Biblical Archaeology Review

A few very short, similar inscriptions have turned up in Canaan—called Proto-Canaanite—but they are dated later, to the late Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom (17th–16th century B.C.E. at the earliest). See especially the examples of the Shechem plaque, the Gezer sherd and the Lachish dagger in Joseph Naveh, Early History of the Alphabet: An Introduction to West Semitic Epigraphy and Palaeography, reprint of 2nd rev. ed. (Jerusalem: Magness Press, 1997), pp. 26–27. See also the Tell Nagila sherd in Gordon J.

James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1955), pp. 18–22.

See David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 73–75.

Maria Höfner, “Remarks on Potsherds with Incised South Arabian Letters,” in Donald T. Ariel, ed., Excavations at the City of David 1978–1985 Directed by Yigal Shiloh. Vol. 6, Qedem 41 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew Univ., 2000), pp. 26–28.

Yifat Thareani-Sussely, “Desert Outsiders: Extramural Neighbourhoods in the Iron Age Negev,” in Alexander Fantalkin and Assaf Yasur-Landau, eds., Bene Israel: Studies in the Archaeology of Israel and the Levant During the Bronze and Iron Ages in Honour of Israel Finkelstein (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 198–212 and 288–303, esp. 208 and 302.

Bron and Lemaire, “Nouvelle inscription Sabéenne et le Commerce en Transeuphratène,” Transeuphratène 38 (2009), p. 51.

“A Gateway Community in Southern Arabian Long-Distance Trade in the Eighth Century B.C.E.,” Tel Aviv 26 (1999), pp. 3–74, esp. 40–61.

“New Perspectives on the Trade between Judah and South Arabia,” in Meir Lubetski, ed., New Inscriptions and Seals Relating to the Biblical World (forthcoming).

Gaza is also mentioned later in Minaean inscriptions, in similar contexts, thereby making the reconstruction here quite certain.

In my view, there is no question that the inscription is authentic. This view is shared by two South Arabian epigraphers who have been working in the field for more than 40 years each: François Bron, who has published the inscription with me, and Christian Robin, who recently cited the inscription in a communication to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (Paris).