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Comment by unscaled

I admit I didn't have time to read this blog post deeply, but it doesn't sound very convincing. It doesn't bring any EVIDENCE that this is an alphabet it just cites other cases of possible alphabets in Mesopotamia and the near East [1].

Besides that, this blog post mentions some morphological characteristics of the inscriptions that make the author believe the writing is alphabetic, but it fails to mention these characteristics. I don't doubt Rollston has good reasons for this statement, but the claims behind them need to be published and reviewed. I'm not sure if this is the case (and I do not have access to the 2021 article).

[1] This includes the Lachish Dagger I tried to look up, but its dating seems disputed, but even the earliest proposed date (the 17th century) is more recent than the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions, so I'm not entirely sure what it is supposed to prove, except perhaps an earlier spread of the Alphabet from Egypt and the Sinai peninsula to Canaan proper?

parent unscaled 1 year ago

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