Endnote 15 – Israel Antiquities Authority’s Report Deeply Flawed

J.T. Milik, “L’epigrafia offre un bell’esempio di scrittura mista: BNH è calligrafico ed il resto è cursivo” (in P.B. Bagatti and J.T. Milik, Gli scavi del “Dominus Flevit,” parte I. La necropoli del periodo romano (Jerusalem, 1958), p. 79 and passim. “The ossuary script in the Jericho inscriptions combines cursive and formal elements, resulting in different forms of the same letter, often appears [sic] together in a single inscription.” (Quoted from Rachel Hachlili, “The Goliath Family in Jericho. Funerary Inscriptions from a First Century A.D. Jewish Monumental Tomb,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 235 (1979), pp. 31–66, especially p. 60).

This phenomenon is also attested in the Greek ossuary inscriptions: “An interesting paleographic feature occurs in this inscription: the use of cursive letters side by side with lapidary forms; the alpha at the end of the word Kyria is cursive. The more common lapidary alpha also appears in this inscription—in the word kai…” (Tal Ilan, “The Ossuary and Sarcophagus Inscriptions,” in Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut, eds., The Akeldama Tombs. Three Burial Caves in the Kidron Valley, Jerusalem, IAA Report No. 1 [Jerusalem, 1996], pp. 57–72, especially p. 57).