The Social Context of Writing in Ancient Ugarit
April 2022 | Vol. 10.4 By Philip Boyes We often ask, what is writing? A better question is, who is writing? It is very easy to approach ancient writing as something rather abstract
Language Death—The Case of Akkadian
February 2022 | Vol. 10.2 By Johannes Hackl The phenomenon of language death is as old as the recorded history of the world’s languages, if not as old as language itself. Languag
Data Science and the Bible: Rediscovering the History of the Christian Bible in Ethiopia
Ethiopia was one of the first Christian societies to translate the Bible into a local language. Thanks to data science, the patterns of transmission are now coming into better focu
From Texts to Scribes: Evidence for Writing in Ancient Israel
What do we know about ancient Israel’s scribal culture? Can two words in the biblical text, the verb ‘write’ (katav) and the noun ‘scribe’ (sofer) help us understand the
Assurbanipal’s iPad: Wax Boards in the Ancient Near East
Writing on wax began in Mesopotamia and spread to the Mediterranean and Europe. But some lingering questions may have finally been answered by a science project with children.
A Treasure Quest in the Copper Scroll from Qumran
The Copper Scroll from Qumran has puzzled scholars and the public since its discovery in 1952. Are the treasures it describes real or imaginary? And is the journey to find them rea
The Enigmatic Tablets from Late Bronze Age Deir ‘Alla
January 2021 | Vol. 9.1 By Michel de Vreeze On April 1, 1964 Henk Franken and his Leiden University based team stumbled upon two clay tablets. Two days later a third tablet was fou
Hebrew as the Language behind the World’s First Alphabet?
Which Semitic language – and people – stands behind the enigmatic Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions? A controversial proposal brings us back to familiar, if equally controversial, gr