An Aramaic contract incised on a Persian-era jar?

NORTHWEST SEMITIC EPIGRAPHY: Halfat the Potter Gets a House 2,500 Years Ago. Archaeologists deduce the details of a deal featuring an unusual caveat, written in paleo-Aramaic on, of all things, a Canaanite jar somewhere in ancient Israel (Ruth Schuster, Haaretz).

We don't know where the jar was manufactured or anything of its history because it was recovered from looters, not unearthed in legal excavation. It was broken and its rim is missing, frustrating identification of its dating by style. But its reconstruction revealed an almost complete inscription all around the shoulder, below the jar neck.

The regained pot was handed over for reconstruction and analysis by the Israel Antiquities Authority's anti-theft division. The study by Esther Eshel and Boaz Zissu of Ramat Gan's Bar-Ilan University, with Haggai Misgav of the Hebrew University and Amir Ganor of the IAA, appeared in Israel Exploration Journal, Volume 74:1 based on their reconstruction of the piece, its (few) missing letters, and their reading and possible interpretation

The Haaretz article gives a good summary of the IEJ article. The full text of the latter is available on Boaz Zissu's Academia.edu site:

Eshel E., Misgav H., Ganor A., Zissu B., 2024. The Potter’s Deal: A Fourth Century BCE Aramaic Economic Inscription Incised on the Shoulder of a Jar. IEJ 74/1, pp. 64-80.

Boaz Zissu
2024, Israel Exploration Journal
72 Views 19 Pages 1 File
Aramaic, Northwest Semitic Epigraphy, Hellenistic Roman and Byzantine Archaeology in the Land of Israel, Epigraphy, Aramaic and Targum
Publication Date: 2024
Publication Name: Israel Exploration Journal

The article presents an analysis of a new, almost completely preserved Aramaic lapidary inscription incised on the shoulder of a storage jar before firing. The script utilized in this inscription displays significant similarities to known Persian-period inscriptions. Consequently, assigning this inscription to the fourth century BCE on palaeographic grounds seems plausible. This discovery is an important addition to the somewhat limited assemblage of Persian-period inscriptions documented in the southern Levant.

This is a fascinating and unusual inscription. Two comments.

First, I commend the scholars who offer their decipherment in the article for a valiant effort to understand a complicated text that comes with almost no context.

Second, I hate to be the one making issue of this again, but the object is unprovenanced. The technical article gives no information about its authentication. The opening sentence says, "An inscription on the shoulder of a large, unprovenanced storage jar acquired through the enforcement of the Israeli Antiquities Law was handed to us for further study by the Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority." That's it. Have I missed something?

As I have said many times (notably here and here), our default assumption should be that an unprovenanced artifact is a forgery unless someone makes a credible case otherwise. Perhaps there is such a case for this object. Perhaps it's even an obvious case. But it is not made here.

We've been burned recently with another Aramaic inscription incised on clay, the fake Darius ostracon (cf. here). This situation is somewhat different, granted. But can we rule out forgery? If so, I would like to know why, how, and how confidently.

The obscure nature of the jar inscription could be an argument either against or in favor of its authenticity.

As always, I would be delighted—and grateful—if someone would show me that my skepticism is unwarranted.

Cross-file under Aramaic Watch.

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