CLASSIFYING
WEST SEMITIC INSCRIPTIONS

Christopher Rollston has compiled a list of early West Semitic inscriptions from the Levant; he regards them all as "Early Alphabetic", but his inventory is an artificially homogenized mass of proto-syllabic, proto-consonantal, neo-consonantal, and neo-syllabic texts. I will reproduce his miscellany here, and then attempt to untangle this entanglement, thereby exposing an unfortunate weakness in the manual that contains it:

Rollston 2020. “The Emergence of Alphabetic Scripts.” Pp. 65-78 in Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages, ed. Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee. Wiley Blackwell.

Note that he creditably and commendably recognizes the acrophonic principle in the making of the proto-alphabet (and, I would add, acrophony was also involved in its progenitor, the proto-syllabary), although many critics dismiss it; and he also highlights the pictorial aspect of the signs (his term pictographic might be replaced by my pictophonic, or even pictophonographic).

http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=921

Early Alphabetic in Egypt and the Levant
On this subject, Rollston affirms (with his characteristic caution):
"In terms of the earlier history of the alphabet, especially as reflected in the Early Alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem and Wadi el-Hol, the most elegant and convincing date (based especially on things such as the palaeographic similarities between Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Hieratic vis a vis the Early Alphabetic inscriptions from Serabit el-Khadem and Wadi el-Hol as well as the dating of Egyptian inscriptions at these same sites, etc.) is often contended to be the chronological horizon of the 18th century BCE.....

" It is also important to emphasize the usage of Early Alphabetic in the broader Levant during the second millennium BCE. At this juncture, therefore, I will summarize this point by reiterating the data which I have discussed in various previous publications (e.g., Rollston 2020, 73). Namely, Ugaritic (13th century BCE, and wedge-shaped in nature) is not the only attested alphabetic writing system in the Levant during the second millennium BCE. Indeed, various Early Alphabetic inscriptions (which are pictographic in nature,….and are reflective of the acrophonic principle) have been discovered at a number of sites in the Levant, ranging from around the 17th century BCE through the 10th century BCE. Note in this connection the following [alphabetical order, not chronological]:

Beth Shemesh Ostracon (Driver 1954, 100-101, and plate 40; Naveh 1987, 35 with drawing),

Beth Shemesh Incised Potsherd (McCarter, Bunimovitz, and Lederman 2011),

Gezer Sherd (Taylor 1930 and plate 1),

Gezer Jar Signs (Seger 1983 and plates 1-4),

Izbet Sarteh (Naveh 1978),

Ophel (Jerusalem) Incised Sherd (Mazar, Ben-Shlomo, and Aḥituv 2013; Hamilton 2015, with literature),

Lachish Ewer (Cross 1954 and literature),

Lachish Dagger (Starkey 1937),

Lachish Bowl Inscripton (Ussishkin 1983, 155-157, and plate 40),

Megiddo Gold Ring (Guy 1938),

Qubur Walaydah Bowl (Cross 1980),

Qeiyafa Ostracon (Misgav, Garfinkel, and Ganor 2009; Rollston 2011),

Qeiyafa Ba’al Jar Inscription (Garfinkel, Golub, Misgav, and Ganor 2015),

Raddana Handle (Cross and Freedman 1971),

Shechem Plaque (Böhl 1938).

New inscription from Tel Lachish (Höflmayer, Misgav, Webster, Streit 2021).

B. E. Colless: My fourfold classification of the evidence is as follows:

PROTO-SYLLABARY > PROTO-CONSONANTARY > NEO-CONSONANTARY > NEO-SYLLABARY
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-inscriptions.html
Each species generates (>) the next in this evolutionary process.
The basis of evolution is that new species are descended from earlier species, though in the development of writing systems, human invention and intervention are always guiding factors.

My list is more comprehensive; it begins with my two essays on the Tell Umm el-Marra (Tuba) inscriptions, which Rollston has unwisely accepted as "Early Alphabetic" (http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=921).

PROTO-SYLLABARY
The West Semitic Logo-syllabary

Tuba cylindrical amulets
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2007/03/oldest-west-semitic-inscriptions-these.html
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-inscriptions.html

Gubla inscriptions on copper and stone
Colless, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996-1997, 1998
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/01/byblos-syllabic-texts.html

Lahun heddle-jack
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2020/08/lahun-syllabic-heddle-jack.html

Rifa amulet
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-deir-rifa-gordon-hamilton-has.html.

Akhnaton-style cylinder
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2019/06/west-semitic-syllabic-cylinder.html.

Thebes syllabic tablet
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-inscriptions.html

Jamaica copper cup
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2012/05/phoenician-bronze-cup-in-jamaica-below.html

Puerto Rico syllabic figurine
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2019/10/phoenicians-in-puerto-rico.html
Rollston had an opportunity to examine this mass of evidence, but he failed to recognize its significance,

Norway silver mine inscription
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2013/09/phoenicians-in-scandinavia.html

Megiddo gold signet ring
https://sites.google.com/site/collesseum/megiddoring

Lakish pentagonal sherd
Lakish triangular sherd
Lakish rectangular sherd
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-scripts.html

PROTO-CONSONANTARY

Wadi el-Hol rock inscription
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2009/12/wadi-el-hol-proto-alphabetic.html

Gezer cult-stand sherd (Colless 1991, 31-32)
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/gezer

Lakish Dagger (Colless 1991, 35-36)
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/death-dagger

Thebes abgadaries
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2007/1 (Colless0/gordon-hamiltons-early-alphabet-thesis.html

Puerto Rico abgadary
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2019/10/phoenicians-in-puerto-rico.html

NEO-CONSONANTARY

Lakish bowl sherd (Colless 1991, 36-38)
Lakish ewer (Colless 1991, 39)
Lakish bowl (Colless 1991, 39-40)
Lakish jar sherd
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-inscriptions.html
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2015/12/lakish-jar-sherd.html
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2019/12/lakish-jar-inscription-new.html

Lakish milk bowl sherd
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-inscriptions.html
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/12/lakish-scripts.html

Byblos bowl
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2016/08/byblos-bowl-inscription.html

Qeiyafa Ishbaal jar
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/qeiyafa-ostracon-2
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2015/06/qeiyafa-jar-inscription.html

Timna inscriptions
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2010/04/timna-inscriptions-copper-mines-at.h

Raddana Handle (Colless 1991, 53-54)

Shekem Plaque (Colless 1991, 33-34)

NEO-SYLLABARY
http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2014/02/the-lost-link-the-alphabet-in-the-hands-of-the-early-israelites/
Rollston immediately though regretfully rejected this theory

Lakish Lice Comb
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2022/11/lakish-lice-comb.html

Yerubba`al sherds
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/09/khirbet-ar-rai-inscription-lyrbl.html
Rollston was the epigraphist who published these three pieces

Beth Shemesh Ostracon (Colless 1991, 46-49)
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/winewhine

Izbet Sartah Ostracon
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/abgadary

Qeiyafa Ostracon
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/qeiyafa-ostracon-2
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2010/03/qeiyafa-ostracon-inscription-this-large.html
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/two-goliath-ostraca-having-already-made.html

Qubur Walaydah Bowl (Colless 1991, 55-56)
http://www.asor.org/anetoday/2014/02/the-lost-link-the-alphabet-in-the-hands-of-the-early-israelites/

Jerusalem Ophel Jar
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2019/05/jerusalem-jar-inscription-2.html

Beth Shemesh Incised Potsherd

Other Scripts
It needs to be added that West Semitic writing appeared in a variety of scripts in the Bronze Age, including the Aegean scripts (notably Linear A on Crete).
Brian Edric Colless, The Mediterranean Diet in Ancient West Semitic Inscriptions. Damqatum 12 (2016) 3 - 20.Damqatum-The-CEHAO-newsletter-N12-2c-2016.pdf
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2016/05/creto-semitica.html
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2016/09/semitic-crete.html
http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2017/06/aegean-syllabic-signs.html

The mysterious tablets from Deir `Alla (Sukkot in the Bible) appear to be yielding their secrets:
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/deir-alla-script

What about all the new inscriptions from Israel, especially the leaden defixio inscribed on a fishing-net-sinker? Is it to be given a silent burial? Christopher Rollston's critique of it has appeared in BAReview (50, 3. 2024) 55-57: "I do not believe [it] has an inscription at all". He offers one of the many photographs of "slices" of the interior text; but he overlooks the central exulting figure, which is the /h/ of YH ( or possibly YHW), the sacred name), and he ignores all the charts prepared by Pieter and Scott, with photographs showing details of all the letters. The professional scientists who did this X-ray tomographic work (also in other successful projects), who immediately noticed the examples of H (>-E), would be justified in taking offence at this defamation of their painstaking labours.

I am not ready to delete my essay on it from my cryptcracker site:

http://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/.../ebal-curse-tablet.html

Rollston is not a reliable critic:

He praises the initial publication of the Lakish lice-comb (likewise small with tiny letters) as "superb" (p.58), extolling the drawing and its correspondence to the photograph, and the various aspects of the analysis are commendable and methodoligically sound. On the contrary, the report is (albeit unintentionally) full of "alternat(iv)e facts":

https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/.../lakish-lice-comb.html

Rollston's own publication of the YRB`L inscription failed to put the three pieces of the broken-pot puzzle together, to produce the complete reading LYRBB`L, and the possibility that it is followed by GD ... (Gid`on).

https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/.../khirbet-ar-rai...

Rollston is unable to distinguish syllabic writing and has one category, "Early Alphabetic":

https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/.../lakish-inscriptions...

So his attempt at classifying the inscriptions is chaotic (see above):

https://sites.google.com/.../col.../classifying-inscriptions

Still, we are grateful to him for pointing out the forgeries that are produced, though none of the inscriptions mentioned here are in that category.
The origin of the alphabet (2014)

References (Colless)

Colless, B. E. 1988, Recent Discoveries Illuminating the Origin of the Alphabet. Abr-Nahrain 26:30-67.

Colless, B. E. 1990. The Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions of Sinai. Abr-Nahrain 28:1-52.

Colless, B. E. 1991. The Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions of Canaan, Abr-Nahrain 29:18-66.

Colless, B. E. 1992. The Byblos Syllabary and the Proto-alphabet. Abr-Nahrain 30:15-62.

Colless, B. E. 1993. The Syllabic Inscriptions of Byblos: Text D. Abr-Nahrain 31:1-35.

Colless, B. E. 1994. The Syllabic Inscriptions of Byblos: Texts C and A. Abr-Nahrain, 32:59-79.

Colless, B. E. 1995. The Syllabic Inscriptions of Byblos: Texts B, E, F, I, K. Abr-Nahrain 33:17-29

Colless, B.E., 1996-1997, The Syllabic Inscriptions of Byblos: Miscellaneous Texts, Abr-Nahrain 34:42-57.

Colless, B.E., 1996, The Egyptian and Mesopotamian Contributions to the Origins of the Alphabet, in Cultural Interaction in the Ancient Near East, ed. Guy Bunnens, Abr-Nahrain Supplement Series 5 (Louvain) 67-76.

Colless, Brian E., 1998, The Canaanite Syllabary, Abr-Nahrain 35: 28-46.

References (Rollston):

Biga, Maria Giovanna.2016
La Syrie et l’Egypte au IIIe Millenaire av. J.-C. d’apres les archives d’Ebla. Comptes Rendus. Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres April-June 2016: 691-711.

Böhl, F. M. Th. 1938.
“Die Sichem Plakette.” ZDPV 61:1-25.

Cooper, Lisa. 2012
Cultural Developments in Western Syria and the Middle Euphrates Valley during the Third Millennium BC. In H. Crawford (ed.), The Sumerian World, 478-97. London: Routledge

Cooper, Lisa. 2013
The Northern Levant (Syria) during the Early Bronze Age. In A. Killebrew and M. Steiner (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeolgy of the Levant, c. 8000-332 BCE. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cross, Frank M. 1954.
“The Evolution of the Proto-Canaanite Alphabet.” BASOR, 134: 15-24.

Cross, Frank M. 1980.
“New Found Inscriptions in Old Canaanite and Early Phoenician Scripts.” BASOR, 238: 1-20.

Cross, Frank M. and David Noel Freedman. 1971.
“An Inscribed Jar Handle from Raddana.” BASOR, 201: 19-22.

Dalley, Stephanie 2009.
Babylonian Tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty in the Schoyen Collecction. CUSAS 9. Bethesda: CDL.

Driver, G. R. 1954.
Semitic Writing: From Pictograph to Alphabet, 2nd ed. London: Oxford.

Gardiner, Alan 1957
Egyptian Grammar: Being an Introduction to the Study of Hierolglyphs. Oxford.

Garfinkel, Yosef, Mitka R. Golub, Haggai Misgav, and Saar Ganor. 2015.
“The ‘Išba‘al Inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa.” BASOR, 373: 217-233.

Goldwasser, Orly 2017.
“From the Iconic to the Linear—The Egyptian Scribes of Lachish and the Modification of the Early Alphabet in the Late Iron Age.” In Alphabets, Texts and Artifacts in the Ancient Near East: Studies presented to Benjamin Sass, edited by Israel Finkelstein, Christian Robin, and Thomas Römer, 118-160. Paris: Van Dieren Publishers.

Guy, P. L. O. 1938.
Megiddo Tombs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hamilton, Gordon J. 2015.
“Two Methodological Issues concerning the Expanded Collection of Early Alphabetic Texts.” In Epigraphy, Philology, & the Hebrew Bible: Methodological Perspectives on Philological & Comparative Study of the Hebrew Bible in Honor of Jo Ann Hackett, edited by Jeremy M. Hutton and Aaron D. Rubin, 127-156. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Höflmayer, Felix; Misgav, Haggai; Webster, Lyndelle; Streit, Katharina, 2021
“Early Alphabetic Writing in the ancient Near East: The ‘Missing Link’ from Tel Lachish. Antiquity 2021.

Mazar, Eilat, David Ben-Shlomo, and Shmuel Aḥituv. 2013
“An Inscribed Pithos from the Ophel, Jerusalem.” IEJ, 63: 39-49.

McCarter, P. Kyle, Shlomo Bunimovitz, and Zvi Lederman. 2011.
“An Archaic Ba‘l Inscription from Tel Beth-Shemesh.” Tel Aviv, 38:35-49.

Misgav, Haggay, Yosef Garfinkel, and Saar Ganor. 2009.
“The Ostracon from Ḥorvat Qeiyafa.” Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Environs, 3: 111-123.

Naveh, Joseph. 1978.
“Some Considerations on the Ostracon from ‘Izbet Sartah.” IEJ, 28: 31-35.

Naveh, Joseph. 1987.
Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography. 2nd ed. Jerusalem: Magnes.

Rollston, Christopher A. 2011.
“The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon: Methodological Musings and Caveats.” Tel Aviv,38: 67-82.

Rollston, Christopher. 2019.
“The Alphabet Comes of Age: The Social Context of Alphabetic Writing in the First Millennium BCE.” Pp. 371-390 in The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to the Present, eds. Assaf Yasur-Landau, Eric Cline, and Yorke Rowan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rollston, Christopher. 2020.
“The Emergence of Alphabetic Scripts.” Pp. 65-78 in Wiley Blackwell Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages, ed. Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee. Wiley Blackwell.

Sass, Benjamin. 2005. “The Genesis of the Alphabet and Its Development in the Second Millennium B.C, Twenty Years Later.” 2004-2005. KBR, 2: 147-166.

Schwartz, Glenn M. 2010.
“Early Non-Cuneiform Writing? Third-Millennium BC Clay Cylinders from Umm el-Marra.” Culture and History of the Ancient Near East, 42: 375-395.

Schwartz, Glenn M. 2021
Non-Cuneiform Writing at Third-Millennium Umm el-Marra, Syria: Evidence of an Early Alphabetic Tradition? Pasiphae XIII: 255-66.

Seger, Joe. 1983.
“New Evidence of the Earliest Alphabet.” In The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, edited by Carol L. Meyers and M. O’ Connor, 477-495. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.

Starkey, J. L. 1937.
“Excavations at Tell edl-Duweir.” PEFQS, 70: 239-240.

Taylor, W.R. 1930.
“The New Gezer Inscription.” JPOS, 10: 79-81.

Ussishkin, David. 1983
“Excavations at Tel Lachish 1978-1983, Second Preliminary Report.” Tel Aviv, 10: 97-185.

Incidentally, the ending (inflexion) -u on the end of a Semitic word indicates the subject of a sentence (nominative case); -a shows the object (accusative case); -i is for the indirect object (genitive case); these are the three vowels that are found attached to consonants in the proto-syllabary and the neo-syllabary.

CLASSIFYING WEST SEMITIC INSCRIPTIONS

CLASSIFYING
WEST SEMITIC INSCRIPTIONS