After the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz got wind that BAR would be publishing the foregoing article, it published its own story in October 2007 about the Jezebel seal and Professor Korpel’s attribution to Queen Jezebel. Korpel’s article, the newspaper wrote, is “scheduled to appear in the highly-respected Biblical Archaeology Review.”

Christopher A. Rollston, a professor at Emmanuel School of Religion and a budding paleographer, quickly filed a response on the Internet to Korpel’s piece.¹ Rollston could find Korpel’s argument in a scholarly paper she had published in the Journal for Semitics.² Rollston concluded that the seal could not be that of Queen Jezebel. Korpel, in turn, will be publishing a scholarly article in the journal Ugarit-Forschungen that addresses Rollston’s arguments, most of which are technical and easily answered— except one. And that one relates to paleography, Rollston’s specialty.

Rollston studied the four letters on the seal and concluded that they cannot date to the ninth century B.C.E., when Queen Jezebel lived. They must date later. Therefore, even if the name on the seal is Jezebel, it cannot refer to Queen Jezebel, wife of King Ahab of Israel. Here are Rollston’s own words:

“I would not consider it tenable to argue that the script of this seal could be ninth century Old Hebrew. It must be later” (emphasis added).³

If true, Rollston’s argument was devastating to Korpel’s identification of the seal: Her argument in favor of the identification is not even “tenable.”

Rollston is nothing if not certain. There is apparently no room in his scholarship for doubt or hesitation. He operates, he says, purely as a scientist. I had seen this certainty before, when I listened to Rollston’s courtroom testimony in the famous ongoing Jerusalem forgery trial. As a witness for the prosecution, Rollston presented himself as an expert in scripts of the Iron Age— the eighth, seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. He testified that he could identify each “with certainty.”⁴

In light of Rollston’s damning criticism of Korpel’s not-yet-published article in BAR, I was faced with the question of whether or not we should proceed with publishing it.

I am not a paleographer. I have no idea about the dating of ancient scripts. I could make no judgment of my own as to who was right— Korpel or Rollston. But I did know paleographers on whom I could call.

So I telephoned Israel’s leading paleographer, the universally admired Hebrew University professor Joseph Naveh. I asked Yossi, as he is commonly known, if he could tell on the basis of the paleography of the four letters that have survived whether the “Jezebel” seal dated to the ninth century B.C.E. or to some time later. He replied that he could not. “I cannot tell,” he said, after looking at the seal in the standard catalog. Inscriptions on seals are especially difficult, he told me. “That is why I have never published a seal— with the exception of an Edomite seal from Hatzevah.^a I cannot tell.”

Naveh is not sure. But Rollston is.

Apparently the late great Israeli paleographer Nahman Avigad, who originally published the seal, also felt that it could be from the ninth century, the time of Queen Jezebel. Indeed, he said so. But, according to Rollston, he was clearly wrong: It’s not even “tenable.”

I also spoke with a number of other paleographers.⁵ Not a single one said that the letters on this seal must be post-ninth century. The consensus was that the four letters on the seal either were, or certainly could be, from the ninth century, although perhaps, according to some, they could also be somewhat later. But that is as far as they would go. As Naveh told me, “Paleography is not a precise science. It is not even a science.”⁶ (I don’t want to be unfair to Rollston, so if there is anyone out there who knows of a paleographer who shares his view that the letters on this seal must be, from a paleographical viewpoint, post-ninth century B.C.E., please let me know and I will contact him or her.)

Unfortunately, this is not the only instance in which Rollston’s “expertise” appears to be “contaminating the data bank.” Even more important than his paleographic conclusion regarding the date of the Jezebel inscription is his view of the paleography of the famous Gezer calendar, which was discovered in an unstratified context at Tel Gezer in 1908. Its name reflects the fact that it describes various agricultural activities over a 12-month period, beginning in autumn. It may be an apprentice scribe’s exercise tablet. It is generally considered to date from the tenth century B.C.E.⁷ and, in the words of Dennis Pardee of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, “is a showpiece of early Hebrew inscriptions,”⁸ perhaps the earliest Hebrew inscription.

This characterization has recently been questioned, however. Some wonder if it is really Hebrew— or if it is Phoenician, South Canaanite or Philistian, all of which have been proposed. The question can be addressed on the basis of linguistic analysis or on the basis of a paleographic analysis (the shape and form of the letters). In a forthcoming article, Pardee himself opts for Phoenician on the basis of a linguistic analysis (however, he disclaims any expertise in paleography⁹). In his carefully detailed and qualified conclusion, he writes that “in our present state of knowledge, the combination of morphological and syntactic features requires that the identification of the language of the Gezer text as Phoenician is to be preferred ... [But] truth be told, the identification as Canaanite cannot be ruled out.”

The question of the language of the Gezer calendar can be addressed also on paleographic grounds: Was the script composed in Phoenician letters or something else? This too, as Pardee notes, is a much-debated question.¹⁰ In his response to Korpel, Rollston flatly states his view that the Gezer calendar is written in Phoenician letters rather than Old Hebrew letters: “I believe that it [the Gezer calendar] is written in the Phoenician script.”¹¹ For Rollston, there is no room for debate. At the Jerusalem forgery trial Rollston also testified that the Gezer calendar was written in Phoenician letters. “We have a distinctive Hebrew script; we have a distinctive Phoenician script,” he told the court. Features of one are “not mixed,” he said, with features of the other. “No paleographer would confuse an Old Hebrew inscription with Phoenician script,” he claimed.

On cross-examination, Rollston admitted that there was some discussion among scholars as to whether the Gezer calendar was closer to Hebrew paleography or Phoenician paleography. “Why, if the matter is so clear, was there this discussion?” he was asked. He stated that “very few people in the world” specialized in the paleography of this period; clearly, he was one of them. He dismissed the people (apparently including leading paleographers) who were not up on the latest scholarship. That other scholars might disagree with him did not concern him. As he testified in connection with one of the other inscriptions involved in the trial, “I base my conclusions on evidence, not authority.”

One of the authorities with whom Rollston disagrees regarding the Gezer calendar is the eminent paleographer and Johns Hopkins University professor Kyle McCarter. Indeed, McCarter was Rollston’s teacher and dissertation advisor. (Rollston received his Ph.D. in 1999.) McCarter recently published his analysis of the script of the Gezer calendar. In his view, the script in which the Gezer calendar is written, like the Tel Zayit abecedary (which is the main subject of the article), is “representative of the linear alphabetic script of central and southern Canaan [where Gezer lies] at the beginning of the first millennium B.C.E.” This script belongs “to the South Canaanite script tradition.” The Gezer calendar script, like the Tel Zayit abecedary, did develop from the Phoenician tradition, but it would be wrong to call it simply Phoenician. The Gezer calendar (and the Tel Zayit abecedary) represent “an inland development of the mature Phoenician tradition of the early Iron Age, but in the tenth century [B.C.E.] it already exhibits characteristics that anticipate the distinctive features of the mature Hebrew national script.” Therefore these inscriptions must be considered to be in “the South Canaanite script tradition.” When these inscriptions were written, McCarter tells us, the Phoenician parent script continued to be used on the Phoenician coast, but not inland at a place like Gezer.¹²

This is a careful, nuanced and incisive paleographical analysis by a mature scholar of the script of the Gezer calendar. It provides a telling contrast to the absolute, confident, assertive, unqualified conclusion of a scholar (1) who has never published anything on the Gezer calendar (except the bald, unjustifiably certain assertion that its script is Phoenician in his response to Korpel), (2) who wrote that the Jezebel inscription cannot be ninth century B.C.E., and (3) who also wrote that “No paleographer would confuse an Old Hebrew inscription with Phoenician script.”

Either Professor Rollston is the world’s greatest and most expert paleographer— or his dating of the Jezebel seal is wrong.— H.S.

The Ninth Century Is There

Michael Welch — United States Of America (5/1/2008 6:59:28 PM)

Dr. Ryan Byrne has written another fine and detailed article. I agree with him most emphatically that the iconography was engraved before the epigraphy and thus put constraints on the letters being engraved. In addition to Dr. Avigad, Drs. Hestrin and Dayagi-Mendels noticed that the iconography had been engraved before the epigraphy as well. They say so on page 48 of their Inscribed Seals book. However, like Dr. Avigad, and apparently Dr. Benjamin Sass, Drs. Hestrin and Dayagi-Mendels dated this seal to the Ninth to Eighth Centuries. Dr. Andre Lemaire probably did as well. All five of these scholars called the palaeography or epigraphy Phoenician or possibly Phoenician. It is also interesting that Dr. Christopher Rollston says this about two of the four letters: "The morphology of Yod and Lamed are indeed better Phoenician forms than they are Old Hebrew." in his ASOR article that you mention above. Dr. Rollston's strong stance in his ASOR article that the Bet is recumbent and must be Old Hebrew is negated by Dr. Byrne and other scholar's observation that its engraving was hindered by the iconography already present. There are numerous examples in our West Semitic Seal Corpus that show that Dr. Rollston is incorrect in his ASOR article statement that the engravers always had things figured out, before engraving the letters. At the very least the twenty-one LMLK seals of King Hezekiah, which are definitely Royal seals, have letters upside down, backwards, false starts, etc. What I find even more interesting than this, is a comparison of this seal to the Gezer Calendar script. Although it is not stratified, it has been dated to the tenth century like the Tel Zayit Inscription. The Zayins at the end of the first line and in the sixth line are pretty much identical to this seal; the Yods found on all seven lines are very similar(having the rounded top stroke); the Lamed towards the end of the fifth line is also pretty much identical; the Bet on the bottom left hand side written vertically is not that close because it has the characteristic on the bottom half of what Mr. Wolfe calls the "Lame Bet" or a forged bet that does not have a sharp bottom half. However, I am confident that the Gezer Calendar is authentic. Thus, Dr. Byrne can attempt to date this seal to the Eighth Century like Dr. Rollston and Dr. Amihai Mazar, but there are other scholarly epigraphers, who have dated it to the Ninth Century. I respect You and Dr. Rollston and Dr. Amihai Mazar. Dr. Mazar taught right along side of Dr. Barkay and Dr. Rainey when I studied in Jerusalem in the 1980s. I have to disagree with all three of you and say that the Ninth Century is There on this seal and other seals. Dr. Avigad said that the owner of this seal could be a contemporary of Jezebel. Thus, it is a Ninth Century seal, according to the epigrapher who you call: "the expert nonpareil of West Semtic seals" above in your article. The seal of Shemaryau, WSS 377, is also dated by Dr. Avigad to the Ninth Century. Its cursive script is pretty much identical to the Samaria Ostraca of the late Ninth Century. Dr. David Diringer noticed that even in the late Ninth Century on the Samaria Ostraca there was an Advanced Hebrew Cursive Script. This is retained on this steatite scarab. Contrary to what Dr. Byrne has stated above, cursive script is retained on stone inscriptions. Dr. Frank Moore Cross noticed this on the Monumental Siloam Inscription which he calls "more developed and more cursive" on page 62 of Dr. Andrew G. Vaughn's Palaeographical Dating Of Judean Seals. Dr. Yohanan Aharoni says, about the seal impression of Nera (son of) Shebna, impressed right next to a LMLK two-winged Hebron sun disc: "All letters are clearly written in a cursive hand." on page 16 of his Excavations At Ramat Rahel. And, Drs. Hestrin and Dayagi-Mendels call the script of the seal of Shemaryau cursive. In fact, on page 59 of their Inscribed Seals book, they describe the seal like this: "Scarab seal, perforated, chipped on left side. The seal is ornamented with Egyptian hieroglyphs and pseudo-hieroglyphs in Phoenician style. In the centre, incised in cursive script, is the name of the owner." Thus, on one seal from the Ninth Century we have both hieroglyphs and cursive Hebrew Script. The hieroglyphs are what Drs. Mazar, Rollston, and Byrne say are supposed to be on Tenth to Ninth Century excavated seals, but not the Hebrew Script. This is supposed to be for the Eighth Century Seals. Yet, we have advanced cursive late Ninth Century Hebrew Script on both the Samaria Ostraca and this seal. Eighty-five to ninety percent of the West Semitic Seals in our Corpus are not excavated. So Drs. Mazar, Rollston, and Byrne's argument is statistically a weak one, based on a few hundred seals out of several thousands. I agree with Dr. Byrne that script forms are retained for long periods of time. For this reason, our problem is that we have not noticed Tenth and Ninth Century Seals in Our West Semtic Seal Corpus that often. With Much Gratitude, Sincerely Yours, Michael Welch, Deltona, Florida

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Jezebel

Ryan Byrne — USA (5/1/2008 12:13:53 PM)

Dear Sir: Hershel Shanks was kind enough to compliment the tenor of my analysis. I feel the need to add a crucial observation, however, of BAR’s preemptive, editorial comments about Dr. Rollston, which appeared slightly less gracious than the standard Mr. Shanks has endorsed. Scholars routinely critique each other’s work in the peer-review tradition, which BAR so frequently calls “the marketplace of ideas.” Marjo Korpel published an unpersuasive article in the South African Journal for Semitics, to which Rollston, Amihai Mazar and I published responses. Dr. Rollston’s critique essentially stole the thunder of BAR’s flashy resuscitation of an obscure article for a popular audience with the so-called Jezebel seal splashed across the cover. I understand BAR’s disappointment about preemptive articles refuting Korpel’s claims appearing in advance of a heavily marketed issue, but Mr. Shanks decision to attack Dr. Rollston under the guise of defending Dr. Korpel accrues to BAR a role it need not assume. Peer-reviewed, academic media constitute the proper protocols for critique, rejoinder, and surrejoinder. Since Rollston did not even mention the BAR piece (and may not have even been aware of it given how secretly BAR protected this issue pre-press), I cannot fathom Mr. Shanks’ ire without consideration of the upstaging effect of Rollston’s critique on the ASOR website. Dr. Rollston is one of the world’s half-dozen preeminent epigraphers in the world; and the assertion that Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins (Rollston’s mentor and mine) would strongly disagree with Rollston’s arguments is not correct. After hours of conversation with the principals, I think we are mostly on the same page. I do not mean to suggest that BAR has no place to weigh in on scholarly debate. Surely it does, but it is difficult to overlook that the vitriol about BAR and the Korpel piece in BAR began with Mr. Shanks’ ad hominem sidebar on Korpel’s article. There is plenty of consternation to go around. Please let us move past this fracas into more pertinent scholarship for the sake of BAR’s readers if not the pursuit of academic freedom. Bar can be a champion of dialogue if it chooses the opportunity to make use of its powerful presence in the marketplace. Can’t we all just get along? Dr. Ryan Byrne Co-director, Tel Dan Expedition Rhodes College, Memphis byrner@rhodes.edu

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