What is the ancient writing system used in Deir Ara, a city that disappeared around 1100 BC?
In 1964, archaeologist Henk Franken of
ANE TODAY - 202101 - The Enigmatic Tablets from Late Bronze Age Deir 'Alla - American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)
https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2021/01/enigmatic-tablets
Franken and his team were excavating in the heart of the Jordan Valley, in an area known as Deir Ala, where dwellings and temples dating back to around 1200 BCE are found, and where they uncovered a variety of artifacts, including ritual vessels, scale armor, and gifts from Egyptian queens of the 19th dynasty .
One of the most important discoveries was a clay tablet with inscriptions that was thought to have been used before Christ. The tablet contained several words with consistent grammatical features, written using symbols made up of a combination of dots and lines, and Franken and his team proceeded to decipher them in order to understand their meaning.
The research team has deciphered some characters. For example, the dot represents the vowel 'i' and the vertical line represents the vowel 'u,' so the symbol resembling an eye shape can be read as 'ʿayin,' which represents 'eye.' If these decipherments are correct, the following clay tablet requests that the ruins of the city be forgotten and talks about the offering of food.
The 15 clay tablets discovered to date contain 29 symbols, and the writing is from left to right. They are classified as a Semitic or
The Deir Ara script and the Ugaritic script disappeared at roughly the same time. Franken and his team are continuing to investigate who used these scripts and how they were used.
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