________________
CANAANITE BRANCH
243
early Hebrew script which is still in use (among the Samaritans, the remainder of an ancient sect but numbering to-day only a few hundred people). The Samaritan is a beautiful, neat and symmetrical script.
The writing on Jewish coins (Fig. 114 and 120, 1-2) from the Maccabean age to Bar-Kochba's revolt (140 B.C. to A.D. 132-135), is another direct derivative of the early Hebrew alphabet. It is commonly believed that the script of these coins was artificially revived some centuries after the early Hebrew alphabet had fallen into disuse, but one can hardly believe that an obsolete script would have been chosen for objects such as coins which are in general use. It is more probable that the early Hebrew alphabet continued to be used among certain sections of the population for some centuries after the Aramaic language and script had become the official means of communication.
Scripts of Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites (Fig. 114; 120, 3 and 121)
We must say a few words about the three eastern sub-divisions of the Canaanite branch of which some documents are extant. All the three scripts were closely related to the early Hebrew alphabet.
Of the Moabite alphabet there are two seals extant and the famous victory-stele (Fig. 121), discovered in 1868 at Dibon, some twenty-five miles east of the Dead Sea, and now in the Louvre. The monument, known as the Moabite Stone or Mesha' Stone, is a self-glorification of Mesha', King of Moab (2 Kings, iii, 4), and belongs to the first half of the ninth century B.C. Until the discovery of the Akhiram epitaph (see p. 212), it was regarded as the earliest inscription in alphabetic writing.
Only three seals are extant in Ammonite script (Fig. 120, 3), which does not differ much from the early Hebrew alphabet.
The able American excavator and scholar Nelson Glueck, in his first campaign at Tell el-Kheleifeh (situated on the north coast of the Gulf of 'Aqabah, to the north of the borders of Saudi Arabia and Sinai, and about half way between Aqabah in Transjordan, and Mrashrash in Palestine), by him identified with the ancient site of both Ezion-geber and Elath, discovered in the spring, 1938, an inscription incised after firing on a jug, "in what are perhaps specifically Edomite characters" (Glueck). There are six letters, of which one is damaged and another, uncertain. The jug was found in a room, attributed to the eighth-seventh centuries B.C.
Still more interesting was the find of twelve stamped jar handles with seal-impressions made apparently with the same small seal. No one inscription is clear, but a composite inscription reads (according to Prof. Glueck) / Qws'nl in the upper line, and 'bd hmlk, in the lower, that is "(belonging) to Ques'nl, the servant of the king." The proper name of
