Canaanite Languages

Many of the world's first written records have been found in the area of the ancient Near East, in what is today known as the Middle East. While many people are familiar with the ancient Israelite literature recorded in the Hebrew Bible, most Near Eastern literature remains a mystery. From an Antique Land lifts the veil from these fascinating writings, explaining the ancient stories in the context of their cultures.
From the invention of writing through the conquest of Alexander the Great, expert scholars examine literature originally written in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Each chapter includes an overview of the culture, a discussion of literary genres, and descriptions and short analyses of the major literary works. Photos of archaeological remains further illustrate these people and their writings.
Contributors: Gary Beckman, Carl S. Ehrlich, Benjamin R. Foster, Susan Tower Hollis, Ingo Kottsieper, Wayne T. Pitard, Gonzalo Rubio.

A complete edition of all known Latino (and Graeco)-Punic inscriptions along with a detailed, comparative grammatical analysis, esp. with regard to phonology and orthographic practice. Several texts are presented here for the first time. These texts from Roman-era Tripolitania (the first centuries A.D.) render Punic systematically, although written with Latin graphemes. Until now they have been largely neglected by Semiticists. They thus provide, among other things, fully vocalised material, unusual for alphabetically written Semitic languages, which can provide us with insight into the historical and diachronic development of the (North-West) Semitic languages, esp. biblical Hebrew. At the same time, these texts are also interesting epigraphic texts documenting the spread of the Punic language into the African interior.

The Karatepe inscriptions contain an intriguing image of a woman walking fearlessly with spindles. This image builds on the symbolism of the spindle in the ancient Near East as an emblem of femininity and highlights the gendered language of the passage in which it occurs. In the context, the figure of the woman with spindles is contraposed with the image of the fearful man. The contrast between them portrays the magnitude of the positive changes accomplished by Azitawada, the ruler who commissioned the inscriptions.

(From the back cover) Egypt, Judaism, and the history of the alphabet intersect in Deciphering The Proto-Sinaitic Script. From its initial appearance, in around the 18th century BC, the origins of proto–Sinaitic writing can be traced back to Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period, when it was somehow derived from the hieroglyphs, its parent–system. The importance of proto–Sinaitic lies in the fact that it represents the alphabet’s earliest developmental period—a kind of ‘missing link’ between the hieroglyphs and these early Semitic alphabets from which our own Latin one descends, by way of the Phoenician and Greek. However, up until now, proto-Sinaitic has remained for the most part undeciphered. The intriguing possibility of giving voice to a lost culture or civilization from thousands of years ago is tantalizing. Representing one of the most enticing problems in modern archaeology, the enigmatic allure surrounding ancient languages and the undeciphered scripts in which they are encoded is truly vexing. In his bold and original research, LeBlanc argues convincingly to have solved the mystery and uncovers some incredibly enthralling information about the people who invented it: The epigraphic evidence suggests that the Egyptianized Canaanites who first devised the proto–Sinaitic script were surprisingly instrumental in the formation of early Israelite culture and proto–Judaism. (A preview of Introduction and Bibliography included in attached PDF)

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss cuneiform writing as a reflection of literacy in Bronze Age Canaan. 1 It will show what cuneiform inscribed artifacts (mainly tablets and seals) can tell us about the way cuneiform literacy was achieved, and how, once achieved, writing was involved in the politics, economy, and social life in Canaan. The conclusion of the chapter will evaluate the spread of literacy and the scope of cuneiform writing in Canaan. The materials presented here are finds recovered during archaeological excavations and those found by accident at or near archaeological sites. They comprise twenty-one letters, twenty-three administrative tablets, eight seals or votive objects, and fourteen school-related or scholarly materials. 2

Part I of this paper seeks to address much of the poor scholastic academic research in regards to Noble Drew Ali, founder of the Moorish Science Temple of America, the very first Islamic organization in the United States of America. Was Noble Drew Ali a mere mystic that worked in a circus and then decided to start an organization? Was he really some illiterate man named Thomas Drew that hid his identity as Timothy Drew, then to become a PROPHET? Did Noble Drew Ali have the requisite information to raise up the so-called "blacks" in the United States of America? All of these questions are answered in this tract.

Las pruebas genéticas recién publicadas en la Revista Sciencie confirman la hipótesis del equipo de la 'Revista Argárica' de que entre los fundadores del Argar, además de los ya más que esperados esteparios, hubo gente procedente de las antiguas tierras de Canaán, concretamente gente con linaje paterno típico de ancestrías afroasiático-semíticas.

This article provides a new reading and interpretation of the undeciphered Ancient North Arabian inscription KRS 2453. It is argued that the text is composed in a mixed Safaito-Hismaic script, and contains a three-line poem recounting the conflict between the Canaanite deities Baal and Mōt as known from the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. The inscription’s Ancient North Arabian context is also discussed, and its style and structure are examined in light of the ʿĒn ʿAvdat inscription, the only comparable Old Arabic text.

Through a careful examination of the data from Biblical Hebrew, Phoenician, and Amarna Canaanite, the 'Canaanite Shift' of Proto-Northwest-Semitic *a: and *a'$ > *o: is shown to have operated in stressed and unstressed syllables, except after rounded vowels in the previous syllable and directly following *y.

Evidence from various Semitic languages suggests that 'hollow' verbs should not be reconstructed with a vowel as their middle radical, but with three radical consonants, the middle one being *w or *y. In the past, forms from Biblical Hebrew have been cited as being incompatible with such a reconstruction. This paper shows that almost all parts of the Hebrew hollow paradigm can easily be derived from their strong counterparts, leaving only the nip̄ʿal imperfect and the hip̄ʿil participle as anomalies. These two forms are then investigated in more detail. The nip̄ʿal imperfect, yikkon, is argued to be an analogical extension of the stem found in the perfect, nåk̠on, based on the model of the geminate roots. The hip̄ʿil participle, mešib̠ , is shown to be the regular outcome of earlier *mihatīb-, a reconstruction which is supported by cuneiform transcriptions .

The Qeiyafa Ostracaon is an important inscription from the late stage of Early Alphabetic. Regarding its language, some have argued that it is written in Hebrew. This article, however, contends that there are no discernible diagnostic features in the ostracon that mandate such a conclusion. Furthermore, the article also emphasizes that the script of this inscription is certainly not Old Hebrew, nor is it the immediate precursor of the Old Hebrew script. Rather the Old Hebrew script derived from Phoenician. Thus, there is some distance between the script of this inscription and the Old Hebrew script. Finally, the article contends that it would be difficult (because of the dearth of data) for grand proposals about statecraft and literacy to be made on the sole basis of this ostracon.

It has been not infrequently mentioned by Semitists
that a few graphemes of the West Semitic consonantal alphabet had
been multifunctional. This is witnessed, in particular, by transcriptions
of Biblical names in Septuagint, Demotic transcriptions of Aramaic
as well as by the Arabic alphabet, Aramaic by its origin, which twenty
two graphemes were ultimately developed into twenty eight ones
through inventing additional diacritics. The oldest firmly deciphered
and convincingly interpreted variety of the West Semitic consonantal
script was employed in Ugarit as early as the 13th century BC. Being
contemporaneous with the epoch of the invention of the West Semitic
consonantal script the most significant evidence is provided with Semitic
words occasionally transcribed in Egyptian papyri from the New
Kingdom. Examples collected (J. Hoch) demonstrate that one and the
same Semitic consonant could be recorded variously with different
Egyptian consonants used; even more crucial is that various Semitic
consonants could be recorded with the same Egyptian one.
E. de Rougé was the first one to state that the immediate prototypes
of Semitic letters were to be sought among the Hieratic characters.
W. Helck and K.-Th. Zauzich determined that the West Semitic
alphabet comprised only those characters which had been used
in “Egyptian syllabic writing”. Summarizing philological and historical
evidence does allow us to conclude that the Canaanite consonantal
alphabet developed as a local adaptation of the Egyptian scribal practice
of recording non-Egyptian words. This local adaptation must have
occurred under Ramesside rule, when Egyptian or Egyptian-trained
scribes resided at Canaanite sites.
It seems reasonable to conclude that West Semitic consonantal
graphemes were not intended for reflecting Semitic phonetics adequately
from the beginning of their existence. Their usage was originally
conditioned by the Egyptian scribal practice of rendering Semitic
words that was current during the New Kingdom.

"A selection of those late Punic texts (i.e. post-dating the destruction of Carthage in 146BC) in both neo-Punic and Latin script which are relatively easy to understand, making them accessible to non-experts in the field of Northwest Semitic epigraphy. The brief but thorough commentary provided for each text explains the readings, the idiosyncrasies of later Punic and the underlying scribal conventions. In some cases, the authors give new readings and dispense with the old ones. On the one hand, the present authors intend to pick up where Gibson’s Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions left off, on the other to broaden the selection offered by Donner and Röllig in Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften , whilst at the same time also reflecting the results of research carried out during the past decades.
The work itself is intended for classroom use, ideally in the second term of an introductory course on North-West Semitic epigraphy, although it may also of course be used for private study. The Neo-Punic texts are given in Latin transcription, whilst the separate Neo-Punic and Latino-Punic glossaries contain both common and proper nouns together for ease of consultation. "

This online edition of the Amarna Letters aims to make transliterations, translations, and glossaries of the letters and administrative texts available to both scholars and the wider public. At this time, the project comprises 218 texts. This number represents the correspondence to and from Egypt's client kings in the Levant, excluding the letters sent from Phoenicia. In our next update, we will add the letters from Phoenicia. In our final update, we will add the correspondence to and from the so-called "Great Powers" as well as the administrative texts related to this correspondence.

This paper summerizes the hellenistic coin finds on sites BEY 002, BEY 006, BEY 004, BEY 026, BEY 145, BEY 125, BEY 133, BEY 142 and BEY 144 from Beirut. The full data presented the VXth INC Glasgow, 2009,  are consultable in the "Talks" section of the current page of Academia.

Δημοσιεύτηκε στο Journal of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 6 (1994), p. 1-50
(Εδώ περιλαμβάνεται μόνον το κείμενο του άρθρου - όχι οι σημειώσεις που αποτελούν το μέγιστο τμήμα του άρθρου, δηλαδή πάνω από 35 σελίδες)

Αναδημοσιεύθηκε (κείμενο & σημειώσεις) online εδώ:
https://oilaoitisthalassas.wordpress.com/
https://oilaoitisthalassas.wordpress.com/2016/05/29/η-ευρύτερη-περιοχή-της-ανατολικής-μεσ/

Με μουσική υπόκρουση αναρτήθηκε ως βίντεο (μόνον το κείμενο του άρθρου - όχι οι σημειώσεις που αποτελούν το μέγιστο τμήμα του άρθρου, δηλαδή πάνω από 35 σελίδες) εδώ:
https://vk.com/video429864789_456239080 (κείμενο και σημειώσεις)
https://vk.com/video429864789_456239078 (μόνον κείμενο)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4elsox
https://vimeo.com/169517508

Writing in its many forms was an important part of the political, economic and cultural landscape of the Levant during the Second Millennium BC. Diverse scripts were used to record both local and foreign languages, and included Egyptian hieroglyphics, cursive hieroglyphics, hieratic, cuneiform, alphabetic cuneiform, Proto-Canaanite, Hittite hieroglyphs and linear Aegean scripts. While the corpus is not large, it is significant and hints at the range of writing practices and knowledge available.

This paper reviews the evidence for Middle and Late Bronze Age writing from a primarily archaeological perspective, showing how a study of object function, materiality and contexts of use can inform on broader questions of textual availability, awareness and execution. Texts played a variety of roles within the communities they served. Texts could act as educational tools; to exert political authority, impress and intimidate; to enhance objects used in funerary or ritual settings, and to mark personal ownership. Across these roles, we can also evaluate more broadly how writing technique, material and script converge, and what the choices that were being made in this respect can tell us about how writing was being organised and managed.

This leads to the conclusion that, despite strong script diversity in the region, most forms of script appear to have been used in discrete environments with little overlap between them. Many uses were confined to a professional setting, with scribes operating within local and imposed administrative networks as representatives of the status quo. Beyond this, writing was generally restricted to elite consumers and so had limited impact on society as a whole. The exception lay in more visible forms of writing, such as publically erected stelae, and in special classes of object such as amulets and amuletic objects, such as the scarab, which could be privately owned by a wider group of people. Accessibility, however, did not necessarily equate with understanding, and for the majority, the significance of a text may well have lain in its visual qualities and associations rather than in the actual words recorded.

Ultimately it was the more personal and unofficial applications of writing that proved to be the most robust, and it was these that survived to bridge the gap between the end of the Late Bronze Age, and the emergence of a whole new set of polities and writing practices in the Iron II period.

The 15th letter in the Canaanite Alphabet, was first called 'Semech', a facility made of wood on which garden plants climbing on. In the ancient inscriptions, we see a Vertical center pole to which three horizontal sticks are connected at equal intervals.

With the long awaited editio princeps of a portion of the Roman-era neo-Punic texts from Henchir Maktar (Tunisia), this large and fairly homogeneous corpus of primarily dedicatory and funerary inscriptions is finally being made available to the scholarly world in a modern publication with serviceable photographs. Although many of these texts have in the meantime been studied extensively, most recently by Jongeling (2008), this edition is—due to what many have in the past considered the cacographic state of these epigraphs—a most welcome and indispensable addition to the toolkit of philologists, epigraphists, historians, and theologians. The volume under review is the first of an intended total of three. It largely contains texts found during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The envisaged second volume is to present the hitherto unpublished " plusieurs douzaines " of texts found in 1969 reused as a foundation for the city's Roman triumphal arch. The third will contain the inscriptions from monuments now lost, based on old photographs and casts. While many of the texts here have been previously published in a preliminary fashion (starting with Chabot 1918; now HNPI), this volume must be formally considered their long-awaited editio princeps. This, as described in the opening chapter (" L'historique de la découverte des inscriptions "), was originally to have been undertaken by J.-B. Chabot; later this task was given to J. Février, and later still to M. Sznycer and M. Fantar. After the death of the former in 2011, it was finally F. Bron who completed the edition for publication. 1 The volume contains some ninty-eight texts arranged by genre: votive texts, largely relating to sacrifices at the Tophet (1–69); epitaphs (69–88); two inscriptions from the " Temple of Apollo " (89–90); fragmentary texts (91–97); and finally a text from Mididi (Hr Medid) (98). The last chapter is a compendious iconographic study of the steles by the late C. Picard. The volume concludes with concordances, glossaries, and quite legible black-and-white photographs. The discussion of the inscriptions includes material data such as the dimensions of each stone, its decoration, letter height, and the dimensions of the champ épigraphique. The texts themselves are presented in transcription and translation along with a summary commentary. The majority of the texts can be found in

The use of the narrative tense in the archaic language type in Biblical Hebrew is consistent with the situation attested in ancient North-West Semitic languages of the 2nd millennium BC. Three centers of linguistic
diversity are established and the status of this isogloss is further elucidated. Part of the material gives priority to the old perfective preterit yqtlø as the main narrative tense; this usage is commonly interpreted as
an archaic retention, but its status as an areal feature needs further investigation. Another part demonstrates the new perfective, perfect qtl, used on the main line of narrative; this usage exposes the main shared innovation that characterizes all the North West Semitic languages as part of Central Semitic. The third group of texts favours the imperfective yqtlu used as a historical present: this type unmistakably indicates an areal
development, particularly the impact of a certain linguistic convention.

My study of NorthWest Semitic languages and linguistics has always been intertwined with my interest for the interactions between Egypt and the Levant. Professor Cathcart was aware of that, and at the end of my first year as his student he offered me a copy of W. Albright's The Vocalization of the Egyptian Syllabic Orthography. That gift was very welcome, as the syllabic orthography, also called group writing-a special hieroglyphic orthography used by the Egyptians to transcribe foreign words and toponyms, especially Semitic ones-had always been something I wanted to work on. I finally had the time to do so over the past two years, and my efforts resulted in a new interpretative model providing a new explanation of how the syllabic orthography notates vowels. In the present paper I use my system to offer new readings for a selection of words of NorthWest Semitic origins attested in Papyrus Anastasi I, which dates to the New Kingdom/Late Bronze Age. A few preliminary observations about these words and the sociolinguistic context of their use are provided in the conclusions.

SUMMARY: Lecture-14 provides an overview of Canaanite religion (selected deities and their attributes), some LB Age material culture (e.g., pottery; foreign forms [trade]; metallurgy; art; sculpture; seals; ivory carving; clay/ceramic sculpture), writing & literature, burial customs, and features in Egypt's Empire in North Sinai and Canaan (e.g., forts) --especially in the Ramesside period (LB IIB - Iron IA). This lecture is designed mainly as an educational resource/aid for college students (i.e., normally posted only on my institution's course website), the public (e.g., people auditing my course), and interested colleagues from other disciplines (to whom I periodically provide copies privately).  I am posting it here, both as a broader access, educational tool, and especially to promote the study of this region and its past societies.  For further knowledge about this region and period, I refer interested parties to the textbooks and other sources from which the initial materials were extracted for this ppt. (see syllabus; e.g., initially Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible), and/or the bibliographies in these works and my online resource guides (see other files in my academia folders).  Much of this and the other lectures summarize the pertinent materials in the course textbook(s), add in other data, including my own research materials, and furnish numerous images to clarify/illustrate the wealth of information encountered in the textbook(s).  Some generic imagery (usually indicated as such) is posted to aid in transmitting various concepts visually, and/or when a specific image remains not located (temporarily).  I update and revise such lectures each time, with such elective courses normally being taught once every two years.  I try to cover the most current, mainstream views, and usually place summary notes at the end of each lecture (or in separate test study guides).  Over time, each lecture is improved, errors rectified, and additional data placed within the lecture.  These ppt. lectures take many hours to compile, but they have proved useful to many of my more serious students (who have since pursued graduate degrees), and a few colleagues, who, like me, often teach outside our main fields of specialty, and I hope they can be of benefit to others as well.  My apologies for any errors I may have made (over time, as I teach this course every two years, I try to rectify any errors that might slip in inadvertently), and for my liberal usage of educational imagery from professional sources and vetted internet sources.  UPDATES: Oct. 2023 reformatting, including new images and text.