Dever Prize Winner Sheds Light on Ammonite Inscription
Discovered in 1961, the Amman Citadel Inscription remains the longest Ammonite inscription available to us today. With eight lines of text, it dates to the ninth century B.C.E. and mentions the Ammonite god Milcom. Unfortunately, this important inscription is incomplete, which makes its interpretation challenging. In particular, one of the most frustrating problems of the text lies in the difficulty of interpreting line 5.
Andrew Burlingame, the winner of the 2018 Dever Prize, presents a new interpretation of the fifth line in his article “Line Five of the Amman Citadel Inscription: History of Interpretation and a New Proposal.”1 In this study, he draws on lexical data from the Temple Scroll, found at Qumran, and an Ugaritic ritual text from Ras Shamra. The resulting interpretation identifies line 5 as part of a command to place a door on an interior sanctuary of the building commemorated in this inscription (very likely a temple).
Andrew Burlingame is a Ph.D. candidate in Northwest Semitic Philology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on Northwest Semitic languages and texts, with special emphasis on the Ugaritic language and textual record. He is particularly interested in creating a more textured description of the Ugaritic language in a way that sheds light on social and scribal practices at Ugarit in the 13th and 12th centuries B.C.E.
The Sean W. Dever Prize was established in 2001 by Professor William G. Dever and the late Norma Dever in memory of their son Sean.