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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2011
Shortly after the publication of my study on the Inscription of Solomon I learned of the new Canaanite inscriptions recently brought from Sinai by Professors Lake and Blake and published by them and Professor Butin in the Harvard Theological Review for January, 1928. Having attempted several years ago, in the Revue Archeologique (1921 and 1922), to explain the earlier ones, I naturally wished to see if I might not read these also and get at their meaning. In this I think I have succeeded, at least to a moderate degree. The first steps in deciphering the ten or twelve documents discovered at Serâbît, near Sinai, were taken by the English scholars A. H. Gardiner and A. Cowley. The former identified the name of Bahalath, the latter that of Tanit, as well as the pronoun ןא (Hebrew ינא ‘I’) and especially the expression םענ לע, which means ‘because of favor.’ Several other words, including ןכ ‘son,’ ןתנ ‘give,’ were recognized within a short time, so that a goodly number of the twenty-two letters of the alphabet were thus identified.
1 L'Inscription du Jardin de Salomon transcrite et expliquée, Montauban, 1928.
2 R. Eisler, Die Kenitischen Weihinschriften, 1919, p. 28.
3 Revue archéologique, 1921 and 1922.
4 Cf. Gen. 31, 7 and 41.
5 Sottas and Drioton, Introduction à l'étude des hiéroglyphes, pp. 71 (note 10), 81 (No. 44), 88, etc.
6 There is a two-fold instance of this use in one of the previous inscriptions, No. 350: “We see here a figure of a man and a long leaf, which seem to me to signify ‘man and plant’” (Bevue archéologique, 1921).
7 Revue archéologique, 1921.
8 Revue archéologique, 1922, ‘Rectifications.’
9 Revue archéologique, 1921.
10 Ḥeth and he in the last inscription have only two parallel lines, instead of three, but this simplification was not lasting. We find it in he, it is true, in the inscription of Solomon, where gimel also has the rounded form, as in the last of the Sinai inscriptions.
11 Just as the inscription of the statue has preserved the most ancient form ב and ף, this inscription with the perforated fish has preserved that of ר. These must be among the earliest forms.