Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Amazing Abecedary Announced

Way back in July, after we completed the 2005 season of excavation at Tel Zeitah, Israel, I announced
"The season at Zeitah was fantastic. We found something really great in my square, O-19, in fact it was by far the coolest thing I've ever seen discovered on a dig in which I participated. But, I am sworn to secrecy as to what it is, so give me a few months and I'll let you know.


Now I can tell you, as the cat is out of the bag. In the 10th century BCE strata where we excavated we discovered what some scholars are calling the earliest Hebrew alphabet ever discovered. You can read about it in the Nov 9th New York Times. Ron Tappy, the project's director, will be presenting this great news in more detail in Philadelphia at the annual meeting for the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature. You can also read more about it on Tel Zeitah's webpage.

3 comments:

Tim Bulkeley said...

Wow! That much have been so exciting!

Could you do a diary entry for us on how it went. That could be a useful resource to make archaeology come alive for students. If you set down your story of how it happened the sequence of events... and how you felt.

Editor B said...

High fives all around.

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah? Well, at Tel es-Safi they found Goliath's signature on a potsherd...or, well, a name similar to Goliath...and maybe it wasn't a signature exactly...but it does prove that the bible is absolutely literally exactly true.