The Jeselsohn Collection of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea

The Jeselsohn Collection of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea
Author: Ada Yardeni
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Aramaic language
ISBN: 9789652173942

"This volume presents 574 ostraca (560 Aramaic and 9 Greek) from the collection of David and Jemima Jeselsohn, almost all dating from the fourth century BCE. They are short notes written in ink on pottery sherds from broken and discarded household vessels. They reveal much information about the daily life of the rural population in that part of the land of Israel at a crucial turning point of history. The core of the volume is the corpus of the ostraca. Each item includes a high-resolution photo, a hand-drawn copy, a ceramic analysis and description, and an interpretation of the text that places it in its historical context and notes similar texts. The corpus is preceded by a foreword and three introductory essays. It is followed by eight supplements, including glossaries of words, names, place names, and terms. The appended disc-on-key contains a concordance of words, names, and months"--

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, volume 2

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, volume 2
Author: Bezalel Porten
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2016-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 157506359X

Since 1991, some 2,000 Aramaic ostraca deriving from the south of Israel have appeared on the antiquities market and are now scattered in 9 museums and libraries and 21 private collections. Of these, the majority are still not formally published, and in this second volume in the series, Bezalel Porten continues the publication of this important corpus of 4th century B.C.E. economic texts. With the expert epigraphic assistance of Ada Yardeni and hand-copies by her as well, Porten here provides the second volume of texts, organized by “dossier” based on the primary personage cited in the text. Color photographs (where available), ceramic descriptions, hand-copies, transcription, translation, and commentary are provided for each text, along with tables of seven grain dossiers. This publication will become the primary resource for information on these texts, which provide insight into the economic, social, and religious lives of Idumeans in the late Persian and early Hellenistic periods.

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, Volume 5

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, Volume 5
Author: Bezalel Porten
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 676
Release: 2024-07-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646022556

Since the early 1990s, about two thousand Idumean Aramaic ostraca have found their way onto the antiquities market and are now scattered across a number of museums, libraries, and private collections. This fifth and final volume of the Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea completes the work of bringing these ostraca together in a single publication. Volumes 1–4 published some 1,600 ostraca that gave us insight into agriculture, economics, politics, onomastics, and scribal practices from fourth/third-century BCE Idumea and Judah. The ostraca in volume 5 come from the same milieu, but the information they provide is entirely new and different. This volume presents 485 ostraca, including 99 land descriptions, 168 uncertain texts, and 218 assorted remains, scribal exercises, and forgeries, along with useful indexes and tables and a comparative list of entries. The land descriptions—which record local landmarks, ownership boundaries, and land registration—provide rich complementary material to the rest of the Idumean ostraca. The “uncertain texts” are fragmentary, in poor condition, or contain other abnormalities. As the TAO corpus becomes better understood and as imaging techniques improve, these texts will help to fill gaps in knowledge. The final section includes the remains of scribal practices and forgeries, important because they help to show the authenticity of the other two thousand pieces. A unique collection of documentary sources for fourth/third-century BCE Idumea—and, by extension, Judah—this multivolume work will be a powerful resource for those interested in onomastics and social and economic history.

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, volume 3

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, volume 3
Author: Bezalel Porten
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 936
Release: 2019-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646020006

Since the early 1990s, about two thousand Idumean Aramaic ostraca have found their way into museums, libraries, and private collections. Four major publications covering some of these texts have appeared, three of which encompass the ostraca held by individual collectors only. This multivolume work classifies the ostraca according to subject matter and brings them together in a single publication. Volumes 1 and 2 covered fifty personal name dossiers (TAO A1-50). Volume 3 contains more than two hundred more such dossiers (TAO A51-255a) and numerous fragments. Each text is accompanied by a color photograph and hand-copy, a facing transcription and translation, and a ceramic description and commentary. The translation uniquely provides marginal captions identifying the phrases. In addition to the presentation of individual texts, there are six dossiers of tables covering all the commodity chits, parallel tables that classify them according to month or size, and comparative lists of entries. Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea is a unique source for the onomastics and the social and economic history of fourth-century Idumea and, by extension, Judah (Yehud).

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, Volume 4

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, Volume 4
Author: Bezalel Porten
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 571
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1646021878

Since the early 1990s, about two thousand Idumean Aramaic ostraca have found their way onto the antiquities market and are now scattered across a number of museums, libraries, and private collections. This multivolume textbook classifies these ostraca according to subject matter and brings them together into a single publication. With this fourth installment, Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni continue their comprehensive edition of Aramaic ostraca from Idumea. Volumes 1–3 published and cataloged 255 Personal Name Dossiers containing 1,152 texts. Volume 4 contains 377 texts divided into six dossiers, including 54 payment orders, 77 accounts, 74 workers texts, 62 names, 87 jar inscriptions, and 23 letters. The payment orders document officially authorized transfers of goods, while the accounts show how those goods were inventoried. The workers texts illustrate the distribution and supply of laborers, the name lists show people as individuals, and the jar inscriptions track vessels in motion. Color photographs, ceramic descriptions, hand-copies, transcriptions, translations, and commentaries are provided for the texts, along with figures and tables, and introductions and summaries of each dossier. A unique source for the onomastics and social and economic history of fourth-century Idumea—and, by extension, of Judah—this multivolume work will become the primary resource for information on these texts.

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, volume 1

Textbook of Aramaic Ostraca from Idumea, volume 1
Author: Bezalel Porten
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 527
Release: 2014-09-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 1575068982

Some 340 Aramaic ostraca of the Persian and Hellenistic periods have been excavated at 32 sites in Israel, from Yokneam in the north to Eilat in the south, with Arad and Beersheba being the main contributory sites. By far, however, the largest cache of texts is what has come to be known as “the Idumean ostraca”. These did not come from formal excavations but began to appear on the antiquities market in 1991. Since then, some 2,000 ostraca have reached 9 museums and libraries and 21 private collections. Of these, the majority are still not formally published, and in this volume (and those to follow), Bezalel Porten undertakes to provide a comprehensive edition of all these texts, in many cases as an editio princeps. Porten, with the expert epigraphic assistance of Ada Yardeni and hand-copies by her as well, here provides the first volume of texts, organized by “dossier” based on the primary personage cited in the text. Color photographs (where available), ceramic descriptions, hand-copies, transcription, translation, and commentary are provided for each text, along with figures and tables, and introductions and summaries of each dossier. An included CD contains a catalogue of all the texts and three color key-word-in-context concordances, for words, personal names, and months for the entire corpus. This publication will become the primary resource for information on these texts.

Using Ostraca in the Ancient World

Using Ostraca in the Ancient World
Author: Clementina Caputo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2020-12-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 3110712954

Throughout Egypt’s long history, pottery sherds and flakes of limestone were commonly used for drawings and short-form texts in a number of languages. These objects are conventionally called ostraca, and thousands of them have been and continue to be discovered. This volume highlights some of the methodologies that have been developed for analyzing the archaeological contexts, material aspects, and textual peculiarities of ostraca.

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts

Multilingualism in Ancient Contexts
Author: Louis C. Jonker
Publisher: African Sun Media
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2021-05-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1991201168

Multilingualism remains a thorny issue in many contexts, be it cultural, political, or educational. Debates and discourses on this issue in contexts of diversity (particularly in multicultural societies, but also in immigration situations) are often conducted with present-day communicational and educational needs in mind, or with political and identity agendas. This is nothing new. There are a vast number of witnesses from the ancient West-Asian and Mediterranean world attesting to the same debates in long past societies. Could an investigation into the linguistic landscapes of ancient societies shed any light on our present-day debates and discourses? This volume suggests that this is indeed the case. In fourteen chapters, written and visual sources of the ancient world are investigated and explored by scholars, specialising in those fields of study, to engage in an interdisciplinary discourse with modern-day debates about multilingualism. A final chapter – by an expert in language in education – responds critically to the contributions in the book to open avenues for further interdisciplinary engagement – together with contemporary linguists and educationists – on the matter of multilingualism.

New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin

New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin
Author: James D. Moore
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2022-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004505563

The famous German excavations between 1906 and 1908 of Elephantine Island in Egypt produced some of the most important Aramaic sources for understanding the history of Judeans and Arameans living in 5th century BCE Egypt under Persian occupation. Unknown to the world, many papyri fragments from those excavations remained uncatalogued in the Berlin Museum. In New Aramaic Papyri from Elephantine in Berlin James D. Moore edits the remaining legible Aramaic fragments, which belong to letters, contracts, and administrative texts. To view supplementary material from the volume go here.

Yahwism Under the Achaemenid Empire

Yahwism Under the Achaemenid Empire
Author: Gad Barnea
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 604
Release: 2024-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 3111018636

The Achaemenid period (550-330 BCE) is rightly seen as one of the most formative periods in Judaism. It is the period in which large portions of the Bible were edited and redacted and others were authored--yet no dedicated interdisciplinary study has been undertaken to present a consistent picture of this decisive time period. This book is dedicated to the study of the touchpoints between Yahwistic communities throughout the Achaemenid empire and the Iranian attributes of the empire that ruled over them for about two centuries. Its approach is fundamentally interdisciplinary. It brings together scholars of Achaemenid history, literature and religion, Iranian linguistics, historians of the Ancient Near East, archeologists, biblical scholars and Semiticists. The goal is to better understand the interchange of ideas, expressions and concepts as well as the experience of historical events between Yahwists and the empire that ruled over them for over two centuries. The book will open up a holisitic perspective on this important era to scholars of a wide variety of fields in the study of Judaism in the Ancient Near East.