- Gezer calendar
The Gezer calendar is a tablet of soft
limestone inscribed in a paleo-Hebrew script. It is one of the oldest known examples of Hebrew writing, dating to the 10th century BCE. It was discovered in excavations of the Biblical city ofGezer , 30 miles northwest of Jerusalem, byR.A.S. Macalister in his excavations between 1902 and 1907.The
calendar describes monthly or bi-monthly periods and attributes to each a duty such as harvest, planting or tending specific crops.It reads:
"Two months of harvest
Two months of planting
Two months are late planting
One month of hoeing
One month of barley-harvest
One month of harvest and festival
Two months of grape harvesting
One month of summer fruit"
Scholars have speculated that the calendar is either a schoolboy's memory exercise or perhaps the text of a popular
folk song , or child's song. Another possibility is something designed for the collection of taxes from farmers.The Gezer Calendar is in the
Museum of the Ancient Orient inIstanbul , along with theSiloam inscription and other archaeological discoveries found beforeWorld War I .Further reading
* Albright, W.F. "The Gezer Calendar" in "Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research" (BASOR). 1943. Volume 92:16-26. Original description of the find.
* Sivan, Daniel 'The Gezer calendar and Northwest Semitic linguistics', "Israel Exploration Journal" 48,1-2 (1998) 101-105. An up-to-date linguistic analysis of this text.External links
* [http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/westsem/gezer.html Details of the calendar including transcription and translation.]
* [http://www.bible.gen.nz/amos/archaeology/gezercal.htm#calendar Another translation and a picture of the calendar.]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.