Tuesday, September 19, 2017

A new Phoenician archive

BIBLE HISTORY DAILY: The Phoenician Alphabet in Archaeology. What did the Phoenicians record with their innovative script? (Josephine Quinn). The essay begins with some basics about the Phoenician alphabet, but then goes on to report something more exciting:
Now, however, excavations at the inland city of Idalion on Cyprus by Dr. Maria Hadjicosti of the Department of Antiquities have finally brought to light a large archive of Phoenician texts, preserved because they were written not on perishable materials but on fragments of marble, stone, and pottery. These texts are now being studied in Nicosia by Professor Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo of the Sapienza University of Rome and Dr. José Ángel Zamora López of the Spanish National Research Agency, who have published their preliminary findings in Italian in the latest issue of the journal Semitica et Classica.
Read on for more on the contents of the archive. It consists of administrative texts and personal documents. There are no literary texts so far.

This is an exciting discovery, which is new to me. I look forward to hearing more about it.

Cross-file under Phoenician Watch and Epigraphy.

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