Proto-alphabetic inscriptions from the Wadi Arabah

Abstract

Proto-alphabetic Inscriptions from the Wadi ArabahThree early West Semitic inscriptions from the Arabah valley are studied here, all of them apparently connected with the Egyptian copper-mining activity in the region, notably at Timna, in the period of the Ramessides.The most striking detail in these texts is a sign corresponding to an Egyptian hieroglyph (N6B ) which depicts two serpents guarding the sun-disc, and another with one serpent (N6 ,); these never appear on conventional tables of early alphabetic letters; this leads to a critical reappraisal of current identifications of the original picture-signs, and elaboration of a new system of interpreting early Canaanite inscriptions, involving recognition that the signs could sometimes stand for whole words and could also be used as rebuses.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.