Computer Experiments On The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon: Crypt

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Advance Access published August 31, 2016
Computer experiments on the

Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon
............................................................................................................................................................
Eythan Levy
Ecole superieure dinformatique (HEB ESI), Bruxelles, Belgium,
Centre de Recherches en Archeologie et Patrimoine, Universite libre
de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium
Frederic Pluquet
Ecole superieure dinformatique (HEB ESI), Bruxelles, Belgium
.......................................................................................................................................
Correspondence: Eythan
Levy, Ecole superieure
dinformatique (HEB ESI),
rue royale 67, 1000 Bruxelles,
Belgium.
E-mail: elevy@heb.be
This article presents a new theoretical framework for computer-assisted decipherment of ancient alphabetic inscriptions. This framework is based on regular
expressions, a widely used computer science formalism for encoding text strings
with partially unknown characters. We then present a new software called SCRYPT,
which applies our framework to the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon, an important
Proto-Canaanite inscription recently discovered in Israel, as a first case study.
Several new anthroponymic readings for the Qeiyafa ostracon, found with the
help of our software, are presented as part of that case study. The software, freely
available online (www.ScryptApp.com), enables users to encode all possible readings for a given grapheme in the ostracon and provides fast automated dictionary
searches for lexemes.
.................................................................................................................................................................................
1 Introduction
The Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon1 (Fig. 1) is an
inscribed pottery sherd discovered in 2008 in
Khirbet Qeiyafa, 27 km southwest of Jerusalem, in
an archaeological excavation led by the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities
Authority, under the direction of Yosef Garfinkel
and Saar Ganor (Garfinkel and Ganor, 2009). The
inscription, now on display in the Israel Museum,
Jerusalem, is dated to the 10th century BCE, and is
considered as the longest existing inscription in the
Proto-Canaanite script, a typicalbut rareLate
Bronze and early Iron Age script that predates the
well-known Hebrew and Phoenician Iron Age
scripts. The ostracon is composed of five lines of
text, and is written from left to right.2 As the
upper line is partially broken, it is unknown whether
additional lines were once present in the upper part

of the inscription. Unfortunately, many letters are
badly preserved, and others altogether erased.
Furthermore, the shapes of some of the letters are
unusual and hardly find direct parallels in similar
inscriptions.
Several decipherments have been proposed for the
ostracon, all based on the hypothesis that the ostracon
reflects an early stage of the ancient Hebrew language.
After early publications by Misgav et al. (2009) and
Yardeni (2009), who cautiously proposed partial
readings and noted the many difficulties in interpreting the inscription, the first complete decipherments,
with continuous syntactic elements, were due to Galil
(2009) and Puech (2010). Their readings depend largely on reconstructions of damaged letters and differ
considerably from each other. Hence, none of their
decipherments has as yet imposed itself to the overall
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Abstract
E. Levy and F. Pluquet
Hebrew dictionary. Usage of the software requires no

knowledge of regular expressions, as the encoding of a
graphemes reading is done via an intuitive user interface. The article ends with a discussion of practical
aspects in the use of our software, its limits, and
future perspectives.
2 Methods
2.1 Regular expressions
epigraphic community, and a more cautious approach, as recently expressed by Rollston (2011),
seems to be called for. The difficulties in interpreting
the inscription are certainly due to its very damaged
state, the unusual shape of some of its letters, and the
scarcity of our knowledge of the Proto-Canaanite
script. Furthermore, the lack of division marks between words, in most parts of the ostracon, provides
an additional difficulty for identifying lexemes. Since
the existing readings of the ostracon vary considerably, but at the same time agree on the identification
of many letters, it has appeared as natural to us to
examine the ostracon using a computer-assisted approach, by encoding its inscription as a regular expression, a widely used computer science formalism
for encoding text strings with partially unknown characters. The first part of this article will show how
regular expressions indeed offer an efficient theoretical framework for representing partial epigraphic
knowledge in alphabetic inscriptions of any script
and language. The second part will present a software
that implements our theoretical framework and
applies it to the Qeiyafa ostracon, resulting in the
proposal of several new readings for the inscription.
This software, called SCRYPT, enables users to encode
all possible readings for a given grapheme in the ostracon and provides fast automated dictionary
searches for lexemes using the Brown-Driver-Briggs
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Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016
(1) is a regular expression, denoting the empty

string (i.e. a zero-length string).
(2) Any element (letter) a of the alphabet is a
regular expression, denoting a one-letter
string composed of this letter.
Non-basic regular expressions are then obtained
using the following inductive rules, for any regular
expressions X and Y:
(1) Concatenation: X Y denotes the set of strings
obtained by concatenating a string from X
with a string from3 Y. A repeated number of
i concatenations between X and itself is
denoted Xi (with X0 formally defined as the
empty string ). For example, a b denotes the
string ab, while a4 denotes the string aaaa (for
any letters a, b in ). In practice, the dot is
often omitted in writing, thus shortcutting
X Y to simply XY.
(2) Union: X|Y denotes the set containing all
strings from X and all strings from4 Y. For
example, a|b denotes the set of strings {a, b}.
(3) Kleene closure: X denotes the set of all
strings obtained by repeated concatenations
i
between strings from X, i.e. X [1
i0 X ,
0
including the empty string X . For example, a denotes the set of strings f; a; aa;
Fig. 1 The Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon (photograph by

Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority, courtesy of the
Khirbet Qeiyafa Expedition)
Let be a finite alphabet, i.e. a finite set of symbols.

A word (or string) is then defined as a finite sequence of symbols from . To compactly represent
and efficiently manipulate certain sets of words, one
can rely on the formalism of regular expressions. A
regular expression (Hopcroft et al., 2006) is defined
inductively, with two base cases and three inductive
rules. The base cases are:
Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon
aaa; . . .g and ajb the set f; a; b; aa;

ab; ba; bb; aaa; . . .g.
2.2.2 Automated dictionary searches

A user can launch an automated dictionary search
by selecting a set of contiguous cells. The computer
then builds a regular expression for the chosen
region by concatenating6 the regular expressions of
all selected cells. A dictionary search is then
launched for all lexemes matching the given regular
expression,7 enabling the user to choose a suitable
reading among these propositions. Examples of dictionary searches for three-cell regions are given
below (assuming the use of the Latin alphabet):
2.2 Methodology
Our methodology is based on dividing an inscription in discrete cells containing at most one letter,
then launching automated dictionary searches for
words in contiguous cells. These steps are detailed
below.
2.2.1 Cell encoding
A cell can contain either a clearly readable letter, a
partially readable letter, or no letter at all. A regular
expression is associated to each cell, defining its possible readings. These expressions have one type
among the following:
: no letter
a : a clearly identied letter a in the given
alphabet
ajbjc : one letter among a limited set of possible readings
. : one unidentied letter
.? : one or no letter
(ajbjc)? : one letter among a limited set of possible readings, or no letter
Cell 1
Cell 2
Cell 3
Words searched for
a
a
a
c|d
b
b
e
.
.?
ace, ade
aba, abb, abc, abd, abe, . . ., abz
aba, abb, abc, abd, abe, . . ., abz, ab
2.2.3 Advantages of the approach

The approach outlined here is particularly relevant
for damaged or incomplete inscriptions, as regular
expressions offer an elegant and concise way to
encode the various reading possibilities of each
cell, and to obtain immediate reading propositions.
Indeed, it is difficult for a human to mentally
browse through all the possibilities offered by a language, and manually searching a dictionary for even
a small three-cell expression such as ajb?cjddje
jf ? already requires 24 manual searches, while
searching for a more complicated expression such
as :ajbcjd: (with unknown first and last letter)
would require the prohibitive number of 22 262
2704 manual searches8 (assuming the use of the
Latin alphabet). Furthermore, our automated
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The inductive nature of the above definition enables the construction of more complex regular expressions than in the given examples. In such cases,
concatenation normally gets higher precedence than
union, and parentheses can be used to impose the
order of application of the operators. For example:
(a b)|c denotes the set {ab, c}, while a (b|c) denotes
the set {ab, ac}.
Regular expressions are used in many computing
languages, under various syntaxes, sometimes different than the formal one given above. These syntaxes
often include notational shortcuts, such as . (dot
operator, not to be confused with the concatenation
operator) denoting any letter of the alphabet
(hence, if is the Latin alphabet, . is a shortcut
for ajbjcjdj . . . jz) and, for any regular expression X,
the notation X? (question mark operator), denoting Xj (any string in X or the empty string). This
article will make use of all the above-mentioned
operators (including . and ?) to the exception of
the Kleene closure.5
The last two cases differ from the preceding in

that they express an uncertainty as to the presence of
a letter in the cell, which is useful for cells with no
visible traces of ink, that might correspond either to
an effaced letter or to a real vacat (blank space) in
the original inscription. The last case might seem
odd (as it combines a limited set of readings with
an uncertainty as to the actual presence of a letter),
but is useful for example in cases of small empty
cells whose original letter, if any, must have been a
small-sized letter, thus reducing the possibilities to a
limited set of readings.
approach has the advantage of being exhaustive and

systematic (within the limits offered by the particular dictionary used), as opposed to the difficulty
involved in obtaining exhaustive results by nonautomated approaches.
2.3 Default expressions for the Khirbet

Qeiyafa ostracon
2.3.1 Author readings as regular expressions

Our approach for determining the default regular
expression of each cell is itself based on regular expressions. Four important works on the ostracon
have been selected, due to Misgav et al. (2009),
Yardeni (2009), Galil (2009), and Puech (2010),
and their respective readings of each cell have
been expressed as regular expressions. Hence, following the methodology outlined in Section 2.2,
clear author identification of a letter inside a cell
has been encoded by that letter only, hesitation between a given set of readings has been rendered by
an a|b|c pattern, a statement such as [this] letter. . .
has not been identified (Yardeni, 2009, p. 260) has
been encoded by . (meaning one letter),9 and
statement such as we do not know if there was a
letter between the shin and the waw (Misgav et al.,
2009, p. 254) has been encoded by .? (meaning
one or no letter). The empty string symbol
(see Section 2.1) has been used to signify that the
cell did not bear any letter according to some
author. Finally, the presence of a word divider10 in
a cell has been represented by a dash (-). Fig. 2
presents our division of the Qeiyafa ostracon in discrete cells, while Fig. 3 presents the readings of our
four authors as regular expressions, using the standard transcription of the Hebrew alphabet.11
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Fig. 2 Cell division of the ostracon
2.3.2 The default expression as a union of

readings
The default expression of each cell has then been set
by taking the union (as defined in Section 2.1) of
the regular expression of each author, to take
into account the broadest set of possible readings.12
Fig. 3 presents the expressions resulting from this
union,13 corresponding to the default expressions
used in our software. These expressions have been
simplified using the following simple rules that naturally derive from the logical or semantics of the
union operator:
a j : : for any letter a
a j:? :? for any letter a
: j :? :?
This union-based approach has the advantage of
combining the reading insights of several different
scholars, thus enabling the search for words containing one scholars reading in one cell, and another scholars reading in another cell.
Furthermore, it ensures that words already identified by a given scholar are still available among the
wider set of readings obtained through the automated dictionary search.
The software presented in Section 3 provides preencoded default expressions for each cell, but still
allows the user to change the encoding of a cell at
any time. This section describes these default expressions and the methodology used to obtain
them. The default expressions are meant as a starting point for users of the software, and are naturally
destined to be modified and refined by them during
the computer-assisted decipherment process.
Fig. 3 Determination of default expressions, with standing for the empty string (see Section 2.1) and - standing for
a word divider
2.4 The problem of Matres Lectionis

An important problem with the use of a classical
Hebrew dictionary to match our regular expressions
is that the spelling of words in early phases of the
language, as expressed in our ostracon, differs from
that of the classical (biblical) Hebrew language
found in dictionaries. More precisely, biblical
Hebrew uses certain consonants and semi-vowels
to encode vowels. These letters used as vowels, in

what was originally a purely consonantal script, are
called matres lectionis (Latin plural of mater lectionis,
meaning mother of reading), but they are normally
not used in the Proto-Canaanite script. Matres lectionis in Hebrew consist of the letters14 y (yod) used
for vowels [/i], [e/] in non-initial position, w (vav)
used for [u/u] and [o] in non-initial position, and h
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(he) used for final [a ], [e/], or [o] (Ariel, 2013).

Hence, a Hebrew word ending with vowel [a ] might
be spelled with a final letter h in a classical Hebrew
dictionary but would likely not feature this final h in
our ostracon. Hence, before launching the pattern
matching algorithm for some regular expression
representing a word, one must add the possibility
for the presence of non-initial letters y and w and
final letter h. For example, the regular expression gr
will entail an automatic dictionary search not only
for gr but also for gyr, gwr, gry, grw, gyry, gyrw, gwry,
gwrw, grh, gyrh, and gwrh. More formally, for a
word search in n contiguous cells bearing regular
expressions x1 x2 . . . xn , respectively, the system will
actually search for the regular expression
x1 yjw?x2 yjw? . . . xn1 yjw?xn yjwjh?
instead of simply x1 x2 . . . xn . For example, a word
search using three cells holding the expressions a,
b|c, and d, respectively, will launch a search for the
regular expression ayjw?bjcyjw?dyjwjh? instead of just15 a(b|c)d.
Note that this approach can entail the insertion
of false positives into the list of matching words,
i.e. words where the inserted y, w, or h are not
matres lectionis but consonants/semi-vowels in
their own right. These false positives have been
dealt with by post-filtering the matched list of results, checking each inserted occurrence of y, w, and
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h and removing the word from the list if it does not

fulfill the following conditions: y should be preceded
by a qames, hireq, sere, or seghol vowel and not bear
_
_
any niqqud_ vowel
sign
(Lambdin, 1973, p. XXV), w
should be a s ureq or a holem male, and final h
_
should not contain a mappiq.
3 Results: The SCRYPT Software

3.1 User manual
A web application called SCRYPT,16 applying our
regular expression-based methodology to the
Qeiyafa ostracon, is freely available online at
http://www.ScryptApp.com. Fig. 4 presents a
screenshot of the application. It displays the ostracon on the right side, divided in cells, and a collapsible piloting panel on the left side. Use cases of the
software, outlined below, are fairly simple and require no prior knowledge of regular expressions or
any other technical computing skills.
3.1.1 Main use cases
The main use cases of the software are available by
clicking on the first button of the piloting panel,
which enables the Readings mode.
3.1.1.1 Checking the expression of a cell.
Checking the regular expression of a cell is simply
Fig. 4 The online application
Fig. 5 Viewing cell contents
done by clicking on the cell. The cell contents (in

standard square Hebrew script) then appears in a
clickable black label. The label disappears automatically when the user clicks on a blank region of the
window. Fig. 5 presents two simple examples of this
use case.
3.1.1.2 Modifying the expression of a cell.
Clicking on the black label that displays cell contents
enables the user to change that contents using an
interactive expression editor (see Fig. 6). This editor
enables the users to erase the current expression (x
button in the upper right corner), and to encode the

different reading possibilities for a cell presented in
Section 2.2:
: click on the "Nothing" button
a : click on the button with corresponding
letter
ajbjc : click on each of the letters in a
sequence
. : click on "One letter"
.? : click on "One or no letter"
(ajbjc)? : click on each of the letters in a
sequence and on "Nothing"
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Since another special character occurs in the

Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon, namely the word divider,
this character has been added to the editor, after the
list of Hebrew letters. This character can be used
alone, or combined with other letters. The last line
of the editor enables to save ones changes, to cancel
them, or to revert to the default expression presented in Fig. 3.
3.1.1.3 Launching a dictionary search. To launch
an automated dictionary search, the user selects a
range of continuous cells,17 which triggers the dictionary search for words matching the concatenated
regular expression of the selected cells (see Fig. 7).
The definition of each word, according to the classical Brown-Drivers-Briggs Hebrew dictionary
(Brown et al., 1906), appears by simply putting
the mouse cursor on the word (Fig. 7). A cell containing a sole word divider cannot be used inside a
word. Hence, the user interface will highlight such a
cell in red and prevent the addition of further cells
to the selected region. On the other hand, a cell
containing a divider among other readings can be
part of a word, in which case only the readings other
than the divider will be taken into account in the
dictionary search.
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3.1.1.4 Saving readings in the panel. A word can

be saved in the piloting panel on the left, by simply
clicking on the word.18 The chosen readings appear
in the panel in sorted order. The selected regions
then appear highlighted in white on the ostracon
(Fig. 8a). When the cursor is moved on one particular reading on the panel, the associated region in the
ostracon is highlighted in gray, its definition appears,
as well as a small cross near the word, enabling the
user to delete the reading (Fig. 8b).
3.1.2 Additional use cases
3.1.2.1 Image processing. The second button of
the piloting panel enables the image processing
mode (Fig. 9). In this mode, the user can interactively change the brightness, contrast, saturation,
and hue of the image, as well as its RGB curve, to
obtain the best possible reading of obscure parts of
the inscription.
3.1.2.2 Magnifying glass. A magnifying glass is
available through the last icon situated in the
menu bar (Fig. 10). When selected, the magnifying
glass shows the details of a round region centered at
the position of the cursor. The piloting panel also
has a magnifying glass button, which allows to
Fig. 6 The expression editor, for modifying cell contents
change both the zoom size and the zoom factor of

the glass.
3.1.2.3 Saving/loading a configuration. The last
button of the piloting panel enables to save a given
configuration, as a .scrypt file, and to load a given
.scrypt file (Fig. 11). The configuration file saves all
the current work of the user, i.e. the saved readings,
image processing, and magnifying glass settings.
3.2 Internals
The SCRYPT software is implemented as a web application using the latest web standards and technologies, such as HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. The
application is totally client-based: all computations
and dictionary searches being performed on client
side19 and implemented in Javascript. The Javascript
JQuery 2.0.3 library20 has been used to facilitate
manipulation of the Document Object Model. The
KineticJS21 library has been used to create the cells
of the ostracon, their highlighting, and to handle
mouse events related to these cells. The image processing tool for the ostracon has been implemented
using the glfx.js library.22 The Javascript source code
has been designed using the Model-View-Controller
design pattern, thus separating domain objects from
the view and enhancing modularity. The code is
hence rendered modular enough to be easily adaptable to other inscriptions,23 dictionaries, languages,
and scripts. The application has been successfully

tested on the Google Chrome 44, Firefox 40,
Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8, and Opera 31 web
browsers.
3.3 Case study: the Qeiyafa ostracon as

a name list
3.3.1 Introduction
This section presents a practical case study on how
to use SCRYPT to find new readings. More precisely,
we wish to test the hypothesis that the Qeiyafa ostracon is a list of anthroponyms (personal names), a
genre well attested among later Hebrew ostraca.
This hypothesis has been raised by several authors.
Misgav considered the idea but concluded that the
ostracon clearly contains more than a list of names
(Misgav et al., 2009, p. 256). Yardeni more cautiously asserted that Most of these words/roots
also appear in personal names, but as stated, while
the interpretation of this text as a list of names appears less likely to me, it should not be ruled out
(Yardeni, 2009, p. 260). Galil and Puech rejected the
name-list hypothesis since their decipherments contain only real syntactic elements (sentences). Two
authors have however pleaded for reading the ostracon as a list of names. Millard noted that a list of
names is the simplest and most credible interpretation of the ostracon, and proposed names24 covering almost half the surface of the ostracon (Millard,
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Fig. 7 Launching a dictionary search for the first three cells of line 2
Fig. 8 The Readings mode
2011). More recently, Richelle (2015) reopened the

issue and proposed additional names25 covering
lines 1 and 2, but did not address lines 35. None
of these authors has thus been able to cover the
entire (or almost entire) surface of the ostracon
with anthroponyms. We wish to tackle this challenge with our computer-assisted approach, as a
proof-of-concept, to justify the usefulness of our
regular expression-based approach, and to illustrate
how we conceive of the use of SCRYPT for testing
hypotheses as to the correct cut between words
and the correct identification of graphemes.26
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3.3.2 Results obtained with SCRYPT

3.3.2.1 Line 1. Cells 16. In accordance with
Misgav, Yardeni, Galil, and Puech, we accept the
presence of a word divider in cells 7 (pace Richelle)
and 14. We thus look for separate names in cells 1
6 and 813. SCRYPT finds no result for cells 16, but
cells 46 yield the anthroponym Esheq27 (6sq).28
Searching for another anthroponym in cells 13
(8lt) yields no result, but one might think of a
name related to the names 8lwt and wlt attested
on the Philistine Gath ostracon (Maeir et al.,
2008).29
Fig. 9 The image processing mode
Fig. 10 The magnifying glass mode (magnifying here the first cell)
Cell 8. Cell 8 has been understood by our four

base authors as the conjunction w (and). Another
possibility is to make it a vertical word divider.30 In
any way, trying to make it part of the succeeding
word (with a reading w) yields no match with
SCRYPT, for any region beginning in cell 8.
Cells 913. SCRYPT proposes the same names
Abdel31 (6bd8l), Abdiel32 (6bdy8l), and Abda33 (6bd8)
as proposed by Millard and Richelle.
3.3.2.2 Line 2. Cells 13. SCRYPT proposes the
name Shafat34 (spt), as proposed by Millard and
_
Richelle.
Cells 47. We adapt the default regular expression in the following way: cell 6 is clearly too small
to hold a letter (pace Galil), hence we set its reading
to Nothing. We also add another possible identification to cell 7, namely the letter y, which has apparently been overlooked by our four base authors,
although the visible elements of the letter clearly
match the y of some other Proto-Canaanite inscriptions such as the Lachish ewer and the Izbet Sartah
ostracon. We now need to determine the length of
the word. SCRYPT finds no matches for any region
longer than cells 49 (starting in cell 4). For cells 4
9, interesting theophoric names are found, namely
Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016 11 of 21
Abiel and Shebuel, both of which need to be discarded however (the first one because Abiel would
be written defectively as 8b8l rather than 8by8l in
Proto-Canaanite orthography, the second because
the traces of a vertical stroke35 on the right side of
cell 4 do not seem to match a letter s ). For cells 48,
only one name is found, namely Tsibya (sby8) but is
_ is then
also discarded because no suitable match
found for the sequel, beginning in cell 9.36 Finally,
for cells 47, nine matches are found: two of which
are false positives,37 and five unlikely candidates.38
We retain the two remaining ones, Abyah39 (8byh)
and Ribay40 (ryby), as likely candidates.
Cells 810. Starting in cell 8, SCRYPT finds no
anthroponymic matches covering more than three
cells, hence orienting us toward the search for a
name covering cells 810. Only one anthroponym
is found, namely Ulam41 (8wlm).
Cells 1114. SCRYPT finds two possible anthroponyms for this region, namely Yoshafat42 (ywspt) and
_
Shafat (spt, already noted by Millard and Richelle),
_
depending on whether one considers cell 11 (One
or no letter) to be a real letter or not.
Cells 1517. If we consider the vertically written
letters as part of the preceding name, then Shafatbased theophoric names are possible, as proposed
by Richelle.43 An alternative is to see these letters as
part of a new name, possibly featuring an additional
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letter in the broken upper right corner of the ostracon. To reduce the number of matches, we set cell
16 to z (Puechs reading), rather than the default
One letter, as z seems by far the best identification
here. SCRYPT then finds only the name Yaziz44 (yzz).
3.3.2.3 Line 3. Cells 14. A large amount of
matches are possible for this region, and hence we
will restrict cell identifications to a minimum. For
cell 1, we encode w or b or Nothing, limiting ourselves to the actual identifications of three of our
base authors (thus rejecting Yardenis cautious One
or no letter). In the same way, we reject Misgavs
minority identifications of cells 2 and 3, and keep
the identifications g and r proposed by the three
other authors. SCRYPT then finds no matches for
cells 12 nor 13. But cells 14 yield Gera45 (gr8)
and Gareb46 (grb), the same two readings as proposed by Millard. The available traces in cell 4
clearly resemble an alef in our opinion, and hence
we retain the reading Gera. Checking for longer options (cells 15, 16, 17, or 18) yields no other
match.
Cells 57. This region is problematic. As noted by
most authors, the well-known Semitic root b6l naturally comes to mind, a root appearing in nouns
(master, lord, husband), verbs (marry, rule over),
theonyms (Baal, Baal-Zaphon, Baal-Shamem), and
Fig. 11 Saving and loading a configuration
which case an additional name Iddo54 (ydw, in defective spelling here) is proposed by SCRYPT in cells
1516. The alternative is to search for a single name
in the whole region, which entails the unique match
Mikayah55 (mykyh) (in which case cell 16 bears no
letter, with Yardeni and Galil). These readings are
however much more conjectural than the preceding
ones, since the letters are much more damaged here,
hence other letter identifications than the ones proposed by our four base authors should also be
possible.
3.3.2.4 Line 4. Cells 14. To reduce the large
number of possible readings, we need to limit the
default reading One letter of cell 4. We retain
Misgav and Puechs w but reject Galils n, since
the preserved vertical stroke seems too long for
the shape of the letter n in the Proto-Canaanite
stage.56 We also add a divider (vertical stroke57) as
an additional possible reading of this cell. We also
change cell 2 from One or no letter to One letter,
since we do not expect a vacat in the middle of the
first name. We now discuss the division of words.
Limiting the first word to cells 12 would yield a
large number of matches (due to the unknown value
of cell 2), but a problem then arises for the second
word since SCRYPT finds no anthroponyms for any
region beginning in cell 3. We thus search for a
name covering more than two cells. SCRYPT finds
no matches for any region longer than cells 13,
but proposes the following names for cells 13:
Edom (8dwm), Adam (8dm), Ulam (8wlm), Onam
(8wnm), Otsem (8sm), and Aram (8rm). The first
two names need _to be discarded since they are
borne only by the mythological first human, and
by the eponymic ancestor of the Edomite people.
We thus retain Ulam58 (8wlm), Onam59 (8wnm),
Otsem60 (8sm), and Aram61 (8rm) as likely candidates
_ Cell 4 then could either be a conjuncfor cells 13.
tive w (and) or a vertical word divider (like cell 8
of line 1). Indeed, SCRYPT finds no match (of any
length) beginning with cell 4.
Cells 57. As for word division, cells 56 yield a
reading62 Ner (nr), which we reject since no word can
then be found starting from cell 7. In the same way,
SCRYPT finds no anthroponyms for cells 57, nor for
any longer region starting from cell 5. Millard
many anthroponyms, and attested in several ProtoCanaanite inscriptions.47 The reading b6l has however been discarded by Galil and Puech because of
an apparent word divider in cell 10 (a single dot)
and an apparent letter l in cell 9. Since the letter l
does not correspond to any possible single-letter
morphemic suffix in Hebrew (one would have
rather expected y, k, m, or n for example), these
authors have opted for the rarer48 lexeme 6wll
(infant). We believe however that the preservation
of the much more common root b6l in the reading is
a more probable working hypothesis, and use SCRYPT
to check if one can cover line 3 with anthroponyms
while retaining this root. This would entail of course
a rejection of the reading of cell 10 as a word divider
(as did Galil, who joined it with cell 11 to form the
letter r) or to see it as a misplaced divider.49
Experimenting with cells 57 yields one possible
match, namely the anthroponym Baal50 (b6l).
Checking for matches in any longer region starting
in cell 5 yields no result.
Cells 811. Since cells 10 and 11 have One letter
we get too many matches. We shall thus restrict the
regular expression to the actual identifications made
by our base authors, namely r or q for cell 10 and b
or s for cell 11 (thus rejecting Yardenis cautious
_ One letter for these cells). We also encode
choice
Nothing in cell 13 (pace Yardeni) since the cell
seems too small to hold a letter, and we remove
the reading d in cell 12, since the visible traces clearly
do not match this letter (pace Galil). SCRYPT finds no
matches for any region beginning in cell 8. We therefore decide to encode an alternative reading for cell 8,
which was read as l by our four base authors. We
propose a badly drawn p, since this letter is close to
an l in the Proto-Canaanite alphabet (see for example
the roundish shape of p in the second cell of line 2).
SCRYPT now finds only two matches beginning in cell
8: either Purah (prh, see Judg 7:10) in cells 810 or
Perets51 (prs) in cells 811. We retain Perets (cells 8
_ SCRYPT finds no anthroponym (of any
11) only, since
length) starting in cell 11.
Cells 1216. As noted in the preceding paragraph,
we have encoded Nothing in cell 13 and removed
the reading d in cell 12. Two possibilities now exist
for dividing between words. Cells 1214 yield two
matches: Mikah52 (mykh) and Maki53 (mky), in
3.3.2.5 Line 5. Cells 14. We adapt the regular expression in the following way: Galils reading b and y
in cells 2 and 3 seem forced (see Rollston, 2011, p. 76),
hence are removed from the regular expression. We
also remove the reading n from cell 4, as the shape of
the letter clearly seems like a m to us (with Yardeni
and Puech, pace Misgav and Galil). SCRYPT then proposes Aram67 (8rm), Hiram68 (hyrm), and Harim69
_ match. A shorter
(hrm). No longer region yields any
_
region (cells 13) does yield results, but does not
permit us to find a second anthroponymic match
starting in cell 4 (with the letter identifications for
cells 57 described below).
Cells 57. The default expression is One letter
for each of these three cells, so we obviously need to
restrict them to limit the number of matches. We
take the actual identifications proposed by our base
authors, namely the 6, b, and d proposed by Galil
and Puech, and the additional s for cell 7 proposed
by Yardeni. Cells 56 yield no anthroponymic
match, neither does any region longer than cells
57, with the expression we retained for cells 813
(see below). For cells 57, SCRYPT proposes the following matches: Ebed70 (6bd), Abdy71 (6bdy), and
Obed72 (6wbd).
14 of 21
Cells 813. This region is particularly obscure,

and no author has proposed any anthroponym
here as yet, to the best of our knowledge. Our proposals will therefore be tentative at best. Since cells 8
and 9 have One letter as default expression, we will
restrict them only to the actual letters proposed by
our base authors, namely k or s or m in cell 8 and
k or m in cell 9. For cells 89, we find73 Mikah74
(mykh) and Maki75 (mky). No anthroponymic
match is found in cells 810, 812, and 813, and
no suitable one in cells 811.76 Cells 1011, 1012,
and 1013 yield no further match however. An alternative would be to add a reading b to cell 9, since
the shape of this letter can be seen as a slightly
misdrawn b.77 In that case, cells 810 yield the
root kbd (heavy, glorious). We can therefore
posit a hypochoristicon (abbreviated theophoric
name) of a kbd-based theophoric name like the biblical Yokebed (ywkbd, Exod. 6:20) or the Punic
kbdmlqrt and kbd6strt (Benz, 1972, p. 131). In this
case, the only anthroponym proposed by SCRYPT for
final cells 1113 is the feminine name Ruth (only
attested as the name of the Moabite heroin of the
eponymic biblical book), but this reading is unlikely
(see note 26). Finally, the only other proposal we
can think of to make sense of all the cells in this
region requires positing a scribal mistake in cell 9,
namely a badly drawn l, and adding a reading q in
cell 10 (note that its sign has the same visible
shape as cell 10 of line 3, read as q by Puech).
Then cells 513 would yield the widely attested
Phoenician name 6bdmlqrt (litt. Servant of
Melqart, see Benz, 1972, pp. 15561), which
would fit nicely with the preceding name Hiram
and possibly the ysd of line 4, both attested as
Phoenician names (among other attestations).
This reading remains however highly conjectural,
since it requires a somewhat forced reading
of cell 9. It is indeed highly possible that line 5
contains one or several anthroponyms totally
unknown to us, as in the case of the second
Qeiyafa inscription (Garfinkel et al., 2015),
which contains two anthroponyms: one
(Ishbaal) well known from the Bible, the other
(Beda) unattested in Biblical literature and Old
Hebrew epigraphy.
proposed here the name Naqmay63 (nqmy) in cells 5

8, followed by the Phoenician name Bodmilk
(bdmlk). We acknowledge this possibility, but want
to add another one, namely a shorter variant Naqam
(nqm), attested in a Hebrew ostracon from Jerusalem
(Dobbs-Allsopp et al., 2005, pp. 21819). This
shorter variant of the name proposed by Millard
will allow us to also propose an alternative to
bdmlk for the end of the line (see cells 810 below).
Cells 810. The only anthroponym, of any length,
found by SCRYPT starting from cell 8 is Yob (ywb,
cells 89), but we do not retain this possibility because it does not enable us to cover the whole remaining cells with further anthroponyms.64 We
rather propose the name ysd, attested on the
Ekron royal inscription (Gitin et al., 1997) as well
as in Phoenician epigraphy (Benz, 1972, p. 128).
Cells 1114. SCRYPT proposes anthroponyms
Maluk65 (mlwk) and Melek66 (mlk) (with no letter,
or a divider, in cell 14, pace Misgav).
Fig. 12 Results of the name-list experiment (with new

readings shown in italics, and the dash representing a
word divider). The words are given in defective spelling,
as they appear in the ostracon
within the realm of Proto-Canaanite epigraphy.

Also, we note that the most classical syntactic markers in Ancient Hebrew, such as the definite article h
and the accusative marker81 8t seem absent from the
ostracon.
Finally, the aim of this experiment was to provide
an example of how we conceive of the use of our
software. The detailed description of the experiment
in Section 3.3.2 above shows how we experimented
different word divisions using SCRYPT, to rule out
some choices and be better guided toward a wordcut solution enabling us to cover a whole line with
anthroponyms. Also, we have shown how the user
can change the default regular expression either to
restrict it when he does not agree with some of the
identifications it provides, or to add new identifications of graphemes, especially when none of the default ones yield a suitable solution. Admittedly, this
aspect of trial-and-error is sometimes tedious, and
further automation is possible, to ask the computer
to automatically provide a list of anthroponyms
covering the largest possible number of cells. Such
fully automated use cases are part of the future enhancements we wish to bring to our software.
3.3.3 Conclusions of the experiment

Our experiment with SCRYPT has enabled us to propose several new readings for the Qeiyafa ostracon,78 which are summarized in Fig. 12. These
readings cover the entire surface of the inscription,
with the exception of the last three cells,79 and thus
nicely complement the previous works of Millard
and Richelle, who covered, respectively, about half
of the inscription, and lines 1 and 2. Furthermore,
these new anthroponymic readings are not based on
strange or exotic identifications of graphemes, since
most of them are based on identifications proposed
by our four base authors. Only in rare casesand
when no other solution existedhave we proposed
alternative identifications of a given grapheme.
Finally, we also note that most of the identified
anthroponyms are indeed biblically attested in
texts referring to the Judges and Early Monarchic
periods, thus fitting well with the current dating of
the Qeiyafa ostracon to the 10th century BCE.80
This experiment has been proposed as a proofof-concept, showing that our computer-assisted
approach is indeed useful, since it has allowed us
to improve on previous work within the name-list
hypothesis, and to show that most of the ostracon
can indeed be covered with anthroponyms. We do
not mean to say that our readings form a definitive
new edition of the ostracon, nor that we have
proven that the ostracon is a name list. As mentioned in the end of the preceding section, alternative readings are certainly possible, especially for the
most damaged sections of the ostracon. But we believe that, within the name-list hypothesis, our experiment indeed provides an advancement to
current research, and helps lend credence to this
hypothesis, since for the first time most of the inscriptions surface has been covered with anthroponyms. Other advantages of this hypothesis are its
simplicity (as noted by Millard) and the fact that
name lists account for a large percentage of later
Hebrew ostraca. Furthermore, no long verbal sentences usually appear in Proto-Canaanite inscriptions, since (when decipherable) they usually
contain only personal names, very short sentences
(usually nonverbal), or abecedaries. Hence, decipherments such as Galils and Puechs, if correct,
would make the Qeiyafa ostracon a first of its kind
4 Conclusion
4.1 Discussion
16 of 21
4.2 Future works

The approach describedand implementedhere
for the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon can be directly
applied, without any change, to other Hebrew and
Proto-Canaanite inscriptions. The projected next
step of this research is the addition of several new
inscriptions to our software, as well as its extension
toward a more general tool for ancient Hebrew85
(and Proto-Canaanite) epigraphy. This tool will
enable the user to choose any picture of an inscription on his computer, interactively divide it into
discrete cells with the help of a wizard, choose a
default value for each cell, then start searching for
words. Furthermore, additional dictionaries of ancient Hebrew (both literary and epigraphic) and
cognate languages86 should be added to the software
to enrich the number of proposed readings.
A further step of research will be the application
of our methodology to other languages and scripts,
both Semitic and non-Semitic, with Aramaic,
Arabic, Greek, and Latinwith their rich epigraphic
corpusas the first projected examples. The methodology outlined in this article actually translates
naturally to any alphabetic script (as opposed to
more complex scripts using logograms/ideograms,
such as cuneiform Akkadian and hieroglyphic
Egyptian), provided adaptations are made to meet
the particular needs and epigraphic peculiarities of
that script, just as matres lectionis needed to be inserted in our regular expressions to meet the archaic
orthography used in the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon.
The SCRYPT software is designed as a tool for helping

epigraphers in the decipherment process by providing fast, automated, and exhaustive dictionary
searches, to propose a set of possible readings to
the user, many of which might otherwise be overlooked. The choice of a particular reading is still left
to the user of course, hence the definition of our
software as a tool for computer-assisted decipherment, rather than automated decipherment. In
practical terms, the software enables the user to
test various reading hypotheses for a given cell,
and also various divisions of the text into words
(recall that the ostracon is written with almost no
word dividers). Starting from the default cell readingsa combination of the reading insights of several scholars (see Section 2.3) the user can test
alternate readings by changing cell contents and
launching dictionary searches to check whether
that new reading entails a suitable word match in
the dictionary. At the same time, the user can test
several different hypotheses as to where a given
word starts and ends, since most of the inscription
is written without word dividers. Combining both
these search aspects, with a limited amount of trialand-error, is the way by which we expect the software to be most useful to epigraphic research. This
usage enables the rejection of reading hypotheses
that provide no word match, and instantly provides
an exhaustive set of reading propositions, some of
which might have otherwise been overlooked by the
user. This approach has shown its usefulness by
helping us provide several new readings for the
Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon, under the hypothesis
that its text consists of a list of personal names.
A further note should be mentioned concerning
the search for lexemes. The Brown-Driver-Briggs
dictionary used in our software does not contain
inflected forms, such as plurals or conjugated
verbs. Hence, any inflected form present in our inscription should be searched for on the basis of their
dictionary form (singular for nouns, masculine singular for adjectives, and third person masculine singular Qal preterite for verbs). Luckily, inflected
Hebrew forms tend to preserve the dictionary
form of a word. For example, the masculine plural

is generally marked by a -m suffix attached to the
dictionary form of the word,82 and verbal tense,
voice, number, and gender use both prefixes and
suffixes attached to the verbal root83 found in the
dictionary, but no infixes.84 Hence, when using the
software in the search for words, one should bear in
mind that the dictionary search is limited to noninflected forms, and thus, after identifying a given
lexeme in the ostracon, the next lexeme to be
searched for should not necessarily start directly
after it, to allow space for possible suffixes, marking
for example the plural, or some other morpheme.
The same holds true for the previous lexeme, to
allow space for possible prefixes.
Other possible extensions to our software include

the possibility to filter the result of dictionary
searches for specific categories of words, such as
verbs, toponyms, or anthroponyms, to narrow the
number of search results, as well as the automated
detection of inflected verbal forms (by encoding the
derivation rules of these forms form the verbal
root). The search for more complex syntactic structures (i.e. sentences) instead of simple lexemes, still
lies outside the scope of the present work.
Acknowledgements
Cross, F. (2000). An ostracon in literary Hebrew from

Horvat 6Uza. In Stager, L., Greene, J., Coogan, M.
_
(eds),
The Archaeology of Jordan and Beyond: Essays in
Honor of James A. Sauer. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake:
Indiana, pp. 111113.
Demsky, A. (2012). An Iron Age IIA alphabetic writing
exercise from Khirbet Qeiyafa. Israel Exploration
Journal, 62(2): 18699.
Dobbs-Allsopp, F. W., Roberts, J. J. M., Seow, C. L., and
Whitaker, R. E. (2005). Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from
the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Finkelstein, I. and Fantalkin, A. (2012). Khirbet Qeiyafa:
an unsensational archaeological and historical interpretation. Tel Aviv, 39: 3863.
Galil, G. (2009). The Hebrew inscription from Khirbet
Qeiyafa/Neta6im: script, language, literature and history. Ugarit Forschungen, 41: 193242.
Garfinkel, Y. and Ganor, S. (eds) (2009). Khirbet Qeiyafa
Vol. 1. Excavation Report 2007-2008. Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society.
Garfinkel, Y., Golub, M. R., Misgav, H., and Ganor, S.
(2015). The 8Isba6al inscription from Khirbet Qeiyafa.
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research,
373: 21733.
Gitin, S., Dothan, T. and Naveh, J. (1997). A royal dedicatory inscription from Ekron. Israel Exploration
Journal, 47 (1/2): 116.
Funding
Hoftijzer, J. and Jongeling, K. (2003). Dictionary of the

North-West Semitic Inscriptions. Brill, Leiden.
This research was supported by the Haute Ecole de

BruxellesEcole superieure dinformatique (HEB
ESI).
Hopcroft, J. E., Motwani, R., and Ullman, J. D. (2006).

Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and
Computation, 3rd edn. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley
Longman Publishing Co., Inc..
References
Ariel, C. (2013). Orthography: Biblical Hebrew. In Khan,
G. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and
Linguistics. Brill, Leiden.
Beit-Arieh, I. (1993). A literary ostracon from Horvat
_
6Uza. Tel Aviv 20, 5565.
Benz, F. L. (1972). Personal Names in the Phoenician and
Punic Inscriptions. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute.
Khan, G. (Ed.) (2013). Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language

and Linguistics. Brill, Leiden.
Lambdin, T. (1973). Introduction to Biblical Hebrew.
London: Darton, Longman and Todd.
Maeir, A. M., Wimmer, S. J., Zukerman, A., and
Demsky, A. (2008). A late Iron Age I/early Iron Age
II Old Canaanite inscription from Tell es-Saf /Gath,
_ _
Israel: Palaeography, dating, and historical-cultural
significance. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
Research, 351: 3971.
The authors would like to thank the Haute Ecole de

BruxellesEcole Superieure dInformatique (HEB
ESI) for its generous support, and especially its director Claude MISERCQUE for her support and trust.
They thank Yosef GARFINKEL for his kind permission
to use the photograph of the Qeiyafa ostracon. They
would also like to thank their colleagues and friends
Arnaud DELHOVE, Aline DISTEXHE, Gilles GEERAERTS,
Shira GOLANI, and David NUNN for their careful reviewing of this article and its associated software, as
well as their many helpful suggestions. They finally
thank Richard WHITAKER for his kind permission to
use his digitized version of the Brown-Driver-Briggs
Hebrew dictionary as distributed in the sources of
the DAVAR Bible software (version 2.4) by Josef
PLANETA, whom we also thank here for his assistance.
Brown, F., Driver, S., and Briggs, C. (1906). A Hebrew

and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford:
Oxford University Presss.
Mazar, E., Ben-Shlomo, D., and Ahituv, S. (2013). An

inscribed pithos from the Ophel. Israel Exploration
Journal, 63(1): 3949.
McCarter, P. K., Bunimovitz, S., and Lederman, Z.
(2011). An archaic Ba6l inscription from Tel BethShemesh. Tel Aviv, 38: 17993.
Millard, A. (2011). The ostracon from the days of David
found at Khirbet Qeiyafa. Tyndale Bulletin, 62: 113.
Misgav, H., Garfinkel, Y., and Ganor, S. (2009). The
ostracon. In Garfinkel, Y., Ganor, S. (eds), Khirbet
Qeiyafa Vol. 1. Excavation Report 2007-2008.
Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, pp. 24357.
Richelle, M. (2015). Quelques nouvelles lectures sur lostracon de Khirbet Qeiyafa. Semitica, 57: 14762.
Rollston, C. (2011). The Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon:
Methodological musings and caveats. Tel Aviv, 38:
6782.
Sass, B. (1988). The Genesis of the Alphabet and its
Development in the Second Millennium B.C., Vol. 13
gypten und Altes Testament. Wiesbaden: Otto
of A
Harrassowitz.
Yardeni, A. (2009). Further observations on the ostracon.
In Garfinkel, Y., Ganor, S. (eds), Khirbet Qeiyafa Vol. 1.
Excavation Report 2007-2008. Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, pp. 25960.
Notes
1. The word ostracon refers to inscribed pottery sherds.
2. Such is the current standard understanding of the ostracon. Note however that Demsky proposed that the
ostracon was rather written vertically, and that its horizontal dividing lines (see Fig. 1) represent columns
rather than lines (Demsky, 2012). This theory actually
only affects the way the ostracon was held by the scribe,
but Demskys order of reading the letters is the same as
that of the other authors.
3. Note that concatenation is not commutative, i.e. X
Y 6YX.
4. Note that union is commutative, i.e. X|Y Y|X.
5. The Kleene closure has been presented here for the sake
of theoretical completeness in the formal definition of
regular expressions. This operator is useful for denoting infinite languages, as in the expression . b, denoting all strings, of any length, ending in b. Our
approach, however, is based on finite structures, with
18 of 21
Puech, E. (2010). Lostracon de Khirbet Qeiyafa et les

debuts de la royaute en Israel. Revue Biblique, 117(2):
16284.
regular expressions denoting the (inherently finite)

reading possibilities of each given grapheme (see
Section 2.2), and hence does not require the possibility
of expressing infinite languages.
6. See Section 2.1 for a definition of the concatenation
operator.
7. The search for words matching a regular expression
in a dictionary is a standard algorithm, available in
most programming libraries (Hopcroft et al., 2006,
pp. 11214).
8. Note that the manual search for 2,704 words in a
dictionary (in addition to mentally checking whether
the word really matches the regular expression) would
yield more than 3 hours of manual work, even assuming only 5 seconds per word, as opposed to the instantaneous rendering of all matches by the
computer.
9. In some unclear cases, where an author expresses
strong uncertainty as to his reading, but still provides
(admittedly) conjectural possibilities, the choice between . and an a|b|c pattern has been our own subjective choice.
10. Note that word dividers are not part of the base
(Hebrew) alphabet , hence are not included in the
regular expressions . and .?.
11. The classical (latinized) transcription used here encodes the Hebrew alphabet as 8, b, g, d, h, w, z, h, t,
_ _
y, k, l, m, n, s, 6, p, s, q, r, s , t.
_ approach is particularly con12. Note that this union
servative since in a cell where all authors propose a
precise reading and only one author expresses uncertainty (i.e. .), the default encoding will select the
broadest reading, hence . (see e.g. the middle of
line 5). The user remains free however to change
these broad default expressions at any time.
13. In cases were unsolvable conflicts existed between the
cell divisions or other hypotheses taken by our authors, the majority view has been favored. For example, Puechs right-to-left reading of the last
characters of line 2 have been rejected in favor of
the left-to-right direction coherent with the rest of
the inscription. Similarly, readings of superimposed
letters on the same line (Galil for the fourth cell of
line 4, and Puech for the middle of line 4) have been
discarded, as have been additions of supplementary
letters outside the preserved scope of the ostracon
(e.g. Galil for the end of line 2 and Misgav for the
end of line 4). Finally, Fig. 3 gives no readings for
Misgav et al. at the end of lines 2 and 3 since their
article proposed no reading for this part of the
ostracon.
25. For line 1, Richelle proposed Allat-Astar (8lt-6str) for

the first word (seen as either theonymic or anthroponymic), followed by the same reading as Millard
(6bd8l), or its variant 6bd8. For line 2, Richelle proposed Shafat (spt), as Millard, then bb8 (attested in
Phoenician and Aramaic epigraphy) or bd8 (attested
in Phoenician, Aramaic and late Hebrew epigraphy)
for the next name, and several other possibilities for
the third name (lmk, lmn, lmh, lmh, lmy, lmq), with
mostly Arabic epigraphic parallels._ Finally, Richelle
noted the possibility of a second s pt at the end of
the line, possibly followed by a complementary element in the vertical cells above the line (Richelle cites
putative theophoric names such as s ptym, s ptyrh,
_
s ptyh, and s ptyhw).
26. For every name identified with the help of SCRYPT, at
least one attestation of the name in the BrownDriver-Briggs dictionary will be provided, highlighting (when possible) occurrences roughly contemporary with the Qeiyafa ostracon, i.e. in the Judges or
early Israelite Monarchy periods. Biblical names that
only appear in biblical books referring to the postexilic period will usually be discarded (as they are less
likely to appear in a 10th century ostracon), as well as
feminine names (as they usually do not appear on
Hebrew ostraca).
27. Name borne by a Benjamite (1 Chr 8:39).
28. Note that the identification of a q in cell 6 conforms
to Puechs reading of that cell.
29. Recall that Gath is situated but 12 km from Khirbet
Qeiyafa, and that influences of Philistine material culture have been found in Qeiyafa, such as Middle
Philistine decorated pottery (so-called Ashdod
ware, see Garfinkel and Ganor, 2009, chap. 7).
30. Vertical dividers are well attested in Proto-Canaanite
and Old Hebrew epigraphy (see the second Qeiyafa
inscription (Garfinkel et al., 2015) for an obvious
example).
31. Name of a Judean in the late Monarchy period (Jer
36:26).
32. Name borne by a Gadite (1 Chr 5:15).
33. Name of the father of an official of King Solomon (1
Kgs 4:6), and a Levite (Neh 11:17).
34. This name has several occurrences in the Bible,
among which a herdsman of David (1 Chr 27:29)
and the father of Elisha (1 Kgs 19:16).
35. This vertical stroke appears very clearly on a digitally
processed photograph of the ostracon published by
Bearman et al. (in Garfinkel and Ganor, 2009, p.
269, Fig. 15.8; the picture is also available online at
http://qeiyafa.huji.ac.il/ostracon/Fig5.jpg).
14. This section uses the classical linguistic square brackets notation for phonetic transcription. The notations
used for Hebrew vowels are those of Brills
Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics
(Khan, 2013), with [a ] for qames gadol, [e] for sere,
[] for seghol, [] for long hireq, [i]_ for short hireq,_ [u]
_ s, and
for long s ureq/qibbus, [u] _for short s ureq/qibbu
_
_
[o] for holem.
_ here, an exhaustive manual dictionary
15. Note that
search for an expression like :ajbcjd: would take
even more prohibitive time, since the need for inserting matres lectionis entails a combinatorial explosion
in the number of possible matches, making this
number jump from 2,704 (see Section 2.2) to 292,032.
16. The name SCRYPT is inspired by a fusion of script (as
in ancient script), script (a list of computer commands stored in a file), and crypt (as in
cryptography).
17. These cells can either be on the same line, or overlap
two consecutive lines. Order of selection is also important, since the user can select cells either right-toleft or left-to-right, depending on the assumed writing order of the inscription (left-to-right in the case of
the Qeiyafa ostracon).
18. The word can later be removed from the panel list at
any time by clicking on the X button to its left.
19. Future versions of the software might include server
treatment, to save user sessions and readings for
example.
20. http://jquery.com
21. http://kineticjs.com
22. http://evanw.github.io/glfx.js/
23. Currently, two other recently discovered inscriptions
have been added to the software, namely the Ophel
pithos inscription (Mazar et al., 2013) and the
Qeiyafa Ishbaal inscription (Garfinkel et al., 2015),
both available through the Select an inscription
button in the application menu.
24. For line 1, Millard proposed the unattested anthroponym Ellat-ash (8lt6s ) (litt. the goddess helped),
followed by the conjunction w (and) and the biblical
name Abdel or Abdiel (6bd8l). For line 2, he proposed
the name Shafat (spt), and noted the possibility of a
second Shafat at the end of the line, possibly followed
by a complementary element in the vertical cells
above the line. For line 3, he proposed Gera (gr8) or
Gerab (grb), followed by Baal-X (i.e. a theophoric
name beginning with Baal). For line 4, he proposed
the epigraphically attested Hebrew name Naqmay
(nqmy), and the Phoenician name Bodmilk (bdmlk)
already noted by Yardeni. Millard proposed no readings for line 5.
20 of 21
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
Ekron royal inscription for example (Gitin et al.,

1997).
Name of a Rubenite (1 Chr 5:5), and a Gibeonite
(1 Chr 8:30, 9:36).
Name of a son of Judah (Gen 46:12).
The name would be written here twice defectively,
lacking both y and h matres lectionis. Several occurrences of the name mykh are attested in the Hebrew
Bible, among which are the prophet Micah (Mic 1:1),
an Ephraimite (Judg 17:5), and a great-grandson of
King Saul (1 Chr 8:34). This name is a shorter form of
Mikayah (mykyh, compare 2 Kgs 22:12 with 2 Chr
34:20) and Mikayahu (mykyhw, compare Judg 17:4
with Judg 17:5).
Name of a Gadite (Num 13:15).
Name of a Manassite (1 Chr 27:21), and of a postexilic character (Ezra 10:43).
More precisely, the name is spelled here as Mky,
which can be seen as a hypochoristicon for
Mikayah/Mikayahu (2 Kgs 22:12, Judg 17:4 a.o.), or
alternatively for Mikael (1 Chr 5:1314, 6:25, 7:3,
8:16, a.o.).
Note the shape of the (partially preserved) n in the
second Qeiyafa inscription (Garfinkel et al., 2015), as
well as the more classical shape of the second n identified by Misgav, Yardeni, and Galil in cell 5.
See note 30.
See note 41.
Name of a chief of tribe of Judah (1 Chr 2:26), and an
Edomite (Gen 36:23).
Name of a brother of David (1 Chr 2:15), and a descendant of Judah (1 Chr 2:25).
This name has several occurrences, among which a
descendant of Asher (1 Chr 7:34, only occurrence of
this name borne by an Israelite).
Two additional matches have been rejected, namely
Sarah (wife of Abraham) and Sharay (Ezra 10:40), the
first one because it is feminine (see note 26), the
second one because it is both late (post-exilic) and
a false positive since the y here is consonantal and not
a mater lectionis.
This name does not appear in the Hebrew Bible but is
attested in Old Hebrew epigraphy, and as part of
Phoenician names (Millard, 2011, pp. 1011).
The reading Yob in cells 89 allows us to find a name
Dumah (dwmh) for cells 910, but no possible match
then arises for cells 1114.
This name has several occurrences, among which a
Levite (1 Chr 6:29).
Name of a Benjamite (1 Chr 8:35).
See note 61 above.
36. The only anthroponymic match is Lemek (lmk), the

name of two biblical antediluvian patriarchs, but it is
not attested in biblical texts dealing with historical
periods.
37. The first one is Betsay (bsy), a false positive because its
_
final y is not a mater lectionis,
hence it should feature
an additional final y in our ostracon. The second one
is Shobi (sby), a false positive because that name
would have been written defectively as s b, rather
than s by, in Proto-Canaanite orthography.
38. Three of them (Zabay [zby], Habayah [hbyh], and
_ because
Shobay [sby]) are discarded as less likely
they are biblically attested only in the postexilic
period. We also discard the feminine name Tsibyah
(sbyh) (see note 26), and also Shovakh (swbk), because
_ traces of a letter in cell 6 do not seem compatible
the
with the letter s .
39. The name is written here as 8by, a hypochoristic form
of Abyah attested in 2 Kgs 18:2. The name Abyah has
several biblical occurrences (also under the longer
form Abyahu), among which are a king of Judah
(son of Rehoboam, 1 Kgs 14:1), a son of Samuel (1
Sam 8:2), and a Benjamite (1 Chr 7:8). It is also attested on the Gezer calendar, an inscription roughly
contemporary with the Qeiyafa ostracon.
40. Name of a Benjamite, contemporary of David (2 Sam
23:29).
41. Name of a Benjamite (1 Chr 8:40).
42. This name has several occurrences in the Bible,
among which are one of Davids heroes (1 Chr
11:43), a trumpeter and priest in Davids time (1
Chr 15:24), and (under the longer orthography
yhwspt) a king of Judah (1 Kgs 15:24).
_
43. We would
however exclude s ptym and s ptyrh from
_
Richelless list of readings, since the visible traces
in
cell 16 seem to be incompatible with m and r.
44. Name of an officer of David (1 Chr 27:31).
45. A Benjamite name, with several occurrences (Judg
3:15, 2 Sam 16:5, 1 Chr 8:3, a.o.).
46. Name of one of Davids heroes (2 Sam 23:38).
47. Examples include the Baal inscription from BethShemesh (McCarter et al., 2011) and several inscribed
arrowheads (Sass, 1988, pp. 7273).
48. The word 6wll is only attested once in Old Hebrew
epigraphy to the best of our knowledge, on an ostracon from Horvat Uzzah, and even there the reading
infant favored by Beit-Arieh (1993) has been challenged by Cross (2000), who rather read violent
deed.
49. Examples of misplaced dividers are sometimes attested in Northwest Semitic epigraphy, as in the
81.
82.
83.
84.
85.
86.
feature a surprisingly large number of names attested

for Benjamites, namely Esheq (1 Chr 8:39), Abyah (1
Chr 7:8), Ribay (2 Sam 23:29), Ulam (1 Chr 8:40),
Gera (Judg 3:15, 2 Sam 16:5, 1 Chr 8:3, a.o.), Baal (1
Chr 8:30), Mikah (1 Chr 8:34), Melek (1 Chr 8:35),
and Huram (1 Chr 8:5). This is probably a coincidence, but if not, it does remind us of a recent theory
connecting Khirbet Qeiyafa to an early Northern
Israelite polity centered in Benjamite territory
(Finkelstein and Fantalkin, 2012, pp. 525).
Galils reading [t] as an accusative marker at the end
of line 1 is not very convincing since he does not
propose any ensuing object complement.
An exception to this rule concerns feminine nouns
ending with h (he) as a mater lectionis, since this
final h will not appear in the plural form (usually
ending in -t or in -wt). This problem, however,
should not be felt in the case of the Khirbet Qeiyafa
ostracon, as the archaic spellings found in such ancient Proto-Canaanite inscriptions normally do not
yet feature h as a mater lectionis in feminine singular
nouns, hence the search for the word without its
plural ending will yield the finding of the correct feminine lexeme through the automatic insertion of a
final h mater lectionis at the end of the word (see
Section 2.4).
Note that this is not necessarily the case for all Semitic
languages. Arabic for example frequently uses infixes
in its verbal inflection, and hence any application of
our methodology to the Arabic language should
enable the user to launch a dictionary search based
on a set of non-contiguous cells.
Rare exceptions to this pattern include some cases of
metathesis in verbal inflection, as in some Hitpael
forms of roots beginning with a sibilant, where the
sibilant gets permuted with the t (tav) verbal prefix
(Lambdin, 1973, p. 248).
When generalizing the tool towards inclusion of inscriptions written in the classical Old Hebrew script
(as opposed to the earlier Proto-Canaanite script), we
intend to provide the user with the option to disable
the automatic insertion of matres lectionis, since Old
Hebrew inscriptions do already feature these matres.
An obvious welcome addition to SCRYPT would be
Hoftijzer and Jongelings dictionary of Northwest
Semitic inscriptions (Hoftijzer and Jongeling, 2003).
68. This name (sometimes appearing under the variant

Huram [hwrm]) is borne by a king of Tyre (2 Sam
_
5:11), a Tyrian
artificer (1 Kgs 7:13) and a Benjamite
(1 Chr 8:5).
69. This name has several occurrences, among which a
priest in Davids time (1 Chr 24:8).
70. Name of a character in the book of Judges (Judg
9:26), and of a postexilic character (Ezra 8:6).
71. Name of a Levite (1 Chr 6:29) and of a postexilic
character (Ezra 10:26).
72. This name has several occurrences, among which the
son of Boaz and Ruth (Ruth 4:17), and a mighty man
of David (1 Chr 11:47).
73. We discard the names Shem (sm, son of Noah and
eponymic ancestor of the Semites) and Shamah (smh,
attested in 2 Sam 23:11, among other occurrences)
because the reading m of Misgav and Puech in cell
9 implied the presence of a word divider in that cell
before the letter m.
74. See note 52.
75. See note 53.
76. Cells 811 only yield Shamgar (smgr), which needs to
be rejected for the same reasons as Shem and Shamah
here above (see note 73).
77. We base ourselves on Yardenis facsimile here, the
only one to correctly render the shape of the letter
of cell 9, in our view.
78. Admittedly, not all our readings have been found by
SCRYPT, since some of them are not attested in biblical
Hebrew, and are thus not found in our base dictionary but rather in epigraphic corpora such as the concordance of Dobbs-Allsopps corpus of Old Hebrew
inscriptions (Dobbs-Allsopp et al., 2005) and Benzs
corpus of Phoenician and Punic anthroponyms
(Benz, 1972). Nevertheless, this does not invalidate
our approach since the planned future addition of
such corpora to SCRYPT will make this wealth of inscriptional material available to the user.
79. Note however that if we relax our initial constraint of
excluding feminine names, or if we allow for a scribal
error in cell 9 of the last line, then we can cover the
entire ostracon with anthroponyms (see Section 3.3.2,
line 5).
80. Note that, in addition to several biblical names borne
by Judeans (not surprisingly, due to the location of
Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Judean Shefela), our readings

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Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Advance Access published August 31, 2016

Computer experiments on the

additional lines were once present in the upper part

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E. Levy and F. Pluquet

Hebrew dictionary. Usage of the software requires no

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016

(1) is a regular expression, denoting the empty

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Fig. 1 The Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon (photograph by

Let be a finite alphabet, i.e. a finite set of symbols.

Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

aaa; . . .g and ajb the set f; a; b; aa;

2.2.2 Automated dictionary searches

Words searched for

2.2.3 Advantages of the approach

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The last two cases differ from the preceding in

E. Levy and F. Pluquet

approach has the advantage of being exhaustive and

2.3 Default expressions for the Khirbet

2.3.1 Author readings as regular expressions

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016

Fig. 2 Cell division of the ostracon

2.3.2 The default expression as a union of

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Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

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2.4 The problem of Matres Lectionis

to encode vowels. These letters used as vowels, in

E. Levy and F. Pluquet

(he) used for final [a ], [e/], or [o] (Ariel, 2013).

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016

h and removing the word from the list if it does not

3 Results: The SCRYPT Software

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Fig. 4 The online application

Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

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Fig. 5 Viewing cell contents

done by clicking on the cell. The cell contents (in

button in the upper right corner), and to encode the

E. Levy and F. Pluquet

Since another special character occurs in the

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016

3.1.1.4 Saving readings in the panel. A word can

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Fig. 6 The expression editor, for modifying cell contents

Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

change both the zoom size and the zoom factor of

and scripts. The application has been successfully

3.3 Case study: the Qeiyafa ostracon as

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E. Levy and F. Pluquet

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Fig. 8 The Readings mode

2011). More recently, Richelle (2015) reopened the

Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2016

3.3.2 Results obtained with SCRYPT

Computer experiments on the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon

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Fig. 9 The image processing mode

Cell 8. Cell 8 has been understood by our four