I look forward to seeing the publication that will surely emerge from this work, and will keep you updated.

Works cited
Hawkins, J.D. 1986. Writing in Anatolia: imported and indigenous systems. World Archaeology 17(3): 363-375.
Lemaire, André. 1977. Inscriptions hébraiques, vol. 1. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Shaanxi oracle bones

A recent China Daily news story reports on the discovery of inscribed oracle bones (jiǎgǔpiàn) in Shaanxi province, dating to the Zhou dynasty (11th – 7th centuries BCE). Over the past few months inscriptions have been found comprising over 1100 characters in total. (As in modern Chinese writing, each character is roughly the equivalent of a single lexical unit, most often what we would call a word).

Apparently 1100 characters is a ‘new record’, whatever that means. Does anyone else find it odd that so much attention is being paid to the number of characters found? It’s reminiscent of the sort of student (thankfully, rare) who uses word count as a proxy for paper quality when arguing a grade: “But sir, I have 5000 words! How did I get a C?”

I’m also struck by the similarity between this report and my last post on the 10th century BCE Israelite (Hebrew?) inscription. In both cases, the presence of writing (and in this case, the quantity) is seen as being informative on the nature and context of literacy, and the presence of the word for ‘king’ is seen as particularly noteworthy. In this case, however, the Zhou dynasty is several centuries (at minimum) into the history of Chinese writing, and there is no question that the Zhou state was politically and socially complex, featuring high degrees of social stratification. Hey, I understand that archaeologists spend a lot of time looking for exciting stuff like this, and inevitably you want to tell us all about it. But just once, couldn’t we have a news report that talks in detail about the content of the writing and the context of the inscription?

Early Hebrew writing

Over the past couple of weeks there have been a number of news stories about the discovery of a new ostracon (pottery shard) from the site of Khirbet Qeiyafa southwest of Jerusalem, bearing five lines of text that have been identified as ‘Hebrew’. The ostracon was dated (through association with burnt olive pits that could be radiocarbon dated) to around 1050-970 BCE, right around where the traditional timeline puts the Biblical King David. The site is a large fortified urban one, and is located in the Valley of Elah, where it is said that David slew Goliath. If the date holds, and if the claim that this is ‘Hebrew’ writing is confirmed, then this would represent the earliest Hebrew writing known to date.

As a teacher I’ve often found it useful to present news reports to students, and ask them how they would evaluate evidence like this in light of what they already know, or to ask what further questions they would want answered before being satisfied. Because most of us (including most scholars) never go any further than the news reports, and because these reports often precede by months or even years the publication of peer-reviewed material, it’s vital to be able to evaluate this material in terms of its implications for archaeology and epigraphy. So what do we know, and how do we evaluate it?

To start with, let’s collect some articles on the subject, which will constitute our body of evidence:
BBC News, 10/30/2008
Associated Press, 10/30/2008
Mail Online, 10/31/2008
Reuters, 10/30/2008
Telegraph, 10/31/2008
New York Times, 10/30/2008

– There are no published results yet, but that’s not unusual in ancient Near Eastern archaeology, which has a fairly conservative perspective on the pace of peer review, but this is a situation where one could get scooped at any moment, so announcing a find early, to be followed up by potentially years of peer review, is not unusual in this area.

– Dating by association is a well-established archaeological technique: if two artifacts are found in the same layer, they are likely of similar age. I have no reason to think the date is off in this case, but we need to recognize right off the top that if the olive pits and the shard ended up in the same layer for reasons other than that they were deposited at around the same time, the date could be way off.

– It is true that this ostracon predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by up to 1000 years, if the dating is right. True, but irrelevant. The Dead Sea Scrolls are frequently invoked in reporting on biblical archaeology as a benchmark for ‘really old Bible stuff’, but in this case, it gives the misleading impression that what has been found is a lot older than other paleo-Hebrew writings, which is simply not the case. The Gezer calendar, which dates to perhaps 925-900 BCE (based on the paleographic style of the text), is the next oldest well-attested Hebrew inscription and is one of many, many paleo-Hebrew texts from the Iron Age in the Levant. This new find extends the history of the script back another 50-75 years, which is interesting – but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the DSS.

– The claim that this would be the ‘earliest Hebrew writing’ is true but isn’t exactly saying what you think. There are any number of other inscriptions in Semitic languages from this period – for instance, there are Phoenician inscriptions from Byblos dating to around 1000 BCE. The text on the ostracon is apparently in Proto-Canaanite script, of which most of our exemplars are from the late Bronze Age (i.e., around 1500-1000 BCE), used to write any number of ancient Semitic languages, as the BBC article notes. So the script itself is not particularly unusual for the period, and doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

– And this brings us to a significant issue: the ostracon hasn’t been deciphered yet. So how do we know it’s Hebrew? Well, the BBC tells us, “Preliminary investigations since the shard was found in July have deciphered some words, including judge, slave and king.” and that “Lead archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel identified it as Hebrew because of a three-letter verb meaning “to do” which he said was only used in Hebrew.” This is significant because it identifies the language as Hebrew as opposed to something earlier. This one word on an as-yet incompletely-deciphered ostracon is being used to assert that the writer was a speaker of Hebrew, therefore an Israelite, and therefore that this provides evidence for the Kingdom of Israel in David’s time (e.g. the early 10th century BCE). But we would do well to remember that this is very preliminary stuff. Also bear in mind that our corpus of proto-Canaanite writings is small enough that it is impossible to know whether this form of “to do” was only used in Hebrew, or whether it could have been used in earlier Semitic languages as well.

– The claim is being made by several sources that this ostracon provides evidence for the historicity of King David. Not so. Rather, the claim is that the fact that there is such early writing demonstrates a high level of social complexity and a system of scribal education at the period. If true, this would tend to confirm that there was a large state in Israel in the 10th century BCE, and if one wished to associate that with the Biblical David, one could choose to do so without contradicting the evidence. The presence of words like ‘judge’ and ‘king’ in the text (if confirmed) would provide support for this position from within the text. This stands in opposition to the theory that the Israelites were more egalitarian and disunified at this period, as suggested by the heretofore pretty scanty record from the 10th century. If the latter were true, the Old Testament account would be open to more serious scrutiny; this new find doesn’t confirm the validity of anything Biblical, but rather doesn’t disconfirm it. And remember, this is one ostracon only, not an archive or even a small collection – so we have little idea of what it means. Rollston (2006), who is generally supportive of the argument that there was significant scribal education in Iron Age Israel, discusses many of the complexities behind inferring widespread literacy from the epigraphic/paleographic record.

– On the same topic: Hello, journalists? Could I make a suggestion? Just because you are writing an article about Iron Age Israel and a purported connection with King David does not mean you have to invoke Goliath. Seriously. Especially you, Daily Mail, for citing this undeciphered clay shard as evidence that David actually slew Goliath. At least the Telegraph just presents the theory that the David-Goliath story is a metaphor for Israelite-Philistine conflict at the period.

– One thing that is hardly mentioned is that the ostracon is the longest text in proto-Canaanite script yet attested. This could have important implications for our understanding of the script, once the inscription is read completely. Moreover, once it is read thoroughly, the paleographic letter-forms may actually tell us quite a bit about the date of the inscription, which could tend to confirm or refute the radiocarbon date.

– It would be a mistake to ignore the implications for the historicity of the Iron Age Kingdom of Israel for modern national conceptions and ethnic identity in contemporary Israel. The idea that 3000 years ago, there was a strong, militarily powerful unified kingdom of Israelites in that area has enormous symbolic appeal, and is one of the more controversial issues in contemporary Levantine archaeology. This issue was behind the debate over the tenure case of Nadia Abu El Haj at Barnard/Columbia a couple of years back, centrally concerned with her book, Facts on the Ground (Abu el Haj 2001).

In general, though, the presentation of the data is pretty good and the context of the discussion is generally sane. We have a lot still to learn, and I look forward to seeing the publication of the text in the hopefully not-too-distant future.

Nadia Abu El Haj (2001). Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Rollston, Christopher A. 2006. Scribal education in ancient Israel: the Old Hebrew epigraphic evidence. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344: 47-74.

Translation follies

This BBC News story has been making the rounds on various blogs, but in case you haven’t seen it:

Officials in Swansea, Wales, UK, emailed a translator, requesting a Welsh translation for a bilingual road sign that in English reads:

No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.

Unfortunately, the emailed response they got was:

Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu.

which apparently translates to ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.’

Oops. (see also this example from Language Log)

The linguistic situation in Wales is fascinating due to a strong linguistic resurgence related to Welsh national identity.  Although Welsh has never been an endangered language (certain parts of it have a majority of Welsh speakers), it is spoken to widely different degrees in different regions.  But by regulation, all road signs in Wales are supposed to be bilingual, creating a huge market for translation. (This stands in direct contrast to my former home province of Quebec, where bilingual public signs are forbidden – they must be in French only).   While Swansea is relatively anglophone (only 13% of the city’s inhabitants are fluent in Welsh, according to 2001 census data), the rule applies nonetheless.  Whether bilingual public signage actually provides support for language retention is an open and very interesting question, but at the very least it reflects a changing language ideology in the region in favour of Welsh.

Another set of interesting issue around this mistranslation is raised in the comments on the Language Log post.   Bob Moore wonders, “I am left wondering who this automated reply could possibly be intended for. Since virtually all Welsh speakers also speak English, surely this person’s clients are mainly English speakers who do not speak Welsh. But those are exactly the folks who would not understand the message.”  Bill Poser suggests that it is possible that a Welsh linguistic nationalist would have a monolingual Welsh auto-reply as an expression of identity (a situation that would be quite familiar to anyone who has spent any time in Montreal).   However, a couple of other respondents point out that perhaps the auto-reply was bilingual, but that the hapless recipient took the English to be the auto-reply part of the message, and then understood the Welsh part to be the actual translation.