SINAITIC INSCRIPTIONS. - Inscriptions found in 1905 by Flinders Petrie at Serâbît al-Hâdim (Sinai), in the turquoise mines near the temple of Hathor. Further discoveries, made by the expeditions of Harvard University (1927, 1930, 1935) and by a Finnish mission (1929), bring to about 25 the number of inscriptions usable for decipherment, to which are added some that are more poorly preserved.

The interpretation of the S. i. is particularly difficult. It is almost certain that the script used there is alphabetic and that a north-western Semitic language is expressed in it.

Along this path, a decisive step in the decipherment was taken in 1915 by A. Gardiner, who identified the frequently recurring expression l'It and interpreted it as "to Ba'alat", the Semitic name of the des Hathor. Further studies were made (K. Sethe, R. Butin, H. Grimme) and further progress was achieved (A. E. Cowley, M. Sprengling) subsequently, until in 1948 W. F. Albright published extensive attempts at translation.

As for the date of the S. i., according to some (Gardiner, Butin) it is to be placed around 1880 B.C., according to others (Flinders Petrie, Albright) around 1500. The authors of the S. i. were probably Semitic prisoners or slaves who worked in the mines.

Bibliography

BIBL.: W. F. Albright, The early alphabetic inscriptions from Sinai and their decipherment, in Bulletin of the Am. schools of oriental research, 110 (1948), pp. 6-22 (with previous bibliography).

@incollection{ec11_sinaitiche_iscrizioni, author = {Moscati, Sabatino}, title = {Sinaitiche, iscrizioni}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XI}, pages = {660--661}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1953}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/sinaitiche-iscrizioni} }

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Sinaitic Inscriptions

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