Tombstones bearing Hebrew inscriptions in Aden (Part 2) [Archives:2006/980/Culture]

A. Klein-Franke
The study of tombstone inscriptions from Aden provides us with more than just a possible time horizon for the presence of the Jews in southern Arabia. The letter forms used in the inscriptions are an important asset for Hebrew palaeography. A number of inscriptions use some of the oldest known styles of Hebrew characters. Furthermore, a few epitaphs from the same cemetery and seemingly from the same period exhibit styles of letters that are either inconsistent or completely different.

Almost eighty years after Saphir's publication of the inscriptions from Aden, Birnbaum undertook a palaeographic study of sixty-two Hebrew inscriptions from Aden. He attempted to ascertain the age of the inscriptions in accordance with the theory of the development of the Hebrew alphabet. Birnbaum concluded that although the epitaphs were written in a unique, local style, most of them could not have been written earlier than the fourteenth century CE. According to his theory the way the letter dalet was written did not appear before the fifteenth century and the way the letter qop was written)open on two sides)did not appear before the end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Birnbaum believed that the dates in the inscriptions were contracted and the letters, which were supposed to have indicated the millennium, were omitted. Birnbaum argued that it could not be a coincidence that the dates were short in so many inscriptions. The masons must have intentionally omitted part of the date. As a result, Birnbaum added 2000 years to the date of the inscription of Masta's slab from the British Museum and also to the inscriptions copied by Saphir.

Fifteen years after Ben-Zvi's publication, Shmu'el Yavne'elli told him that while visiting Aden in 1911 he had also copied a few Hebrew inscriptions from the ancient cemetery. Yavne'elli was familiar with Saphir's publications. Ben-Zvi published fourteen inscriptions from Yavne'elli's collection of thirty-two. At the same time as Ben-Zvi obtained Yavne'elli's notes, Ben-Zvi received photographs of Hebrew epitaphs from Aden from Mori Salem.

These he published with Yavne'elli's notes and issued another edition of his previous publication. Ben-Zvi was now convinced that the dates were contracted and revisited his theory on the age of the inscriptions in a new palaeographic study.
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