Alinda Damsma, Lily Kahn and I are happy to invite you all to take part in our eLecture series on language contact in the ancient Near East. Please email a.damsma@ucl.ac.uk if you would like to attend one of the lectures: 
Wednesdays 1 July – 26 August 2020 from 16:00 until 17:00 BST (London)

eLecture 1: 01.07.20
Dr Mark Weeden (SOAS, London), Language Contact between Hittite and Sumerian

eLecture 2, 08.07.20
Prof. Mark Geller (University College London), Mind the Gap: A Lecture on Comparative Ancient Magic from Mesopotamia

eLecture 3, 15.07.20
Prof. Aaron Rubin (Pennsylvania State University), The Relationship of Egyptian and Semitic

eLecture 4, 22.07.20
Prof. Gary A. Rendsburg (Rutgers University New Brunswick), Ancient Hebrew and Hieroglyphic Egyptian: Contact through the Ages

eLecture 5, 29.07.20
Prof. Dr. Stefan Schorch (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), Through Aramaic Lenses: Reconstructing Late Antique Samaritan Hebrew

eLecture 6, 05.08.20
Dr Marieke Dhont (University of Cambridge), Jewish Multilingualism in the Second Temple Period: Greek as a Jewish Language

eLecture 7, 12.08.20
Benjamin Whittle (University College London), The Translation of Biblical Hebrew Verbal Stems in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets

eLecture 8, 19.08.20
Dr Na'ama Pat-El (University of Texas Austin) & Dr Phillip Stokes (University of Tennessee Knoxville), Reevaluating Contact between Aramaic and Arabic in the Levant

​eLecture 9, 26.08.20
Dr Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (University of Chicago), Language Contact in the Third Millennium BCE: The Case of “Eblaite”
(for more details please look here

01/07 Dr Mark Weeden (SOAS, London)
Language contact between Hittite and Sumerian
By the late 2nd millennium BC Sumerian had definitively died out as a spoken language but continued in use as a language of scholarship throughout the cuneiform world. Bizarrely phrased scholastic Sumerian compositions such as the "Scholars of Uruk" witness this development already in the Old Babylonian period in Mesopotamia. This and certain other learned compositions encourage a view of Sumerian as a language of the obscure, comprehensible only to the initiated, written in a language constructed on the basis of lexical lists and other school texts. There was thus absolutely no chance that there was any language contact between Hittite and Sumerian speakers during the Late Bronze Age. What then was the use-context of Sumerian texts at Hattusa? Were scribes on the geographical edge of the cuneiform world indulging in the same kind of hermeneutic use of Sumerian as some of their Mesopotamian counterparts?
 
08/07 Prof. Mark Geller (University College London)
Mind the Gap: A lecture on Comparative Ancient Magic from Mesopotamia 
Therapeutic magic was both a discipline and practice in the ancient world, which crossed geographical, chronological, and linguistic boundaries.  This talk will provide an example of a type of medically-orientated incantation which appears to have originated in cuneiform tablets and later appeared in an Aramaic magical text in Iraq in Late Antiquity.  This example is a model for other cases of healing magic from cuneiform sources which later influenced therapies in the Babylonian Talmud.   
 
15/07 Prof. Aaron Rubin (Pennsylvania State University)
The Relationship of Egyptian and Semitic
It has long been known that the ancient Egyptian language is related to the Semitic language family, but the details of this relationship are still not fully understood. In this lecture, we will look at the major similarities (and differences) of the two language groups, including topics in phonology, morphology, and the lexicon, with an eye towards identifying inherited Afroasiatic features. We will also look at how Egyptian and some dialects of Northwest Semitic influenced one another as a consequence of sustained linguistic and cultural contact.
 
22/07 Prof. Gary A. Rendsburg (Rutgers University New Brunswick)
Ancient Hebrew and Hieroglyphic Egyptian: Contact through the Ages
The lands of Israel (better: Canaan) and Egypt were interconnected for most of the 2nd millennium B.C.E., and indeed into the 1st millennium B.C.E., notwithstanding the relatively empty space of the Sinai peninsula separating the two geographically. During this period hundreds of Canaanite words entered the Egyptian language and dozens of Egyptian words entered the Hebrew language. This talk will focus on these lexical items, but it also will widen the lens to discuss literary style and literary motifs shared by the two cultures.
 
29/07 Prof. Dr. Stefan Schorch (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg)
Through Aramaic lenses: Reconstructing Late Antique Samaritan Hebrew
Samaritan Hebrew, i.e. the variety of Hebrew spoken and transmitted in the Samaritan community, originates in the Hebrew dialect that was common in the region of Samaria and became the religious sociolect of the Samaritans at the end of the 2nd century BCE, when the followers of the Israelite cult on Mount Gerizim became increasingly independent from Judaism, leading to the emergence of the Samaritans. Limited to the Samaritan Pentateuch, the corpus of Samaritan Hebrew texts from this period is rather small. As a result, the means to determine the meaning of a given word on account of its usage in different contexts are extremely restricted. Under these circumstances, the Aramaic translations from the Samaritan Targumim are a main source for the reconstruction of Late Antique Samaritan Hebrew. These translations emerged between the 1st and 11th century CE, when Aramaic replaced Hebrew as Samaritan vernacular. The paper presents challenges and results from the study of these sources, currently pursued in the framework of an ongoing project of a dictionary of Samaritan Hebrew. 
 
05/08  Dr Mariek Dhont (University of Cambridge)
Jewish Multilingualism in the Second Temple Period: Greek as a Jewish Language
The style of the Jewish-Greek authors has often been evaluated as "bad  Greek." Their Greek is often considered to be tainted by Semitic interference, which, in turn, is seen as evidence of their lack of education. The negative views on the language use of Hellenistic Jewish writers are illustrative of a broader issue in the study of Hellenistic Judaism: language usage has been a key element in the discussion on the  societal position of Jews in the Hellenistic world. I discuss how to assess the style of various fragmentary Jewish-Greek writers in the context of post-classical Greek, and conclude that their language reflects standard Hellenistic Greek. The linguistic analysis then becomes a starting point to reflect on the level of integration of Jews in the Greek-speaking world as well as to consider the nature of Jewish multilingualism in the late Second Temple period.
 
12/08 Benjamin Whittle (University College London)
The Translation of Biblical Hebrew Verbal Stems in the Septuagint of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets
This paper analyses the translation of Biblical Hebrew verbal stems in the Greek version of the Pentateuch and Former Prophets codified in the Septuagint. The Biblical Hebrew system of stems differs significantly from the Greek verbal system, and therefore systematic investigation of the strategies employed by the Greek translators can shed light on the ways in which they negotiated this linguistic difference, as well as contributing to our understanding of ancient perceptions of the functions of the Biblical Hebrew stems. 
 
19/08 Dr Na'ama Patel (University of Texas Austin) & Dr Phillip Stokes (University of Tennessee Knoxville)
Reevaluating Contact between Aramaic and Arabic in the Levant
The fact that Aramaic was the lingua franca of most of the area where Arabic is spoken today is not in dispute. The exact nature of the spread of Arabic and the specifics of language shift in the Middle East are less well understood. Many scholars assume that Arabic spread with the Islamic conquest and that Arabic was learnt quickly and imperfectly by speakers of Aramaic. As a result, number of structural features of the colloquial dialects of the Levant were argued to be a result of an Aramaic substrate. In this paper we discuss the contact between Arabic and Aramaic in Antiquity and Late Antiquity, draw attention to a number of methodological flaws in work on Aramaicism in Arabic, and argue that the evidence is not consistent with a rapid and imperfect language shift, but rather with a prolonged period of contact and bilingualism.
 
29/08 Dr Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (University of Chicago)
Language contact in the third millennium BCE: The case of “Eblaite” 
Eblaite is attested in written material from the northern Syrian site of Tell Mardikh (ancient Ebla) dating to a short period in the 24th century BCE (app. 2370-2320 BCE). The language attested in the texts has been classified as East Semitic, although it is still uncertain whether it constitutes an independent language of this sub-branch or an archaic dialect of Akkadian. The linguistic sub-grouping of Eblaite is difficult to determine based on traditional historical and comparative approaches because of the many features exhibited by Eblaite that defy clear classification. In this talk, I argue that any explanation of the linguistic situation at Ebla needs to consider extra-linguistic factors, such as the extensive trade network connecting Ebla to e.g. Mesopotamia and Egypt, and, more importantly, the well-established cultural and scribal contacts between Mesopotamia and Syrian sites such as Mari and Ebla, which resulted in sustained language contact.

Thanks are due to the British Academy which has made recordings of the 2013 Schweich lectures by André Lemaire available here. Now you won't have to trust my summaries of the first two lectures and can check for yourselves.

In his third lecture, entitled 'Levantine Epigraphy and Samaria, Judaea and Idumaea during the Achaemenid Period', Prof. Lemaire showed the vital importance of epigraphic material for the political and social history of the southern Levant in the Persian period, particularly in the 4th century BCE. My notes are less ordered, as the presentation was less structured within each discussed region.

PART I: SAMARIA
The documents and bullae from Wadi Daliyeh – widely referred to as Samaria documents – were recently re-edited by Jan Dušek, a very fine epigrapher (Les manuscrits araméens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450-332 av. J.-C. [Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 30; Brill: Leiden; Boston], 2007; for the coins see Meshorer and Qedar). These documents shed light mainly on the last decades of Persian control of the area:
The names in the papyri attest to a mixed society (North-Arabic, Hebrew, Phoenician and Aramaic).
While names do not map religion 1:1 it is likely significant that 57% of names have a yahwistic theophoric element, with other deities attested only between 1-3% each.
The order of governors of Samaria in the Persian period is as follows:

• Sanballat I (from before 445 until about 410/407 BCE)
• Delayah (, son of Sanballat; ca. 410/407 - ca. 370 BCE)
• Shelemyah [Dušek does not agree with this]
• Ḥananyah / 'Ananya (ca. 354 BCE)

This fits neatly with the depiction of Ezra's mission according to Neh 12, dated to 398 BCE

According to the available evidence, Samaria extended as far north in the Galilee as Yoqne'ām [on the basis of one Aramaic ostracon, unlike the Phoenician ostraca found further north. I find this particular argument less convincing. If the ostracon had been in Samarian Hebrew, or at least written in Palaeo-Hebrew letters, like the bullae and coins, I could understand it, but otherwise, the fact that the ostracon was written in Aramaic solely indicates that it was written in the Persian empire.
The Eastern border ws probably the Jordan

The Southwestern border of Samaria unclear. After the revolt of Sidon lands formerly controlled by Sidon may have been given to Samaria but this remains unclear.

Part II: YEHUD
Yehud stamps indicate that the Northern border of Yehud was North of Mizpah and Bethel.
A problem for historians of the period is that to this date, not a single papyrus from this period was unearthed in Yehud, but there are a few ostraca, such as the Ketef Yeriho ostracon, found together with an Alexander coin, therefore dating both to the last third of the 4th century BCE. A few other ostraca were found in Jerusalem, Heshbon, En-Gedi
In general, several low-denomination coins have been found dated to the 4th century onwards

Lemaire speculated that Ezra mission and promulgation of the law may well have been contemporary with the fall of the Elephantine since the relation between Jerusalem and Elephantine seems to have been relatively good at the end of the 5th century BCE, and the Judean community in Elephantine seems to have been well informed who the important people were in Jerusalem.

We can identify the following governors of Yehud:

• Bagavahya (Bagohi), ca. 407 
• Yehizqiyah

it is not impossible that these two were the only governors in the Persian 4th century

As high-priest we have a Yehohanan mentioned in the Elephantine letters, and a Yohanan in a coin which, according to Fried, should be dated to ca .370 BCE. Possibly, this Yohanan should be identified also with the Yohanan in Neh 12. This fits well with the presentation of governors of Samaria

The Hebrew Bible seems to know of two sets of boarders for Yehud, a small and a large one. The small one is attested, e.g. in Neh 3 and the larger Yehud mainly in Neh 11 (there extending south to Beer Sheva) .

Lemaire's second Schweich Lecture was a tour de force of epigraphic evidence for Judeans in the Near East in the Persian period. He started his lecture by referring to the cuneiform evidence that directly links to the Hebrew Bible and the exiles, such as the cuneiform tablet which shows that Nabû-šarussu-ukin (the Bible's Nebo-sarsekim) did exist and was a Babylonian Eunuch, the Weidner lists, the Murašû texts an the so-called āl-Yāhūdū texts. He gave a good summary of the currently available cuneiform evidence.
He then moved on to the Aramaic and – according to him at least in one case (one name is written as 'X ben Y' instead of 'X bar Y') – Hebrew dockets on cuneiform tablets.
According to him, in Babylonia, Jews demonstrably participated in three distinct cultures: Hebrew, Aramaic and Akkadian. 
to me, this statement was the most problematic that Prof. Lemaire made during the entire presentations. None of the scribes writing the cuneiform evidence was Judean (according to their name), and one Hebrew name does not make fully 'Hebrew culture' (whatever that is). What we have evidence for is for the use of Aramaic to express either partly content or one of the people involved in the dockets. The distinctions may appear minor, but they are rather important, I believe.

The second, and by far the longest part of the lecture, focussed on Elephantine. Not, as is so often the case only on the papyri from there, but mostly, in fact, on the ostraca of the Collection Claremont-Ganneau, recently published by Hélène Lozachmeur (2006). He argued that they are far closer to the everyday life than the papyri, and therefore are more representative of the Judean community's everyday life. He mentioned the use of the ostraca in indicating that the Aramaic documents in Ezra-Nehemiah are historically possible (the historian in me would ask, whether historical possibility is all that is needed for historical likelihood, but that is another question). He then went on to analyse the ostraca in particular with regard to the image of the religion of everyday Judean life in Elephantine and came to the result that the community's life was very much focussed around Yahu, and that other deities only appear very rarely indeed. Indeed, it seemed to Lemaire that the Judean community from Elephantine had a kind of 7th century Judean religiosity.
In an aside he then pointed to other sites of Judean activity in Egypt during the Persian period: Thebes, Abydos, Memphis, Saqqara, Daphne and Edfu. 

The third and final part of the presentation concerned evidence for Judeans in Aramaic texts from elsewhere in the Persian empire, in particular two funerary inscriptions from Didaskaleion (which he thought were both unlikely), and then 5 funerary inscriptions from Cyprus which mention individuals with Judean names. 

All in all a very interesting and useful summary of the currently available evidence for Judeans in Aramaic epigraphy in the Persian empire. Few know the texts as well as Lemaire.