We have done a little excavation of our own on the text of this article by Yossi Garfinkel and his colleagues. A little way into the article is a paragraph summarizing the finds from the authors’ excavation of Qeiyafa. The last word in the key sentence is “inscriptions.” Not “inscription,” but plural, “inscriptions.”
We all know about the extraordinary five-line inscription from Qeiyafa.a Yossi and his colleagues refer to it in their article as their “prize find.” But what other inscriptions have they found?
Our investigation has revealed that not one, but two additional inscriptions have been uncovered at Qeiyafa. They are currently being studied by the excavation’s paleographer, Haggai Misgav of the Hebrew University. They will not be shown even to at least one other Jerusalem paleographer until Dr. Misgav has completed his study of these inscriptions.
Unlike the famous five-line inscription from Qeiyafa, the two new inscriptions are small, even tiny. But even if we get little new information from the text of these two inscriptions, the very fact that now three inscriptions have been found at Qeiyafa is important: Was writing relatively common at Qeiyafa? Was there more than one scribe? Was there a school for scribes here? Did they write commercial as well as literary texts? If so, what products were involved? Stay tuned.—Ed.
