TEL ZAYIT (ZEITAH) INSCRIPTION SESSION REPORT (part one): The session was on Sunday evening from 7:00 to 9:00 in a stifling, standing-only crowded room with several hundred attending. Ron Tappy and I, incidentally, were postgraduates together in the Harvard Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations program and a great many of our contemporaries showed up, many with their spouses, which made part of the crowd an impromptu 1980s Harvard NELC reunion. The panel consisted of Harvard archaeologist Larry Stager, who did the introductions; Ron, the chief excavator of the site; epigrapher Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins; and epigraphers Bruce Zuckerman (USC) and Marilyn Lundberg. Ron, Kyle, and Bruce gave presentations. I'll cover Ron's contribution in this post.

RON TAPPY first emphasized that everything he was presenting was still undergoing analysis and was preliminary. Then he gave a detailed account (which I won't try to reproduce) of the stratigraphy of the relevant square and the area around it. The inscription layer was sealed under ninth-century BCE layers and was over a Late Bronze Age stratum. The inscription layer is dated on ceramic grounds to the mid- to late tenth century BCE, so the area seems to have been unoccupied during the Iron Age I period. The inscription layer consisted of two rooms with a door between them, with flagstones on the floor of the room of interest. Much more excavation needs to be done to put it in context, but at present it corresponds to the features of "pillared houses" at other sites.

Tappy's original assumption was that he was excavating a small village, but he is reassessing that idea and now thinks the site may have been much larger, with much of it having been removed a couple of centuries ago through agricultural activitiy. There is a stone sticking up from the wall of the room, which Ron called a "monolith." This room is part of a curved line of as yet unexcavated monoliths. Evidently it was part of a much larger complex of rooms which may have ringed the shoulder of the site, perhaps forr defensive purposes.

The inscription room was destroyed in a conflagration of uncertain origin, but since sling stones were found in the burnt layer, it may have involved an attack on the city.

The inscription is built into a stone wall. It was spotted by a volunteer, who showed it to biblioblogger Michael Homan. Michael called Ron over to see "something important." Indeed.

The stone weighs about 40 pounds and has a sort of bowl carved on the other side; the bowl was facing down in the wall. The stone above it was, unusually, made of (imported) onyx. The inscription would be visible on the wall. The letters are very thinly incised, perhaps by a metal tool. Such tools have been excavated elsewhere on the site.

That's the Tappy presentation. I'm out of time and don't have time to proofread. Apologies for typos. To be continued ...

LATER: Links added and (I hope) typos now corrected.

UPDATE (22 November): Michael Homan posts his own account of the discovery here.

UPDATE (24 November): The room was too dark for good photography during the session, and I don't want to post any unpublished images of the inscription, but here's a photo I took just before the session started. Michael Homan is in the center facing forward. To his left you can see Ron Tappy in profile, facing toward Michael. In the background to the right is a screen with the opening slide of the presentation.