Thursday, July 18, 2024

William M. Schniedewin on the use of Egyptian Symbols among the Hebrew Scribal Communities beginning in the 12th century BC

  

Egyptian accounting symbols became a regular part of Hebrew scribal communities beginning in the early Iron Age (that is, the twelfth century BCE). There are many Hebrew inscriptions that use the Egyptian hieratic accounting symbols, but these inscriptions mostly date to the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The earliest good examples of these Egyptian accounting symbols appear in Hebrew inscriptions dating to 800 BCE, but there is one fragmentary example from Tel Arad that might date as far back as the tenth century BCE. A remarkable example of this borrowing is a school exercise excavated at Kadesh Barnea in the southern Judean desert (Figure 2.4). A young scribe was doing homework, practicing the writing of hieratic numbers in a list. It is “Accounting 101” for scribes.

 

The symbols are borrowed from Egyptian by alphabetic scribes as early as the twelfth century BCE. By analogy, we borrowed “Arabic numerals,” and all European languages use them. The early Hebrews borrowed “Egyptian numerals.” We knew these numerals were borrowed from Egypt, but exactly when had been the subject of some debate.

 

Now we have the proverbial smoking gun in the Lachish jar inscription. They were a legacy of the Egyptian scribal community working in Canaan in the waning years of its hegemony in Canaan.

 

The borrowing from Egyptian scribal communities extended beyond the hieratic numbers and symbols. It begins with the very technology for writing—namely, the use of ink and papyrus (in contrast to the stylus and clay for cuneiform writing). These were Egyptian technologies. They were invented by the Egyptians and were borrowed by the early alphabetic scribes. Not surprisingly, a whole host of Egyptian words related to the scribal enterprise made their way into Hebrew. These include basic words relating to the profession like “ink” (ḏeyô), “papyrus” (gōmeʾ), “scribal palette” (qeseṯ), “seal” (ḥôṯām), and “signet ring” (ṭaḇaʿaṯ). In addition, accounting terms related to measurement also come from Egyptian: “ephah” (a measurement for grain), “hin” (a liquid measure), and “zeret” (a span of measurement). It is worth observing here that there are relatively few Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew, and most can be related to the scribal profession.

 

We might question why Hebrew scribes did not just use Egyptian hieroglyphs for their scribal communities. There are a handful of Egyptian hieratic inscriptions that have been excavated in various locales in ancient Canaan so it was at least a possibility. However, using hieroglyphs was not a viable option for early Hebrew scribes. There are no Egyptian school texts found outside of Egypt proper, even though some Egyptians working in Canaan were left behind at the end of the New Kingdom. But hieroglyphs and hieratic are purely Egyptian writing systems for the Egyptian language. They would have been awkward to adopt and difficult to learn for Judean scribes. And they were Egyptian. So it made sense to reject hieroglyphs in favor of the alphabet—a writing system that they could make their own. (William M. Schniedewind, Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024], 48, 50)

 

The following is taken from ibid., 49: