Monday, February 02, 2015

Still more on the Babylonian-Judean cuneiform tablets

PHILOLOGY! ‘By the rivers of Babylon’ exhibit breathes life into Judean exile.
Never-before-showcased clay tablets documenting the first diaspora go on display at Jerusalem’s Bible Lands Museum
(Ilan Ben Zion, Times of Israel). Another article that gives still more details about this important discovery. Read it all, but I will just comment on two passages.
“It puts a face on the real people who went through these fateful events,” Dr. Filip Vukosavović, curator of the exhibit, told The Times of Israel. The tablets preserve a wealth of Judean names — including the familiar Natanyahu — of the exilic community, and even include a handful of Aramaic inscriptions.
This is easy to miss, but, if accurate, it's very important. We have almost no Babylonian Aramaic from this period. We know plenty of Aramaic was written in Babylonia in the Second Temple Period; there is even a special Akkadian word for an Aramaic scribe (sepīru), distinguished from a scribe who copied cuneiform tablets (tupsharru). But Aramaic was normally written on perishable materials and almost none of it survived the humid Babylonian climate. To have even a little Babylonian Aramaic from the period of the Exile is in itself a major discovery. (Cross-file under "Aramaic Watch.")
Each document catalogs when and where it was written and by whom, providing scholars with an unprecedented view into the day-to-day life of Judean exiles in Babylonia, as well as a geography of where the refugees were resettled. The earliest in the collection, from 572 BCE, mentions the town of Al-Yahudu — “Jerusalem” — a village of transplants from Judea.
This is a bit garbled. The phrase Al-Yahadu is Akkadian for "town of Judea," which makes sense as a name for a village of exiled Judeans. It doesn't have anything directly to do with Jerusalem. This article from the 2011 Story of Iran and the Jews Exhibition (noted here) discusses the correct meaning of the phrase.

Background here and links.