New Lachish ostracon confirms Joseph's Canaanite title?

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY: New Inscription From Lachish Proves Early Use of Joseph’s Title. As Joseph was ‘šalit’ in Bronze Age Egypt, Baal was ‘šalit’ at Bronze Age Lachish (CHRISTOPHER EAMES, Armstrong Institute of Biblical Research).

Nevertheless, šalit has at least been generally recognized as a later Persian Period loan word, applied either during the editing or composition of these texts perhaps somewhere as late as the second half of the first millennium B.C.E.

A brand new inscription from Lachish, discovered just last year and published in a recent Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology article, challenges that conclusion—revealing the use of this word in the Levant as early as the second half of the second millennium B.C.E.—the end of the Late Bronze Age.

The underlying open-access article in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology:

A Late Bronze Age Canaanite Jar Inscription from the 2025 Excavation Season at Lachish

Daniel Vainstub^a, Itamar Weissbein^b, Hoo-Goo Kang^c, Shai Halevi^d, and Yosef Garfinkel^e

a Independent Researcher, dvainstub@gmail.com
b The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, itamar.weissbein@mail.huji.ac.il
c Seoul Jangsin University, Korea, hoogoo7008@gmail.com
d Israel Antiquities Authority, shaih@israntique.org.il
e The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, garfinkel@mail.huji.ac.il

Abstract During the 2025 season of excavations at Tel Lachish, a partially preserved inscription was found in an unambiguous 12th-century BCE archaeological context associated with the site’s last Late Bronze Age settlement. The inscription consists of six letters written in red ink on the shoulder of a ceramic jar. Although the potsherd is horizontally broken, at the mid-height of the inscription, the surviving parts of the letters allow one to read the personal name Bʻlšlṭ. This name is built on the root šlṭ, which hitherto has been widely considered a much later (Persian period) loan from Aramaic. Furthermore, the inscription was written in the standardized Linear Canaanite script displaying cursive features, apparently by a person accustomed to writing with a stylus and ink.

A new Iron Age II Hebrew ostracon from Lachish was also published last year in the same journal.

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