The “Three Shekels” and “Widow’s Plea” Ostraca: Real or Fake?

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One of the most astounding inscriptions to surface in recent years records a donation of three shekels to the Temple of the Lord (Beyt Yhwh) in Jerusalem. It is written on a broken piece of pottery (called an ostracon) and dates somewhere between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C.E. Another ostracon, apparently from the same hoard (the handwriting is the same), is a widow’s petition for part of her deceased husband’s estate—to which, however, she was not entitled under Biblical law.

Both ostraca surfaced on the antiquities market and are in the private collection of Shlomo Moussaieff of London. Because they are unprovenanced, the question of their authenticity was raised at the outset. The three scholars who originally published the ostraca in a scholarly French journal are convinced that they are genuine.¹ In connection with a 1997 BAR article on the two ostraca,^a we consulted three more internationally famous paleographers, and they, too, pronounced them authentic.² As reported in that BAR article, the authenticity of the ostraca was also supported by laboratory tests on the pottery and the ink used for the inscription and on the white patina that had formed on them. (Patina is a microscopic film that builds up on ancient objects.)

Nevertheless, Israel Eph’al and Joseph Naveh, two prominent Israeli scholars—Naveh is Israel’s leading paleographer, an expert in ancient handwriting—have questioned the authenticity of the ostraca.³ To forgers, Naveh is a kind of glum Jaubert, relentlessly tracking them down and exposing them. He has unmasked several in the past. He has also obliquely 042insinuated that certain inscriptions might be forgeries. His suspicions—even mere doubts—cast a lasting pall over an inscription, provoking fear in scholars who might otherwise assume its authenticity. Naveh can kill with a withering glance.

Commenting on a recently published corpus of West Semitic seals (most of which are Hebrew) by Nahman Avigad, Naveh describes how the author so loved gathering material for the book that he insisted on doing the work “entirely by himself.” Unfortunately, Avigad passed away not long before completing the project, so that job fell to a younger scholar, Benjamin Sass. “Avigad was confident,” Naveh tells us, “that they [all the seals in the corpus] were genuine.” But Naveh himself was not so sure. He noted that 49 seals out of more than 1,200 bore “somewhat peculiar iconography and letter forms.” He did not specify what the “peculiar iconography and letter forms” might be. While admitting that “no scholar thus far has proven that [these seals] are recent fabrications… there were [nevertheless] rumors among scholars concerning their authenticity.” This was enough to cast doubt over the authenticity of these 49 seals. Because of Naveh’s caveat, few, if any, scholars would dare to use them in research.

In their article on the Moussaieff ostraca, Eph’al and Naveh recall two occasions when Naveh unmasked forgeries by showing how the forger used previously known inscriptions to create his text. Eph’al and Naveh quickly add, however, that the two Moussaieff ostraca “cannot be compared with the above-mentioned forgeries.” Then why do they mention them?

The authors go on to say they “do not claim that the [Moussaieff] ostraca have been recently fabricated, because they believe that such an accusation should not be leveled unless it can be proven beyond any doubt.” But despite this professed restraint, Eph’al and Naveh 043proceed to strew the path with doubt.

In the case of the Moussaieff ostraca, Eph’al and Naveh have at least listed the reasons for their misgivings. Their major doubt arises from the parallels they discovered between the Moussaieff ostraca, on the one hand, and Biblical passages and other known ancient inscriptions on the other. “Such a high degree and frequency of similarity… can hardly be regarded as accidental,” they conclude.

For example, the “Widow’s Plea” ostracon opens with the phrase, “May Yahweh bless you in peace” (ybrkk.yhwh.bslm). Psalm 29 ends with a similar phrase: “May Yahweh bless the people in peace” (yhwh ybrk ‘t ‘mw bslm). Did the psalm inspire the “forger” of the ostracon? Eph’al and Naveh apparently think so. (On the other hand, the comparison could as easily lead to the opposite conclusion: that the ostracon is genuine.)

Another example cited by Eph’al and Naveh: The “Three Shekels” ostracon begins, “Pursuant to the order to you of Ashyahu the king” (k’sûr swk.’sûy. kw.hmlk). An inscription from a site in the Sinai called Kuntillet ‘Ajrud reads, “Says Ashyu the king” (‘mr ‘syw hmlk). Again the question is whether the inscription found in an excavation inspired a forger to use a similar phrase. Eph’al and Naveh suspect it did. Perhaps two parallels would not be enough to damn the Moussaieff ostraca, but the authors assemble seven in all.

Eph’al and Naveh also make paleographical criticism (that is, of the shape and form of the letters). The three scholars who originally published the ostraca, they claim, were guilty in their French article of “analyzing this script in a facile way.” The Hebrew letter dalet, for instance, “has a very long upper stroke extending far to the right… This is very rare” in Hebrew inscriptions from before the Babylonian Exile of 587 B.C.E. Three other letters have suspicious “upward thickened ticks at their ends,” according to Eph’al and Naveh.

But coming to the defense of the Moussaieff ostraca is another well-known Israeli scholar, Elisha Qimron (yes, the scholar who successfully sued BAR for publishing his claimed reconstruction of a Dead Sea Scroll^b). Qimron is an expert in Hebrew linguistics, and his analysis of the texts of the ostraca leads him to the opposite conclusion from Eph’al and Naveh. “In my opinion,” says Qimron, “the inscriptions’ grammatical structure proves that they are authentic and not forgeries… There are no inaccuracies in the early Hebrew used in the inscription… Whoever wrote the inscriptions was very fluent in early Hebrew and its fine points. Is there an erudite forger capable of creating such a masterpiece?”⁴

Qimron examines five grammatical structures in the text. For example, the “Widow’s Plea” ostracon states, “my husband died.” This phrase consists of only two words in Hebrew: mat ishi. The phrase appears frequently in the Bible, although sometimes the two words are reversed. In the entire history of Biblical linguistic studies, there apparently has been no discussion of what this difference in word order means. So Qimron undertook the study himself. He collected all the instances in the Bible and found that in 13 cases the word order matched that of the ostracon; in five cases, the word order was reversed. Analyzing the context of each occurrence, Qimron concluded that the reversed order was used to describe a background fact, something that occurred well in the past. The word order used in the ostracon, on the other hand, signifies a declaration, as if to say, “My husband has just died.”

In the case of the “Widow’s Plea” ostracon, a declaration would have been needed to satisfy legal requirements—so that the official, the sar, to whom it was addressed could act. That is why this word order was used in the widow’s plea. A forger would hardly know this. Even Qimron did not know it until he studied the matter.

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Some expressions used on the ostraca are more common in Hebrew literature of the Second Temple period (sixth century B.C.E.-first century C.E.) than in the First Temple period (tenth-sixth century B.C.E.), when the ostraca were supposedly written. For Qimron, however, this is a sign of the ostraca’s authenticity: A number of genuine inscriptions from the First Temple period contain linguistic expressions characteristic of literature from the Second Temple period, showing that they were also used earlier. “In my opinion,” writes Qimron, “an expert forger would avoid anything that could arouse suspicions and the use of Second Temple period linguistic expressions would surely awaken such suspicions.” Therefore, the writer’s use of these expressions tends to prove, not disprove, authenticity.

I talked to Naveh and asked him if he was convinced by Qimron’s argument. “Qimron did not change my view,” he said. So the matter remains.

The authenticity of the “Widow’s Plea” ostracon has also been questioned by two German scholars, who argue that it is a forgery on linguistic, rather than paleographical, grounds.⁵ The noted Sorbonne scholar André Lemaire has answered these arguments, however, example by example.⁶ He believes that it is true that some of the language in the Moussaieff ostracon can be questioned, but the anomalies are not sriking enough to conclude that the ostracon is a forgery, especially in the face of the scientific tests on the ink and patina. Lemaire adds that some aspects of the paleography can also be questioned. (And he notes that the German authors did not even address the matter of paleography.)

As for the ostracon’s paleographical issues that Lemaire detected—the letters seem slightly curved and the vertical strokes on certain letters are accentuated—Lemaire concludes that the ostracon is probably the work of an advanced scribe’s apprentice. Based on all the factors—linguistic, paleographic and scientific—he has no doubt that the ostracon is authentic.

Those who object to scholars relying on unprovenanced inscriptions point to the uncertainties that they say are typified in the two ostraca under consideration here. To the extent that there is uncertainty—and readers must decide this for themselves—it is no different, however, from the uncertainty that clings to many archaeological artifacts. It’s the nature of the discipline. In the case of an unprovenanced inscription, it is just one more factor to take into account.

One of the most astounding inscriptions to surface in recent years records a donation of three shekels to the Temple of the Lord (Beyt Yhwh) in Jerusalem. It is written on a broken piece of pottery (called an ostracon) and dates somewhere between the ninth and seventh centuries B.C.E. Another ostracon, apparently from the same hoard (the handwriting is the same), is a widow’s petition for part of her deceased husband’s estate—to which, however, she was not entitled under Biblical law. Both ostraca surfaced on the antiquities market and are in the private collection of Shlomo Moussaieff of London. […]