Gezer calendar
Encyclopedia
The Gezer calendar is a tablet
of soft limestone
inscription, dating to the 10th century BCE. Scholars are divided as to whether the script and language are Phoenician
or paleo-Hebrew
, which were linguistically very similar in this period.
was discovered in excavations of the ancient Canaanite
city of Gezer
, 20 miles west of Jerusalem, in the last of the foothills of the Central Hills which continue to decline into the northern Shephelah, by R.A.S. Macalister in his excavations with the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1908.
The calendar inscribed on a limestone plaque describes monthly or bi-monthly periods and attributes to each a duty such as harvest, planting, or tending specific crops. It reads:
Scholars have speculated that the calendar is either a schoolboy's memory exercise or perhaps the text of a popular folk song, or children's song. Another possibility is something designed for the collection of taxes from farmers.
"Abijah" is, in all likelihood, the name of the scribe
. The name means "Yah (abbreviated form of YHWH, the Hebrew name of the God of Israel) is my father". This name appears in the Bible for several different individuals, including a king of Judah (1 Kings 14:31).
The Gezer calendar is in the Museum of the Ancient Orient, one of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, along with the Siloam inscription
and other archaeological discoveries found before World War I
.
Tablet
A tablet is a pharmaceutical dosage form. It comprises a mixture of active substances and excipients, usually in powder form, pressed or compacted from a powder into a solid dose...
of soft limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
inscription, dating to the 10th century BCE. Scholars are divided as to whether the script and language are Phoenician
Phoenician alphabet
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, was a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad. It was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia...
or paleo-Hebrew
Paleo-Hebrew alphabet
The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet , is an abjad offshoot of the ancient Semitic alphabet, identical to the Phoenician alphabet. At the very least it dates to the 10th century BCE...
, which were linguistically very similar in this period.
History and content
The calendarCalendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
was discovered in excavations of the ancient Canaanite
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
city of Gezer
Gezer
Gezer was a Canaanite city-state and biblical town in ancient Israel. Tel Gezer , an archaeological site midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is now an Israeli national park....
, 20 miles west of Jerusalem, in the last of the foothills of the Central Hills which continue to decline into the northern Shephelah, by R.A.S. Macalister in his excavations with the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1908.
The calendar inscribed on a limestone plaque describes monthly or bi-monthly periods and attributes to each a duty such as harvest, planting, or tending specific crops. It reads:
Scholars have speculated that the calendar is either a schoolboy's memory exercise or perhaps the text of a popular folk song, or children's song. Another possibility is something designed for the collection of taxes from farmers.
"Abijah" is, in all likelihood, the name of the scribe
Scribe
A scribe is a person who writes books or documents by hand as a profession and helps the city keep track of its records. The profession, previously found in all literate cultures in some form, lost most of its importance and status with the advent of printing...
. The name means "Yah (abbreviated form of YHWH, the Hebrew name of the God of Israel) is my father". This name appears in the Bible for several different individuals, including a king of Judah (1 Kings 14:31).
The Gezer calendar is in the Museum of the Ancient Orient, one of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, along with the Siloam inscription
Siloam inscription
The Siloam inscription or Silwan inscription is a passage of inscribed text found in the Hezekiah tunnel which brings water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam, located in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The inscription records the construction of the tunnel in the 8th century...
and other archaeological discoveries found before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
.
See also
Further reading
- Albright, W.F.William F. AlbrightWilliam Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist and expert on ceramics. From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the universally acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement...
"The Gezer Calendar" in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR). 1943. Volume 92:16–26. Original description of the find. - Sivan, Daniel "The Gezer calendar and Northwest Semitic linguistics", Israel Exploration Journal 48,1-2 (1998) 101–105. An up-to-date linguistic analysis of this text.
- Dever, William G. “Gezer”. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East vol. 2, Editor in Chief Eric M. Meyers, 396–400. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
- Pardee, Dennis. “Gezer Calendar”. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East vol. 2, Editor in Chief Eric M. Meyers, 396–400. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.