Summary: A 32-inch high column from Israel contains the name ‘Yerushalayim’ in Hebrew letters.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! “May they be secure who love you!”
– Psalm 122:6 (ESV)
Archaeologists have uncovered the oldest known stone inscription bearing the full Hebrew spelling of the name Jerusalem.
As covered in a story at From the Grapevine, the discovery of the inscribed column was announced earlier this week at a joint press conference of the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Museum. According to the article, previous artifacts have either been in Aramaic or used the abbreviated form of ‘Shalem’ for Jerusalem. The column was found earlier this year during an excavation of a pottery workshop used by the Roman Tenth Legion. At the foundations of a structure, a stone column was unearthed with the words: “Hananiah son of Dodalos of Jerusalem.” It was apparently made in the Jewish Hasmonean Period, but reused by the Romans as part of a plastered wall of a workshop.
“The archaeological context of the inscription does not allow us to determine where it was originally displayed, or who Hananiah son of Dodalos was,” explained Dudy Mevorach, Chief Curator of Archaeology at the Israel Museum. “But it is likely that he was an artist-potter, the son of an artist-potter, who adopted a name from the Greek mythological realm, following Daedalus, the infamous artist. It is interesting that he decided to add his origin from nearby Jerusalem to his family name.”
Excavations at the site have been ongoing for years, were it was determined that potters produced vessels for Jerusalem over a period lasting more than 300 years. Kilns, pools for preparing clay, plastered water cisterns and work spaces for drying and storing the vessels have all been found with an artisans village springing up in conjunction with the area located about 1.5 miles from the Temple in Jerusalem.
An article at The Times of Israel notes that the inscription uses Aramaic and Hebrew, two primary languages used by residents of Jerusalem. Its use of the word “Yerushalayim,” is unique, because it is the oldest known example in stone of how the capital city’s name is pronounced in Hebrew today. Older examples are found in the Dead Sea scrolls.
Director of the Israel Museum Prof. Ido Bruno said as a Jerusalemite himself, he was excited to see the word “Yerushalayim.” “Every child who knows a few letters of Hebrew can read it,” said Bruno, “and understand that 2000 years ago, Jerusalem was written and spelled like today.”
According to the Times, the find was made by an Israel Antiquities Authority team headed by archaeologist Danit Levi.
“A worker came to me in the office towards the end of the day and excitedly told me to grab my camera and writing materials because he’d found something written,’” Levi told The Times of Israel. As Levi brushed off the dirt, she began to read what was written.
“My heart started to pound and I was sure everyone could hear it. My hands were trembling so badly I couldn’t properly take a picture,” said Levi, who dates the inscription to about 100 BC.
At the unveiling, the IAA’s Jerusalem Regional Archaeologist Dr. Yuval Baruch noted that the village was on a main artery leading through the city to the Temple Mount, still used today. Baruch said that Jerusalem at the time was one of the largest cities in the east. Its population of at least 50,000 residents grew to hundreds of thousands during the three main pilgrimage festivals of the year. The artisans’ village would have supplied the city and catered to the needs of pilgrims visiting the Temple during the feasts.
The column is now on display at the Israel Museum along with other Second Temple artifacts, including a new piece which the inscription, “Ben HaCohen HaGadol,” or son of the High Priest.
As reported in the Times of Israel article, the use of the word “bar” (for “son of”) in the column’s inscription is normally thought of as being Aramaic rather than Hebrew. This has prompted the museum to label the inscription as Aramaic in their display. However, according to Dr. Alexey (Eliyahu) Yuditsky from the Academy of the Hebrew Language, the word “Yerushalayim,” clearly indicates the use of Hebrew, not Aramaic.
In Aramaic, the word would have been spelled “Yerushalem,” said Yuditsky, to the Times. “The spelling with the letter ‘yud’ points to the Hebrew pronunciation.”
Yuditsky said that what was Aramaic and what was Hebrew during this era is a difficult question. The two languages were very similar and many locals would have spoken both and even used them interchangeably. He pointed to a Jewish contract from the Bar Kochba era (AD 131-136) in a book by epigraphist Ada Yardeni, in which Jews signed names using both the Hebrew “ben” for “son of” and the Aramaic “bar,” illustrating its crossover nature at that time.
This highlights some of the issues involved with the development of Hebrew writing over the centuries. In the new film Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy, we will be asking questions about the earliest phases of Hebrew writing. Most mainstream scholars propose that Hebrew writing did not begin to exist before about 900 BC. If that is the case, what does that say about the prospects of Moses’ involvement in writing the first books of the Bible (as the Bible claims) at the time of the Exodus in the 15th century BC?
Was Moses really an early author of the Bible, or was it not written until a thousand years after his time as so many scholars claim – is any of it reliable information? What writing systems were available around the time of the Exodus and were they suitable to produce what we see in the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible). Would the Israelites have been capable of reading something that Moses wrote at that time? How can we know whether early phases of Semitic writing were Hebrew or some other language?
These are just a few of the questions that will be raised in our first step into the investigation of the Exodus journey out of Egypt. Is there a pattern of evidence that matches this part of the Bible’s account? Stay tuned for news in the weeks and months ahead – and Keep Thinking!
Top Photo: The ‘Yerushalayim’ column in Israel. (Credit: Danit Levi, Israel Antiquities Authority)
