Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon

The Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon is a ostracon (a trapezoid-shaped potsherd) with five lines of text, discovered during excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa in 2008. Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was the longest Proto-Canaanite text ever found. Carbon-14 dating of olive pips found in the same context with the ostracon and pottery analysis offer a date c. 3,000 years ago (10th century BCE).

In 2010 the ostracon was placed on display in the Iron Age gallery of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Content, language, interpretation

;Émile Puech
Although the writing on the ostracon is poorly preserved and difficult to read, Émile Puech of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française proposed that it be read:

:1 ''ʾl tʿšq wʿbd ʾ ... h''
:2 ''špṭ wbk ʾlm špṭ''
:3 ''bgr wbʿll qṣm yḥd''
:4 ''ʾ wšrm ysd mlk''
:5 ''ḥrm (ššm?) ʿbdm mdrt''

:1 Do not oppress, and serve God … despoiled him/her
:2 The judge and the widow wept; he had the power
:3 over the resident alien and the child, he eliminated them together
:4 The men and the chiefs/officers have established a king
:5 He marked 60 servants among the communities/habitations/generations

and understood the ostracon as a locally written copy of a message from the capital informing a local official of the ascent of Saul to the throne. Puech considered the language to be Canaanite or Hebrew without Philistine influence.

;Gershon Galil
Gershon Galil of Haifa University proposed the following translation:

:1 ''ʾl tʿs wʿbd ʾ ...''
:2 ''špṭ � wʿlm špṭ ^{yt /sup>''
:3 '' r ʿll rb w''
:4 ''ʾ n šqm ybd mlk''
:5 ''ʿ n �bd šk gr t k'}

:1 you shall not do t but worship (the god) l:2 Judge the sla eand the wid w/ Judge the orph n:3 ndthe stranger. lad for the infant / plead for the po r and:4 the widow. Rehabilitate he poorat the hands of the king
:5 Protect the po r andthe slave / upprt the stranger.

;Haifa U press release
On January 10, 2010, the University of Haifa issued a press release stating that the text was a social statement relating to slaves, widows and orphans. According to this interpretation, the text "uses verbs that were characteristic of Hebrew, such as ‘śh (עשה) ("did") and ‘bd (עבד) ("worked"), which were rarely used in other regional languages. Particular words that appear in the text, such as ''almanah'' ("widow") are specific to Hebrew and are written differently in other local languages. The content itself, it is argued, was also unfamiliar to all the cultures in the region other than that of Hebrew society. It was further maintained that the present inscription yielded social elements similar to those found in the biblical prophecies, markedly different from those current in other cultures, which write of the glorification of the gods and taking care of their physical needs."
Gershon Galil claims that the language of the inscription is Hebrew and that 8 out of 18 words written on the inscription are exclusively biblical. He also claimed that 30 major archeological scholars do support this thesis.

;Rollston and Misgav
Other readings are possible, however, and the official excavation report presented many possible reconstructions of the letters without attempting a translation. Cited in

According to the epigraphist Haggai Misgav, the language of the ostracon is Hebrew. In contrast to the Qeyafa ostracon, the short inscription known from Tell es-Safi contains Indo-European, not Semitic names.

The inscription is written left to right in a script which is probably Early Alphabetic/Proto Phoenician, though Christopher Rollston and Demsky consider that it might be written vertically. Early Alphabetic differs from old Hebrew script and its immediate ancestor. Rollston also disputes the claim that the language is Hebrew, arguing that the words alleged to be indicative of Hebrew either appear in other languages or don't actually appear in the inscription.

;Alan Millard
Millard believes the language of the inscription is Hebrew, Canaanite, Phoenician or Moabite and it most likely consists of a list of names written by someone unused to writing.

;Levy and Pluquet
Levy and Pluquet, by using a computer-assisted approach, give several readings as a list of personal names.

;Brian Colless
Colless proposes that the different orientations of letters on the ostracon, such as three orientations of aleph, are intentional and represent differences in pronunciation.

References

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2008 archaeological discoveries
Canaanite inscriptions
Ostracon
Archaeological discoveries in Israel
Collections of the Israel Museum