What Does It Say?

We can’t recall an ancient inscription that has engendered so many different interpretations and aroused so many controversies as the ostracon (inscribed potsherd) recovered in 2008 by Yosef (Yossi) Garfinkel at Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Judean Shephelah. For those who are engaged by this sort of the thing, we remember the deathless opening of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnet: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” One of the most intriguing interpretations of the Qeiyafa ostracon is that of Émile Puech, a world-class Hebrew linguist and paleographer who teaches at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française […]