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Originally posted by thoughtsfull
Could be symbols for the Jebusites? or one of the other peoples that inhabited Jerusalem prior to the Conquest by King David.
Tho I had a quick peek at the Canaanite language of the age and it doesn't seems to contain any similar symbols but it does seem the Canaanites referred to their supreme god as the "bull god" so perhaps the bull was sacred? and thus kept indoors in a pen.
and then again I could be talking out my bottom.
thanks for the interesting link and pics
The original inhabitants of Jerusalem were Phoenician Canaanites. Jerusalem was originally a village built on a hill. The name "Urushalim is first found on Egyptian statues, circa 2500 B.C. "Urushalim", in fact is a word of Canaanite derivation; the prefix "uru", meaning "founded by", and the suffix "salem" or "Shalem," Phoenician Canaanite god of dusk. This evidence is reinforced by archaeology and by tablets found in Elba, Syria, dating back to 3000 B.C., on which the god Shalem being venerated in a city called Uruksalem is mentioned. The old name of the city Urushalim figures also in the Egyptian texts called Texts of Proscription of XII dynasty 'ws'mm pronounced in Akkadian language Urushalim city of god.
Thesis
In 2003, completely unaware of Moran and the others’ work, I discovered that if you
rotate the Phoenician alphabet ninety degrees counter-clockwise, and join the twenty-two letters
into sequential couplets, a pattern appears that resembles the eleven constellations of the
Egyptian solar zodiac. The alphabet doesn’t follow a simple circular pattern, but instead follows
a more complex pattern that incorporates letter reversals at the solstices. It also forms two loops
that meet at the constellation Gemini. Furthermore, this astro-alphabetic pattern is not only found in Modern Hebrew, the Chinese Lunar Zodiac, Phoenician, Proto-Sinaitic, Egyptian Hieratic and Hieroglyphs, but, in accord with Petrie’s assertion, proto-astro-alphabetic glyphs also appear on a European stag bone from 3800 BC, and on a Karanovo Culture zodiac from 4800 BC
Originally posted by yampa
Another random thought:
Twenty-two foundation letters: He placed them in a circle…. He directed
them with the twelve constellations.
— Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation)
en.wikipedia.org...
There are seven 'arms' here. The Ancient approximation for pi is 22 / 7 = 3.1428. There are 22 letters in the Phoenician alphabet
Did a search for "Phoenician "22/7"" and got this nice publication by Brian R. Pellar about astronomical/geometrical theories for the origin of alphabets.
.pdf link here:
www.sino-platonic.org...
Originally posted by thoughtsfull
reply to post by yampa
Obviously not the one you found thus demonstrating my quick peek was off track and perahps a bit to far North into what is now Syria thanks for that so perhaps I was on the right track for once
and if you managed to find it out then I do wonder why any expert would be stumped by this amazing find..
It does seem a bit odd that they didn't even suggest anything Phoenician, even as a guess. Perhaps the archaeologists aren't as mystified as they make out. Journalists do have a habit of trying to make things sound more mysterious than they are.
Originally posted by Blue Shift
I like how people try to get these things to mean something in an alphabet, however, their location and depth suggest that they are not writing of any kind. And so folks come up with something profound, when the marks may be nothing more than grooves meant to catch and collect chicken poop.
Originally posted by yampa
"it does seem the Canaanites referred to their supreme god as the "bull god" so perhaps the bull was sacred" - that seems like a good intuition to me! (if indeed these letters are an Aleph symbol). The bull is the constellation associated with the Aleph by Pellar in that article.
It does seem a bit odd that they didn't even suggest anything Phoenician, even as a guess. Perhaps the archaeologists aren't as mystified as they make out. Journalists do have a habit of trying to make things sound more mysterious than they are.
Originally posted by Omphale
This is evidently a very contentious issue. Some schools subscribe to the belief that the Canaanites were the descendents of those that were displaced by the Thera eruption, and are therefore descendants of the Minoan culture. Given the Phoenicians similarity to the Minoan culture, including the significance of the Bull to them, it does seems like a common sense hypothesis. Some, I have read, won't even discuss the possibility.
Originally posted by yampa
Originally posted by Omphale
This is evidently a very contentious issue. Some schools subscribe to the belief that the Canaanites were the descendents of those that were displaced by the Thera eruption, and are therefore descendants of the Minoan culture. Given the Phoenicians similarity to the Minoan culture, including the significance of the Bull to them, it does seems like a common sense hypothesis. Some, I have read, won't even discuss the possibility.
I don't think it's contentious that there was a region (including what is now Israel) which was named Canaan and that these people helped create the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets.
en.wikipedia.org...
"Wells identified the haplogroup of the Canaanites as haplogroup J2.[16] The National Geographic Genographic Project linked haplogroup J2 to the site of Jericho, Tel el-Sultan, ca. 8500 BCE and indicated that in modern populations, haplogroup J2 is found in North Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East, with especially high distribution among present-day Jewish populations (30%), Southern Italians (20%), and lower frequencies in Southern Spain (10%) "
Jericho is about 15 miles from Jerusalem.
Originally posted by Omphale
No, what is contentious is the origin of the culture, not the genetics.
Originally posted by yampa
I think it would be quite speculative to say that Crete could be the origin of written language in the Jerusalem area, but I'm sure there was much overlap of cultures of the Fertile Crescent and surrounding areas. You would also have to recognise Akkadian, Egyptian and Sumerian as potential influences too.
Originally posted by yampa
I think astronomy, mathematics and human intuition about which are the 'right' sounds to vocalise and symbolise have existed since before any of these cultures. That's why I like Pellar's paper, it suggests we are all drawing from the same influences.