Copyright © 2001 Andrews
University Press, cited with permission;
digitally prepared for use at
THE INSCRIBED TABLETS
FROM TELL DEIR cALLA
PART 1*
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
The
Biblical Research Institute
During the 1964 season of
excavations at Tell Deir cAlla
on the
eastern side of the mid-Jordan Valley, the Dutch
expedition led by
H.
J. Franken recovered eleven clay tablets from the floors of two
storerooms, Rooms IX and X, located across a
courtyard from the
Late-Bronze-Age
temple at the site.l Three
of the tablets were
inscribed with texts written in a previously
unknown script, seven
of the tablets were incised only with dots, and
one tablet appeared
to be merely a lump of clay squeezed by hand.
Franken is to be
complimented and thanked for his prompt
publication of the find.
His
manuscript announcing the discovery of the tablets was com-
pleted but two weeks after the
end of the excavations.2 All three of
his articles which dealt with the tablets in one
way or another
appeared in journals dated to 1964.3
In the present study, the inscribed
tablets are designated by
Roman
numerals, as follows:
Tablet I (or Text I) = Deir
cAlla No. 1449
Tablet II (or Text II) = Deir cAlla No. 1441
Tablet III (or Text III) = Deir cAlla No. 1440
The
reason for this particular sequence will be made clear in my
treatment of the decipherment of the texts and the
historical impli-
cations involved. Franken has
provided line drawings and some
*Editor's Note: The continuation and
conclusion of this study, in "Part II," is
currently planned for the Summer 1989 issue of AUSS.
1 H. J. Franken,
"Excavations at Deir cAlla,
Season 1964," VT 14 (1964):
417-422.
2 H. J. Franken,
"Clay Tablets from Deir cAlla,
3 H. J. Franken,
"The Stratigraphic Context of the Clay Tablets
Found at Deir
cAlla," PEQ 96 (1964): 73- 78, plus the articles
mentioned in nn. 1 and 2, above.
For
the excavations at the site in general, see idem, Excavations at Tell Deir
cAlla: I
(
21
22
WILLIAM H.
SHEA
photographs of these three inscribed tablets and
line drawings of
all eight unwritten tablets, plus photographs of
six of the latter.4
My
own line drawings given herein are based on those of Franken.
The
line drawings for the first two inscribed tablets appear below,
and those for the third inscribed tablet will be
set forth in the
subsequent installment (Part II) of this article,
in conjunction with
the discussion of the dotted tablets that will be
given there.
1. Studies of the Tablets
Unfortunately, relatively little has
been done in studies of
these tablets since they were published. In a passing remark, W. F.
Albright
suggested that they might have originated with the Philis-
tines because of "their similarity to Minoan
tablets."5 As Trude
Dotan noted, however, "this
extremely attractive proposal is difficult
to substantiate because the derived Philistine
pottery at Deir cAlla
was found in the Iron-Age-I levels following the
destruction of the
temple complex."6
The first two studies of the Deir cAlla tablets
appeared the year
after they were discovered. In the first study of
them, A. van den
Branden concluded that their script was most
directly related to
early Arabic scripts.7 While van den Branden made a useful begin-
ning in the study of these
tablets, his special reliance upon Arabic
scripts has not produced an overall solution to
their texts. H.
Cazelles followed up van den Branden's
study by agreeing that
some of the letters in this script were related to
early Arabic forms,
but he also noted that other letters resembled
those in the Phoeni-
4 For his line drawings
of all eleven tablets, see "Stratigraphic
Context," p. 73,
Fig. 1. A further line drawing, in larger size,
of text I appears in "Clay Tablets,"
p.
380; and such a drawing of text III appears in the same article on p. 378.
Photo-
graphs of six of the eight dotted texts appear in
"Excavations," Plate Va. Franken
has also published photographs of inscribed texts
II and III in "Excavations," Plate
Vb, and
"Clay Tablets," Plate 1, respectively.
5 W. F. Albright, "
History, 3d ed.. vol. 2, part 2, p. 510.
6 T. Dotan,
The Philistines and Their Material Culture
(
7 A. van den Branden, "Dechiffrement des
inscriptions de Deir 'Alla,"
VT 15
(1965):
129-149.
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 23
cian alphabet. He suggested
that attention should be given to their
relations in that direction.8
Almost a decade passed before the Deir cAlla tablets
were
treated again. Following up the idea that the
script of these tablets
might have come from the Aegean world, Z. Mayani attempted to
decipher the tablets on the basis of Etruscan.9
His results are so
exceptional that they are not dealt with further
here.
The most recent study of one of
these tablets was published
more than a decade ago. In 1975, G. E. Mendenhall
transcribed and
translated one of the three written tablets, but
this was only as a
passing comment in a study on another subject.10
As a result,
Mendenhall's
cursory treatment provides no detailed interpretation
of the palaeography or
linguistics involved. Mendenhall sees the
text as written in a script related to hieroglyphic Luwian but
conveying a message in a Semitic language. The
message is the
record of a delivery of some donkeys. Because of its
linguistic
consistency, Mendenhall's is probably the best of
the previous
studies of these tablets.
My own interest in these tablets dates to a
seminar I taught at
in that seminar, Aecio Cairus from
the Deir cAlla tablets for his research project. I did
not encourage
him in this undertaking because at the time I
considered the tablets
undecipherable. Cairus
persevered, however, and eventually con-
vinced me that he had indeed
identified seven more letters of this
script beyond those identified by earlier researchers
(see Section 3
below). Because of the difficulty of the script, this
was a remarkable
achievement.
On various occasions during the course of that
seminar, Cairus
and I discussed the identification of individual signs,
the meaning
of, different words, and the overall significance
of the texts. In spite
of the progress made, the texts remained
difficult. In the final
written report of his research, Cairus presented three different ways
in which the two tablets with which he dealt
(texts I and III) could
8 H. Cazelles,
"Deir-Alla et ses tablettes," Semitica 15
(1965): 5-21.
9 Z. Mayani,
"Un apport a la discussion du
texte Deir cAllah," VT
24 (1974):
318-323.
10 G. E. Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation (Baltimore, MD, 1975), pp. 160-161.
24
WILLIAM H.
SHEA
be translated. He has subsequently presented the
results of his work
on this subject to the Midwestern sectional
meeting of the Society
of Biblical Literature that met at
1986.
While I am deeply indebted to Cairus for his identification of
the letters which I accepted from him, plus some of
the words in
my translations which were first proposed by him,
other lexical
items and the overall translation and interpretation
of the tablets
proposed below are my own responsibility and the
result of my
continuing work on this subject. I have also added
here my transla-
tion of the third and more
badly damaged tablet (text II) and my
interpretation of the dotted tablets
with which
2. The Archaeological Context
These tablets were found on the floors of two
storerooms that
were located immediately adjacent to the sanctuary
at the site.
Since
the pottery in the final phase of the sanctuary and in the
storerooms was essentially the same, it is evident
that all of the
buildings in the complex were destroyed at
approximately the same
time. A faience vase bearing the cartouche of Queen Taousert, who
reigned in
found in the final destruction level of the sanctuary;
hence a date
for this destruction just after 1200 B.C. is
appropriate from the
archaeological evidence.
This date of just after 1200 B.C. for the final
destruction of the
sanctuary complex, however, does not necessarily
provide a specific
date for the writing of the tablets. The
archaeological evidence
indicates only that they could not have been
written any later than
ca.
1200; it does not tell us how long before that final destruction
they were written. Several objects found in the
sanctuary complex
antedated its final phase by rather long periods
of time; A Hyksos
scarab was found in the storerooms with the tablets,
and it must
have been more than three centuries old by the time
of that destruc-
tion.11 Two large painted LB-I
vessels were found in the cella of
the temple, and they came from an earlier phase of
that structure.12
It
is possible, therefore, that these tablets could have originated
from a time considerably earlier than the
destruction of the final
11 Franken, "Excavations," Plate
VIII, no. 3.
12 Ibid., Plate I.
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 25
phase of the sanctuary. The archaic nature of their
script suggests
that they probably did.
3. Analysis and Decipherment of the Script
The process of deciphering the script used on
these tablets has
been a slow one, to which each of the studies cited
above has made
a contribution. For reasons of space,
identifications for signs in
previous studies which have been rejected are not
here discussed.
The first of the letters in this script, which
van den Branden correctly
identified, was the gimmel. It consists of a vertical
stroke which curves to
the right at its head. The form is similar in later
West-Semitic scripts, but
the head became more angular.
Van den Branden's
second correct letter was the pe. This he identified
on the basis of parallels with the bow-shaped pe of Thamudic and Safaitic
scripts. In Canaanite writing the pe was written
with more of a curve, and
it does not straighten out as much at the ends of
the stroke.
Van den Branden was
also the first to identify the samek in these texts.
It
is a typical West-Semitic samek, which consists of three horizontal
strokes on a vertical stem.
The final letter, utilizable from van den Branden's identifications, is
the taw. It, too, is typical of West-Semitic taws
in that it was written with
two crossed strokes.
The kaph, which was first identified by Cazelles,
has a trefoil head and
a vertical tail like the later forms of the
West-Semitic kaph.
The use and
length of the tail of the kaph seem to vary among the Deir cAlla tablets.
The yod, which Gazelles identified, lacks the forked head of the
later
West-Semitic yods. It was written here
with just a dot, or not even that, at
the head of the vertical stroke.
The res that Mendenhall recognized has a direct parallel with
the
head-shaped sign with which the res was written in the Proto-Sinaitic
script.
The first of the letters which Cairus identified is the beth. Later West-
Semitic
beths have
triangular heads and angular tails. What Cairus noted
here was that there is a letter with a triangular
head, but it is represented
only by three corner dots. The tail of this letter
consists only of a straight
downstroke without any bend in it.
The circular infolded lamed, which Cairus recognized, comes
fairly
close to the lamed
in the abcedary of the cIzbet
Sartah Ostracon.13
13 The lamed
occurs as the 10th letter in the second line; the 12th, 26th, and 29th
letters of the fourth line; and the 12th letter
of the fifth or alphabetic line of the
cIzbet Sartah
Ostracon. See M. Kochavi,
"An Ostracon of the Period of the Judges
from cIzbet Sartah," Tel
Aviv 4 (1977): 1-13.
26
WILLIAM H.
SHEA
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 27
Cairus's distinction between the
mem and the
nun is especially impor-
tant for understanding these
Deir cAlla
texts. In later scripts, both of these
letters had wavy-lined heads extending to the
left from the head of their
downstrokes. The mem, however, has
multiple notches, while the nun has
only one. In these texts Cairus
has identified the wavy vertical line as the
nun and the broad vertical V as the mem. This seems
to run in the oppo-
site direction from the parallels. Cairus adopted this position on the basis
of the sense that they brought to their respective
words. When he showed
me these identifications, I checked some of the
early alphabets for parallels
and found one for the mem in the abcedary
of the cIzbet Sartah
Ostracon.14
Thus
the mem
that we find here has a .parallel in at least one other early
alphabet. That leaves the alternate letter as a nun.
cAyin was originally written
in the form of a horizontal oval or circle
with a dot in it, representing the eye with a pupil.
What Cairus recognized
here is that we have half of this sign--one curved
line with a dot in it, but
lacking the lower curved line and being turned
90º to stand vertically.
Cairus's bow-shaped sin is relatively close in form to the
later West-
Semitic
sins, except that it has been rotated
90º to stand vertically like the
cayin.
The vertical box-shaped sign at the beginning of
the one word on the
side of text III has been difficult to identify. It
looks most like heth,
but it
does not function like heth because it is followed by a
clear example of an
cayin. The combination of heth followed by cayin
does not occur in West-
Semitic languages. In his search for
another letter with which to identify
this sign, Cairus settled
upon the zayin.
If this sign is rotated 90º, like the
two previous letters discussed, and its excess of
crossbars is removed, this
sign would resemble the later zayin. The key to this
identification may lie
in the fact that the letter's top horizontal
crossbar extends between the two
vertical strokes at an angle, as does the
vertical connector between the
horizontal strokes of the later zayin.
There are some additional signs which should now
be added to the
foregoing list. The first of these proposed here
is he. One example of a
vertical box-shaped sign with one central
crossbar appears in text II, and
14 The alphabet of the cIzbet
Sartah Ostracon has been
misinterpreted with
regard to mem and nun. It
has been thought that the last letter in the alphabet
before the break in the middle of the sherd was the nun
and that the mem
was
missing. Actually, the last letter before the
break is the mem
and the nun was
written back in the sixth position of the
letters in the alphabet. It is the standard
notched form of the nun that was written there
in error, and to compensate for this
error the scribe wrote the waw, the correct letter of that
position, underneath the
nun. That makes the broad letter like the v-shaped
letter of the Tell Deir cAlla
tablets' mem. For details, see the line drawing of the ostracon which accompanies
Kochavi's article referred to in n. 13.
28
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
another occurs in text I. While this sign looks
something like heth, heth
does not make sense in these contexts while he does, and he is the letter
that looks most like heth. The clue to identifying he here may lie in the
facts that only one central crossbar extends between
the vertical strokes and
that the vertical stroke on the left appears to be
less deeply incised than the
one on the right.
Both Cazelles and Cairus considered identifying the letter with the
semicircle atop the vertical stroke as a waw, but in the
end they rejected
that identification. That original identification is
retained here. This letter
looks very much like the waws in other West-Semitic
alphabets, and it
functions well in these texts as a waw.
The triangular letter which consists of only
three dots has a head
which is similar to the head of the beth, but it does
not have a tail, as does
the beth. The letter in later alphabets which has a triangular
head but only
a rudimentary tail is the dalet; hence this letter has been
identified as a
dalet here.
There appears to be another example of the zayin present here, this
one in text II. It is also a vertical box-shaped
sign, but it has no central
crossbar, only top and bottom crossbars, and the
top crossbar is incised at
an angle like that of the zayin
on the side of text III. If this sign is rotated
90º
and its bottom crossbar is removed, it also looks like the later zayin.
Together, these letter identifications yield the
alphabet that is
outlined in Figure 1. While the forms of some of
these letters are
unusual and quite archaic, most of them can
still be related to
forms known from other early West-Semitic alphabets.
From the
standpoint of these relations, there is no need to
identify this script
as non-Canaanite. It should rather be thought of
as compatible
with other early Canaanite scripts.
Before proceeding to the transliteration and a
translation of
the texts of the three tablets, the long slash
marks inscribed in these
texts should be mentioned. The slash marks are
clearly word di-
viders. They make, in fact,
much better word dividers than the
short vertical strokes or dots that were used in
later texts.
4. Text I: Pethor Smitten
(Deir cAlla
No. 1449)
General Introduction
In connection with text I and also the further
two written
tablets, the pattern of treatment is as follows
(indicated by side
subheads): First the transliteration and
translation are given; next
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 29
my line drawing of the particular tablet is
presented (as given in
line drawing below); then general introductory
comments are made
(whenever there are such); following those comes the analysis
of
the text upon which my transliteration and
translation are based;
and finally, attention is given to the historical
and geographical
implications of the information
elicited from the text. In tablet I,
which is inscribed with only one line, the final two
items require
but one side heading each, whereas in tablets II
and III, each of
which contains more than one line, the headings for
these two final
areas of treatment will be on a line-by-line basis.
Transliteration
and Translation of Text I:
lkm / mk. / wtm.y / whm
/ mk. /ptr
(la) "To you (have come) a smiter
and a finisher,
(lb) and they (are) the smiters of Pethor."
The
Line Drawing:
Analysis of the Text
This text was written all on one line located
along the edge of the
tablet, and all six boxes for the words of this text
were marked off on this
line. The superior and inferior flat surfaces of the
tablet were not incised.
The
first letter of the first word can be identified as a circular infolded
lamed, comparable to that of the cIzbet
Sartah Ostracon. This is
followed
by a standard form of the kaph with a trefoil head and
vertical tail. The
large V of the mem concludes this word. Lkm divides
nicely into the
prefixed preposition l and the suffixed pronoun km,
second person plural.
It
translates as, "To you. . . ." The position of this prepositional
phrase
suggests that a form of the verb "to
be" should be understood with it, here
translated freely as "have come."
The first noun which tells what came to the
people was written with a
large notched mem, a trefoil kaph, and a dot following the kaph. This fits
either one of two words in Biblical Hebrew-makka as the noun
for
"blow, stroke, wound, defeat"; or the Hiphil participle makke from the
derivative root nkh, "to beat, strike,
smite, defeat." Either the noun or the
30
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
verb would bring satisfactory meaning to this
passage, but the verbal form
has been preferred for its emphasis on agency over
result: thus, "smiter."
No
indicator of the final vowel was written, but a dot does follow the kaph
both here and in the same word in the fifth box. In
Biblical Hebrew the
kaph in these forms was
doubled by using a dagesh forte. It looks very
much as if that was the scribe's intent here by use
of this dot.
The third word is introduced by a waw with a forked
head, which
should serve as a conjunction. Therefore a form and a
function similar to
those of the preceding word are thus expected. The taw and mem from this
word's root occur next, and they are clear. They are
followed by a dot and
a plain vertical stroke of the yod. The most
direct relationship is to the
root tmm, "to finish, complete." If the dot doubles the
letter that it
follows, as it appears to do elsewhere in this
text, the yod
following could
provide the reason why it should function in
this way. When endings were
added to this Hebrew verb, its doubled forms
appeared. This final yod
probably is not a pronominal suffix. More likely,
it represents the i-vowel
of the old genitive case ending, a case ending
which would be appropriate
here with a word that ends a prepositional phrase.
My translation of this
word is "finisher."
The next word begins with a standard form of the
waw with a
forked
head. This should serve as a conjunction that
introduces the other major
statement of the text. This is followed by the
vertical box-shaped sign,
which has been identified as the he rather than heth. He also makes better
sense here. The last sign of this word is the large
V-shaped mem
that has
already been seen three times in this text. The
word present here is
w + hm, or the conjunction
followed by the third person masculine plural
independent pronoun, "they." The natural
plural antecedent of this pro-
noun should be the two objects mentioned together
immediately before it,
the "smiter"
and the "finisher."
The fifth word in this line is the same as the
second. It consists of a
mem followed by a kaph and a dot.
As in the previous case, this should be
taken as a Hiphil
participle from nkh,
"to smite." For the third time in
this line a dot appears to function as doubling the
consonant that it
follows. Since the subject of this participle is
in the plural, the participle
should be plural too. But it lacks the mem of the plural
ending, so it
probably should be taken as in construct with the
following word. The
final vowel of the plural construct was not written
out here. With the verb
"to be" understood, this second statement should thus
far be translated as,
"and they (are) the smiters of. . .
."
The object which was smitten by these two "smiters" (i.e., by the
"smiter" and "'finisher" in the first
statement) was named at the end of the
line, and that name reads quite clearly. Its first
two letters are the pe
and
taw, which van den Branden identified, and its final sign is the head-
shaped letter, which Mendenhall recognized as the res. The name of the
DEIR cALLA
TABLETS 31
object which received these two blows or attacks is,
therefore, ptr.
These
consonants can be vocalized quite readily to yield
the name "Pethor."
Historical and
Geographical Implications
Pethor is identified in Num
22:5 as the home of Balaam the
prophet. This text thus provides us with an identification for that
site, which previously was in dispute. Both the
location of Pethor
and the ancient name of Tell Deir
cAlla have been uncertain, but
thanks to this text, those two puzzle pieces can now
be put together
by identifying Tell Deir
cAlla as Pethor.
Further discussion of this
identification follows later in this
study, in Part II of this article.
The
translation developed here for this six-word line thus not
only identifies as Pethor
the site at which the tablet was found, but
also indicates that Pethor
had been attacked by two successive
waves of attackers. Although this text does not
identify those
attackers, it appears that the related tablet
written in the same
scribal hand (II) does do so.
5. Text
II: Pethor's Smiters (Deir cAlla No. 1441)
Transliteration and
Translation:
(1) czwv t / pthm
/ m[k.]
(2) [wcdr]c.y / wywvgg / mk[.]
(1) "The mighty ones of Pithom
(are) a sm[iter],
(2) [and Edre]ci and Yog (are) a smiter."
The
Line Drawing:
32
WILLIAM
H. SHEA
Introduction
Text II was inscribed upon the top surface of
its tablet in a
boustrophedon