Silwan Tunnel Inscription

This inscription was found in Hezekiah's Tunnel in Jerusalem and is now located in Istanbul (it was found during the time of the Ottoman empire). It appears to commemorate the day of the finishing of the tunnel from the perspective of the workers, without a word about Hezekiah or anyone else "important." The details below include information the type of inscription, the spelling, and the way the letters are formed.  

 ×”נקבה. וזה. ×”×™×”. דבר. הנקבה. בעוד                     

הגרזן. אש. אל. רעו. ובעוד.שלש. אמת. להנ      ×¢. קל. אש. ק

רא. אל. רעו. ×›×™. הית. זדה. בצר. מימן  ומ    אל. ובים. ×”     

נקבה. הכו. החצבם. אש. לקרת. רעו. גרזן. על   רזן. וילכו

המים. מן. המוצא. אל. הברכה. במאתים. ואלף. אמה. ומ 

ת. אמה. ×”×™×”. גבה. הצר. על. ראש. החצב                       

[The day of ] the tunnel. And this is the record of how the tunnel was made. While [the diggers were digging?] the axe of a man toward his neighbor and while three cubits to cu[t through] the voice of a man calls to his neighbor for there was a fissure in the crack from the south to the [north]. So on the day the tunnel was made the diggers struck, each man towards his neighbor, axe on axe. And the water came from the spring to the pool, a distance of 1200 cubits. One hundred cubits was the height of the rock above the head of the diggers.

b. Ancient Near Eastern inscriptions are often divided intro three categories. The first is royal inscriptions, which are commissed by the king or ruler and are usually in the first person, telling of the great deeds they have done. The second kind of inscriptions are professional, which are done by professional scribes but describe important events in daily life. The third kind are occasional, which are inscriptions that are written for more mundane purposes on mundane objects like ostraca.

The Silwan tunnel inscription could be a royal inscription, since apparently there are connection between the tunnel with the tunnel built by Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:1-4, 30). However, the inscription does not appear to display the characteristics of a royal inscription. There is no mention of a king or god or battles or why the tunnel was built. Also, the inscription is in the third person instead of the usual first person. It is also a possibility that the inscription was copied from a royal annal, something that might have either been Kings or Chronicles or something like them. But this is also unlikely for the same reasons it is unlikely that this is a royal inscription. If it was copied from an annal, it would seem likely that they would focus more on the state and god, or at least why the tunnel was built (Sasson).

Instead of a royal inscription, it is most likely that this is a professional inscription. The attention of the text is not focused on the authorities who commissioned the digging, but on the diggers themselves. The lack of mention of god and king would best be explained if this was an inscription which the workers themselves put up as a monument to their achievement in making the tunnel. It is professional because it was probably done by a professional scribe for an important event. This theory is supported by the focus of the text: the workers themselves.

c. The orthography of this inscription is interesting. The main interesting part of the orthography is the full and defective spellings. In this inscription, overall defective spelling is used in the middle of words while full spelling is used at the end. Examples of the former include אש, שלש, אמת, קרא, ימן, and ים. Examples of the latter include הנקבה, ×–×”, ×”×™×”, and הברכה. This stage of progress as far as writing of vowel letters is midway in the process between no vowel and letters and the very full spelling often seen at Qumran. Several exceptions could be given against the observations given above. Two apparent vowel letters in the middle of words are found in  ×¢×•×“ and מוצא. However, in both of these the ו is historic and can be accounted for in that way. Perhaps in עוד the diphthong had not contracted yet, and so the vowel should not be pronounced “o” but “au.” The ו in מוצא is from the root ו.צ.א. Another exception dealing with full spelling at the end of the word is the הית, which should be היתה. But because there is full spelling elsewhere at the end of words, then here it probably should not be read הָיְתָ, but הָיָת. The היתה form has two feminine markers, so the הָיָת form with one feminine marker was probably an earlier form. This form also appears in some Mishnaic Hebrew manuscripts. One last point of spelling is the word רעו (Hackett).  In the Bible it is usually spelled רעהו. It is also unusual because usually in the inscriptions we would expect רעה and not רעו, with ×” marking the third person masculine singular suffix and not ו. However, the form רעו does appear one time in the Bible (Jeremiah 6:21). The ו is not due to a later vowel letter influence, but results from a contraction within the original word, and the ×” probably was dropped when writing the inscription.

            The paleography of the inscription has been the subject of a debate recently. Since the script of the time of monarchy did not die out entirely, as it was still being used at the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls and later, it is theoretically possible that any inscription with that script can date from much later than the time of the monarchy. However, in spite of the similarity, there are differences between the script of the monarchy and time of the Hasmonean’s and later. Just two examples will be given here, based on the short note by F. M. Cross (Paleo-Hebrew vs. Old Hebrew: The Long and the Short of It.). In the case of the ×›, the Silwan tunnel inscription has the trident shape, with three prongs pointing up, while the later script has only two prongs, with one of them pointing left with a bend in it and the other pointing more sharply right than the Silwan Tunnel ×›. For the מ, the earlier form is blocked and made in several stages, while the later form is curved and the pen is not lifted from the page. These are just two examples that show that the letters of the Silwan tunnel inscription do not belong to the Hasmonean time but to the time of the monarchy. 

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