Multiple Readings, Multiple Interpretations

Eight scholars (two a pair) have offered their opinions of the inscription recently recovered south of the Temple Mount—each one different from the other!

1. Shmuel Ahituv, Emeritus Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University, reads from left to right: ]m p q ḥ n l? n[ ... , which gives no sense.¹

2. Christopher Rollston, visiting scholar of Northwest Semitic literature at Tel Aviv University, offered another reading, also from left to right: ... ]m q l ḥ n r? n [ ... , and found the word qlḥ, meaning a pot of some sort, perhaps with prefixed m-, although that form is otherwise unknown. He speculated that the name Ner might follow it, giving “pot of Ner” or “Ner’s pot.”²

3. Aaron Demsky, professor of Biblical history at Bar-Ilan University reads, from left to right: ... ḥ] m r l ḥ n [n] [space], giving a sense “[w]ine/ [ho]mer belonging to Han[an].”³ P. Kyle McCarter, William Foxwell Albright Professor in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, independently came to essentially the same conclusion.⁴