ByrneRefuge

1

introduction

t is an axiom of bureaucracy that institutionsare easier to destroy than institutional cultures.The cuneiform and linear alphabetic writing sys-

tems coexisted in Palestine during the Late BronzeAge. While cuneiform probably did not survive asa dominant medium in the region past the 12th cen-tury

b.c.e.

, linear alphabetic continued its develop-ment apace from the early second millennium throughits Phoenician refinement and customized variegationvia derivative, so-called nationalized scripts. The OldCanaanite alphabet was just coming into its own inthe Iron I Levant while cuneiform was eclipsing there.We have little way of knowing for certain whether orhow the “institutional culture” of cuneiform writing,i.e., the scribal culture, relates to its counterpart cul-ture of alphabetic writing. It is easy but dangerous topresume that all intelligentsias are kindred, a consid-eration that hamstrings any claim that the Iron I prac-titioners of linear alphabetic were the direct heirs ofCanaan’s cuneiform scribal culture; the alphabet had

its own Late Bronze tradents. This paper intends toexplore (1) how evidence for variant curricula mayinform the impact of institutionalism on script stan-dardization, (2) whether curricular patterns in theextant cuneiform and alphabetic corpora bear signif-icance for the relationship between their respectivescribal cultures, (3) the distinction between the pos-sible and applied uses of writing as a technology(i.e., writing’s “social location”), and (4) how thescribal trade survived at the margins of the decentral-ized political economy of Iron I Palestine.

Adding yet another peg to a base and baselesstautology, we might regard the southern Levant dur-ing Iron Age I as a kind of historical black hole.

1

Theclaim is base, because it pays obeisance to historicalarchaeologies that privilege texts over artifacts, which

1

Miller (2005: xiii) toys with the term “Dark Ages” as a subtlejab at the scholarly hurry to transition the Israelites from nomad-ism to monarchy (see Finkelstein and Naªaman 1994), while hislarger thesis treats with the Iron I material as profitable dataafforded the cultural historian.

The Refuge of Scribalismin Iron I Palestine

Ryan Byrne

Department of Religious StudiesRhodes College

2000 North ParkwayMemphis, TN [email protected]

The standardization of scribal products often admits of institutional patronage.Scribal variegation, on the other hand, sometimes suggests the decentralization of spon-sorship or commission. As both a craft and a technology, writing had restricted culturalfunctions in the ancient Near East. These cultural particulars speak to the agency ofpolitical programs to foster refinement and systemic customization. Where and how didscribes in Canaan ply their trade in the political interregnum between the ebb of cunei-form and the rise of the Iron II states? A survey of the early linear alphabetic corpussuggests that this medium largely appealed to prestige interests before the Iron II statesharnessed its potential and instrumentalized its professionals. Elite posturing offeredrefuge to scribes on the periphery of the Iron I political economy. Scribal curricula mayhold clues touching on the relationships between institutions and technological refine-ment, between the cognitive potential of technology and its cultural application, andbetween the respective scribal intelligentsias of cuneiform and the linear alphabet.

I

2

ryan byrne

BASOR 345

are tacitly deemed meaningless when no meaningarises that is appreciable to modern symbolic orders.

2

The claim is baseless, because scholarship is awashin archaeological data and published databases thatflow only to the limits set by those historians askingthe questions.

3

It is fair to note, however, that theepigraphic corpus from Iron I to Iron IIA Palestine isdramatically smaller and less informative than theregional corpora of Bronze Age cuneiform and theIron IIB Old Hebrew inscriptions.

4

A writing system is a technology that accrues cul-tural merit as practical and creative applications ap-pear to accommodate its potential. There is typicallya cooperative relationship between the proliferationor development of a writing system and the politicalinstitutions that act as apparatus both for its systemiccultivation and chances to survive in the archaeo-logical record as representative rather than anoma-lous examples of practice. Seth Sanders (2004) hasrecently made such an argument for the refinementand maturation of the Ugaritic writing system as astate-sponsored technology, for example, and he ex-tends this model to synthesize the intertwined rise ofLevantine petty states and so-called national scripts.One incumbent charge of the nascent state is the in-doctrination of its subjects into a political commu-nity with sentiments of singular identity. The state’sreified penumbra—on the ground and in the mind—is largely a product of the propaganda embedded inthe political landscape (Smith 2003) and exploitationof language (Anderson 1991). The control of infor-mation through scribal implements epitomizes the

state’s many means to impose a rhetorical semblanceof unity over a “hierarchy of rights,” viz. the author-ity to expropriate from others. In the case of Moab,Routledge (2004: 140–61) understands the Mesha In-scription (

KAI

181) as one of the state’s primary me-dia of self-substantiation. Segmented communitiesbecome “Moab” by tautology. To a largely nonliter-ate community, writing may also serve as an instru-ment of intimidation. William Schniedewind (2004)has recently characterized writing in ancient Israel asa projection of state power. We cannot ascertain thesubaltern effects of the weird, unfathomable devicesof manipulative elites, but the

intent

to condition aresponse is clear in the lapidary medium and otherepigraphic affectations of status.

5

the iron i scribe’s

raison d’e

fl

tre

The decentralized political economy of the IronAge I–IIA stands in sharp contrast to that of itsbookend archaeological periods. The Late BronzeAge witnesses a vibrant era of internationalism withrespect both to material culture and the intangibleelements of cultural exchange. Maritime and over-land trade, imperial expansionism, vassalage, andepigraphic diplomacy manifest in abundant archaeo-logical remains, which in turn illustrate the physicalscope of the rich intellectual, political, and religiousdiscourses of cross-cultural contact. The Iron Age IIBabsorbs the unmistakable archaeological imprint ofself-conscious, self-evident petty states with logisti-cal sophistication domestically and commercial ex-posure abroad. These two archaeological periods alsoshare in common the deposition of epigraphic corporaquite unlike the finds from the Iron I–IIA interreg-num. Epigraphy can speak of Late Bronze and Iron IIscribal cultures, respectively cuneiform and alpha-betic, with some self-assuredness. Between these in-stitutional cultures, however, lies a chasm through

2

See Moreland 2001 on the traditional dominance of logocen-trism in the dialectic between archaeology and historiography.

3

See the synthetic studies of Bloch-Smith and Nakhai 1999;and Miller 2005. Raw survey data of immense import appear inFinkelstein and Lederman 1997; Zertal 2004; and now Miller’s(2002) comprehensive inventory of highland Iron I sites. Surveydata alone do not provide consistently reliable pictures of settle-ment, however. Because they entail controlled excavation, salvageexpeditions provide better data for large-scale distributive models(Faust and Safrai 2005).

4

For a comprehensive review of the second-millennium cu-neiform corpus, see the recent treatments of Horowitz, Oshima,and Sanders 2002; 2006. This inventory includes a full list of tab-lets, tentative identification by genre, and a generous bibliographyof

editios princeps

and secondary studies. Supplement with Wil-helm 1983; and Black 1992 (cf. von Dassow’s fuller geographicperspective [2004: 643, n. 4]). The volumes edited by Dobbs-Allsopp et al. (2005) and Davies (1991; 2004) represent the mostrecent efforts to compile a comprehensive corpus of Iron Age ep-igraphs in Old Hebrew.

5

I emphasize elite

intent

in acknowledgment of the inscru-table factors of circumlocution and negative feedback. Politicalpropaganda need not find purchase exactly as intended. UnlikeSchniedewind, epigraphers should distinguish between the elitecharacterization of writing as numinous and the auditor’s defer-ence to this characterization. Writing is not inherently mantic, norcan we assume a primitivist worldview in which some mantic de-scriptors from the Near East confer upon all ancient audiencesan uncritical submission to preternatural claims made on behalfof text. As Lévi-Strauss cautions (1973: 296–97), even the newly“literate” may understand the subtleties of textual farce.

2007 THE REFUGE OF SCRIBALISM 3

which echo two questions about the scribal profes-sion. What functions does an Iron I scribe perform?Who is the Iron I scribe’s clientele?

The best evidence for a supraregional politicaleconomy is Megiddo’s Stratum VI trade in Nile perchand possibly flints.

6

These industries could indicatefar-reaching exchange, but the evidence is equivocal.By virtue of its geographic location, however, Me-giddo parades a disproportionately cosmopolitan ma-terial culture in nearly every archaeological period.

7

The lowland, arterial sites (i.e., those in coastal plainsand inland-reaching valley depressions) traditionallybenefit from easier topographic access, and so it doesnot surprise us to find relative affluence at an Iron Isite like Tel Hadar (Kochavi 1993) on the eastern bendof the Beth-Shean corridor.

8

Petrographic analysisindicates that some collared-rim jars traveled a dis-tance, which Ilan (1999: 195–99) takes for trade infungible contents.

9

In any case, this period exhibitsa steep decline in exchange relationships beyond bal-kanized regions. Miller’s yeoman narrative (2005:45–63) of Iron I highland imports and endogamousexchange exposes what the evidence for agro-pasto-ral subsistence (Hopkins 1985; Rosen 1994) has al-ready implied: most imports do not come from farafield, nor do Egyptian trinkets necessarily denote in-ternationalism in a setting with nearby Egyptian (orEgypto-Canaanite) lowland materials attested as late

as the 1130s.

10

The comparative poverty and isola-tion of this “political economy” places the

centrality

of the Iron I scribe’s relevance in doubt. If scribal culture indeed operated at the periphery

of the dominant modes of consumption and exchange,then it is necessary to consider whether accounts, led-gers, contracts, and letters represented the primaryapplications of the scribal craft. The economic land-scape suggests that Iron I elite culture declined instature on the basis of the conventional archaeologi-cal indicators (status goods and symbols, importedwares, residential structures, and public works). Towhat extent did the services of scribes become a lux-ury to the few who could afford to employ them? Inother words, how does the trade of scribalism surviveand reproduce itself in an environment that pushes itsutility further to the margins of relevance? This re-turns the discussion to the matter of clientele. Unlikethe Late Bronze and Iron II epigraphic corpora, whichreflect the dimensions of state interests, the Iron I evi-dence suggests a culture of scribalism that survivedlargely through circumstantial appeal to elite patron-age. In order to flesh out the vicissitudes in scribal cul-ture from the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age IIB,the discussion now turns to the empirical evidence forthe trajectory toward standardization.

script standardization,

pedagogy, and curricula

Christopher Rollston (1999; forthcoming) hascompleted a comprehensive quantitative palaeo-graphic study of the corpus of stratified Old Hebrewinscriptions from the eighth to sixth century

b.c.e

.The major results of this undertaking include an em-pirical database that favors the development of astandardized, interregional Hebrew script over thefinal two centuries of the Iron Age II. Specifically,the data inflict enormous damage on critiques ofpalaeography that deride the specialty as insensitiveto the natural variations in handwriting that charac-terize even most modern handwritten scripts. Moregenerally, they provide epigraphers with more infor-mation with which to investigate the possible curric-ula that Iron Age scribes used to learn reading andwriting.

6

The abundant flints from Area K might suggest productionfor exchange beyond the immediate vicinity; see Gersht 2006. TheNile perch finds from Stratum VI are ambiguous. Lernau (2000:475–76) infers from the distribution that the fish may have thrivedin the Levant’s coastal rivers. Halpern (2000: 551–52), on theother hand, interprets the perch as long-distance trade markers. Ina subsequent publication, however, Lernau (2006: 493) concedesthat the perch must have been imported from the Nile Valley.

7

Instrumental neutron activation analysis of selected StratumVI ceramics points to a Cypriot vector of origin, further under-scoring Megiddo’s fortune “to benefit from the social and culturalinteraction that transpired between the nascent polities emerging inthe political vacuum of the 11th century

b.c.e.

” (Harrison and Han-cock 2005: 719). The wherewithal of Megiddo’s Stratum VI elites,moreover, pales next to the international assets of Stratum VII orthe regional integration of Strata VA–IVB to IVA.

8

Hadar is not strictly a valley corridor site, but it abuts thenatural topographic vector of inland-penetrating traffic, whethermaterial or intellectual. The Iron IIA extension of this topographicpattern is visible in the relative affluence at Kinneret (Fritz andMünger 2002) and Bethsaida (Arav and Bernett 2000).

9

Others (Esse 1992; Halpern 2000: 554; Faust in press) sug-gest the jars were conveyed in patrilocal dowries. There may besubstance to this interpretation in light of myriad Babylonian mar-riage contracts that specify ceramics as dowered items.

10

Viz., the site of Megiddo, where a Ramses VI cartouche (ca.1140

b.c.e.

) appeared beneath the sealed destruction layer of Stra-tum VIIA; see Weinstein 1992; Ussishkin 1995; Harrison 2004: 9.

4

ryan byrne

BASOR 345

Even the observation of a standardized scriptcutting across regions and centuries does not satisfyquestions about the existence of institutional schoolsor guilds of scribes.

11

Variability in ancient andmodern hands has produced an impasse between thedoubters and true believers of palaeography.

12

Mod-ern writers are sensitive to their own inconsistenciesin penmanship and so naturally suspect the precisionof typological analysis. It is always an uphill en-deavor, however, to analogize with modern anec-dotalism. Ancient scribes were professional writerswith the skill to produce commissioned texts me-thodically as well as the luxury to employ a coarsercursive when opportune. The rising dependence onword processors and the decline in required penman-ship courses in grammar schools have together sav-aged the aesthetics of student handwriting (to saynothing of vernacular orthography’s debt to the spell-check function) in what was never a community ofuniform

professional

hands even before the personalcomputer’s sudden affordability in the late 1980s.The closest approximate modern parallels to earlyalphabetic scribal instruction are draftsmanship cur-ricula prior to the commercial introduction of CADsoftware.

13

This is also an imperfect comparison,but the curricula exhibit kindred graphic austerity,reproduction exercises within registers, and a meth-odological distinction between professional and in-formal hands. Apprentice draftsmen first learned toreproduce the alphabet within a register template.The mastery of this skill permitted the draftsman toaffix a script with uniform size and spacing to hand-drawn architectural blueprints. The critical point isthat a draftsman’s professional hand may differ sub-stantially from his cursive or informal hand, but nevershould the latter characterize a professional docu-ment. Handwritten blueprint text ultimately reflects

the pedagogical austerity of alphabetic transcriptionexercises.

We might also consider the use of the grid systemamong Egyptian artisans in the initial illustration oftomb and monumental paintings. Most relevant hereperhaps is the employment of grid templates to facil-itate proper proportion of both human figures andhieroglyphic accompaniment. The glyphs typicallyadhere to axial registers or baselines. Gay Robins(1994) offers a comprehensive review of the grid sys-tem as an instrument of artisan organizations fromthe Middle Kingdom onward. In numerous examples,one sees instances where the standardization of agraphic product through the use of registers is theresult of coordinated methods of instruction andduplication. This does not necessarily validateIversen’s notion (1975) of a “canon of proportions,”however. Robins (1994: 56) counters with an obser-vation of individualism: “Plainly Egyptian artistswere not working within a rigid, unchangeable sys-tem from which only bad practitioners deviated.”

14

One rather witnesses the practiced hand of a masterartisan who still respects the professionalism of thebaseline.

Rollston (2003: 160–62, 178) observes that in in-stances with a

samek-pe

sequence in a provenancedIron IIB–C Hebrew inscription, there is a consistentpattern with respect to vertical placement.

15

The

samek

always ascends to a height above the regis-ter’s ceiling line, while the

pe

nestles snuggly belowthe left edge of the

samek

’

s lowest crossbar. This isan important detail. While palaeographic analysisoften considers ductus relative to the baseline, lessfrequently does it ruminate on placement patterns ofcharacters relative to each other. There are meaning-ful patterns in this domain that perhaps speak to cur-ricular instruction. There are no deviations from the

samek-pe

sequence in any individual scribe’s hand inHebrew during the eighth to sixth centuries regard-

11

There is still little consensus on the formalization of IronAge schooling; see surveys of evidence and varying scholarlyviews in the works of Rollston (2006), Crenshaw (1998), Lemaire(1981; 1984), Davies (1995), Puech (1988), Haran (1988), Why-bray (1990) and Jamieson-Drake (1991).

12

Respectively representative views find expression in Kauf-man 1986 and Cross 2003: 344–50.

13

Recall specifically the gradual proliferation of CalCompworkstations in the 1970s and AutoCAD software in the early1980s. These and kindred advances essentially destroyed hand-drawn architectural drafting and concomitant training with alpha-betic registers.

14

Compare the comments of Schäfer (1974: 326–34), whoallows for the artisan’s deviation from a “canon of proportions”only for objects other than humans and animals.

15

This pattern overlaps media—the

samek-pe

sequence oc-curs on both ostraca and the Royal Steward Inscription (Rollston2003: 178)—a fact that testifies to the progressive cursive’s influ-ence on the lapidary medium. While the restrictive space of stampseal registers understandably curtails this pattern within the me-dium, there is nevertheless a specimen from Megiddo (Avigad andSass 1997: no. 85); see Rollston 2003: 161, n. 63.


less of region.

16

This graphic relationship, moreover,does not appear (to my knowledge) in the Phoeni-cian, Aramaic, or Transjordanian scripts.

17

I arguethat this juxtaposed letter placement is a memoryreflex of alphabetic transcription. In other words,one imagines a Hebrew abecedary in common usewith a

samek-pe

template that consistently locatesthe

pe

beneath the

samek

’

s crossbars. The abecedaryostensibly functions as a curricular guide for the du-plication of the alphabet (Puech 1988).

18

Epigraphersenvision scribal students writing and rewriting thealphabet as an exercise to gain familiarity and pro-ficiency with the characters, their relative size, andtheir relative placement. This parallels the use oflexical lists from the Sumero-Akkadian curriculumin which duplication is the primary mechanism offamiliarizing the students with the relevant inven-tory of signs (Tinney 1998; Veldhuis 1998; 2004).The popularity of such an abecedary or curricularprimer would account for the uniformity of the

samek-pe

relationship over the course of the eighthto sixth centuries. It would further substantiate theexistence of a

pe-ºayin

Hebrew abecedary in preva-lent (if not dominant) use until (or later than) theclose of the Iron Age. This does not necessarily con-firm the existence of scribal schools as institutions,but it does serve as potent evidence in favor of tra-ditional pedagogical aids.

While the

pe-ºayin

sequence appears at

º

Izbet

S

ar

t

ah (Demsky 1977), Kuntillet

º

Ajrud,

19

and in thebiblical acrostics,

20

the Lachish abecedary (Lemaire1976) bears an

ºayin-pe

sequence in a remedial handwith little control over the baseline. The quality ofthis scribal hand should not be taken outright to sug-gest a poorly learned

pe-ºayin

convention, however.This find may index a genuine pedagogical varia-tion. Haran (1988) has agued that the abecedary it-self need not signify a scribal school, especially inthe light of the find-spots of many such specimens.Haran’s skepticism is confessedly a reaction to thesanguine treatment of Lemaire (1981), who does nothesitate to surmise the existence of a formal schoolat a given archaeological site with the sparsest ofepigraphic evidence.

21

Their impasse seems to con-cern the recovery of schools by syllogism. This syl-logism takes scribal training for scribal schools, thusfurther taking the abecedary as evidence for the lat-ter. This leap is unnecessary. The survival of epi-graphic material indicates an act of qualified literacy,however culturally restricted, which assumes scribaltraining

res ipsa loquitur

. This need not import theanachronism of the school.

The presumption among some West Semitic epig-raphers of formal schooling in a dedicated buildingevidently derives from Kramer’s (1949) once-influ-ential Mesopotamian model and Sjöberg’s (1976)

16

Two incriminating exceptions to the ascendant

samek

arethe Moussaïeff ostraca (Bourdreuil, Israel, and Pardee 1996) andthe Jehoash Inscription, both of which are unprovenanced (hencesuspect a priori) and unmistakable forgeries on countless othergrounds; see Rollston’s damning palaeographic analysis (2003).

17

Overarching

samek

s are rare in general outside of Hebrew,regardless of the adjacent letter. “Note that, with some excep-tions,” writes Rollston (2003: 178), “

samek

in Phoenician andAramaic does not tower over other letters in the same way as inOld Hebrew.”

18

Abecedary inscriptions themselves may also representscribal exercises and occasionally doodling, as one perhaps seesin Kuntillet ºAjrud’s Pithos B (Hadley 1987). The abecedary is across-cultural idiom, appearing in Latin, Greek, and Etruscan inaddition to West Semitic. Coogan (1974) has argued that the Latinterm

elementa

derives indirectly from the

l-m-n

sequence in the al-phabet’s second exercise register; this is a romantic notion, butone should like better documentation for Greek intermediation.Coogan (1990) furthermore interprets the West Semitic root ÷

ªlp

to reflect the abecedarian’s exercise in verbal form, i.e., “to tran-scribe the alphabet,” perhaps in parallel to the Greek verb

poini-kázen

, “make Phoenician [letters].” But see the caveats of Haran(1988), who disputes the assumption that the abecedary necessar-ily indexes school duplication exercises.

19

We may further infer from Kuntillet ºAjrud’s Pithos B thata

pe-ºayin

abecedary enjoyed use in the north. The pithos bearsboth the

samek-pe

reflex and the name ªAmaryaw with the char-acteristic northern elision of the theophor (Davies 1991: 81, nos.8.019–8.021). This ascription is circumstantial, however, as itdepends on the scribe’s dialect rather than that of ªAmaryaw him-self. See further Hadley 1987.

20

See Lam 2–4; Ps 9–10; and (in LXX) Prov 31.

21

Lemaire (1981; 1984) makes the most impassioned caseby far for organized schools in the Iron Age Levant, while Puech(1988) and Davies (1995) offer more restrained inferences fromthe epigraphic data. Whybray (1990) and Crenshaw (1998) rep-resent more moderate positions on the modesty of private scribaleducation, while Haran (1988) trends even more skeptically withrespect to the interpretation of “school materials.” Jamieson-Drake’s oft-cited manifesto (1991) rejects nearly any notion ofscribal culture at all until the very late Iron Age II on the equa-tion of monumental architecture with literate

haute

couture

.While I indeed envision state patronage as a cultivator of scribalrefinement and apparatus for professional organization, Jamie-son-Drake’s work strikes me as fatally reductionist in its ap-propriation of passé political taxonomies from structuralistanthropology.

6

ryan byrne

BASOR 345

dissection of edubba pedagogy.

22

This model has sinceevolved with closer scrutiny of the tablets’ find-spots.Recent work on cuneiform scribal education now mil-itates against the concepts of a dedicated edifice anda uniform employment of instructional aids.

23

Eventhe Old Babylonian curricular literature and its ordervaried according to the individual predilections of pri-vate instructors, notwithstanding the legendary ortho-dox canon of scribal pedagogy. Robson’s (2001)investigation of the Nippur schools “shows that therewas by no means a standard curriculum across thecity, but rather a common fund of shared compositionsupon which individual teachers drew according to per-sonal taste or pedagogical preference.”

24

The circula-tion of variant West Semitic abecedaries may reflectspecific pedagogical choices of, or access to, primersmade within individual learning environments whichdo not detract from the trajectory toward the standard-ized templates suggested by Rollston’s work. Indeed,not until the Iron II emergence of state interests in

scribal discourse did the necessary cultural apparatusappear to coax the refinement of this professionaltechnology. Even so, the

pe-ºayin

alphabetic order didnot give way to the

ºayin-pe

standard of post-exilicHebrew until quite late. The later concretization of

ºayin-pe

in the light of preponderant Iron Age abece-daries of another order suggests the arbitrariness ofthe selection. Arbitrary selections tend to index insti-tutional codification, which may likewise bear on lateIron II palaeographic development under chanceryaegis. In other words, the

pe-ºayin

alphabet was a stan-dard of the Iron II state, while the

ºayin-pe

alphabetbecame

the

standard of priestly Yehud and subse-quent Judaism. The Iron IIB “homogenization” ofthe Hebrew script speaks of scribal deference to anemerging ideal hand which served a political program.The early Iron Age tells a different story, in whichvariant primers circulated in an environment withmore circumstantial patronage of writing.

caveats on curricular

variation from cuneiform

The standardization of the Hebrew curriculumis attributable to elite encouragement during theIron Age IIB.

25

Before this juncture, it seems that di-versified, decentralized scribal instruction employedvariant pedagogical aids. Conventional wisdom hasmoved away from the schoolhouse model thatKramer (1949) popularized in his edition of the Su-merian “Schooldays” text. Scribal instruction mainlyoccurred in private homes with a handful of studentsat most (Charpin 1990; Robson 2001). The notabledeparture is the Ur III state’s attempt to coordinateinstruction in order to facilitate the needs of a grow-ing bureaucracy (if not stimulate sycophancy withcurricular hagiography)—an exception supportingthe rule.

26

It falls to the state to unfurl standards.

22

The elephantine cache of secondary literature on cuneiformscribal culture and education permits only an abridged set of ci-tations. Studies of scribal history and culture include Pearce 1995;Visicato 2000; Wilcke 2000; and Sasson 2002. For sympatheticviews of the edubba literature, see Kramer 1949; Sjöberg 1976;and now Volk 2000. Seminal lexicographic studies beyond

MSL

are Civil 1976; 1995. Important treatments of the cuneiform cur-riculum include Veldhuis 1997; 1998; 2000; 2004; Robson 2001;Tinney 1998; 1999; Charpin 1990; George 2005; Gesche 2001;Civil 2000; Nemet-Nejat 1988; 1995; Landsberger 1960; Oppen-heim 1965; and Vanstiphout 1979. For selected work on peripheralcuneiform education in the second millennium, see Artzi 1990;Beckman 1983; Civil 1989; Demsky 1990; Izreªel 1997; van Soldt1995; van der Toorn 2000; Wilcke 1992; and Edzard 1985.

23

See most recently Veldhuis 2004: 58–66; Robson 2001; Tin-ney 1998; and George 2005: 131 for the Old Babylonian period.Sjöberg’s famous depiction (1976) of a monolithic school has leftan indelible but anachronistic mark on scholarly approaches toedubba particulars. There are qualified elements of the older“school building” approach in a recent article by George (2005:133–34), who carefully restricts this possibility to subsidies of UrIII micromanagement. One indeed infers from Ur III epigraphiceffects a causal state interest in regulation (Michalowski 1991; Vi-sicato 2000: 7, n. 24), but the edubba vignettes (Kramer 1949;Volk 2000) are still likely stylized profiles (Robson 2001: 39). Wecannot make much architectural sense out of Shulgi’s abstruse ref-erences to the é-gé

s

tug-

d

nissaba-mul or the ki-úmun—which sometake as formal academies—when even city gates boast metonymicor ideological designations. Nor do “autobiographical” hymnsthat praise Shulgi as the best student among his peers rise abovethe opacity of propaganda. Shulgi no doubt received the privateinstruction befitting an absolute monarch, albeit with a masterscribe who had every occasion to compliment his royal pupil onhis progress vis-à-vis that of lesser tutees.

24

See further Tinney 1999.

25

We must distinguish between palaeographic evidence forIron IIB–C script standardization (with, what I infer therefrom, aconcomitantly dominant

pe-ºayin

abecedary) and the post–Iron IIconversion to an

ºayin-pe

abecedary. These conventions are bothproducts of elite patronage, but they represent distinct phenomenaof different eras. If the Lamentations acrostic assumes a date after587

b.c.e.

, then we see the persistence of the

pe-ºayin

order wellinto the sixth century (if not later).

26

As Michalowski explains (1991: 51–53), the micromanage-ment of the dub-sar’s formative “textualization” under Shulgi’sself-aggrandized regime may have produced only a marginallymore literate scribal class; any attempts to unify the curricula servedbaser political instincts than “the pursuit of pure knowledge” (tosqueeze blood from another academy’s malapropian stone).


This is the axiomatic essence of Adam Smith’s (2003)charge that the “state” substantiates itself with amental map of a political landscape.

27

The adminis-trative refinement of writing may yield both internal(organizational) and external (representational) div-idends when a government elects to transform ascript into an emblem or a literature into an ideol-ogy.

28

Beyond the short-lived Ur III experiment, thevariable of individualism left its mark in the selectiveuse of primer materials from the so-called Mesopo-tamian canon.

29

The derivative curricula that facilitated the use

and abuses of second-millennium Peripheral Akka-dian in parts west and north exhibit more extremevariability in the evidence for (or choice of) peda-gogical texts. Artzi (1990) has inventoried the extantlexical materials from Akhetaten, where cuneiformscribes had access to the Silbenalphabet, S

a

Sylla-bary, An-Anum, and Diri. Notable texts of the so-called standard curriculum are absent often due tothe accident of discovery, but perhaps there are alsocases of selective or restricted access to the widerinventory of instructional aids. Alalakh has so farproduced only specimens from the Ur

5

-ra =

hubullu

series,

30

while Ugarit boasts nearly the entire reper-toire save Erimhu

s

and Kagal (van Soldt 1995). OnlyUgarit and Boghazköy apparently featured Proto-Luand grammatical texts in their curricula; only these

two cities and Emar boast the S

a

Vocabulary amongthe Peripheral Akkadian corpora. Are what Artzi(1990: 140) calls Akhetaten’s “surprising gaps” ac-cidental or intentional? Faivre (1995) cautions thatcuneiform texts were regularly recycled, and Civil(1995: 2307) notes that this practice was especiallytrue of school texts. Many exercise tablets werenever fired, and thus these survive mainly in confla-gration detritus or secondary usage (viz., fill materialfor walls). Beckman (1983) and Artzi (1990) convinc-ingly attribute the parallelism between the chancerycurricula at Akhetaten and Boghazköy to a Hittiteedubba tradition established in Egypt in an anteriorperiod. There are clear parallels in ductus and canon,viz. the literary legends of the kings of Akkade,which appear both in Hatti and EA 359.

31

It is note-worthy that the city-state of Ugarit exhibits the mostdiverse collection of pedagogical aids among all thePeripheral Akkadian corpora, including that of Hatti.Part of the incongruity admits of complex scribal in-termediation; Ugarit’s lexicographic series derivedfrom a Hurrian tradition, while Boghazköy’s did not(Beckman 1983: 103).

32

In view of the selective useof pedagogical aids in the Old Babylonian Nippurcurricula (Robins 2001), then, it is probably wisestto concede (at least tentatively) a variegated patternof text distribution in the peripheral cuneiform cul-tures stemming from the independence of individualteachers or chanceries.

33

This pattern may indicatepedagogical discrimination, circumstances of inter-mediation, and/or accident of discovery. Wilcke

27

Smith is admittedly uncomfortable with the anthropologicalreification of the “state,” but that illusory taxon is nevertheless thereferent political archetype of the built environment as he envi-sions the operations of self-authentication. To paraphrase Smith’sown paraphrase of Solzhenitsyn, the state is the conceptually con-tiguous archipelago from which archaeology cannot escape, be-cause the state’s cultural valence is equal parts emic and etic. Iinsist on a phenomenological recognition of the actual “essential-izing act” endemic both to statecraft and the scholarship of state-craft (Byrne forthcoming).

28

See Messick 1993 for a parade example from Yemen,where polity and calligraphy claim coextensive existence in pub-lic discourse.

29

Note that Wilcke (2000) sees in variability a need to diver-sify and enlarge the traditional understanding of elite cuneiformliterati. Wilcke’s conclusions are not altogether convincing, buthis important work on scribal diversity (1992; 2000) demonstratesthe need for better theoretical discourse on literacy.

30

The archaeological distribution of evidence warrants

tenta-tive

analytical inference; see Artzi 1990: 153, n. 43. For half acentury, essentially three lexicographic texts have framed the ped-agogical picture at Alalakh (Wiseman 1953: 113, nos. 445–47, al-though I surmise that texts 452–53 also assume curricularsubstrates). In 2003, however, Chicago excavators discovered anUr

5

-ra XVIII fragment in Tell Atchana’s topsoil (Lauinger 2005).The tablet’s superficial stratification speaks truth to caution.

31 Viz., the “King of Battle” epic (sar tamhâri); see the dis-cussions of Beckman (1983: 112–13) and Westenholz (1997: 4–5, 102–31). EA 359’s Egypto-Hittite ductus suggests an Egyptiancopy of a Hittite import to Izreªel (1997: 71), while the Hittiteorthography (which Izreªel also notes) suggests an Anatolianoriginal to others (Westenholz 1997: 105). The tablet unfortu-nately has not undergone petrographic sourcing (Goren, Finkel-stein, and Naªaman 2004: 87).

32 Beckman (1983: 101–2) credits Assyrian and Babyloniansources for Boghazköy’s lexical inventory; this Empire-era trans-mission parallels (and complements) Hurrian intermediation, thefruits of which included Boghazköy’s introduction to the Gil-gamesh and Kumarbi literature.

33 Curricular vectors of origin may also play a formative rolein the ultimate profile of a derivative curriculum. This is certainlythe case with Hittite influence on the Egyptian curriculum, al-though the latter includes one literary text, the Adapa myth (EA356), which originated in Babylonia on petrographic grounds(Goren, Finkelstein, and Naªaman 2004: 82–83; but see Izreªel2001: 55–59). Izreªel (1997: 46; 2001: 51–52) broached this pos-sibility for the Adapa text (or its Urtext) on the basis of its affin-ities with Middle Babylonian ductus. The ductus is similar in the

8 ryan byrne BASOR 345

(1992) sees in Emar’s orthography, palaeography,phraseology, and grammar at least two distinct scribalschools in operation. Such a distinction may implysomething about eclectic learning syllabary at thesite, but it also curbs expectations of standardiza-tion in Peripheral Akkadian more generally. Pre-scriptivist characterizations of Peripheral Akkadianas “barbarized” unfortunately tend to deemphasizethe fact that, in cases where Akkadian was not thedominant spoken language (Mitanni, Hatti, Ugarit,Canaan), the “language” instead functioned as atechnological instrument.34 The appropriation ofAkkadian was an adaptive technical act, while Akka-dian’s functions (diplomatic, epistolary, etc.) wereculturally ad hoc.

Like scribes in Nippur and Emar, the cuneiform-ists in Palestine perhaps enjoyed the opportunity tochoose primers for apprentices from an assortment ofmaterials.35 Izreªel (2001: 52) identifies the Adaparecension from Akhetaten as a school text with theobservation (among others) that it privileges Akka-dian syllabic spelling over the frequent use of logo-grams. If this orthographic criterion indeed suggestsa pedagogical character, then it is worth noting thatthe Gilgamesh fragment from Megiddo follows suit.In 19 lines of fragmentary cuneiform, there are onlythree logograms; those logograms all present thesame name, Igim-mas, who is none other than Gil-gamesh (Goetze and Levy 1959: 121–23). In otherwords, the logographic spelling is incidental, almostformulaic, in its exception to the otherwise exclusive

syllabic orthography.36 The Gilgamesh tablet, then,was probably a literary text assigned in the advancedstages of scribal education at Megiddo.37 This dis-covery complements the larger inventory of curricu-lar texts discovered in Bronze Age Palestine.38

The larger Canaanite inventory may have includedstill other literary compositions and lexica. MiguelCivil (1995: 2307) argues that the quality of instruc-tion in Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform differed notice-ably in peripheral sites such as Emar, Ugarit, andBoghazköy from that of Mesopotamia proper. Thus,he attributes the inferiority of the Peripheral Akka-dian product to its status as a second language, but healso sees the consequence of an inferior educationwith alien primers. Lexical lists of early second-mil-lennium Sumerian canals or marsh fish, he argues(1995: 2307), would prove entirely meaningless tolate second-millennium West Semitic scribes. Theesoteric nature of these lexica might indeed have

34 Moran (1992: xxi) freely designates some Amarna Akka-dian as “extremely barbarized”; Márquez Rowe (1998: 63) uses“barbarised” for Hurro-Akkadian in an equivocal way; Rainey(1996b: 1) refreshingly rejects the term “barbaric” as a charge that“can no longer be sustained.” In von Dassow’s view (2004), the al-loglottographic character of Amarna Akkadian complicates itsvery designation as a language.

35 For a general conjecture of scribal education in Canaanite-Akkadian, see Demsky’s digest (1990).

36 After all, Igim-mas is persona sine qua non.37 Demsky (1990: 164–65) has intimated as much. The ad-

vanced stages of literary transcription are amply documented(Veldhuis 2004), notably including the “Gilgamesh and Huwawa”text within the Sumerian Decad at Old Babylonian Nippur (Tin-ney 1999). The fact that the Gilgamesh epic was a core componentof the scribal intelligentsia of Late Bronze Canaan partly obviatesthe need to reconstruct a relationship of transmission between thecross-cultural flood narratives of Mesopotamia and Judah. Whilethere may exist other Babylonian signatures in the Primeval His-tory that hint at exilic-era influences, there is no compelling rea-son to exclude the possibility that, by the early Iron Age, highlandJudaean lore understood the ancestral iterations of the deluge asan autochthonous mythos. I demur from Lambert’s view (1967:127), on grounds too numerous to digest here, that early post-Kassite Babylon itself had no knowledge of the flood story exceptby late conversation with Sippar conservators. In view of the pop-ularity of Sargonic legends among peripheral cuneiform curricula(Beckman 1983), perhaps the “Sargon Birth Legend” (Westenholz1997: 36–49) found its way into peripheral hands just as the “Kingof Battle” epic came to Egypt. The latter appears in recensionalform at Akhetaten as EA 359 (see Westenholz 1997: 102–31). Sar-gonic staples of the Canaanite curriculum could help historicalcritics to digest the elliptically “aboriginal” Moses infancy topos(Exod 2:1–10) in Iron Age Judaean folklore.

38 These include lexical texts from Hazor (Tadmor 1977), TelAphek (Rainey 1975; 1976), and Ashkelon (Huehnergard and vanSoldt 1999); liver model fragments from Hazor (Landsbergerand Tadmor 1964); and a mathematical fragment from Hazor(Horowitz 1997). For the use of omina in scribal education, seeKoch-Westenholz 2000: 15; van Soldt (1995: 176–77) suggeststhe curricular employment of omina at Ugarit. For cuneiformmathematical primers, see Robson 1999; and Nemet-Nejat 1988;1995. Extensive bibliographies on these and noncurricular textsappear in Horowitz, Oshima, and Sanders 2002; 2006.

Nergal and Ereshkigal text (EA 357), but in this case the inclu-sions denote an Egyptian provenance (Goren, Finkelstein andNaªaman 2004: 83). One sees a hodgepodge in the confluence ofa Hittite-influenced edubba (in turn partially derived from Hur-rian cuneiform and its idiosyncrasies; see Beckman 1983: 102–3), imported Babylonian canonical texts, and native Egyptiancopies characterized by emulated Babylonian ductus with Pe-ripheral Akkadian spelling (Izreªel 2001: 53). Still more peculiaris the adaptation of the Egyptian red-point system, ordinarilyused to demarcate Egyptian syntagms, in order to indicate pro-sodic units in the Akkadian literary texts EA 356, 357, and 372(Izreªel 2001: 81–90).


undermined their pedagogical efficacy to some de-gree in peripheral cuneiform cultures, but the workof Niek Veldhuis introduces caveats about the peda-gogical function of content in the so-called Listen-wissenschaft. He (Veldhuis 1997; 2004) argues thatSumerian lists of leather products, wooden objects,birds, and the like served the primary function ofmodeling cuneiform signs and words for the purposeof graphic duplication exercises. The reproduction ofSumerian words placed emphasis on the “training inSumerian reading, writing, and culture” (Veldhuis2004: 65). Civil’s characterization would prove moreresonant had West Semitic scribes needed to mentionSumerian canals in their professional compositions;as it was, they did not.39 In peripheral curricula, theSumerian words themselves did not always need tobe understood in order to facilitate the graphic ob-jectives. The Hittite tradition was barely conversantin Sumerian (Beckman 1983), although Sumerianlexica are attested at Boghazköy. In Mesopotamia,even Old and Middle Babylonian scribes would haveapproached the lexica in Sumerian, by their eras adead language, with some cultural distance. In anycase, the West Semitic column in the Ur5-ra fragmentfrom Ashkelon (Huehnergard and van Soldt 1999)implies the attempt, however successful, of Amarna-period scribes to interact with the lexical content ofthese “alien” materials. And while the trilingualprism from Aphek (Rainey 1976) does not conformto any known Mesopotamian curriculum, it too sug-gests Canaanite interest in polyglot lexicography.40

There are several dimensions of the Amarna cor-respondence that might prove pertinent to the ques-tion of sundry curricula. The dialectal diversity ofPeripheral Akkadian, which is conventionally di-vided into northern (variously called Syro-Anatolian,Reichsakkadisch, Hurro-Akkadian, and the regretta-bly ambiguous “Assyrian”) and southern (Canaanite-Akkadian) branches, is a testament to regional vari-ation in practice. Notable is the fact that the Late

Bronze scribes from Egypt and Jerusalem employeda form of Akkadian more consistent with the north-ern branch, notwithstanding the regional geographicbuffer of what one might call an “isogloss” bifur-cating Peripheral Akkadian’s northern and southernbranches. These noncontiguous pockets of dialectalaffinity may speak to kindred curricular traditionswithin a larger pluralism of scribal attitudes. With re-spect to the Jerusalem scribe, Moran (2003: 249–74)is keen to note not only lexical breaks from Canaan-ite-Akkadian, but also departures in palaeography,orthography, and syllabary.41 These latter features ofcuneiform writing are profoundly indebted in execu-tion to the specific pedagogical primers employed inscribal training; the inventory, appearance, and com-bination of signs are the hallmarks of the duplica-tion exercise. We run amiss to neglect the enormousimpact of local languages on Akkadian writing inits peripheral incarnations—the Mitannian examplesare legion, especially the reverberant effects of pho-nology on orthography (Márquez Rowe 1998)—butwe do well also to note that consistency of depar-ture from the Mesopotamian norm might imply some-thing about tools as well as method in peripheraleducation. Consider the use of logograms, for ex-ample, which constituted not an insignificant portionof the edubba lexical exercises. Rainey (1996a: 34–35) attributes variant usage by Canaanite scribes to“a poorly learned logogram.” This is a reasonableenough conclusion,42 but there are perhaps pedagog-ical circumstances that might illuminate the originof some variants. As Huehnergard and van Soldt(1999: 191) reconstruct the Ashkelon Ur5-ra frag-ment, it corresponds exactly to that of the Emarcognate.43 As Civil (1989: 9) notes, however, “Mostlexical tablets from the Northwest teem with scribalmistakes.” These mistakes are plentiful in Emar’s

39 Canaanite scribes nevertheless made plentiful use of logo-grams (livestock, professions, etc.) in culturally appropriate con-texts. Many of these are elementary signs (they occur in the Sa

literature, which is attested at Ugarit but not in Canaan), and theyoften appear reproduced correctly; but see Rainey 1996a: 26–36for evidence of variants.

40 Another lexical fragment from Aphek (Rainey 1975: 125–28) may also have contained polyglot entries; see Horowitz,Oshima, and Sanders 2002: 755 (Aphek 1); 2006: 29–31.

41 Moran (2003: 272–74) prefers to classify the Jerusalem cor-pus as a philological admixture with “northern” influence (from anethnolinguistic junction on the Syrian Canaanite-Akkadian/Reichsakkadisch isogloss), while Rainey (1996b: 24–26) prefersthe term “Assyrianism.” Whether Assyrianisms per se pervade thecorpus is open to interpretation, however (Moran 2003: 266, n. 58;Rainey 1996b: 26).

42 West Semitic morphosyntax better explains sharp depar-tures in verbal forms than it does nominal logograms (exceptingdeviant phonetic complements with western signatures).

43 The Ur5-ra I tablet from Emar (Arnaud 1987: 38–46) pre-serves almost the complete Sumerian text.


lexical aids, especially the Sa Vocabulary.44 Varia-tion in content and order not only depart from Assurand Boghazköy standards, cautions Civil, but alsointernally within the broader Emar lexical corpus. Itis difficult to hazard whether incongruities existedbetween the complete Ashkelon and Emar lexica orwhether such variants might have influenced vocabu-lary in scribal practice. One does imagine, on theother hand, that lexical errors in primers would havecontributed to some of the poorly learned logo-grams that Rainey infers from Amarna variants. Ifone furthermore holds with von Dassow that Ca-naanite-Akkadian, replete with Glossenkeile, repre-sented an intelligible Akkadographic writing systemintended as much for readers as writers, then it islogical to posit the incorporation of the substratepeculiarities into formal training. She writes (2003:215–16):

. . . let us consider the Canaanite glosses, that is,Canaanite words spelled out syllabically followingeither a logogram or a syllabically spelled Akka-dian word, and signaled by a gloss mark. Suchglosses are usually taken to indicate the languageof the writer of the text. But in actual practice theywere surely meant for the reader: the purpose ofwriting a gloss would have been to aid the readerin understanding the glossed word. In the case ofthe Canaanite Amarna letters, then, the practice ofoccasionally glossing logograms and Akkadianwords with Canaanite words would have been pre-mised on the assumption that the reader might re-quire some assistance, by means of a Canaanitetranslation, in order to comprehend those logogramsand Akkadian words. In other words, the reader wasexpected to understand the text in Canaanite!

Von Dassow characterizes the Canaanite glosssystem as an Akkadographic code between corre-spondents, rather than the representation of a living,spoken dialect.45 Were this code to function effec-tively, i.e., achieve the results for which it was osten-sibly innovated, then one expects to find the code’sincorporation into the scribal curriculum. Withoutmore Canaanite syllabaries and lexica, however, wecannot vet this theory. If this code arose to assist thereader as much as (if not more than) the author, asvon Dassow maintains, then one further supposescurricular familiarity with the code among scribal re-cipients. In other words, the Akkadographic codehad better render Canaanite letters more intelligibleto Egyptian readers in order to justify its invention.46

On the other hand, the road to perdition is paved withcircumlocutions: shorthand and glosses can obfus-cate as much as clarify a document’s meaning. Mo-ran (1992: xxii) and Rainey (1996b: 32) also freelycharacterize the Amarna language as a code; so toodoes Pardee (1999: 313), but he sees randomness inits execution:

The Akkadian of these texts was a learned language,a lingua franca—none of the scribes of these textswas a native speaker of Akkadian as spoken in Mes-opotamia. It had already been in use in Canaan longenough to develop into a sort of code understoodonly by the scribal class who used it: for speakersof Canaanite it was incomprehensible because itwas basically Akkadian, while the extent to whichit reflected Canaanite, particularly the morphologyand morphosyntax of the verbal system, would havemade it nearly as incomprehensible for a speaker ofAkkadian. The code, however, was never system-atized: it is clear from the examination of variants

44 As van Soldt (1995: 172–74) reconstructs the elementaryUgaritic curriculum in syllabic cuneiform, students copied the Sa

Vocabulary fairly early. This lexicon of simple signs representsone of the student’s first polyglot texts. Errors in his Sa Vocabu-lary could reverberate throughout a scribe’s career. If the Emarlexica bore any broader similarities with the Ashkelon lexica, thenit becomes easier (though not any safer) to account for any num-ber of variant logograms in the Canaanite corpora. On the otherhand, Artzi (1990: 148–51) considers the Sa Syllabary (the Sa

Vocabulary’s immediate precursor in van Soldt’s curricular se-quence) a “more advanced stage” of the transcription education.Veldhuis’s work (1998) on transcription sequences, however,counters Artzi’s characterization. What Artzi considers “ad-vanced” work in fact precedes the student’s initial exposure topolyvalence and compound signs (as in Ur5-ra), abstract polyva-lence (as in Ea and Diri), and Sumerian/Akkadian “incongruities”(as in the acrographics), to say nothing of work with model con-tracts, letters, proverbs, or literary texts.

45 See von Dassow’s (2004 [2006]) further characterization ofAmarna Akkadian as an alloglottographic system, which deservesfuller consideration than my paper offers. Publication delays at theAmerican Oriental Society did not permit me access to this articleuntil the final editorial stage of the present manuscript. Von Das-sow’s study is linguistically more circumspect than that of Gianto,who vaguely settles on the “interlanguage” designation to de-scribe “the development of a linguistic system in its own right”(1999: 131).

46 See Izreªel 1995; Gianto 1999; and von Dassow 2004, whodraw important attention to the reading of glosses by recipients.The Taanach letters indicate that Canaanite principalities alsowrote to each other in Akkadian. This suggests that Canaanitescribes may have originally developed a gloss code for Levantinecorrespondence rather than for an Egyptian readership. The code’sembeddedness nevertheless accounts for its attestation in letters tonon–West Semitic recipients.


of given forms that the scribes vacillated betweentheir native language and their imperfectly learnedAkkadian.

Such variants are beyond dispute, as Moran andRainey have exhaustively detailed. Pardee does notspecify whether he has in mind variants betweengeographic corpora (Gezer, Byblos, Amurru, etc.) orvariants within a given geographic corpus. The limitsof my expertise do not permit me to infer the pat-tern of distribution to which he alludes, but it standsto reason that variants between city-states may yetspeak to emic curricular aids of idiosyncratic char-acter (whether rife with errors as in the Emar lexicaor irregular in Nuzi and Alalakh orthography). Whatwe call variants may in some instances owe theirforms to a kind of instructional systemization thatPardee sees lacking in application. This does notdeny the idiosyncratic nature of Canaanite-Akkadian;Pardee’s remonstrations are charitable. But the stu-dent’s incompetence in Akkadian and the systematicmethod of instruction are not mutually exclusiveelements of scribal education, as any overwhelmedgraduate student might confess. Rainey’s “poorlylearned logogram” may have also been a sometimesperfectly copied logogram. The cuneiform of thescribe is only as good as the cuneiform of his sylla-bary.47 A comprehensive study of variant distribu-tion by toponym or petrographic origin could producepatterns that confirm or quash the possibility of re-gionally disparate primers with internally consistentorthographies.48

A final piece of evidence is relevant to the ques-tion of “pedagogical isoglosses” for want of a moreprecise sociolinguistic term for regional curricula.While the northern branch of Late Bronze Periph-eral Akkadian (including Emar, Ugarit, Egypt, Alash-iya, etc.) employs a Middle Babylonian system withmarked Assyrian influence, it is Rainey’s contention(1996a; 1996b) that several linguistic features of Ca-naanite-Akkadian derive from an archaic Old Baby-lonian writing system (in contradistinction to thenorthern branch’s Middle Babylonian system withMiddle Assyrian overlay). If Rainey is correct, thenthis relationship must likewise speak specifically tovestigial curriculum (isolated by choice or circum-stance). The phonological evidence in particularrecommends a serious consideration of Rainey’s ar-gument. Canaanite conservatisms include the re-tention of Old Babylonian initial and intervocalic w(cf. Middle Babylonian w > m), avoidance of Mid-dle Babylonian nasalization of geminated dentals,common rejection of predental s > l shifts, affinitieswith Old Babylonian orthographic representation ofsibilants, and other examples (Rainey 1996a: 37–46).He further cites Canaanite’s 2c dual pronoun that oth-erwise boasts only Old Babylonian and Old Akka-dian attestations (1996a: 81–83), as well as the 3mspronoun sut (1996a: 62–63). Rainey admits that thelatter pronoun, common to Old and Middle Assyrian,may have entered the Canaanite repertoire throughcontemporary vectors, but he prefers to understandthis form as concomitant with other distinguishingevidence for Old Babylonian vestiges. Van Soldt(1998: 596) finds this appeal to Old Babylonian“farfetched,” however, in view of the influence fromlocal languages on Peripheral Akkadian elsewhere;his lectio facilior for sut therefore favors the Assyr-ianism. Huehnergard (1998: 61, 63) and von Dassow(2003: 197), on the other hand, seem to treat Rainey’sOld Babylonian inheritance with reticent approval.However much peripheral cuneiform scribes con-taminated their Akkadian with pidgin codes, onecannot easily isolate variegated Babylonian dialect

47 Compare Moran’s (2003: 266, n. 58) preference to interpretthe apparent Assyrianism as ignorance of proper Babylonian. Atsome point, explanations for serial (and even singular) aberrationsshould factor in the apparatus of scribal instruction at least to ex-clude its possible influence.

48 EA 285 illustrates a problematic case in point. This tabletbelongs to the Jerusalem corpus on the basis of its sender, Abdi-Heba. Moran (2003: 249–74) uses philological particulars of theAkkadian to illustrate his point that the Jerusalem corpus bears ageographically isolated affinity with the hallmarks of Syrian Pe-ripheral Akkadian. The fabric of the tablet, however, does not ex-hibit the Moza or ºAmminadav petrographic signatures typical ofthe hill country anticline (Goren, Finkelstein, and Naªaman 2004:268–69). The inclusions instead suggest an origin in the Beth-Shean vicinity, whither Goren et al. speculate Abdi-Heba mighthave traveled before dictating the letter to the pharaoh. We mustconcede the tablet’s sender to be Abdi-Heba and therefore pre-sume either (1) that his scribe accompanied him to the river valleywhere tablets with local inclusions were accessible, or (2) thatAbdi-Heba dispatched his scribe there with a wax draft. We mustalso presume a local tablet kiln at Beth-Shean, then, as well as a

cooperative local scribe. The unlikely alternative requires areexamination of Moran’s use of EA 285 as evidence for the pe-culiarity of Jerusalem’s scribe, since Abdi-Heba must then havecommissioned this tablet (with its concomitant grammar, seminalsyllabary, etc.) downslope from a lowland scribe on hand. The re-sultant philological affinities between the Beth-Shean and Jeru-salem corpora would thus complicate Moran’s presumptiveisogloss circumambulating Abdi-Heba’s scribe. It is wiser to sidewith the wax writing board.


geography from the underlying variegated curricula.Variation in instruction begets variation in execution.

epistemic limits of

alphabetic cuneiform

The scribal admixture of Ugaritic, Hurrian, andAkkadian at Ugarit is well known and amply docu-mented (Nougayrol et al. 1968). In many ways,Ugarit’s geopolitical and maritime position imbuedthe city with a cosmopolitan character unlike manyother polities within the Peripheral Akkadian ambit.This accounts for Ugarit’s impressive collection ofcurricular lexica (van Soldt 1995). The presence far-ther south of Canaanite scribes conversant with al-phabetic cuneiform is a more peculiar fact. The BethShemesh abecedary, the Taanach tablet, and the Ta-bor knife blade might all testify to the presence ofeither Ugaritian scribes abroad or functional knowl-edge of Ugaritic among Canaanite scribes.49 Bothpossibilities might presume, moreover, the anteriormobility of palace scribes in order to facilitate“first contact” with the Ugaritic writing system. Theproblem with these extrapolations, however, is thediscord in palaeography and abecedary between tra-ditional Ugaritic writing and the southern counter-parts (Sanders forthcoming). There are variations ofa writing system in wide geographic usage, but thereis no standard to which these subtraditions cleave.Taken together, these inscriptions testify to the re-gional prestige of alphabetic cuneiform, but more im-portantly, they document manifold curricula in scribalcircles as far south as the lower Galilee, northern cen-tral highlands, and Shephelah. If Canaanite scribeslearned Ugaritic in order to conduct diplomatic orcommercial correspondence with a single city-state,then it is fitting to acknowledge this acquisition ofextremely specialized knowledge for expressly com-missioned purposes.50 What survive in the archaeo-logical record, however, are three epigraphs withoutan unambiguous cultural horizon to illuminate. Giventhe variations in the Canaanite specimens, it is diffi-cult to see any regional scribal integration beyondlocal prestige or the ad hoc.

applications of

scribal technology

There are attestations of nearly every traditionalcategory of cuneiform writing in Canaan amongMiddle and Late Bronze Age finds. Administrativetexts, letters, lexica, a literary text, a lawsuit, andomina round out a nice sampling of applied cunei-form.51 One hesitates to speak too loosely of ample“genres” mainly in acknowledgment that severaltexts—lexica, Gilgamesh, omina, perhaps the Hazormathematical tablet—all seem to represent curricularstaples. The notable text type to go underrepresentedin Palestine is the contract. As Horowitz, Oshima,and Sanders (2002; 2006) typologize the texts fromthe Canaanite corpus, there are no unequivocal con-tracts prior to the Neo-Assyrian period. There maybe a smattering of Bronze Age contracts among theextant corpus (many of these texts are fragmentaryor otherwise unintelligible), but their elusiveness isconspicuous (fig. 1).

The paucity of contracts should arrest our atten-tion. Does form follow function? In most cuneiformcultures, excluding Ugarit, contracts represent thevast majority of retrieved documents. Is there sig-nificance to the discordant ratio in Palestine? Acci-dent of discovery might account for disproportionaterepresentation. The discovery of the Amarna corpuson foreign soil provides a powerful caveat concern-ing secondary context, but one may only appeal todiscard patterns for so long. The Amarna, Aphek,Taanach, Tell el-Hesi, Gezer, Shechem, and Hazorletters were elite objects by commission. In cunei-form cultures, contracts dominate in part because theyare well distributed in private homes and archives.Chance discoveries of elite archives at Taanachand Nuzi tend to skew the distribution patterns withrespect to raw numbers,52 but the prevalence of con-

49 One may consult secondary literature under the headingsBet Shemesh 1, Taanach 15, and Tabor 1 in Horowitz, Oshima,and Sanders 2002: 756, 761; 2006: 157–66.

50 Note that the Taanach tablet ostensibly deals with remit-tance.

51 See Horowitz, Oshima, and Sanders 2002; 2006. For gen-eral overviews of the Canaanite corpus, see the treatments ofEdzard (1985) and van der Toorn (2000), both of whom see mini-mal cultural information surrendered in extant texts. The socio-economic Sitz im Leben of the epigraphs indeed privileges theirnarrow content against the holistic, but this is little different fromcuneiform corpora elsewhere. Our texts favor us with good dataon the social location of writing and writers in the Bronze Age Le-vant; that variety of cultural computus is difficult to overvalue.

52 Chance discoveries can also obfuscate cultural practice oridiom. At Nuzi, there is only one attested land sale document withthe operative term simu “price” (JEN 159). Nuzi’s convention of


tract finds is largely attributable to their appear-ance in socially stratified archaeological contexts.In Palestine, we have good, large-scale exposures ofnumerous Late Bronze sites—many with discrete de-struction layers, i.e., the optimum conditions forpreservation of nonperishable epigraphs, especiallytablets—and still the contracts have not appeared innumbers sufficient to draw a parallel with the repre-sentation we see in Mesopotamia.53 In other words,

53 Southern Levantine sites with varying degrees of excavatedLB II strata include Tell ºArka, Tell Kazel, Tell ºAshtarah, TellSimiriyan, Tell Ashºari, Kamid el-Loz, Tell Ghassil, Tell Sakka,Tell el-Jalul, Sahab, Irbid, Umm ed-Dananir, Tell Abila, AmmanAirport, Tell el-ºUmeiri, Dahr el-Medineh, Jarash, Tell Deir ºAlla,Tell Abu Kharaz, Tell es-Saºidiyeh, Pella, Tell el-Mazar, Byblos,Beirut, Sarepta, Tyre, Tripoli, Khlade, Arde, Tell Nebi Mend, TelQiri, Yoqneam, Beer Tivºon, Tel Qashish, Tel Bira, Nahariya,Kabri, Khirbet el-ºAiyadiya, Tel Akko, Kefar Rosh ha-Niqra,Givºat Yesef, Qiryat Ata, Tell Abu Hawam, Tell Keisan, Tel Par,Horvat Menorim, Khirbet Beit Jann, ed-Delhemiyeh, Tel Yinºam,Tel Qishyon, Horvat Halukim, Tel Mor, South of Ashdod Yam, TelAshdod, Ashkelon, Netiv Ha-ºAsara, Gezer, Tel Malot, Tel Hamid,Bene Beraq, Tel Michal, Tel Gerisa, Jaffa, Mesubbim Junction, Ye-hud, Azor, Yavneh Yam, Lod, Tel Aphek, Tel Hadid, Tel Batash,Tel ºErani, Tel Zippor, Yarmut, Beth Shemesh, Tel Miqne, TellZakariya, Tel Harasim, Tell eß-Safi, Tel Zeror, Tel Nami, Tell SittLeila, Tel Hefer, Tel Megadim, Tel Dor, Tel Mevorakh, Tel Mikh-moret, Tel Shiqmona, Tel Poleg, Horvat Migdar, Tel Soreg, Tel Qar-nei Hittin, Tel Dan, Tell el-ºOreimeh, Tel Naªama, Tel Anafa, Hazor,Qiryat Shemona South, Tel Qedesh, Tel Nagila, Tell Hesi, TelMaaravim, Tel Seraº, Tel Halif, Tell Beit Mirsim, Lachish, ºAfula,

Fig. 1. The cerebral potential for scribal technologies may differ markedly from their cultural orcircumstantial application in practice. Courtesy of The New Yorker.

marutu, fictive kinship by adoption, permitted predatory credi-tors to acquire real property from borrowers. The borroweradopts the creditor, who gives his fictive father a qistu (níg-ba)“gift” in exchange for a zittu (ha-la), i.e., inheritance rights(probably inalienable) to the property. The procedure may be nor-mative for land sales, or the chance discoveries of creditor ar-chives may prejudice the documentary evidence in favor ofexchanges made under duress. It is possible that this legal devicecircumvents the sudutu proclamations, but we cannot even besure that the sudutu intended to secure rights of land redemption.


appeals to accident of discovery have certain limita-tions.54 A defining characteristic of the contract asa retrievable epigraph is its ubiquity. Again we askwhether the patterns of “genre” representation withinthe cuneiform corpus from Palestine are meaningful.The question itself is meaningful, in any case, be-cause it speaks directly to the relative cultural func-tions and applications of writing.

Scribal activity appears to be restricted to a smallset of applications. In Palestine, scribes appear asroyal or elite retainers, and perhaps exclusively so.The Shechem deed with witnesses may represent anexception, but this text is poorly understood.55 It isimportant to distinguish between the potential appli-cations of a technology and the cultural applicationin practice. Consider the fact that cuneiform as atechnology—from its incipient stages at late fourth-millennium Uruk to the Early Dynastic periods—serviced contracts, receipts, onomastica, some lit-erature, and the occasional marker of possession.The epistolary application for this technology goesunattested until the 24th century b.c.e. at the earli-est.56 As Michalowski (1993: 2–3) notes, however,the early etiologies for writing from the 18th cen-tury b.c.e. in fact mistakenly invert the chronologi-cal order of application. Six centuries of use permittedscribes and poets to take the epistolary idiom forgranted.57 In the Enmerkar myth, for example, theetiology for writing imagines that the cuneiform tab-

let was invented specifically for sending a letter. Af-ter numerous exchanges by courier with the lord ofAratta, Enmerkar chooses not to entrust his weightymessage to his messenger’s memory. “Before thatday, there had been no putting words on clay” (Van-stiphout 2003: 85), so he invents cuneiform to ensurethe verbatim transmission of his message. The his-torical inversion makes the epistolary etiology unin-tentionally ironic, but the lord of Aratta’s response isconsistent with the common misgivings that newtechnologies occasion.

The lord of Aratta took from the messengerThe tablet (and held it) next to a brazier.The lord of Aratta inspected the tablet.The spoken words were mere wedges––his brow

darkened.The lord of Aratta kept looking at the tablet (in the

light of) the brazier. (Vanstiphout 2003: 87)

The epic portrays the lord of Aratta’s hesitation atthe use of wedges to convey words as confused phi-listinism.58 It is not enough for him to suspect thenew medium, but he must also gape at it in astonish-ment. The narrative’s joke is practically Aristotelianin its contrived epistemological distance betweenlogos and barbarian. No less than the lay reader de-fers to the Sumerologist to decipher the epic in goodfaith did illiterate kings have to concede to the scribehis representation of a tablet’s content as read aloud.59

The professionalization of interpretation always in-troduces an awkward power dynamic in which trustand mistrust cohabit. As Van De Mieroop (1999: 94–95) notes, few of the approximately 20,000 Old As-syrian tablets—many of which are letters exchangedbetween family members—actually make use of theepistolary medium to convey personal feelings orinquire after loved ones beyond the formulaic. Thereare notable (often idiosyncratic) exceptions, but most

54 Note the fascinating exchange between Civil (1980) and Hallo(1990) on the epistemological contours of documentary evidence.

55 See Horowitz, Oshima, and Sanders 2002: 760; 2006: 123–25 for relevant bibliography.

56 The basic corpus of third-millennium letters appears in thetreatments of Kienast and Volk (1995) and Michalowski (1993).A few more Old Akkadian letters have since appeared in print,but the dates and content do not alter the chronological patternof distribution.

57 In the case of the Enmerkar cycle, however, the 18th-cen-tury tablets probably reflect copies of a tradition from the Isin-Larsa or Ur III period. This would shorten the centuries between

58 Vanstiphout (2003: 96) defends the translation of gag as“wedge” against the critique that gag is not the technical Sumerianterm: “But that is just the point. How is the lord of Aratta sup-posed to have known this?”

59 To say nothing of the fact that diplomatic Akkadian oftenserved as intermediary between the language in which the com-muniqué was “composed” (either orally or written) and the lan-guage into which it was translated for reception. Van der Toorn(2000: 100–105) sees tremendous political power vested in scribalautonomy.

Midrakh ºOz, Tell Jenin, Tel Kedesh, Taanach, Tel Jezreel, TellDothan, Megiddo, Khirbet Belºameh, Tel Rehov, Beth-Shean, Tellel-Hammah, Tel Iztabba, Beitin, Shechem, Khirbet el-Marjama,Tell el-Farºah North, Shiloh, Horvat Seifan, Ein Sippori, Kfar Yeho-shua, Beth-Zur, Jerusalem, Jericho, Moza, Emeq Refaªim, Hebron,Tell el-ºAjjul, Tell el-Farºah South, Tel Haror, Tell Jemmeh, Gaza,and Qubur ªel-Walaydah. See the pertinent LB II bibliography inGoren, Finkelstein, and Naªaman 2004: 333–55, which also listssurveyed sites with contemporaneous sherds. The surveys are in-consequential for assessing the accidents of epigraphic discovery,however. Only excavated sites are statistically meaningful if oneplaces emphasis on breadth of site exposure; see Faust and Safrai2005. the first cuneiform letters and the Enmerkar etiology for cunei-

form, but one doubts that the chronological result enlightened theepic’s scribes one whit as to the letter’s true origins.


texts are proverbially “all business.” As for Meso-potamian letters more generally, Stol (1995: 499)quashes the prospects of familial sentimentality withall the tenderness of a Thomas Hardy novel: “No onewrote a love letter.”60 In the case of Bronze AgePalestine, where contractual tablets are rare, we mayinvoke the distinction between the possible applica-tion of writing in theory and the cultural applicationin practice. Van der Toorn is decidedly positivisticabout the cultural significance of the Syro-Palestin-ian scribal tradition. “Syllabic cuneiform was usedfor Akkadian,” he writes (2000: 108), “and Akkadianwas the language of diplomacy and internationalpolitics. It was not used to record legal transactionsor for purposes of intellectual exploration.”61 Themodel contracts appear in the latter stages of theBabylonian curriculum, but there is no certainty thatsome Canaanite curriculum followed suit.62 Perhapsorality still functioned as the dominant cultural me-dium for contractual agreements in the southernLevant.63 One cannot be sure, but binding oral con-ventions of oaths and witnesses indeed surface widelyin biblical literature. It is moreover possible to see inthe written tablet’s witness list a vestigial protocol oforal antecedents. The witnesses bear memorial testi-mony to facts beyond the manipulation of interestedparties; the written text usurps that function, relegat-ing to human witnesses the lesser task of certifying

only that the document itself materialized in goodfaith.

The millennial gap between the earliest proto-cuneiform ideographs and the epistolary applicationrevisits the characterization of writing as a “technol-ogy” (Goody 2000; Ong 2002). Houston and Stuart(1992: 590) dispute the technological metaphor as “ittends to situate script apart from other ways of com-municating meaning.” Their objection sensibly re-acts to the efforts of Goody and Watt (1963), Ong(2002), and Havelock (1986) to infer psychodynamicpatterns of human behavior from the structures andshifts of writing systems. The construction of grandsociolinguistic theory from the semiotic isolation ofthe cuneiform or linear alphabetic scripts falls faroutside our present interests (and credulity).64 Whilethe technological metaphor is suspect, however,perhaps it is still salvageable.65 Applied writing af-fords political economy certain operative services,notwithstanding its interdependence with other me-dia in cultural discourse. We need not reduce thetotality of that discourse to the epigraph in order toappreciate what the epigraph may usefully occasion.The determinant for practical technologies is theidentification of practical applications and suc-cess in execution.66 The mythological imperatives of

60 Many Old Assyrian letters employed a simplified syllabaryof approximately 150 cuneiform signs (Larsen 1987: 219–20, esp.n. 50), a fact that many have taken as evidence for more easilyachieved literacy (especially for private letters). This may be true,but one also notes that the Old Assyrian documents typically fea-ture formulaic financial reports and requests pertaining to firmtrade in ores and textiles. Although many letters involve uniquesubjects and learned scribes, much of the basic “trade Akkadian”deals with a limited set of topics or conceptual templates to whicha limited syllabary could cater in an ad hoc curriculum.

61 Van der Toorn overlooks the lawsuit tablet from Hazor(Hallo and Tadmor 1977), as well as the legal texts in Akkadianfrom Ugarit unless he means to exclude the city’s corpus from his‘Syro-Palestinian’ (his term) sample; note the Ugaritica V cacheof Akkadian “textes juridiques” (Nougayrol et al. 1968: 172–87).If by “legal transactions,” however, van der Toorn simply meanscontracts, then he may well be correct.

62 See Bodine 2001 for summary literature on the model con-tract as a text type. The absence of Canaanite specimens doesnot necessarily proscribe their fixture in the curriculum, however.The Amarna and Taanach letters almost certainly rely on the cur-ricular use of model letters, notwithstanding the latter’s absence inthe material record; see Civil’s case study (2000) on the epistolaryexercise and relevant bibliography.

63 Even within the written contract tradition, one sees varie-gation of Babylonian practice with respect to loan types, interest,repayment, and pledges (Skaist 1994).

64 One laments this impulse to parlay the absence of modernepigraphic “genres” into intellectual critiques. Von Soden (1936)saw in the curricular lexica an epigraphic testimony to Mesopota-mian culture’s intellectual deficits; but see the sobering epistemo-logical critique of Veldhuis 2004: 81–86. The ambiguity of thedesignation Listenwissenschaft has facilitated the misrepresenta-tion of the curricular lexica as a boorish philosophical or scientificliterature. Larsen’s (1987) misguided dependence on Goody(1977) and Ong (2002) perpetuates an insecure subculture of As-syriology that continues to reify the fictitious “Greek miracle” atthe expense of the Near East’s “savage mind.” The fact that cu-neiform scribal culture did not employ its technology to constructphilosophical excurses and dialogues in the fourth-century Athe-nian tradition does not lead to the presumption that Mesopotami-ans were incapable of abstract speculation. We must distinguishbetween a technology’s synchronic possibilities and functionalapplications. Philosophy remains a luxury of the academy to thisday (if trends in universities’ general distribution requirementssuggest anything about cultural valuation). The utilities of cunei-form in practice do not inform something as subjectively im-perious as an intellectual profile, whether profound or vapid,philosophical or incurious.

65 Note that elsewhere Houston (2004) uses the term “technol-ogy” with only the slightest hint of self-consciousness, viz., withthe occasional application of quotation marks.

66 Note that my characterization of writing as a technologydiffers markedly from Goody’s (2000: 132–51) most recent at-tempt to popularize the notion of “technologies of the intellect.”


cuneiform in Enmerkar require the victory of roman-tic rhetoric over the banality of accounting.

Alan Millard (1998; 1999) has written at lengthdescribing the perishable media available to scribesof Palestine—tablets, wax boards, papyri, leather—and he envisions a culture of scribalism that madeuse of these media to the greatest extent possibleor imaginable. He (1999: 321) optimistically recon-structs systemic elite emulation in which Canaanitekinglets adopted every conceivable device and appli-cation for writing that one may find depicted on anEgyptian tomb. In other words, he exports the fullrange of Egyptian media and application to Canaan-ite elites. This best-case scenario raises an importantmethodological question. How do we balance a plau-sible argument from silence with the need to confrontthe patterns that the empirical corpus presents? Theempirical corpus for late second-millennium Pales-tine does not suggest an applied scribal craft beyondthe realm of elite commission.67 There is the addi-

tional consideration of the size of Palestine’s scribalculture, which hardly suggests the high visibility ofwriting within this agrarian society. The Amarnacorpus contains letters from perhaps a minimum of18 distinct cities within the traditional ambit ofCanaan (Millard 1999: 318). That might index aminimum of 18 Canaanite scribes proficient in cu-neiform, although palaeographic, syntactic, and nowpetrographic observations suggest the possibility thatsome city-states shared scribes; sharing implies alower number of scribes active in the region, and ahigher value placed on these specialized retainers.Millard (1999: 318) himself has conceded the possi-bility of scribes shared among principalities,68 whileZaccagnini (1983) has offered extensive evidence ofprofessionals (including specialist scribes) gifted,lent, borrowed, and withdrawn among foreign pal-aces both for their expertise and prestige value. Thenthere is the factor of scribes with extrinsic philologi-cal affinities, as in the case of Jerusalem, which ad-mits further of possible mobility. Were one optimisticenough to double the “minimum number” of scribesto 36 cuneiformists, however, 14th-century Canaanstill presents a considerably restricted culture of lit-eracy as measured strictly by the number of activeprofessionals. To this picture, add Millard’s caveat(1999: 318) that the Amarna letters were “productsof the ruling circles in Canaanite towns and thescribes who wrote them were, probably, ‘palace’scribes. If they worked for a larger circle of clients,no trace remains.” “Whenever we meet cuneiformscribes in Syria-Palestine,” adds van der Toorn (2000:108), “it is in connexion with the palace.” I take van

67 Even in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, where scribes per-formed myriad functions in administrative, entrepreneurial, ritual,and magical capacities, there is evidence of some specialists whoowed their livelihood to elite patronage. While many scribes en-joyed hereditary introduction to the trade, still others apprenticedthemselves at the encouragement of benefactors. Letters 150–152from Tell al-Rimah (Dalley, Walker, and Hawkins 1976: 122–23)involve a case in which a scribe pleads to his benefactress aftershe evidently cuts him off from the palace, impairing his abilityto work. Toward the end, he even characterizes scribal patronagewith a patrimonial simile. I enclose the editors’ translation ofLetter 150 with my emendations.

Speak to my lady: thus Yasitna-abum your servant. May Sha-mash and Marduk grant that my lady live forever for the sakeof a ghost’s son, myself. I am well; but news about the healthof my lady has never arrived, and my heart is not alive. InAndariq, you encouraged me not to catch birds (?), saying:“Learn the art of scribes! I shall make you into a household ofgentlemen.” You made me trust in this business, and you mademe forfeit water and broth. You have decided that I, a ghost’sson, shall wander around aimlessly in the midst of my ownfamily. You no longer remember that once you gave me con-fidence and you strove for me, and you did not have towardsme the mercy (expected) of womankind. Do you not knowthat a ghost’s son, even more than a corpse, is deserving ofmercy? Now, for the love of Shamash, show everlasting kind-ness to a ghost’s son. Because I have nothing, I cannot servein the palace. And what more can I write to tell you? Am I anybetter acquainted with the matter than you? Do you not realizethat a ruler whose (palace) officials are not trustworthy is dis-honored in his own palace, and he himself is despised? Do yousimply not realize, although I keep writing to you? Just as afather does not reject his own sons, so may my lady upholdme, the son of a ghost. Just as men trust in their fathers andbrother, so did I trust in my lady. May my lady not neglect me.

68 His full sentiment is more optimistic, however. “Althoughsome local princes may have shared the services of a single scribe,”Millard (1999: 318) concedes, “there is no reason to suppose thatwas normal.” Millard discerns normalcy and exigency with a clar-ity that the data do not afford; cf. the petrography of EA 285(Goren, Finkelstein, and Naªaman 2004: 268–69). We can sur-mise, on the other hand, that any practice of lending and borrow-ing scribes in fact conformed with accepted conventions. The verytransmission of cuneiform throughout the Peripheral Akkadiancultures speaks to elite exchange of scribal professionals, not un-like the circulation of artisans (Mora 1992). Kings may lend or be-stow peers (or their lessers) with skilled laborers under a rubric ofgift-giving that sculpts power dynamics through indebtedness.Negri-Scafa (1992: 240) takes archival prosopography from Arra-pha to suggest that scribes sometimes worked itinerantly, travelingto patrons with waiting commissions. “Les scribes exclusivementlocaux, rattachés à une seule ville, de préférence périphérique,”she writes, “sont relativement peu nombreaux. . . . En général lerapport scribe/propriétaire d’archive semble être plus significatifque le rapport scribe/ville.”


der Toorn to refer to Amarna communiqués, sincethe find-spots of most Bronze Age tablets in Canaanlack demonstrable connections to any palace. Thelarger point remains, however, that a scribal com-mission in Bronze Age Canaan is an elite act; theIron I commissions were no doubt elite still. In fact,the extant evidence for alphabetic writing during theIron Age I paints an unambiguous picture of declinein scribal activity relative to the Late Bronze Age,when cuneiform was preponderant. This downturnsuggests even more restricted access to writing (nowpredominantly alphabetic) outside of elite circlesduring the 12th to 10th centuries b.c.e.

linear alphabetic inscriptions

from the late second to

early first millennium b.c.e.

The West Semitic graffiti in Egypt’s Wadi el-Holbear palaeographic signatures that suggest a date ofca. 2000 b.c.e. for the earliest alphabet. Although theinscriptions themselves date ca. 1800 b.c.e., theynevertheless demonstrate vestigial graphic affinitieswith both hieroglyphic and hieratic from an earlierera (Darnell 2005). This permits a triangulation ofpalaeographic points of contact and departure. Likethe earliest cuneiform texts relative to the late recog-nition of epistolary application, the origins of thealphabet (now dated earlier than before) furtherchronologically distance its invention from its even-tual sophistication. Unlike Ugaritic, which likelyrefined its own alphabet with inspiration from Akka-dian cuneiform, the Old Canaanite alphabet resistedstandardization during the second millennium despiteits proximity to both cuneiform and hieroglyphs. Theabsence of an intentional political program safe-guarded the randomness of Old Canaanite writing aswell as its common unintelligibility to epigraphers.In the light of Wadi el-Hol, Sanders (2004: 33) con-trasts the ambiguously understood Old Canaanitealphabet with the programmatic cultivation of itsUgaritic counterpart.

This new knowledge of the alphabet’s history has atleast two cultural consequences: first, it destroys theimage of the alphabet’s inevitability. For the firsthalf millennium or so of its history, the main attesteduse of the alphabet was for marginal people—for-eign soldiers and laborers—to write graffiti in des-olate, out-of-the-way places. In the second half ofthis millennium the alphabet blossomed into a wide

range of forms, most of which did not survive intothe next. . . .

A second consequence of the new history of thealphabet is to link forms of writing with politicalprograms. Alone among the early alphabets, theonly one that can be consistently read is the varietyof alphabetic cuneiform that was standardized andproduced in mass quantities at Ugarit. This is a di-rect result of the activity of the Ugaritic state. WestSemitic-speaking intellectuals conducted their firstmajor cultural project with an alphabet for the pur-pose of creating a native Ugaritic literature.

Here Sanders emphasizes the circumstantially spe-cific applications of the early alphabet(s),69 a point ofintrigue which intersects with our present interest inthe cultural utility of inscriptions and inscribing inIron I Palestine. In order to clarify the socioeconomicdimensions of scribal culture during the late secondand early first millennia b.c.e. (during and after theeclipse of regionally preponderant cuneiform), dis-cussion will proceed to an inventory of the relevantalphabetic texts in order to clarify patterns of usageprior to the state’s emergence. The bibliography forthis corpus is too vast for full citation, and the datesof several texts are now disputed in the light of theLow Chronology (Sass 2005), which I abjure forthe present. I will restrict focus largely to evidencefor scribal commission and function with the beliefthat any pending chronological corrections will notundermine the cultural conclusions drawn from thecorpus.70

Lachish Fosse Inscriptions

The Late Bronze Fosse Temple supplied two in-scriptions of note in linear alphabetic script. Froma ceramic assemblage chronologically straddlingStructures II and III comes a bowl with charactersbrush-painted in white lime (Diringer 1958: 129).The legible portion of the inscription (which pre-cedes an indecipherable ending) reads bslst, “In/bythree . . . ,” which likely indicates a quantificationof the dedication’s particulars (its dated occasion,

69 See further the important observations of Millard (1991) onthe uses of the early alphabets.

70 See Sass 1988: 53–105 for a fuller inventory of linear al-phabetic inscriptions from this time period. I have omitted frommy list epigraphs that are unintelligible or uninformative withrespect to their function.


inventory of items, or volume). By Tufnell’s strati-graphic reconstruction, the bowl is perhaps a littleolder than the ewer inscription, although the palaeo-graphic affinities overshadow however little distancein time separated the epigraphs.

Excavators discovered the fragmentary ceramicewer inscription in the Fosse Temple’s late 13th-century phase (Diringer 1958: 130). The letters arepainted concentrically within a band of serial zoo-morphic images (including the common Late Bronzepalm-and-ibex motif ). There is a lacuna in the in-scription’s center, however, where a fractured sherdwas not recovered. While the missing elements aredisputed, there are clear characters reading mtn (“Mat-tan” [the benefactor] or “gift”) at the beginning andªlt, (“ ªElat” [the goddess]) at the end. Notwithstand-ing the lacuna, therefore, the common tendency toview the ewer as votive is justified. This is a prestigeitem (perhaps naming the donor) from a ritual contextdedicated to a divine character.

Lachish Bowl Fragment

This bowl fragment from Lachish bears an incom-plete inscription in alphabetic Old Canaanite scriptfrom the late 13th century b.c.e. (Cross 2003: 293).Its extant text includes the apparent name of a di-vine character or venerated ancestor ªilªib in the firstline, and the phrase byßº hwsb in the second, whereCross reads “in the gallery, he installed (it).” Here isa votive offering which specifies its intended recip-ient and the attendant piety that (and of whom, thelacuna perhaps attested) the same beneficiary mightacknowledge in gratitude.

Khirbet Raddana Handle

The late 13th-century inscription on the jar handlefrom Khirbet Raddana preserves only three discern-ible letters before a break, but Cross and Freedman(1971) make a good case for the preservation of apartial personal name or hypocoristicon in the extantletters ª˙l. The handle inscription must therefore in-dicate the owner of the vessel, or its donor were itdedicated to a shrine.

Qubur ªel-Walaydah Bowl Fragment

From Qubur ªel-Walaydah comes a votive bowl,comprised of two major fragments with a clear join,bearing the names of two donors: Simi-paºal andªIyya-ªel. The dextrograde text follows the personal

names with a sin and another character maimed bythe bowl’s right break. Cross (2003: 216) imaginesthat this sequence could refer to votive ¶u/¶i (“sheep”after common Ugaritic attestations) or seqel with thebroken character perhaps standing for either a num-ber (s 10) or a nun for n[tn lDN]. He dates the bowlpalaeographically to ca. 1200 b.c.e.

Beth Shemesh Ostracon

The ink-blurred ostracon from Beth Shemesh(Grant 1930) dates a little later palaeographicallythan the inscriptions from the Lachish Fosse Temple,which places it roughly in the 12th century b.c.e.

(Cross 2003: 324–25). The reading is disputed, butthe reverse clearly indicates two personal names.Cross makes a persuasive argument for additionalpersonal names on the obverse, fronted by a markerof possession—thus (1) lºzª˙ (2) ªb¶kr, et al. Indeedthe initial lamed is legible in the upper left-hand cor-ner even in the final report’s scratchy photograph(Grant 1931: pl. 10).

ºIzbet Sartah Ostracon

The 12th-century inscribed ostracon from ºIzbetSartah (Demsky 1977) features an abecedary that con-tributes significant typological data both to the palaeo-graphic development of the linear alphabet and thepedagogical diversity of scribes who reproduced it.The pe-ºayin sequence accords with the Lamenta-tions acrostic and the abecedaries from KuntilletºAjrud against the Lachish abecedary and the “con-ventional” order of the biblical Hebrew alphabet (seeabove). The ºIzbet Sartah inscription furthermoreexhibits a ˙et-zayin sequence that now finds a paral-lel in the Tel Zayit abecedary. These features testifyto pluriform primers, however diversified geograph-ically or cross-communally, during the larger IronAge continuum of scribal Kulturgeschichte.

Revadim Seal

The seal discovered on the premises of KibbutzRevadim bears an inscribed scaraboid image withanthropomorphic figures and a reversed text read-ing lªbª, “Belonging to Abba” (Giveon 1961). Cross(2003: 299–302) dates this status piece, carved fromhard limestone, to the late 12th century b.c.e. Theinscribed scene seems to depict two humans attend-ing a seated man or child. Giveon and Cross differ onthe possible interpretations of the latter, but the


broader attribution of divinity or royalty to the centerfigure is probably certain enough to safeguard theseal’s prestige value to its bearer, Abba.

Arrowheads from El-Khadr andParts Unknown

Assorted inscribed arrowheads from the antiqui-ties black market have made their way into publicand private hands over the past several decades.The total number of unprovenanced objects is fiftywith one additional specimen retrieved from a dis-turbed burial cave (there are numerous other unin-scribed congeners). These objects bear NorthwestSemitic possessive formulae incised into bronze withthe object (˙ß, “arrow”) and the owner named. Inmost instances, the personal name precedes a fa-milial relation (patronym or fratronym), title (re-tainer, chief, king), or affiliation (e.g., “Sidonian”).The palaeographic diagnostics range from the verylate 12th (or very early 11th) through the mid-10thcentury b.c.e. The principal examples came to lightin 1953 putatively in a farmer’s field in El-Khadrnear Bethlehem (Milik and Cross 1954), whence thefarmer or an intermediary dispersed them to differentdealers in Jerusalem and Amman. Cross (2003: 217)reckons that 5 inscribed and 21 uninscribed arrow-heads from this original cache are now identifiableas a coherent corpus. Due to the genre’s count in-creasing by a coefficient of 10 since the early 1950sand the typically illicit means of retrieval, the rele-vant bibliography is extensive. Deutsch and Heltzer(1999: 13–19) have collected these items in a singlepublication, however, which doubtless contains au-thentic and dubious items alike.71 The consultationof such a publication occasions certain caveats.Rollston (2003; 2004) has now authored the firstsystematic discussion of proper protocols for assay-ing unprovenanced epigraphic materials. He suggeststhat the absence of provenance feature prominently inpublished analysis as a measure of credibility. Roll-ston (2004: 75–76) further advises a rating systemthat indicates the probability of authenticity. The lat-est trends in forgery detection recommend extremecaution, if not qualified incredulity, toward all recentinscriptions of unknown origin. Each unprovenanced

epigraph is suspect to some degree. The burden ofproof rests on the dealers and their black marketaffiliates to prove the authenticity of their wares; itdoes not fall to the epigrapher to disprove the au-thenticity of an unprovenanced object which might,under the best of circumstances, be accorded the re-spect of “legitimately stolen” goods. There is goodreason to note the implausibility of forgery for manyarrowheads, especially the early collection from El-Khadr, but we cannot bestow this grace to all suchartifacts. As Cross (2003: 200) warns, “The appear-ance of spurious or forged arrowheads on the marketis most troubling; procuring old arrowheads is notdifficult, and the increased interest and value of suchpieces no doubt tempts the modern manufacturerof antiquities, notably professional forgers of seals,to satisfy the demand.” Recent advances in forgingtechnology and craft cast a pall over black marketitems appearing in the past generation. Arrowheadspecimens of later discovery therefore carry a graverstigma. Our concern here, however, is largely therecognition of a possessive template with bearing onscribal commissions: “Arrow of PN son/retainer ofPN.” This template cross-pollinates the suspect andless suspect pieces alike as one would surmise fora marketplace of imposture. Elite commission ofscribal inscriptions extends also to elite retainers,who name their lieges on the arrowhead. Prestige ac-crues both to the retainer as “man of so-and-so” andto the patron with men thus bedecked with statussigla. The affectation of the prestige inscription,therefore, might have provided the Iron I scribe ahook to diversify his commissions (if not his clien-tele, provided the pretentious patron does not alsocommission inscriptions for his retainers).72

71 See also the inventory of Cross (2003: 200–202), who ex-ercises commendable caution with respect both to the opportunitiesafforded potential forgers and credulity to “spurious” specimenspublished by Deutsch and Heltzer (1995).

72 The Lokop spear industry in north-central Kenya providesan intriguing, non-epigraphic parallel. Blacksmiths operate on theeconomic margins of this pastoral society, an exigency thatpresses the need to develop deliberate survival strategies. The cli-entele and commissions for weapons from any one kin affiliationare infrequent, so the blacksmiths have identified clients withmeans (and the airs of elitism) across kin groups as a distinct con-sumer class. “In their vaguely defined and peripheral status, black-smiths can be seen as the ‘brokers’ of style,” Larick writes (1991:313). “On the surface, they make utilitarian weapons. Their realskill shows, however, in their ability to recombine varied traits ofsize, shape, and decoration into meaningful spear morphology.”This customization of spear style carries prestige value among theLokop warrior cohorts, who “effectively collaborate with black-smiths to set up their own future place as elders” (Larick 1991:327). Blacksmiths survive by marketing their craft to a targetedclientele with status pretenses.


Byblian Inscriptions

Three inscribed objects from Byblos feature an11th-century Phoenician script with bearing on thisinventory. The first two are clay conical objects, eachof which records the owner’s name: lºbd˙mn andlª˙ªm/s bbd, respectively. The reading in the secondname is disputed (Cross and McCarter 1973; Teixi-dor 1977; Gibson 1982: 12), but the categorical con-clusion remains that these inscriptions indicatepossession. The third object of note is the AzarbaalSpatula (KAI 3), which Cross (2003: 228–29) datesa little later in the 11th century than the inscribedcones. The small bronze item in the shape of a spat-ula bears an inscription, possibly a palimpsest, of nolittle controversy. Dunand (1938) originally claimedthat the contents betrayed a commercial transac-tion—a view revived by Gibson (1982: 9), who en-visions little more than a banal monetary exchangeor request for repayment. Iwry (1961) sees superra-tional properties supposed for belomantic recourse inlegal disputes, while McCarter and Coote read in thetext a refusal to bestow a land grant to a subordinate.They write (1973: 19), “That a legal disclaimer wasinvolved here accounts for the choice of writing ma-terials. The selection of a metal spatula, even thoughit was being reused, indicates that the informationrecorded was meant to be preserved.” This suggestsawareness of the contingency of further consultationshould the dispute be resurrected. Shea (1977) adoptssome of McCarter and Coote’s philological correc-tions to construct a hybrid interpretation of a trans-actional document detailing the conveyance of realproperty. So long as the content indeed concerns aparty equipped to effect the transfer of a n˙l, “patri-monial estate,”73 then we may ascribe elite status toat least one of the text’s principals.

With new high-resolution photographs taken incooperation with the West Semitic Research Project,Rollston (personal communication) has tentativelyentertained the possibility that the spatula inscrip-tion’s mention of a n˙l suggests scribal verse aboutthe patrimonial idiom or ethic.74 The notion that thespatula text could be proverbial or lyrical is in-triguing in view of the pedagogical use of proverbsin Akkado-Sumerian curricula (Falkowitz 1980;Veldhuis 2000). Indeed, the biblical book of Prov-

erbs perhaps owes its initial compilation to the use ofapprentice duplication exercises. In any case, it is tooearly to group the poorly understood Byblos spatulawith the Gezer Calendar (see below) in a schoolboymnemonic genre, but that does not forestall the pos-sibilities that this bronze inscription was a prestigeobject, belonged to a scribal elite, or found use as afunctional primer, albeit with assumed airs.

Mana˙at Sherd

An Iron I burial cave near Jerusalem’s satellitevillage of Mana˙at revealed a potsherd inscribed afterfiring (Stager 1969). Stager (1969: 48), who withJohn Landgraf co-discovered the object, notes thatthe incised sherd likely constituted part of a completefunerary vessel rather than an ostracon. Landgraf(1971: 93) dissents, however, preferring to envisionan already broken sherd inscribed and reemployed asa potter’s sculpting tool. The text reads lsd˙, whichexpectedly indicates the vessel’s owner, here likelythe decedent provisioned with grave goods pertinentto “anthropomorphic” needs in the hereafter. Stager(1969) and Cross (2003: 229) date the script to the11th century b.c.e. on the basis of few but helpfullydiagnostic letters (especially the lamed and sin).

Kefar Veradim Bowl

Evidence from Cave 3 at Kefar Veradim suggestsa Middle Bronze Age burial site disturbed to accom-modate five later Iron Age burials. An assemblage ofIron II pottery littered the excavation area. The rep-ertoire included various bowls, kraters, jugs, lamps,and Black-on-Red juglets typical of the early IronAge IIA (Alexandre 2002a). Among the grave goodsstands out one fluted bronze bowl which mournersinterred upside down next to the head of one of thedecedents. An inscription incised into the bowl’s in-terior reads ks ps˙ bn smº “Cup of Ps˙ son of Sema”(Alexandre 2002b). The high quality of the bowl andits commissioned engraving unveil the elite status ofthe interred owner. The script is ostensibly Phoeni-cian—with a close artifactual parallel in the Tekkebowl (Sznycer 1979)—although it also predates theperiod in which we can confidently speak of mean-ingful palaeographic departures of the so-called na-tional scripts from the Phoenician Mutterschrift.Alexandre (2002b: 68*–69*) prefers a 10th-centuryb.c.e. date, privileging the contextual ceramic as-semblage over the inclination of Cross (2003: 227–29) and others to date the Tekke bowl to the 11th

73 So McCarter and Coote 1973; and Shea 1977.74 See Adele Berlin’s (1996: 205–6) patrimonial interpretation

of Psalm 133, which may involve a political lament for a subdi-vided estate.


century. I should prefer a ballpark tenth- to earlyninth-century date in view of the Black-on-Redware;75 the Veradim bowl seems typologically ear-lier than both the Gezer Calendar and the Old By-blian lapidary inscriptions (neither of which boastssecure stratigraphic credentials). If a diverse range ofabecedaries characterized the Iron Age I–IIA, whichI suspect was the case, then minor palaeographicvariants or inconsistencies should occasion neitheralarm nor compelling dates. This bowl may repre-sent the first tenth-century West Semitic inscriptiondiscovered in situ; one exemplar does not a palaeo-graphic benchmark make,76 although the Zayit abece-dary now helps to flesh out matters an iota.

Tel Zayit Abecedary

The final week of the 2005 excavation season atTel Zayit produced a partial abecedary incised onlimestone (Tappy et al. 2006). Tappy proposes atenth-century date on the basis on the inscription’sin situ stratification with a concomitant ceramic as-semblage sealed beneath material with later radio-carbon dates. McCarter proposes a mid-10th-centurydate on the basis of palaeographic features moreadvanced than the Kefar Veradim bowl and morearchaic than the Gezer Calendar (with the exceptionof the full-headed mem, which signals a more pro-gressive trait). The abecedary is remarkable for thefollowing letter orders: waw-he and ˙et-zayin. Othernotable features include a possible pe-ºayin sequence,although the stone is too damaged for certainty, anda lamed-kap sequence, which McCarter considersan error (demonstrable by concomitant “editorial”marks). The waw-he sequence is otherwise unattestedin West Semitic abecedaries and consequently a pos-sible marker of scribal individualism. The ˙et-zayinsequence, on the other hand, validates its ºIzbet Sar-tah correspondent (see above) as an authentically su-praregional convention rather than a local aberration.In short, the Zayit abecedary exemplifies the notion of

viable alternative primers among scribal cultures inthe decentralized Iron I political economy.77

Gezer Calendar

The inscribed limestone tablet from Gezer (KAI182) is well known and thoroughly studied.78 It is agood epigraph with which to conclude this survey, inpart because of its common description as a scribalexercise or mnemonic. By self-acclamation, Albright(1943: 21) was the first scholar to characterize thetablet as such when he wrote, “Judging from Egyp-tian and Mesopotamian parallels, the text before uscan be only a school exercise. With this agree thesize and the material of the plaque, which is justlarge enough to be held comfortably in the hand of a12-year-old boy, and which shows the rounded edgesand sides resulting from considerable use.” Notwith-standing the quaint imagery, Albright’s instincts werereasonable; and numerous other epigraphers havesince read the tablet as an apprentice’s homework onmore rigorous grounds. Haran (1998: 89) neverthe-less assails this interpretation of the Gezer Calendar,which “can only doubtfully be considered the exer-cise of a schoolboy, just because it is hardly conceiv-able that, with all the poverty and simplicity of livingconditions in biblical Israel, students were forcedto scratch their homework on stones.”79 Haran alsocites incisions on ceramics prior to firing as dubiouscandidates for school activity. These are fair cri-tiques of inscriptions taken for student exercises, butthe medium in question does not necessarily rule out

75 I am comfortable with the continuation of these ceramicwares into the ninth century (Byrne forthcoming).

76 The Veradim bowl’s dotted ºayin cannot on its own securean 11th- or even 10th-century date. The feature’s attestation atFekheriyeh demonstrates the acrophonic principle in aestheticpractice. The fact that the name and meaning of the letter ºayinwere never forgotten counters the notion that palaeographers mustread the scribe’s graphic addition of the eye’s pupil (the dottedºayin) as an archaism. This caveat has negative consequences forthe dotted ºayin’s diagnostic relevance for the alphabet’s transmis-sion to the Greeks.

77 I would hesitate to characterize this particular epigraph asa primer, but rather as a text indirectly derived from knowledge ofsuch a primer. This inscription is evidently a graffito. If McCarteris correct about the erroneous execution of the lamed-kap se-quence, then one doubts that this inscription enjoyed use as amodel for proper transcription (i.e., “proper” relative to the localcurriculum).

78 The editio princeps is Gray, Lidzbarski, and Pilcher 1909.Nearly a century has passed since the inscription’s publication,with the expected accumulation of unwieldy secondary literature.See the summaries of Cross and Freedman (1952: 46–48), Gibson(1971: 1–4), and Pardee (1997: 400–401) for representative analy-sis and bibliography.

79 Haran’s critiques are especially pertinent now for the lime-stone Tel Zayit abecedary if it indeed records an exercise (or evena graffito). There are no prescriptive conventions on the valuationof media, however, even now as the writ contends with the elec-tronic. In view of the mutually alien conventions that separatemodern and ancient cultures of literacy, one might leave the ques-tion of a medium’s tactile or aesthetic viability to its user. Scribesdid in fact incise limestone irrespective of their taste for it.


the possibility that the tablet was rather a primer it-self—a template document inscribed on durablematerial perhaps in anticipation of repeated use. Atthe end of the day, however, the aura of uncertaintyrecommends against decisive use of the inscriptionfor argumentative gain. Its cultural import is fatallyambiguous.

the prestigious retainer

The grammarians Strunk and White (1979: 57)disparage the adjective “prestigious” with the fol-lowing remarks: “Often an adjective of last resort.It’s in the dictionary, but that doesn’t mean you haveto use it.” Their objection no doubt concerns the cos-metic surgery that transforms noun into adjectivalneologism. Or perhaps “prestigious” raises hacklesbecause it confers unearned repute upon the nomi-native bearer. In its ancestral connotations of “illu-sion” and “imposture” (< Lat praestigia “deception”),prestige is an artifice rather than an entitlement.There is considerable history chronicling the presti-digitations of elite culture to radiate status throughmaterial acquisition of objects and persons alike fordisplay or intellectual predilection (Helms 1993). Vir-gil thrived with imperial patronage. Mozart barelysurvived giving music lessons to girls of aristocraticfamilies. Having resigned his professorship at theGraduate Theological Union, Daniel Matt (2004:xxvii) now translates the Zohar at the behest of thePritzker family. As for a largely subsistence-basedpolitical economy in which alphabetic writing oper-ated on the periphery of socioeconomic necessity, itsscribes found refuge in the entourages of “GreatMen.” The Iron I corpus of applied alphabetic writ-ing consists of two basic categories: prestige objects(possessive, martial, votive, funerary) commissionedby elites, and curricular instruments used to pre-serve the very profession of scribalism during an erain which it existed on the margins of dominant ex-change patterns. Epistolary applications of writingare unknown, however possibly camouflaged by ac-cident of discovery or perishable media. On the otherhand, the political and economic conditions thattypically occasion long-distance epistolary contactbetween elites are not consistent with the politicaleconomy (or social location of scribalism) of Iron IPalestine. We do not expect letters, but any thatshould surface would further establish the sender’sprestige in an era when such correspondence denoteda luxury. In the extant aggregate, the epigrapher seesa restricted clientele to which scribes needed to ap-

pear relevant in order to remain relevant. Warlordismranks far below the ideal form of intellectual patron-age, but it does afford survival. The scarcity of thecraft, moreover, inflated the value of the scribal re-tainer and the prestige that accrued to the sybaritewith wherewithal to retain one; lesser elites no doubthad to borrow or share cuneiformists even during theAmarna period. Scribes could convey as status giftsin elite exchange (in both the suzerain/client andpeer varieties), which accounts both for the Hittiteedubba and Babylonian Adapa tablet in Egypt.80 Theimport of writing for status is especially visible whenan elite culture boasts the retention of prestige ob-jects constructing prestige objects.

Surviving Mayan inscriptions exclusively repre-sent elite commission (Schele and Freidel 1990: 55).The elite prerogatives of scribalism surface in aroyal conquest stela and murals, which depict the rit-ualistic mutilation of captured scribes of rival kings(Johnston 2001). Prior to his sacrificial execution,the scribe endured a public humiliation in whichhis fingers were ceremonially broken as a metaphorfor his master’s silenced propaganda. “Although cap-tured scribes were tortured and executed,” Johnstonwrites (2001: 380), “what captors chose to empha-size in public documents was not the physicalelimination of the scribes through sacrifice but thedestruction through finger mutilation of their capac-ity to produce for rivals politically persuasive texts.”The political prestige of the mutilation owed its res-onance to the prestige of the scribe and the unique-ness of his craft. So too the khipukamayuq retainersmanifested and projected the power of their Inkalords, who commissioned these specialists to con-struct and decipher narrative records on woven khipustrings (Quilter 2002). Before the rise of the uni-versity system in medieval Europe, scribes receivedcommissions outside the clerical scriptorium almostexclusively from aristocratic patrons, who welcomed

80 Zaccagnini (1983: 250) documents this phenomenon in de-tail, writing “The sending of specialized workers is well attested inthe framework of the diplomatic relations between the ‘great’ kingsand, to a certain extent, between the ‘great’ and ‘small’ kings of thelate Bronze Age. The skilled workers who were sent from one courtto another were viewed as prestige goods, and their transfers areinserted into the dynamics and formal apparatus of the practice ofgift-exchange.” In EA 49, the king of Ugarit requests from Pharaohtwo Africans and a physician, whom Zaccagnini (1983: 251) sees“placed on the same level: exotic curiosities to be shown at courtamong the king’s entourage.” This was especially true of diviners,i.e., scribes with specialized training in the barûtu literature.


(or contracted) their own family hagiographies (Shop-kow 1997). These scribes routinely sought such com-missions, moreover, with unsolicited encomia toprospective masters.

The unprovenanced Iron I arrowheads indicatethat they belonged not only to powerful men, butalso to their retainers, whose inscribed equipment inturn enhanced the patrons’ stature. The uniformedchauffeur or butler mirrors (and brandishes) his em-ployer’s affluence as a matter of protocol. The sur-vivability of the alphabetic haute couture in thecenturies after the ebb of Canaanite cuneiform iron-ically hinged on its own irrelevance, i.e., in its rele-vance to those who could afford the luxury. Perhapsthis illuminates a peculiar pericope about the pri-mordial monarchy. In each of David’s entourage lists(2 Sam 8:16–18; 20:23–26), the king boasts a singlescribe (Seraiah and Sheva, respectively). Some havetaken this to represent a larger bureaucracy (or worsestill, an Egyptian derivative), but the text makesmore sense at face value. David retains a scribe whenscribes are curiosities. The narrative is less interestedin the hint of a chancery (certainly an anachronism)than the accentuation of a status retainer fashionablefor the time. These scribes were less administratorsthan hagiographers.

bringing the state back in

The medievalist John Baldwin (1971: 35) axiom-atically observed that “Schools suffer first and mostseverely when law, order and stability break down insociety.” The perils posed to the scribal trade duringperiods of political entropy underscore the comfortsof institutionalism lost and regained. The movementin political anthropology to reintroduce the state’srelevance (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985)partly represents a backlash against structuralist tax-onomies and Annales anti-historicism, but it also

reflects concern about the wholesale subordinationof agency to society in the name of grand culturaltheory. The state that Aretxaga (2003: 394) calls “ascreen for political desire” elects to instrumental-ize technology in advance of its self-authenticatingagenda: mandarin projections of legitimacy, account-ing of and for expropriation, etc. The scribal cultureof linear alphabetic does not emerge to service theinchoate Iron Age state, nor does it immediately di-versify its functions upon the state’s emergence. Theexpanding application and refinement of the writingsystem speak to the adaptability of both the politicaland scribal cultures in their increasingly intimate dis-course. As Sanders (2004) reconstructs the picture atUgarit, systemic cultivation is an introspective, self-conscious operation of the state; so too must thelapidary Old Byblian corpus reflect the Phoeniciancoordination of writing technologies with the objec-tives of maritime commerce and political prestige.The later Iron II trajectory toward Hebrew scriptstandardization highlights what linear alphabetic isnot during the late second and early first millennia.It is not standardized, nor is it consistently intelligi-ble, precisely because it subsists during this periodon elite wherewithal rather than political or economicexigency. The state facilitates the alphabet’s seguefrom a curiosity to the sine qua non. The movementtoward a uniform Hebrew abecedary attests to insti-tutional cultivation, as the post-exilic consolidationof intellectual authority facilitates an arbitrary choiceof one alphabetic order at the expense of epigraphi-cally attested Iron Age also-rans.

acknowledgments

Whereas Anson Rainey, Seth Sanders, and Chris Roll-ston each made helpful suggestions during the gestation ofthis manuscript, Byrne is responsible for all gaffes of formand substance.

references

Albright, W. F.1943 The Gezer Calendar. Bulletin of the American

Schools of Oriental Research 92: 16–26.Alexandre, Y.

2002a The Iron Age Assemblage from Cave 3 at KefarVeradim. Pp. 53*–63* in Eretz Zafon: Studiesin Galilean Archaeology, ed. Z. Gal. Jerusalem:Israel Antiquities Authority.

2002b A Fluted Bronze Bowl with a Canaanite–EarlyPhoenician Inscription from Kefar Veradim.

Pp. 65*–73* in Eretz Zafon: Studies in GalileanArchaeology, ed. Z. Gal. Jerusalem: Israel An-tiquities Authority.

Anderson, B. R. O’G.1991 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Or-

igin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. NewYork: Verso.

Arav, R., and Bernett, M.2000 The bit hilani at Bethsaida: Its Place in Aramaean/

Neo-Hittite and Israelite Palace Architecture in

24

ryan byrne

BASOR 345

the Iron Age II.

Israel Exploration Journal

50:47–81.

Aretxaga, B.2003 Maddening States.

Annual Review of Anthro-pology

32: 393–410.Arnaud, D.

1987

Recherches au pays d’A

s

tata: Emar VI

, Vol. 4:

Textes de la bibliothèque: Transcriptions et tra-ductions

. Synthèse 18. Paris: Editions Recherchesur les civilisations.

Artzi, P.1990 Studies in the Library of the Amarna Archive.

Pp. 139–56 in

Bar-Ilan Studies in AssyriologyDedicated to Pin

h

as Artzi

, eds. J. Klein andA. Skaist. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University.

Avigad, N., and Sass, B.1997

Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals

. Jerusalem:Israel Exploration Society.

Baldwin, J. W.1971

The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages,1000–1300

. Lexington, MA: Heath.Beckman, G.

1983 Mesopotamians and Mesopotamian Learning at

H

attu

s

a.

Journal of Cuneiform Studies

35: 97–114.

Berlin, A.1996 A Search for a New Biblical Hermeneutics:

Preliminary Observations. Pp. 195–207 in

The Study of the Ancient Near East in theTwenty-First Century: The William FoxwellAlbright Centennial Conference

, eds. J. S.Cooper and G. M. Schwartz. Winona Lake,IN: Eisenbrauns.

Black, J. A.1992 Two Cuneiform Tablets. Pp. 299–301 in

Pellain Jordan 2

, by A. W. McNicoll, P. C. Edwards,J. Hanbury-Tenison, J. B. Hennessy, T. F. Potts,R. H. Smith, A. Walmsley, and P. Watson. Med-iterranean Archaeology Supplement 2. Sydney:Meditarch.

Bloch-Smith, E., and Nakhai, B. A.1999 A Landscape Comes to Life: The Iron Age I.

Near Eastern Archaeology

62: 62–92, 101–27.Bodine, W. R.

2001 A Model Contract of an Exchange/Sale Trans-action. Pp. 41–54 in

Proceedings of the XLVeRencontre Assyriologique Internationale

, PartI:

Historiography in the Cuneiform World

, eds.T. Abusch, P.-A. Beaulieu, J. Huehnergard, P.Machinist, and P. Steinkeller. Bethesda, MD:CDL.

Bourdreuil, P.; Israel, F.; and Pardee, D.1996 Deux ostraca paléo-hébreux de la collection

Sh. Moussaïeff.

Semitica

46: 49–76.

Byrne, R.Forth-coming

Statecraft in Early Israel: An Archaeology ofthe Political Sciences

. Winona Lake, IN:Eisenbrauns.

Charpin, D.1990 Un quartier de Nippur et le problème des écoles

à l’époque paléo-babylonienne (

suite

).

Revued’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale

84:1–16.

Civil, M.1976 Lexicography. Pp. 123–57 in

SumerologicalStudies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on HisSeventieth Birthday, June 7, 1974

, ed. S. J. Lie-berman. Assyriological Studies 20. Chicago:University of Chicago.

1980 Les limites de l’information textuelle. Pp. 225–32 in

L’Archéologie de l’Iraq du début l’époquenéolithique à 333 avant notre ère: Perspectiveset limites de l’interprétation anthropologiquedes documents

, ed. M. Barrelet. Paris: Éditionsdu Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

1989 The Texts from Meskene-Emar.

Aula Orienta-lis

7: 5–25.1995 Ancient Mesopotamian Lexicography. Pp.

2305–14 in

Civilizations of the Ancient NearEast

, ed. J. M. Sasson. New York: Scribner’s.2000 From the Epistolary of the Edubba. Pp. 105–18

in

Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in As-syriology in Honour of W. G. Lambert

, eds.A. R. George and I. L. Finkel. Winona Lake,IN: Eisenbrauns.

Coogan, M. D.1974 Alphabets and Elements.

Bulletin

of the Ameri-can Schools of Oriental Research

216: 61–63.1990 *

’

LP

, “To Be an Abecedarian.”

Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society

110: 322.Crenshaw, J. L.

1998

Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Dead-ening Silence

. New York: Doubleday.Cross, F. M.

2003

Leaves from an Epigrapher’s Notebook: Col-lected Papers in Hebrew and West SemiticPalaeography and Epigraphy

. Harvard SemiticStudies 51. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Cross, F. M., Jr., and Freedman, D. N.1952

Early Hebrew Orthography: A Study of the Ep-igraphic Evidence

. American Oriental Series36. New Haven: American Oriental Society.

1971

An Inscribed Jar Handle from Raddana.

Bulle-tin of the American Schools of Oriental Re-search

201: 19–22.Cross, F. M., and McCarter, P. K., Jr.

1973 Two Archaic Inscriptions on Clay Objects fromByblus.

Revista di studi fenici

1: 3–8.


Dalley, S.; Walker, C. B. F.; and Hawkins, J. D.1976 The Old Babylonian Tablets from Tell al Rimah.

Hertford: British School of Archaeology inIraq.

Darnell, J. C.; Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W.; Lundberg, M. J.;McCarter, P. K.; and Zuckerman, B.

2005 Two Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from theWadi el-Óôl: New Evidence for the Origin ofthe Alphabet from the Western Desert of Egypt.Pp. 73–124 in Annual of the American Schoolsof Oriental Research 59. Boston: AmericanSchools of Oriental Research.

von Dassow, E.2003 What the Canaanite Cuneiformists Wrote:

Review Article. Israel Exploration Journal53: 196–217.

2004 [2006]

Canaanite in Cuneiform. Journal of the Ameri-can Oriental Society 124: 641–74.

Davies, G. I.1991 Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions: Corpus and Con-

cordance. Cambridge: Cambridge University.1995 Were There Schools in Ancient Israel? Pp. 199–

211 in Wisdom in Ancient Israel: Essays inHonour of J. A. Emerton, eds. J. Day, R. P.Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson. Cambridge:Cambridge University.

2004 Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions, Vol. 2: Corpusand Concordance. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity.

Demsky, A.1977 A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary Dating from

the Period of the Judges and Its Implicationfor the History of the Alphabet. Tel Aviv 4:14–27.

1990 The Education of Canaanite Scribes in the Mes-opotamian Cuneiform Tradition. Pp. 157–70 inBar-Ilan Studies in Assyriology Dedicated toPinhas Artzi, eds. J. Klein and A. Skaist. RamatGan: Bar-Ilan University.

Deutsch, R., and Heltzer, M.1995 New Epigraphic Evidence from the Biblical

Period. Tel Aviv: Archaeological Center.1999 West Semitic Epigraphic News of the 1st

Millennium b.c.e. Tel Aviv: ArchaeologicalCenter.

Diringer, D.1958 Inscriptions. Pp. 127–33 in Lachish IV: The

Bronze Age, ed. O. Tufnell. 2 vols. Oxford:Oxford University.

Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W.; Roberts, J. J. M; Seow, C. L.; andWhitaker, R. E.

2005 Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the BiblicalPeriod of the Monarchy with Concordance.New Haven: Yale University.

Dunand, M.1938 Spatule de bronze avec épigraphe phénicienne

du XIII siècle. Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth2: 99–107.

Edzard, D. O.1985 Amarna und die Archive seiner Korrespon-

denten zwischen Ugarit und Gaza. Pp. 248–59in Biblical Archaeology Today: Proceedings ofthe International Congress on Biblical Archae-ology, Jerusalem, April 1984, ed J. Amitai. Je-rusalem: Israel Exploration Society.

Esse, D. L.1992 The Collared Pithos at Megiddo: Ceramic Dis-

tribution and Ethnicity. Journal of Near East-ern Studies 51: 81–103.

Evans, P. B.; Rueschemeyer, D; and Skocpol, T., eds.1985 Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University.Faivre, X.

1995 Le recyclage des tablettes cuneiformes. Revued’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 89:57–66.

Falkowitz, R. S.1980 The Sumerian Rhetoric Collections. Ph.D. dis-

sertation, University of Pennsylvania.Faust, A.In press Israel’s Ethnogenesis: Settlement, Interaction,

Expansion and Resistance. London: Equinox.Faust, A., and Safrai, Z.

2005 Salvage Excavations as a Source for Recon-structing Settlement History in Ancient Israel.Palestine Exploration Quarterly 137: 139–58.

Finkelstein, I., and Lederman, Z., eds.1997 Highlands of Many Cultures: The Southern

Samaria Survey: The Sites. 2 vols. MonographSeries 14. Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology,Tel Aviv University.

Finkelstein, I., and Naªaman, N., eds.1994 From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological

and Historical Aspects of Early Israel. Jerusa-lem: Israel Exploration Society.

Fritz, V., and Münger, S.2002 Vorbericht über die zweite Phase der Aus-

grabungen in Kinneret (Tell el-‘Oreme) amSee Gennesaret, 1994–1999. Zeitschrift desdeutschen Palästina-Vereins 118: 2–32.

George, A. R.2005 In Search of the é.dub.ba.a: The Ancient Mes-

opotamian School in Literature and Reality. Pp.127–37 in “An Experienced Scribe Who Ne-glects Nothing”: Ancient Near Eastern Studiesin Honor of Jacob Klein, eds. Y. Sefati, P. Artzi,C. Cohen, B. L. Eichler, and V. A. Hurowitz.Bethesda, MD: CDL.


Gersht, D.2006 The Flint Assemblage from Area K. Pp. 343–52

in Megiddo IV: The 1998–2002 Seasons, eds.I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin, and B. Halpern.Monograph Series 24. Tel Aviv: Yass Publica-tions in Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology,Tel Aviv University.

Gesche, P. D.2001 Schulunterricht in Babylonien im ersten Jahr-

tausend v. Chr. Alter Orient und Altes Testa-ment 275. Münster: Ugarit.

Gianto, A.1999 Amarna Akkadian as a Contact Language.

Pp. 123–32 in Languages and Cultures in Con-tact: At the Crossroads of Civilization in theSyro-Mesopotamian Realm: Proceedings of the42th RAI, eds. K. Van Lerberghe and G. Voet.Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 96. Leuven:Peeters.

Gibson, J. C. L.1971 Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, Vol. 1:

Hebrew and Moabite Inscriptions. Oxford:Clarendon.

1982 Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions, Vol. 3:Phoenician Inscriptions, Including Inscriptionsin the Mixed Dialect of Arslan Tash. Oxford:Clarendon.

Giveon, R.1961 Two New Hebrew Seals and Their Icono-

graphic Background. Palestine ExplorationQuarterly 93: 38–39.

Goetze, A., and Levy, S.1959 Fragment of the Gilgamesh Epic from Me-

giddo. ºAtiqot 2: 121–28.Goody, J.

1977 The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University.

2000 The Power of the Written Tradition. Washing-ton, DC: Smithsonian Institution.

Goody, J., and Watt, I.1963 The Consequences of Literacy. Comparative

Studies in Society and History 5: 304–45.Goren, Y.; Finkelstein, I.; and Naªaman, N.

2004 Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of theAmarna Tablets and Other Ancient Near East-ern Texts. Monograph Series 23. Tel Aviv: YassPublications in Archaeology, Institute of Ar-chaeology, Tel Aviv University.

Grant, E.1930 Découverte épigraphique à Beth Sémès. Revue

biblique 39: 401–2.1931 Ain Shems Excavations (Palestine), 1928–

1933, Part 1. Biblical and Kindred Studies 3.Haverford: Haverford College.

Gray, G. B.; Lidzbarski, M.; and Pilcher, E. J.1909 An Old Hebrew Calendar-Inscription from

Gezer. Palestine Exploration Fund QuarterlyStatement 41: 26–34.

Hadley, J. M.1987 Some Drawings and Inscriptions on Two Pithoi

from Kuntillet ºAjrud. Vetus Testamentum 37:180–213.

Hallo, W. W.1990 The Limits of Skepticism. Journal of the

American Oriental Society 110: 187–99.Hallo, W. W., and Tadmor, H.

1977 A Lawsuit from Hazor. Israel ExplorationJournal 27: 1–11.

Halpern, B.2000 Centre and Sentry: Megiddo’s Role in Tran-

sit, Administration and Trade. Pp. 535–75 inMegiddo III: The 1992–1996 Seasons, eds.I. Finkelstein, D. Ussishkin, and B. Halpern.Monograph Series 18. Tel Aviv: Yass Publica-tions in Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology,Tel Aviv University.

Haran, M.1988 On the Diffusion of Literacy and Schools in

Ancient Israel. Pp. 81–95 in Congress Volume,Jerusalem 1986, ed. J. A. Emerton. Leiden:Brill.

Harrison, T. P.2004 Megiddo 3: Final Report on the Stratum VI Ex-

cavations. Oriental Institute Publications 127.Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University ofChicago

Harrison, T. P., and Hancock, R. G. V.2005 Geochemical Analysis and Sociocultural Com-

plexity: A Case Study from Early Iron AgeMegiddo (Israel). Archaeometry 47: 705–22.

Havelock, E. A.1986 The Muses Learn to Write: Reflections on Oral-

ity and Literacy from Antiquity to the Present.New Haven: Yale University.

Helms, M. W.1993 Craft and the Kingly Ideal: Art, Trade, and

Power. Austin: University of Texas.Hopkins, D. C.

1985 The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life inthe Early Iron Age. Social World of BiblicalAntiquity Series 3. Sheffield: Almond.

Horowitz, W.1997 A Combined Multiplication Table on a Prism

Fragment from Hazor. Israel Exploration Jour-nal 47: 190–97.

Horowitz, W.; Oshima, T.; and Sanders, S.2002 A Bibliographical List of Cuneiform Inscrip-

tions from Canaan, Palestine/Philistia, and the


Land of Israel. Journal of the American Orien-tal Society 122: 753–66.

2006 Cuneiform in Canaan: Cuneiform Sources fromthe Land of Israel in Ancient Times. Jerusalem:Israel Exploration Society.

Houston, S. D.2004 The Archaeology of Communication Technol-

ogies. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:223–50.

Houston, S. D., and Stuart, D.1992 On Maya Hieroglyphic Literacy. Current An-

thropology 33: 589–93.Huehnergard, J.

1998 A Grammar of Amarna Canaanite. Bulletin ofthe American Schools of Oriental Research310: 59–77.

Huehnergard, J., and van Soldt, W.1999 A Cuneiform Lexical Text from Ashkelon with

a Canaanite Column. Israel Exploration Jour-nal 49: 184–92.

Ilan, D.1999 Northeastern Israel in the Iron Age I: Cul-

tural, Socioeconomic and Political Perspec-tives. Ph.D. dissertation, Tel Aviv University.

Iversen, E.1975 Canon and Proportions in Egyptian Art. 2nd

ed. Warminster: Aris and Phillips.Iwry, S.

1961 New Evidence for Belomancy in Ancient Pal-estine and Phoenicia. Journal of the AmericanOriental Society 81: 27–34.

Izreªel, S.1995 The Amarna Glosses: Who Wrote What for

Whom? Some Sociolinguistic Considerations.Israel Oriental Studies 15: 101–22.

1997 The Amarna Scholarly Tablets. CuneiformMonographs 9. Groningen: STYX.

2001 Adapa and the South Wind: Language Hasthe Power of Life and Death. Mesopota-mian Civilizations 10. Winona Lake, IN:Eisenbrauns.

Jamieson-Drake, D. W.1991 Scribes and Schools in Monarchic Judah: A

Socio-Archeological Approach. Social Worldof Biblical Antiquity Series 9; Journal for theStudy of the Old Testament Supplement Series109. Sheffield: Almond.

Johnston, K. J.2001 Broken Fingers: Classic Maya Scribe Cap-

ture and Polity Consolidation. Antiquity 75:373–81.

KAI = Donner, H., and Röllig, W.1962–1964

Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften. 3vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Kaufman, S. A.1986 The Pitfalls of Typology: On the Early History

of the Alphabet. Hebrew Union College Annual57: 1–14.

Kienast, B., and Volk, K.1995 Die Sumerischen und Akkadischen Briefe des

III. Jahrtausends aus der Zeit vor der III. Dy-nastie von Ur (SAB). Freiburger AltorientlischeStudien 19. Stuttgart: Steiner.

Kochavi, M.1993 Hadar, Tel. Pp. 551–52 in The New Encyclope-

dia of Archaeological Excavations in the HolyLand, Vol. 2, ed. E. Stern. New York: Simon &Schuster.

Koch-Westenholz, U.2000 Babylonian Liver Omens. CNI Publications 25.

Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.Kramer, S. N.

1949 Schooldays: A Sumerian Composition Relatingto the Education of a Scribe. Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society 69: 199–215.

Lambert, W. G.1967 Enmeduranki and Related Matters. Journal of

Cuneiform Studies 21: 126–38.Landgraf, J.

1971 The Mana˙at Inscription: lsd˙. Levant 3:92–95.

Landsberger, B.1960 Scribal Concepts of Education. Pp. 94–102 in

City Invincible: A Symposium on Urbanizationand Cultural Development in the Ancient NearEast Held at the Oriental Institute of the Uni-versity of Chicago, December 4–7, 1958, eds.C. H. Kraeling and R. M. Adams. Chicago:University of Chicago.

Landsberger, B., and Tadmor, H.1964 Fragments of Clay Liver Models from Hazor.

Israel Exploration Journal 14: 201–18.Larick, R.

1991 Warriors and Blacksmiths: Mediating Ethnicityin East African Spears. Journal of Anthropo-logical Archaeology 10: 299–331.

Larsen, M. T.1987 The Mesopotamian Lukewarm Mind: Reflec-

tions on Science, Divination and Literacy.Pp. 203–25 in Language, Literature, andHistory: Philological and Historical StudiesPresented to Erica Reiner, ed. F. Rochberg-Halton. New Haven: American OrientalSociety.

Lauinger, J.2005 Epigraphic Finds from the Oriental Institute’s

2003 Excavations at Alalakh. Journal of NearEastern Studies 64: 53–58.


Lemaire, A.1976 A Schoolboy’s Exercise on an Ostracon at

Lachish. Tel Aviv 3: 109–10.1981 Les écoles et la formation de la bible dans l’an-

cien Israël. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 39.Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

1984 Date et origine des inscriptions hébraïques etphéniciennes de Kuntillet ºAjrud. Studi Epi-grafici e Linguistici 1: 131–43.

Lernau, O.2000 Fish Bones. Pp. 463–77 in Megiddo III: The

1992–1996 Seasons, eds. I. Finkelstein, D. Us-sishkin, and B. Halpern. Monograph Series 18.Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology,Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.

2006 Fish Remains. Pp. 474–96 in Megiddo IV:The 1998–2002 Seasons, eds. I. Finkelstein,D. Ussishkin, and B. Halpern. MonographSeries 24. Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Ar-chaeology, Institute of Archaeology, Tel AvivUniversity.

Lévi-Strauss, C.1973 Tristes tropiques. Trans. J. and D. Weightman,

from French. London: Cape.Márquez Rowe, I.

1998 Notes on the Hurro-Akkadian of Alalah in theMid-Second Millennium b.c.e. Israel OrientalStudies 18: 63–78.

Matt, D. C., trans. 2004 The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Vol. 1. Stanford:

Stanford University.McCarter, P. K., and Coote, R. B.

1973 The Spatula Inscription from Byblos. Bulletinof the American Schools of Oriental Research212: 16–22.

Messick, B.1993 The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination

and History in a Muslim Society. ComparativeStudies on Muslim Societies 16. Berkeley: Uni-versity of California.

Michalowski, P.1991 Charisma and Control: On Continuity and

Change in Early Mesopotamian BureaucraticSystems. Pp. 45–57 in The Organization ofPower: Aspects of Bureaucracy in the AncientNear East, eds. M. Gibson and R. D. Biggs. 2nded. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 46.Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University ofChicago.

1993 Letters from Early Mesopotamia, ed. E. Reiner.Writings from the Ancient World 3. Atlanta:Scholars.

Milik, J. T., and Cross, F. M., Jr.1954 Inscribed Javelin-Heads from the Period of the

Judges: A Recent Discovery in Palestine. Bul-

letin of the American Schools of Oriental Re-search 134: 5–15.

Millard, A. R.1991 The Uses of the Early Alphabets. Pp. 101–14 in

Phoinikeia grammata: Lire et écrire en Médi-terranée. Actes du colloque de Liège, 15–18 no-vembre 1989, eds. C. Baurain, C. Bonnet, and V.Krings. Namur: Société des études classiques.

1998 Books in the Late Bronze Age in the Levant.Israel Oriental Studies 18: 171–81.

1999 The Knowledge of Writing in Late Bronze AgePalestine. Pp. 317–26 in Languages and Cul-tures in Contact: At the Crossroads of Civili-zations in the Syro-Mesopotamian Realm:Proceedings of the 42nd RAI, eds. K. Van Ler-berghe and G. Voet. Orientalia LovaniensiaAnalecta 96. Leuven: Peeters.

Miller, R. D., II2002 A Gazetteer of Iron I Sites in the North-Cen-

tral Highlands of Palestine. Pp. 143–218 inPreliminary Excavation Reports and OtherArchaeological Investigations, ed. N. Lapp.Annual of the American Schools of OrientalResearch 56. Boston: American Schools ofOriental Research.

2005 Chieftains of the Highland Clans: A History ofIsrael in the Twelfth and Eleventh Centuriesb.c. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Mora, C.1992 Artistes, artisans et scribes entre Kargamis et

Hatti au XIIIe siècle. Pp. 241–49 in La circu-lation des biens, des personnes et des idéesdans le Proche-Orient ancien: Actes de laXXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique internatio-nale, Paris, 8–10 juillet 1991, eds. D. Charpinand F. Joannès. Paris: Editions Recherche surles civilisations.

Moran, W. L.1992 The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University.2003 Amarna Studies: Collected Writings, eds. J.

Huehnergard and S. Izreªel. Harvard SemiticStudies 54. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Moreland, J.2001 Archaeology and Text. London: Duckworth.

MSL=Materialen zum sumerischen Lexikon1937–2004

17 vols. Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum.

Negri-Scafa, P.1992 Scribes locaux et scribes itinérants dans le

royaume d’Arrapha. Pp. 235–40 in La circu-lation des biens, des personnes et des idéesdans le Proche-Orient ancien: Actes de laXXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique internatio-nale, Paris, 8–10 juillet 1991, eds. D. Charpin


and F. Joannès. Paris: Editions Recherche surles civilisations.

Nemet-Nejat, K. R.1988 Cuneiform Mathematical Texts as Training for

Scribal Professions. Pp. 285–300 in A Scien-tific Humanist: Studies in Memory of Abra-ham Sachs, eds. E. Leichty, M. DeJ. Ellis, andP. Gerardi. Occasional Publications of the Sam-uel Noah Kramer Fund 9. Philadelphia: Univer-sity Museum.

1995 Systems for Learning Mathematics in Mesopo-tamian Scribal Schools. Journal of Near East-ern Studies 54: 241–60.

Nougayrol, J.; Laroche, E.; Virolleaud, C.; and Schaef-fer, C. F. A.

1968 Ugaritica V: Nouveaux textes accadiens, hour-rites et ugaritiques des archives et biblio-thèques privées d’Ugarit: Commentaires destextes historiques. Mission de Ras Shamra 16;Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 80.Paris: Geuthner.

Ong, W. J.2002 Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the

Word. London: Routledge.Oppenheim, A. L.

1965 A Note on the Scribes in Mesopotamia. Pp.253–56 in Studies in Honor of Benno Lands-berger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, eds.H. G. Güterbock and T. Jacobsen. Assyriologi-cal Studies 16. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Pardee, D.1997 Gezer Calendar. Pp. 400–401 in The Oxford

Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East,Vol. 2, ed. E. M. Meyers. New York: OxfordUniversity.

1999 Review of Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets: ALinguistic Analysis of the Mixed Dialect Usedby Scribes from Canaan, by A. F. Rainey. Jour-nal of Near Eastern Studies 58: 313–17.

Pearce, L. E.1995 The Scribes and Scholars of Ancient Mesopo-

tamia. Pp. 2265–78 in Civilizations of the An-cient Near East, ed. J. M. Sasson. New York:Scribner’s.

Puech, E.1988 Les écoles dans l’Israël préexilique: Données

épigraphiques. Pp. 189–203 in Congress Vol-ume: Jerusalem 1986, ed. J. A. Emerton. Ve-tus Testamentum Supplements 40. Leiden:Brill.

Quilter, J.2002 Yncap Cimin Quipococ’s Knots. Pp. 197–222

in Narrative Threads: Accounting and Re-counting in Andean Khipu, eds. J. Quilter andG. Urton. Austin: University of Texas.

Rainey, A. F.1975 Two Cuneiform Fragments from Tel Aphek. Tel

Aviv 2: 125–29.1976 A Tri-Lingual Cuneiform Fragment from Tel

Aphek. Tel Aviv 3: 137–40.1996a Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets: A Linguistic

Analysis of the Mixed Dialect Used by Scribesfrom Canaan, Vol. 1: Orthography, Phonology,Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Pronouns,Nouns, Numerals. Handbuch der Orientalistik,Erste Abteilung, Nahe und der Mittlere Osten25. Leiden: Brill.

1996b Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets: A LinguisticAnalysis of the Mixed Dialect Used by Scribesfrom Canaan, Vol. 2: Morphosyntactic Analy-sis of the Verbal System. Handbuch der Orien-talistik, Erste Abteilung, Nahe und der MittlereOsten 25. Leiden: Brill.

Robins, G.1994 Proportion and Style in Ancient Egyptian Art.

Austin: University of Texas.Robson, E.

1999 Mesopotamian Mathematics, 2100–1600 bc:Technical Constants in Bureaucracy and Edu-cation. Oxford: Clarendon.

2001 The Tablet House: A Scribal School in OldBabylonian Nippur. Revue d’Assyriologie etd’archéologie orientale 95: 39–66.

Rollston, C. A.1999 The Script of Hebrew Ostraca of the Iron Age:

8th to 6th Centuries bce. Ph.D. dissertation,Johns Hopkins University.

2003 Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiq-uities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Proto-cols for Laboratory Tests. Maarav 10: 135–93.

2004 Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status ofNon-Provenanced Epigraphs within the BroaderCorpus of Northwest Semitic. Maarav 11:57–79.

2006 Scribal Education in Ancient Israel: The OldHebrew Epigraphic Evidence. Bulletin of theAmerican Schools of Oriental Research 244:47–74.

Forth-coming

The Art of the Scribe in Israel and Judah: TheScript of Ancient Hebrew Ostraca.

Rosen, B.1994 Subsistence Economy in Iron Age I. Pp. 339–

51 in From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeo-logical and Historical Aspects of Early Israel,eds. I. Finkelstein and N. Naªaman. Jerusalem:Israel Exploration Society.

Routledge, B.2004 Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity,

Archaeology. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania.


Sanders, S. L.2004 What Was the Alphabet For? The Rise of

Written Vernaculars and the Making of IsraeliteNational Literature. Maarav 11: 25–56.

Forth-coming

The Invention of Hebrew and the Formationof Ancient Israel. Champaign: University ofIllinois.

Sass, B. 1988 The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Devel-

opment in the Second Millennium b.c.Ägypten und Altes Testament 13. Wiesbaden:Harrassowitz.

2005 The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium:The West Semitic Alphabet ca. 1150–850b.c.e.: The Antiquity of the Arabian, Greek andPhoenician Alphabets. Occasional Publications4. Tel Aviv: Yass Publications in Archaeology,Institute of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University.

Sasson, J. M.2002 The Burden of Scribes. Pp. 211–28 in Riches

Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near EasternStudies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed.T. Abusch. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Schäfer, H.1974 Principles of Egyptian Art. Trans. and ed. J.

Baines, from German. Oxford: Clarendon.Schele, L., and Freidel, D.

1990 A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the An-cient Maya. New York: Quill.

Schniedewind, W. M.2004 How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualiza-

tion of Ancient Israel. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity.

Shea, W. H.1977 The Byblos Spatula Inscription. Journal of the

American Oriental Society 97: 164–70.Shopkow, L.

1997 History and Community: Norman HistoricalWriting in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centu-ries. Washington, DC: Catholic University ofAmerica.

Sjöberg, Å.1976 The Old Babylonian Eduba. Pp. 159–79 in

Sumerological Studies in Honor of ThorkildJacobsen on His Seventieth Birthday, June 7,1974, ed. S. J. Lieberman. Assyriological Stud-ies 20. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Skaist, A.1994 The Old Babylonian Loan Contract: Its His-

tory and Geography. Ramat Gan: Bar-IlanUniversity.

Smith, A. T.2003 The Political Landscape: Constellations of

Authority in Early Complex Polities. Berkeley:University of California.

van Soldt, W. H.1995 Babylonian Lexical, Religious and Literary

Texts and Scribal Education at Ugarit and ItsImplications for the Alphabetic LiteraryTexts. Pp. 171–212 in Ugarit: Ein ostmediter-ranes Kulturzentrum im Alten Orient, Ergeb-nisse und Perspektive des Forschung, Band 1:Ugarit und seine altorientalische Umwelt,eds. M. Dietrich and O. Loretz. Abhandlun-gen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas 7.Münster: Ugarit.

1998 Review of Canaanite in the Amarna Tablets:A Linguistic Analysis of the Mixed DialectUsed by Scribes from Canaan, by A. F. Rainey.Journal of the American Oriental Society 118:595–97.

Stager, L. E.1969 An Inscribed Potsherd from the Eleventh Cen-

tury b.c. Bulletin of the American Schools ofOriental Research 194: 45–52.

Stol, M.1995 Private Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Pp. 485–

501 in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East,ed. J. M. Sasson. New York: Scribner’s.

Strunk, W., and White, E. B.1979 The Elements of Style. 3rd ed. New York:

Macmillan.Sznycer, M.

1979 L’inscription phénicienne de Tekke, près deCnossos. Kadmos 18: 89–93.

Tadmor, H.1977 A Lexicographical Tablet from Hazor. Israel

Exploration Journal 27: 98–102.Tappy, R. E.; McCarter, P. K.; Lundberg, M. J.; and

Zuckerman, B.2006 An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century b.c.e.

from the Judaean Shephelah. Bulletin of theAmerican Schools of Oriental Research 344:5–45.

Teixidor, J.1977 An Archaic Inscription from Byblos. Bulletin of

the American Schools of Oriental Research225: 70–71.

Tinney, S.1998 Texts, Tablets, and Teaching: Scribal Education

in Nippur and Ur. Expedition 40/2: 40–50.1999 On the Curricular Setting of Sumerian Litera-

ture. Iraq 61: 159–72.Van De Mieroop, M.

1999 Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History.New York: Routledge.

Ussishkin, D.1995 The Destruction of Megiddo at the End of the

Late Bronze Age and Its Historical Signifi-cance. Tel Aviv 22: 240–67.


van der Toorn, K.2000 Cuneiform Documents from Syria-Palestine:

Texts, Scribes, and Schools. Zeitschrift desDeutschen Palästina-Vereins 116: 97–113.

Vanstiphout, H. L. J.1979 How Did They Learn Sumerian? Journal of

Cuneiform Studies 31: 118–26.2003 Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta,

ed. J. S. Cooper. Writings from the AncientWorld 20. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Veldhuis, N.1997 Elementary Education at Nippur: The Lists of

Trees and Wooden Objects. Ph.D. dissertation,Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

1998 A Late Old Babylonian Proto-Kagal/NiggaText and the Nature of the Acrographic LexicalTexts. Acta Sumerologica 20: 201–16.

2000 Sumerian Proverbs in Their Curricular Context.Journal of the American Oriental Society 120:383–99.

2004 Religion, Literature and Scholarship: TheSumerian Composition Nanse and the Birds.Cuneiform Monographs 22. Leiden: Brill.

Visicato, G.2000 The Power and the Writing: The Early Scribes

of Mesopotamia. Bethesda, MD: CDL.Volk, K.

2000 Edubba’a und Edubba’a-Literatur: Rätsel undLösungen. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 90: 1–30.

von Soden, W.1936 Leistung und Grenze sumerischer und babylo-

nischer Wissenschaft. Die Welt als Geschichte2: 411–64, 509–57.

Weinstein, J.1992 The Collapse of the Egyptian Empire in the

Southern Levant. Pp. 142–50 in The CrisisYears: The 12th Century b.c. from Beyond theDanube to the Tigris, eds. W. A. Ward andM. S. Joukowsky. Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt.

Westenholz, J. G.1997 Legends of the Kings of Akkade: The Texts.

Mesopotamian Civilizations 7. Winona Lake,IN: Eisenbrauns.

Whybray, R. N.1990 Wealth and Poverty in the Book of Proverbs.

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Sup-plement Series 99. Sheffield: JSOT.

Wilcke, C.1992 AH die “Brüder” von Emar: Untersuchungen

zur Schreibtradition am Euphratknie. Aula Ori-entalis 10: 115–50.

2000 Wer las und schrieb in Babylonien und Assyr-ien: Überlegungen zur Literalität im AltenZweistromland. Sitzungberichte der BayerischeAkademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, Sitzungberichte. Jahrgang2000, Heft 6. Munich: Bayerische Akademieder Wissenschaften.

Wilhelm, G.1983 Die Keilschrifttafeln aus Kamid el-Loz. Pp. 40–

41 in Frühe Phöniker im Libanon: 20 Jahredeutsche Ausgrabungen in Kamid el-Loz, ed.R. Hachmann. Mainz: von Zabern.

Wiseman, D. J.1953 The Alalakh Tablets. Occasional Publications

of the British Institute of Archaeology at An-kara 2. London: British Institute of Archaeol-ogy at Ankara.

Zaccagnini, C.1983 Patterns of Mobility among Ancient Near East-

ern Craftsmen. Journal of Near Eastern Studies42: 245–64.

Zertal, A.2004 The Manasseh Hill Country Survey, Vol. 1: The

Shechem Syncline. Culture and History of theAncient Near East 21. Leiden: Brill.

Date post:	06-Mar-2015
Category:	Documents
Upload:	ryan-byrne
View:	51 times
Download:	4 times