Epigraphy in Crisis—Dating Ancient Semitic Inscriptions

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Joan Scheuer’s fascinating volunteer report in the January/February issue (“Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” BAR 16:01) was especially interesting to me as a student of paleography. She describes a very important Phoenician inscription, known as the Nora Fragment, and explains how Professor Frank Cross of Harvard is able to date the Phoenician presence on Sardinia to the 11th century B.C. because he dates the Nora Fragment to this time. Relying on Professor Cross’s publication in a scholarly journal,1 Scheuer explains that “Cross has been able to date the inscription on the basis of the shape and stance of […]

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Footnotes

See Adam Mikaya, “Earliest Aramaic Inscription Uncovered in Syria,” BAR 07:04.

Endnotes

Frank M. Cross, “Working With No Data,” in Semitic and Egyptian Studies: Presented to Thomas O. Lambdin, ed. David M. Golumb (Winona Lake IN: Eisenbraun, 1987), p. 71.

Ali Abou Assaf, Pierre Bordreuil and Alan R. Millard, La statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-araméenne (Paris, 1982).

Joseph Naveh, “The Date of the Tell Fekherye Inscription,” Shnaton 5–6 (1983), pp. 131–140 (in Hebrew); Naveh, “Proto-Canaanite, Archaic Greek, and the Script of the Aramaic Text on the Tell Fakhariyah Statue,” in Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of F. M. Cross, ed. P. D. Miller et al. (Philadelphia, 1987), pp. 101–113.

Hélène S. Sader, Les états araméens de Syne depuis leur fondation jusqu’ àleur transformation en provinces assyriennes (Beirut, 1987), p. 27.

Edward LipinŒski, Studies in Aramaic Inscriptions and Onomastics (Louvain, Belg., 1975), vol. 1, p. 16. See also Wayne T. Pitard, “The Identity of the Bir Hadad of the Melqart Stela,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 272 (1988), pp. 3–21, esp. p. 5.

A. della Marmora, Voyage en Sardaigne, vol. 2, Antiquities (Turin, Italy, 1840), p. 348, Atlas pl. 32, 3.

Cross, “Leaves from an Epigraphist’s Notehook,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 36 (1974), pp. 486–494, esp. pp. 490–493. The author has frequently restated this position, recently in: Joan G. Scheuer, “Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” BAR 16:01, p. 52–60.