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THE ALPHABET by the Wellcome-Marston Archæological Expedition. Three other ostraca were discovered in Lachish, in 1938. What we have now is all that has survived of a large collection of correspondence and other documents. As the burnt debris, in which the ostraca were found, dates from the destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar's army at the close of Zedekiah's reign, the documents were probably written about the beginning of 587 B.C. Some of the ostraca (Fig. 117, I and 118, 1) are almost as clear as on the day they were written, two thousand five hundred and thirtyfive years ago.
On various sites in southern Palestine many hundreds of jar-handles have been found which bear impressions of factory stamps. Some of these are royal trade-marks, others reproduce the names of private pottery works, while others are "divine" stamps, "Jerusalem" stamps and so forth. A considerable number, about a hundred and fifty, of inscribed
Fig. 117–Early Hebrew inscriptions 1, Lachish letter. 2. Beautiful seal of a high official of Jeroboam 11 (first half of the
8th century B.C.)
stone seals have also been discovered in Palestine (Fig. 117,2). Another important group of short inscriptions is that of the inscribed weights and measures (Fig. 118, 2).
The Script
The main characteristics of the early Hebrew alphabet, when compared with Phænician writing, are: the letters, especially the sayin and the tsade, are more squat, wider and shorter, also more accurate. The main stems of the letters beth, kaph, lamed, mem, nun and pe are curved or rounded at the bottom. In the kheth, the vertical strokes go beyond the horizontal ones. In the he, the upper horizontal stroke goes beyond the vertical, and there are sometimes four horizontal strokes instead of three. In the mem and run the short vertical strokes are often not joined to the main
