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I added this to a List of inscriptions in biblical archaeology but I dithered on the spelling. I think the letter orientation necessitates reading bovistrophedon from the upper right. smyad alyqm. Maybe the aleph in the first line is an r. Petrie spells it Shimeah here and Shemya there. Doesn't explain much more that I could find in Gerar. So what's the name? Shem Yrd El-Yaqim? Does that sound right to you? I don't know if that sound right to me. Does anybody else refer to this thing? The screen shot is from Petrie Israel and Palestine.Temerarius (talk) 01:29, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The decipherer identifies Smya(d) with the Shimeah (שִׁמְאָ֑ה) mentioned in 1 Chronicles 8:32, in a verse that is repeated in 1 Chronicles 9:38, except there the name is given as Shimeam (שִׁמְאָ֑ם). The proposed decipherment of the seal hinges on both lines being read right-to-left: smyad mqyla, in which mqyla is identified with Mikloth (מִקְל֖וֹת), the father of Shimeah/m. I don't think anything is known about this biblical figure beyond what is mentioned in these verses. There is also another biblical figure whose name is transliterated as Shimeah (but written in Hebrew as שִׁמְעָה), a son of Jesse and thus an older brother of David, --Lambiam10:33, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Where are you getting boustrophedon? The letters on both rows are consistently mirrored because it's a seal, and you want them to be the right way around when you make an impression. That implies both rows should be read in the mirrored direction, that is, left-to-right. The caption in the source image instead reads both rows from right-to-left, suggesting that whoever made the seal made a mistake. That gives "sh-m-y-r-d m-q-y-l-a". You could instead insist on reading it left-to-right, as it should be for a seal, and get something like "d-r-y-m-sh a-l-y-q-m". But I don't see any reason to suggest it would be boustrophedon. The individual characters have a consistent orientation in both rows, and boustrophedon would be unusual for a Paleo-Hebrew inscription. --Amble (talk) 16:26, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In old stuff the "bull marches forward" or the Alef points toward the direction of writing, typically. Especially an A and an L right next to each other like that at the beginning of a line, it's an indication by the writer that doesn't get disturbed when mirroring is involved. The A and L like that are distinctive. The first line just doesn't read the other way, and since it was written first it set the "global" directionality of the Ms and such. The earlier A doesn't look like it's going the same way. Not interpreted that way by the illustrator anyway. I'm going to take another look at Gerar and see there's a photo of that thing. Temerarius (talk) 17:30, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The aleph on the second line is mirrored, yes, just like all the letters on both lines are consistently mirrored, because it’s a seal. So there’s still nothing in the orientations of the letters to suggest boustrophedon. —Amble (talk) 20:51, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm saying the conventions of the time would render that A and L tremendously confusing if at the end of a line. Do you see how "forward" is not disturbed by the seal's mirroring? Temerarius (talk) 00:28, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None of that gets you to boustrophedon. The orientations of the letters are consistent across the two lines. If we trust those, and the usual conventions for writing Paleo-Hebrew, we'd read both lines from left to right. --Amble (talk) 00:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not so sure there is any aleph in the first row. Are you trying to read the seal as boustrophedon based on taking that one character as an aleph, when every other letter is going the other way? That would not inspire confidence. --Amble (talk) 01:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
שמ-ידד אל-יקמ ? "The name of the firstborn, risen up by El." Perhaps in substitution meaning similar to Sennacherib. "Name of" means hypostasis like in "Anat-name-of-Ba'al". Yadid and yachid are complex and sometimes the same, see Levinson on tophet and Jesus.[1]Temerarius (talk) 00:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC) Temerarius (talk) 00:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There are two more seals of Shema(s) in "Ancient Hebrew Seals," 1948.[2] The first is spelled שמע. There's another seal of another El Yaqim too. Same spelling.[3]
Your readings seem at least as reasonable as Petrie's first one with "DRYMSH" or the second one where both lines have to be read in the opposite of the expected direction. Maybe the engraver made a mistake in one line and not the other. But I don't think the answer is self-evident, and I'm nowhere near qualified to judge the possible readings, so I'd have to just go with what's in the sources. (Apologies for the "That would not inspire confidence" line -- that was a comment to myself, and my response was half-edited, and I didn't realize I had published it at all.) --Amble (talk) 22:26, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
References
^Klingbeil, Martin G.; Hasel, Michael G.; Garfinkel, Yosef; Petruk, Néstor H. (2019-05-01). "Four Judean Bullae from the 2014 Season at Tel Lachish". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 381. University of Chicago Press: 41–56. doi:10.1086/703122. ISSN0003-097X.
^Klingbeil, Martin G.; Hasel, Michael G.; Garfinkel, Yosef; Petruk, Néstor H. (2019-05-01). "Four Judean Bullae from the 2014 Season at Tel Lachish". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. 381. University of Chicago Press: 41–56. doi:10.1086/703122. ISSN0003-097X.
