SHAARAYIM INSCRIPTIONS



SHAARAYIM INSCRIPTIONS

THE DAVID AND GOLIATH OSTRACON

AND THE ESHBAAL JAR

FROM KHIRBET QEIYAFA (SHA`ARAYIM)

Brian Edric Colless

This is "work in progress" and is continually being modified.

Perplexing puzzles can be solved with patience and perseverance.

Part 3 of this essay is at:
https://sites.google.com/view/collesseum/qeiyafa-shaaraim

(1) THE OSTRACON INSCRIPTION

The Qeiyafa Ostracon is an ancient potsherd bearing five lines of faded but fairly legible writing; it was found on the floor of a room in a building at Khirbet Qeiyafa,(also here) which is a fortress situated SW of Jerusalem; it looks out over the Elah Valley ("Vale of the Terebinth"), where David slew Goliath (according to 1 Samuel 17 in the Bible). The ostracon is now housed in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Khirbet Qeiyafa has been identified by Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor as Sha`arayim ("Two Gates", an unusual feature which is present at the site); Sha`arayim is a place mentioned in the account of the confrontation between David and Goliath, as being on the way to Gath and Ekron (1 Samuel 17:52); it also appears in the city list of Judah's tribal inheritance, after Socoh and Azekah (Joshua 15:33-36); these two towns are also mentioned at the beginning of the Goliath narrative, which locates the Philistian camp between them (1 Samuel 17:1), and thus confronting Khirbet Qeiyafa, which is also between Azekah and Socoh, but further north.

The history of the discovery of the document (by the expedition led by Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor) is (or was, now no longer accessible) recorded at the Qeiyafa Ostracon Chronicle Part 1; and Part 2 gives an account of the attempts by various scholars to decipher the five lines of visible writing, [with three excellent and essential photographs: two by Clara Amit (Israel Antiquities Authority), and another by Megavision Laboratory; and also drawings by Haggai Misgav (the official epigraphist of the expedition), Ada Yardeni, Gershon Galil, and Émile Puech. George Grena also provided a copy of his own drawing to me personally.]