An Aramaic Contemporary of the Lachish Letters
| Autor: | H. L. Ginsberg |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1948 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 111:24-27 |
| ISSN: | 2161-8062 0003-097X |
| DOI: | 10.2307/1355984 |
| Popis: | The famous Lachish ostraca date from about the years 589-8 B. C., with the exception of one which is about a decade earlier. The people who wrote them wrote on potsherds because they were not writing legal or official documents; if they had been, they would have used papyrus, as has been rightly inferred from the fiber-marks on the clay bearing the impression of the seal of " Gedaliah, the Officer of the Palace," which was likewise found at Lachish. They further wrote in beautiful biblical Hebrew I because they were not addressing diplomatic notes to some non-Canaanite government; if they had been, it would be not unreasonable to surmise from 2 Ki IS: 6 // Isa 36: 11 that they would have composed them in Aramaic.2 When Elnathan ben Achbor went down to Egypt to obtain the extradition of the prophet Uriah on behalf of King Jehoiakim (Jer 6: 22-23), he doubtless carried a message from Jehoiakim to King Necho of Egypt, and in all probability it was written on papyrus and in the Aramaic tongue. A little over a decade later, when a certain " captain of the host, Coniah ben Elnathan," in all likelihood a son of the same Elnathan, 'went down to come to Egypt' (Lachish III 1416)-no doubt to urge the necessity of an Egyptian expedition to relieve the Babylonian pressure upon Judah-he too must have been furnished with a letter from the Jewish king (now Zedekiah) to the Egyptian (now Hophra, or Apries), and this too was presumably an Aramaic papyrus. It would be thrilling if that missive were to turn up somewhere in Egypt, the land which is so kind to perishable papyrus, and some day it may. Meanwhile, we may guess that it was very similar in tone and |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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