Words Unseen

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Sometimes the most powerful written words are the ones that we don’t see. We wear clothing with tiny printed labels on the interior that touch our bodies even though we rarely see or read them. We wear necklaces that often bear the names of loved ones written in miniature letters. Sometimes these necklaces are lockets that purposefully conceal pictures and written dedications inside clasped metal cases. Some people tattoo their bodies with letters that are written in scripts they cannot read of languages they do not speak. What’s more, many hide their tattoos away from all but their closest friends and family.

In many cases, such “unseen” words are among the most important, personal, and meaningful forms of writing we possess. We secure birth certificates, marriage licenses, and passports in safes out of the eyesight of others. Furthermore, each time we put on an article of clothing or an accessory—a watch, 054a shirt, or a pair of sunglasses—we are reminded of the label or brand associated with these items and the status they impart. These writings index more than mere writing—they conjure associations of prestige, wealth, social class, and even age. Likewise, the hiddenness of words in lockets and other forms of jewelry are important both for what they reveal and conceal about social bonds, relationships, hopes, and losses. The hiddenness of their words index proximity and intimacy between individuals. The fact that such unseen words often touch our bodies points to the crucial role they play in shaping our self-perception, the image we wish to project to others, our perception of reality, and our physical and conceptual connections to other bodies, including those of long-lost loved ones no longer present in a corporeal way.

These unseen words become part of our identities and ultimately part of our bodies. Their words might be hidden from our eyes, but they are present in our minds.

The importance of unseen words is also palpable in the material record of ancient Judah. Archaeologists have discovered texts that are engraved on the insides of tombs in a way that hides them from the public, preserving them solely for kin who might visit the deceased relatives. Readers may be surprised to discover that there is also evidence of specialized markets for portable, inscribed amulets in the ancient Levant. Such items possess writing that is small, which would have been masked from others when worn on the body.

Two of the most famous written objects found in the environs of ancient Jerusalem—two silver miniature scrolls—were inscribed in a way that assumed that they would not be read. In other words, two of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions ever discovered were designed to be hidden from human eyes. In fact, their words are so tiny that it required microscopic technology to decipher their texts.

In 1979 during the excavations of the funerary site of Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem, archaeologist Gabriel Barkay discovered two thin sheets of silver in a tomb repository.¹ The sheets of silver had been rolled up and worn as amulets around the neck. When the sheets of silver were unrolled, archaeologists found that they were inscribed with some of the earliest Hebrew texts in existence. Barkay and several 055epigraphers dated the inscriptions to the eighth to sixth centuries B.C.E. based upon their paleography.² Once the texts were deciphered, they became two of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

Both inscriptions contain blessings with striking parallels to the so-called priestly blessing of Numbers 6:24–26: “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” The inscriptions on the amulets are badly damaged, making attempts to read their texts extremely difficult. Still, the presence of the blessings on the amulets makes them some of our earliest artifacts containing the divine name Yahweh. In 2004 the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California produced high-resolution photographs of the inscriptions that brought new light to their words.³ Their readings of the text led to the following translations:⁴

Beyond the presence of blessings with close parallels to the priestly blessing, both inscriptions contain a wealth of important information about the background of the deity Yahweh. Amulet 1 refers to Yahweh as the one who shows graciousness to those who love him and keep his commandments. This expression exhibits close parallels to several Biblical texts (cf. Deuteronomy 7:9; Nehemiah 1:5; Daniel 9:4).⁶ Amulet 2 refers to Yahweh as the deity who has the power to expel Evil.⁷ Such references shed light upon the early history of amuletic magic in ancient Judah during the Iron Age. While we have thousands of uninscribed amulets from Israelite and Judahite sites dating to the Iron Age, these are the only extant ones with words inscribed on their surfaces.

When Barkay first published the amulets, he drew attention to their tiny size by labeling them “miniature scrolls.”?⁸ He emphasized not only the miniature scale of their words, but also the small size of the objects. Amulet 1 measures only 1 inch in height and 0.4 inches in diameter. Even smaller is the size of Amulet 2, which measures only 0.5 inches high with a diameter of 0.2 inches. After Amulet 1 was unrolled, its length was measured at 3.8 inches and its width 1 inch. By comparison, Amulet 2 measures 1.5 by 0.4 inches. This places the size of Amulet 2 just shorter than the length of a standard matchstick. We should note that Amulet 2 contains 12 lines of text. This means that a scribe found a way to incise 12 lines of Hebrew text on a metal scroll the length of a matchstick!

Barkay also noted that one of the references to the divine name Yahweh on Amulet 2 spans only 0.3 inches in width.⁹ To put this into perspective, the standard radius of a dime is 0.7 inches. So the scribe wrote the divine name in a space less than half the size of a dime! Barkay estimated Amulet 2 could have originally contained more than 100 Hebrew letters.¹⁰

All of this begs the following question: What was so important about the miniature size and, perhaps more important, the invisible quality of the inscriptions? As a highly literate culture, we are accustomed to thinking about writing along very functional lines. 056We write to read and to pass along information that (we hope) others will read. We regularly see examples of massive writing located on billboards, movie screens, and shopping centers. We equate such large letters with power, money, and importance. These words are weighty.

In certain ways, ancient Israelites viewed written words along similar lines. Kings inscribed large letters in stone and displayed them at city gates and other public spaces. As writing in stone, these words indexed political and economic power. Most people experienced these impressive words as prominent displays of royal power. Thus, the iconic function of writing was relatively easy to understand; they gave voice to the ability of kings and elites to alter landscapes and exercise power within a given place. 057They were monumental texts.

Scribes wrote texts on papyrus and other materials in order to preserve information in temples, libraries, and palaces. Sometimes these texts were brought before audiences and read aloud as the words of gods. This meant that people saw these texts and heard their words, but they didn’t necessarily read them. They were written words consumed by the ear, not the eye. The bodies that read them aloud and the spaces that stored them conveyed the meaning and importance of their words.

But how did the hiddenness of writing convey meaning? Why was it important to have miniature letters on the inside of amulets hidden away from human eyes? Recent studies on miniaturization and miniature writing offer some potential clues. Such studies focus upon how miniatures affect cognition by generating a type of “enchantment” and “sense of being drawn into another world.”¹¹ The miniaturizing of objects creates what we might call a “King Kong effect,” which triggers a cognition that allows the body to feel in control over large spaces and expansive times. As art historian Stephanie Langin-Hooper explains, “Miniatures are enchanting primarily because they play with scale in order to present an alternative version of reality.”¹² As a result, “the spectator or handler continuously fluctuates between being in the miniature space and being outside of it.¹³

Miniatures—especially those worn on the human body—also create a sense of intimacy, privacy, and personal time between the body and the object. Such objects became part of one’s daily routine and lifecycle. Their lightweight quality allows them to dangle comfortably from necks, producing a feeling that they are part of the body. In the case of miniature texts on jewelry, this means that even though the writing might be invisible or hidden from eyes, the words are always accessible in the wearer’s mind as the writing interacts with the body on a physical level. As the jewelry dangles from, bounces off, and returns to the body, the words inscribed on their surfaces are replayed in the mind.

Miniature objects also affect conceptions of time. Humans experience large objects and animals in “slow-motion.” Time appears to elapse at a slower pace when we watch something huge move. By contrast, we perceive tiny things—bugs, tiny reptiles, and small rodents—moving quickly. Miniature things are 058seen as condensing or “speeding up” time. To put it another way, miniature objects present the world to human bodies as if time has already elapsed. This results in a sense that the world is complete and that time is finished and always present.

These observations offer important insight into the function of the tiny writing on the Ketef Hinnom amulets. The inscriptions on these amulets were written for human bodies. The portability of their words when worn defined their meaning. Their blessings walked with bodies and guided them through their lifecycles—shielding them from harm. When placed on the front of the body, amulets gave tangible voice to certain aspects of their linguistic content. For example, Amulet 1 describes Yahweh’s blessing as more powerful than any snare and more powerful than evil. Similarly, Amulet 2 invokes Yahweh as the deity who expels evil. Thus, the amulets not only protected the body, but they also gave the body its orientation in relation to the deity Yahweh. Yahweh stood with the wearer. Yahweh saw what the body saw.

But we should neither forget the significance of the materiality of the words. That is, we should stress that the words were first and foremost silver scripts. The silver blessings of the Ketef Hinnom amulets indexed ritual knowledge and power, economic status, and material durability. The amulets represented a type of silver hard drive or ritual storehouse of Yahweh’s words. The presence of silver material on the body produced a tension between the skin and the metal words. The body could feel the contrast between the amulets and its surface. Having ritual words written and stored inside silver rolls and placed upon the body produced a cognitive effect that the body was a “safe space” guarded by the deity’s blessings. But the important point here is that the body’s interaction with the metal words served to generate this cognitive effect frequently. The invisible words “spoke” to the ones who wore them (Proverbs 6:21–22). Their portability and location on human bodies meant that the words spoke when the body was at home, when the body was awake, when the body lay down, and when the body rose up (Deuteronomy 6:6–9).

As miniature texts, the amulets also reveal an important facet of personal religion in ancient Judah. Their tiny words drew people into another world—the world of the scribal artisan. A scribe would have handled such written texts delicately, would have bent over the text, looked at it closely, fixated upon its words, and enclosed them with a narrow posture.¹⁴ He would have cradled the texts in his hands and perhaps placed them in a space away from public view until they adorned their wearers’ bodies.

The shapes of necklaces and other types of jewelry are designed to conform to and move with the body. Their ergonomic designs work to create the impression that they are part of the body. This observation reminds us that there is no such thing 059as a “natural” shape to the body. The body possesses wrinkles and curves that make it a canvas for inscription.¹⁵ Placing words upon the body is not an unnatural act but rather a way to augment or elaborate upon the body’s decorations. The body’s physical form invited writing, whether in the form of inscribed jewelry or amulets.

Placing these amulets upon the body extended beyond mere conceptions of bodily adornment to include notions of implanting the deity’s words in proximity to the interior of the body. The frontal portion of the upper body does not provide a flat surface. It includes slight pectoral rises below the neckline and a shallow valley near the top of the intersection of the pectorals. This means that we should not speak of the words being placed upon the body, but instead as words placed in as close as possible to the internal organs. That is, the deity’s words entered into the anatomy of the body: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in/on your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:6); “You shall put these words of mine in/on your heart and soul” (Deuteronomy 11:18); “Your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8); “Bind them upon your heart always; tie them around your neck” (Proverbs 6:21).

Studies also point to the ways in which miniatures and miniature writing represent ritual and technological expertise. Poet Susan Stewart observes, “Minute writing is emblematic of craft and discipline: while the materiality of the product is diminished, the labour involved multiplies, and so does the significance of the total object.”¹⁶ This is true today. Humans marvel at Lego constructions, gingerbread houses, and domino chains. The labor and craft required to build such intricately designed structures stretches the bounds of cognition and imagination. In this regard, it is easy to understand the relationship between miniature writing and ritual expertise. Tiny texts like the Ketef Hinnom amulets compel a person to ask, “How is that humanly possible?” The answer, of course, is that the writing was a wondrous act.

As a wondrous act, the tiny quality of the writing conveyed that its words were not invisible to all eyes. The script on the amulets may have been invisible to human eyes, but these texts had different audiences in mind. According to several Biblical texts, Yahweh was particularly adept at seeing microscopically. His powers were manifest in the ability to perceive human thought at the anatomical level. He could count the grains of sand (Psalm 139:18). His “wonders” were not limited to the fashioning of the cosmos. Instead, his wonders were inscribed on the interior of the human anatomy. Interestingly, Psalm 139 connects Yahweh’s act of knitting together the “inward parts” of the human anatomy to his ability to kill the wicked and bloodthirsty. Verse 16 declares that Yahweh’s eyes possess the ability to behold the unformed substance of a body. The previous verse states, “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:15). According to this passage, Yahweh’s powers were especially effective at an anatomical level.

The words of this psalm are especially evocative for an understanding of the ritual logic of the Ketef Hinnom inscriptions. That they were invisible for human eyes did not mean that Yahweh could not read the amulets’ words. Indeed, their very invisibility might have indexed their function as words that protected the body from invisible forces, demons, disease, etc. Indeed, dangers that harmed the body were rarely visible in the sense of their ability to be diagnosed. Hence, we might surmise that such writing intended to “speak” only to audiences that operated beyond human sight, like “the terror of the night and the pestilence that stalks in the darkness” (Psalm 91:5–6), or goat-demons and Lilith (Isaiah 34:14). The miniature, unseen words of the Ketef Hinnom amulets offered effective defense against the unseen forces in the world that would do us harm. These small words provided potent protection, reminding the wearer that the words of Yahweh, however small, were lamps for the feet and lights for the path (Psalm 119:105).

In , archaeologist Gabriel Barkay discovered two miniature silver scrolls from a late Iron Age (seventh century B.C.E.) tomb in Ketef Hinnom outside of Jerusalem. When unrolled, the scrolls had tiny texts written on them—similar to the priestly blessing in Numbers 6:24–26. Curiously, though, these texts were hidden from human eyes, which begs the question: Who was their intended audience?