Zayit Stone

Drawing of inscription on the Zayit Stone.

The Zayit Stone is a 38 pound limestone boulder discovered on 15 July 2005 at Tel Zayit (Zeitah) in the Guvrin Valley, about 50 km (35 miles) southwest of Jerusalem. The boulder measures 37.5 cm × 27 cm × 15.7 cm high and was embedded in the stone wall of a building. It is the earliest securely-dated example of the complete Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. The flat side of the boulder is inscribed with a complete Paleo-Hebrew abecedary. The first line contains eighteen letters (aleph through tsadi), while the second contains the remaining four letters (qoph through tav) followed by two enigmatic zigzag symbols.

Description

One side of the stone carries the Paleo-Hebrew abecedary extending over two lines:

• Line 1:

• Line 2:

|  |    

In modern Hebrew alphabet, the letters are:

• Line 1:

א ב ג ד ו ה ח ז ט י ל כ מ נ ס ע פ צ‎

• Line 2:

|  |     ק ר ש ת‎

There is some debate over whether the forms of these letters are anticipatory of later developments in Hebrew and should thus be characterized as "Palaeo-Hebrew" or whether they lack such features and should be characterized as "Phoenician" or more generally "South Canaanite."

The side opposite this inscription has a bowl-shaped depression measuring 18.5 cm × 14.5 cm × 6.7 cm deep. Other similar ground stone objects have been recovered at Tel Zayit. Their function is uncertain, but "they may have served as mortars, door sockets, or basins of some kind."

The very top line of the inscription contain the letters:

In the modern Hebrew alphabet this translates to:

עזר

The word עזר is mentioned in the bible many times and depending on the verse, it either translates to, "Help" or "Helper". For example: "Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me; Lord, be my helper" (Psalms 30:11), "And I looked, and there was none to help" (Isaiah 63:5).

History

The stone was discovered on July 15, 2005 by volunteer excavator, Dan Rypma, during excavations under the direction of Ron E. Tappy of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary at Tel Zayit as part of the archeological excavations which took place during the 1999–2001, 2005, 2007, and 2009–2011 seasons.

The inscription was discovered in situ in what appears to be a tertiary usage as part of wall 2307/2389 in square O19. Like the Gezer calendar, the abecedary is an important witness to the letter forms in use in the Levant in the early Iron Age.

Significance

Several inferences may be drawn from its content and context:

• The authors of the editio princeps support the conclusion that given "the well-established archaeo-palaeographic chronology of the Tel Zayit inscription... and the clear cultural affiliation of its archaeological context with the Judaean highlands, we may reasonably associate it with the nascent kingdom of Judah." It should be noted, however, that this interpretation has been challenged on both palaeographic and archaeological grounds.

• The Tel Zayit abecedary adds to the corpus of inland Canaanite alphabetic inscriptions from the early Iron Age and thus provides additional evidence for literacy in the region during this period. While claiming a certain "level" or "percentage" of literacy on the basis of this and similar inscriptions is notoriously difficult, one might argue, as one recent contributor to the discussion, that because "Tel Zayit is... small enough and distant enough from Jerusalem... the presence of this inscription there might be taken as testimony of more widespread writing across more far-flung and minor administrative centers of Judah."

• In addition to preserving writing as such, the inscription preserves an ordered sequence of letters, though this differs at points from those of other abecedaries from the Late Bronze and Iron Age Levant. Particularly, waw is placed before he, het is placed before zayin, and lamed is placed before kaph. In this last instance, a large X appears to mark a mistake realized by the scribe himself. This may indicate that the author was poorly educated or that the alphabetic order had yet to fully stabilize.

• The text may have played a significant role in making "an important symbolic statement for the cultural core that lay in the highlands to the east." This is true "regardless of which cultural set [i.e. coastal Phoenician or highland Hebrew] one sees as the sponsor of the inscription."

In addition to the above broad historical concerns, the inscription is significant primarily due to the light it sheds on the development of letter forms in the southern Canaanite interior of the early Iron Age. Because the stratigraphy of the site and the date of the inscription itself are still debated, it is nevertheless difficult given the present state of research to attach any definite historical or chronologically absolute conclusions to the inscription's existence or content.

See also

• Paleo-Hebrew
• Gezer Calendar
• Biblical archaeology

Notes

References

Excavation website

• The Zeitah Excavations

Academic books and articles

Popular and other articles

• Wilford, John Noble, "A Is for Ancient, Describing an Alphabet Found Near Jerusalem." The New York Times: November 9, 2005.
• Grena, G. M., "An Analysis of the Zayit Stone Inscriptions & BASOR 344's Presentation Thereof." online publication, November 11, 2007