[Jlabsa_gs] Pizza Seminar - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - A Message From Lorelei Carlson

Jodi Patient patient at jlab.org
Tue Jul 17 11:48:46 EDT 2018


Jefferson Lab's Graduate Student and Post-Doc Association Wiki:
  https://gspda.jlab.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

               Please RSVP to:  patient at jlab.org by 3:00 today


                                    Wednesday, July 18, 2018

                                          ***F113***

                                        12:00-1:00 pm

                  "THE  WRITING  ARMY  OF  JUDAH:  Imaging and Analysis of 
                         Hebrew First Temple (Iron Age II) Ostraca


                                                  
                                     Eliazer Piasetzky
                


                 School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, Israel
 

                                       

        
                                   
Abstract:

An ostracon is a piece of pottery or stone that contains writing. We have been 
studying ostraca written in the ancient Hebrew alphabet from the first Temple 
era (Iron Age II).
We performed an algorithmic handwriting analysis of 16 ostraca unearthed at an 
excavation in the far-flung desert fort of Arad, and deduced that the texts had 
been written by at least six authors. The content of the inscriptions disclosed 
that reading and writing abilities had existed throughout the Judah military 
chain of command, from the highest echelon all the way down to the deputy 
quartermaster of the fort. 
Considering the remoteness of Arad, the small garrison stationed there, and the 
narrowly constrained period of the inscriptions, this finding indicates a high 
literacy rate within Judah’s administrative apparatus – and provides a suitable 
background for the composition of a critical mass of biblical texts.



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