Tag Archives: epigraphy

“Barack Hussein Obama” Mentioned in Ancient Manuscript?

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I’ve seen a lot of oddities come across my desk from individuals looking to have Aramaic identified and translated. Pottery sherds, pottery shards (yes, there is a difference), incantation bowls, old Ketubahs that people find in their attics (my personal favorite), prayer books, jewelry, and even a copper scroll (not “The” Copper Scroll, but *a* copper scroll, no joke); but, when this came to me, I was a bit stunned. This is the very first time I have ever seen an artifact this unique.

It is a rather crumbling piece of papyrus that was once sealed with a wax impression. It is old. The handwriting and dialect unmistakably place the text as Imperial Aramaic.

At the top I can make out “ש[נת] ש[תי]תי ז[י] דריהוש מלכא” == “the si[xt]h [yea]r o[f] King Darius,” (placing it during the Persian Administration) and the rest of it seems to be dealing with matters of inheritance within a family.

However, in the meat of the document, I immediately came upon some trouble with the phrase “ברך הסין אובמה” which was sticking out in the middle of the text. It gave me some serious difficulty.

“ברך” is certainly from the root “to bless” and “אובמה” seemed to come from the root “יבם” (“to marry a brother’s widow”). Given this, I thought might be able to interpret “הסין” as the name “Hasin” and the context would be that this individual was cause to marry his brother’s widow to continue the family line under the blessing of the widow’s father.

However, this would require “יבם” to be in the Causitive form, specifically Aphel. Simply put, it couldn’t be in Aphel, given the dialect, and given other demonstrated use of the Haphel elsewhere (the Haphel Causitive didn’t become Aphel until after Imperal Aramaic).

After relaxing with a hot cup of tea and staring at that bit of text in context, I made the following strange connection:

ברך הסין אובמה
brk hsyn ‘wbmh
barak huseyn ‘owbamah

Even when writing this I’m still in a bit of shock. Am I seeing things? I feel that I’ve looked over that blasted YouTube video one too many times and that it’s affecting me in a horrible way. I’m going to try and get some photos of this up ASAP so that others can take a closer look before I take the time to properly photograph the document in high resolution.

Peace,
-Steve

PS: Today is his birthday, no? I need some sleep… This day has been too much.

PPS: First photo is up. Not only do I have poor light this time of the evening, but I now feel I need to upgrade my iPhone.

UPDATE ABOUT 6 YEARS LATER: If you haven’t “gotten” the joke here, please read this post. 🙂

Rare 2nd Temple Aramaic Inscription Found

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Two lines of the Aramaic inscription.
Photo: Stephen Pfann/UHL

A unique ten-line Aramaic inscription on the side of a stone cup commonly used for ritual purity during Second Temple times was recently uncovered during archaeological excavations on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, The Jerusalem Post learned on Wednesday.

Inscriptions of this kind are extremely rare and only a handful have been found in scientific excavations made within the city.

The archaeological excavations are being carried out within the Gan Sovev Homot Yerushalayim national park, close to the Zion Gate. The work is directed by Professors Shimon Gibson and James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, with the co-ordination of Evyatar Cohen and Dr Tsvika Tsuk of the Israel Parks Authority.

Full article here: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1248277923672&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Hehe yeah, that is a bit hard to interpret. Inscribed as clear as day, but difficult to make sense of. I’m going to have to chew on that snippet of the inscription for a while.

Peace,
-Steve

Traces of Aramaic Found on Shroud of Turin

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A recent study by French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters.

A Vatican researcher, Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio July 26 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.

She said that in 1978 a Latin professor in Milan noticed Aramaic writing on the shroud and in 1989 scholars discovered Hebrew characters that probably were portions of the phrase “The king of the Jews.”

Castex’s recent discovery of the word “found” with another word next to it, which still has to be deciphered, “together may mean ‘because found’ or ‘we found,'” she said.

What is interesting, she said, is that it recalls a passage in the Gospel of St. Luke, “We found this man misleading our people,” which was what several Jewish leaders told Pontius Pilate when they asked him to condemn Jesus.

She said it would not be unusual for something to be written on a burial cloth in order to indicate the identity of the deceased.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0903394.htm

I am intrigued.

Personally not quite sure about the authenticity of this particular relic (I lean towards skepticism) but I would become absolutely giddy if I could hunt up some images of this text.

Peace,
-Steve

“Ancient” Syriac Bible found in Cyprus?

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(A picture of the manuscript.)

Fri Feb 6, 2009 7:57am EST

NICOSIA (Reuters Life!) – Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.

The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old.

When I saw images of this relic, they reminded me of something that happened a back in July of last year where I was approached by an individual, who claimed to come from Turkey, trying to sell me a forgery (click the link for pictures). Naturally, such an experience has made me skeptical when I heard about a “manuscript [carrying] excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together” and written in “eastern script.”


(A picture of the manuscript forgery I was offered.)

Given what I have seen of the manuscript thusfar, I’m going to have to tentatively concur with JF Coakley on his analysis. Unless other hard evidence surfaces to the contrary (carbon dating or thorough textual analysis), this is probably either a work no earlier than the 15th century, or a modern forgery.

UPDATE & NOTE (Feb 11th): It seems that I was a bit ambiguous above as to the identity of the manuscript in question. I do not believe the manuscript the police found to be -the- document I was offered, but more that it fits a consistent pattern of forgeries that are showing up in Turkey. All of the defining characteristics look like they match (which both manuscripts seem to share):

  • “Golden letters”
  • Written on leather rather than actual vellum
  • Bound together haphazardly.
  • “Synopses” of New Testament stories rather than full text.
  • Written in Pseudosyriac or modern Syriac.
  • Written in Eastern script.
  • Very characteristic illustrations.
  • Etc.

Peace,
-Steve

An Ambiguous Tattoo: Modern vs. Classical

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In my usual searches across the Internet for Aramaic tattoo oddities, I came across the following tattoo that illustrates an very important point about how different some dialects can be. Here is a transliteration of the text:

gbrt’ yshw` mshykh‘

This tattoo’s owner believes it means “Jesus Christ Almighty,” but ambiguity lies within the word gbrt’.

In some dialects of Modern Aramaic, Arabic loan sounds and loan words have creeped into the language. To represent these, some dialects use diatrics to represent Arabic phonemes by marking similar consonants.

For example, the set of diatrics used to write Arabic text in Syriac letters is known as “Garshuni” (or “Karshuni”) where small loops and dots are added into the crooks of the letters to indicate the Arabic equivalents. In Assyrian dialects, a similar principle is applied, where a squiggle “~” (known as a Majliana) is placed under or over certain consonants.

The letter in question is the gâmal “G” at the beginning.

(The sounds Gâmal makes.)

When tattooing, sometimes these diatric squiggles can end up looking like standard vowel markers. Because of this gbrt’ can first be read as a loan-word from the Arabic “jabbar” which means “almighty.” Jbârthâ’, however, should be masculine, not feminine as it would be an adjective (i.e. Jesus -is- mighty). This would make the entire translation read:

jbârthâ’ yeshû` mshîkhâ’
“(She is) Almighty: Jesus Christ”

…which doesn’t seem to be what the owner is after.

On the other side of interpretation lies gebârthâ’ which is a word found in several dialects of Aramaic (most notedly Syriac) where it is the feminine form of gabrâ’ which means “man” (i.e. “woman”). This would make the translation read:

gebârthâ’ yeshû` mshîkhâ’
“The Woman: Jesus Christ”

…also not quite what they were after.

I won’t repeat myself again as to how important it is to double-check your translations. 🙂 Aramaic Designs will do it for free so there is no excuse!

Peace,
-Steve