Gezer calendar

Gezer calendar
The calendar in its current location
Material	Limestone
Size	11.1 × 7.2 cm
Writing	Phoenician or paleo-Hebrew
Created	c. 10th century BCE
Discovered	1908
Present location	Istanbul Archaeology Museums
Identification	2089 T

Replica of the Gezer calendar in Israel Museum, Israel.

The Gezer calendar is a small limestone tablet with an early Canaanite inscription discovered in 1908 by Irish archaeologist R. A. Stewart Macalister in the ancient city of Gezer, 20 miles west of Jerusalem. It is commonly dated to the 10th century BCE, although the excavation was not stratified. ^{[1] [2]}

Scholars are divided as to whether the language is Phoenician or Hebrew and whether the script is Phoenician (or Proto-Canaanite) or paleo-Hebrew. Koller surmises that the language is Northern Hebrew, while Pardee proposes that it may be Phoenician or "early Samarian Hebrew". ^{[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]}

The inscription is not a formal calendar, as it describes agricultural seasons with imprecise dates, rather than precise divisions of time as would be required for a ritual or bureaucratic calendar. As such, some of the time units comprise two months rather than one, and none are referred to by the month numbers or names known from other sources. ^[9]

Inscription

The calendar is inscribed on a limestone plaque and describes monthly or bi-monthly periods and attributes to each a duty such as harvest, planting, or tending specific crops.

The inscription, known as KAI 182, is in Phoenician or paleo-Hebrew script:

𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤅𐤀𐤎𐤐.𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤅𐤆‎

𐤓𐤏.𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤅𐤋𐤒𐤔‎

𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤏𐤑𐤃𐤐𐤔𐤕‎

𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤒𐤑𐤓𐤔𐤏𐤓𐤌‎

𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤒𐤑𐤓𐤅𐤊𐤋‎

𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤅𐤆𐤌𐤓‎

𐤉𐤓𐤇𐤒𐤑‎

𐤀𐤁𐤉(𐤄)‎

Which in equivalent square Hebrew letters is as follows:

ירחואספ ירחוז‎

רע ירחולקש‎

ירחעצדפשת‎

ירחקצרשערמ‎

ירחקצרוכל‎

ירחוזמר‎

ירחקצ‎

אבי(ה)‎

This corresponds to the following transliteration, with spaces added for word divisions:

yrḥw ʾsp yrḥw z

rʿ yrḥw lqš

yrḥ ʿṣd pšt

yrḥ qṣr šʿrm

yrḥ qṣrw kl

yrḥw zmr

yrḥ qṣ

ʾby[h]

The text has been translated as: A couple of months (yarḥêw, in the dual) of gathering A couple of months of early sowing A couple of months of late sowing A month of making hay A month of harvesting barley A month of harvest and finishing A couple of months of vine pruning A month of summer fruit. [9] Abij[ah] [10]

Possible equivalent months: October, November — in the Hebrew calendar Tishrei, Cheshvan December, January — Kislev, Tevet February, March — Shvat, Adar April — Nisan May — Iyar June — Sivan July, August — Tammuz, Av September — Elul

Scholars have speculated that the calendar could be a schoolboy's memory exercise, the text of a popular folk song or a children's song. Another possibility is something designed for the collection of taxes from farmers.

The scribe of the calendar is potentially written at the bottom of the tablet: "Abijah", meaning "Yah (a shorter form of Yahweh) is my father". This name appears in the Bible for several individuals, including a king of Judah (1 Kings 14:31). If accurate, then it could be an early attestation of the name YHWH, potentially predating the Mesha Stele. ^[11]

History

Dig not stratified, as shown here on suppositions of dating in Macalister's second volume on Gezer

The calendar was discovered in 1908 by R.A.S. Macalister of the Palestine Exploration Fund while excavating the ancient Canaanite city of Gezer, 20 miles west of Jerusalem.

The Gezer calendar is currently displayed at the Museum of the Ancient Orient, a Turkish archaeology museum, ^{[12] [13]} as is the Siloam inscription and other archaeological artifacts unearthed before World War I. A replica of the Gezer calendar is on display at the Israel Museum, Israel.

See also

• List of artifacts significant to the Bible
• List of ancient Near Eastern scribes
• List of languages by first written accounts
• Archaeology of Israel

References

1. Tappy, Ron E.; McCarter, P. Kyle; Lundberg, Marilyn J.; Zuckerman, Bruce (2006). "An abecedary of the mid-tenth century B.C.E. from the Judaean Shephelah". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research . 344 (344): 41. doi:10.1086/BASOR25066976. JSTOR   25066976. S2CID   163300154. ...compromised archaeological contexts (e.g. the unstratified Gezer calendar...
2. Aaron Demsky (2007), Reading Northwest Semitic Inscriptions, Near Eastern Archaeology 70/2. Quote: "The first thing to consider when examining an ancient inscription is whether it was discovered in context or not. It is obvious that a document purchased on the antiquities market is suspect. If it was found in an archeological site, one should note whether it was found in its primary context, as with the inscription of King Achish from Ekron, or in secondary use, as with the Tel Dan inscription. Of course texts that were found in an archaeological site, but not in a secure archaeological context present certain problems of exact dating, as with the Gezer Calendar."
3. Is it “Tenable”?, Hershel Shanks, Biblical Archaeology Review Archived December 25, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
4. Spelling in the Hebrew Bible: Dahood memorial lecture, By Francis I. Andersen, A. Dean Forbes, p56
5. Pardee, Dennis (2013-05-15), Holmstedt, Robert D.; Schade, Aaron (eds.), "10. A Brief Case for Phoenician as the Language of the "Gezer Calendar"", Linguistic Studies in Phoenician, Penn State University Press, pp. 226–246, doi:10.1515/9781575068558-013, ISBN   978-1-57506-855-8 , retrieved 2025-12-28
6. Chris A. Rollston (2010). Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age. Society of Biblical Lit. pp. 30–. ISBN   978-1-58983-107-0.
7. Koller, Aaron (2013). "Ancient Hebrew מעצד and עצד in the Gezer Calendar". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 72 (2): 179–193. doi:10.1086/671444. ISSN   0022-2968. JSTOR   10.1086/671444. S2CID   161247763.
8. Leeuwen, Raymond C. Van (2017-11-07), Jones, Scott C.; Yoder, Christine Roy (eds.), "Agriculture and Wisdom: The Case of the "Gezer Calendar"" , "When the Morning Stars Sang": Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, De Gruyter, pp. 365–380, doi:10.1515/9783110428148-024, ISBN   978-3-11-042814-8 , retrieved 2025-12-28
9. Sanders, Seth (2008). "Writing and Early Iron Age Israel: Before National Scripts, Beyond Nations and States". In Tappy, Ron E.; McCarter, P. Kyle (eds.). Literate Culture and Tenth-Century Canaan: The Tel Zayit Abecedary in Context. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN   978-1-57506-150-4.
10. Coogan, Michael D. (2009). A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament: The Hebrew Bible in Its Context. Oxford University Press. p. 119. ISBN   978-0199830114.
11. Hoffmeier, James Karl (2005). Ancient Israel in Sinai: the evidence for the authenticity of the wilderness tradition. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 240–241. ISBN   978-0-19-515546-4.
12. Gezer calendar Archived 2012-11-01 at the Wayback Machine
13. Istanbul Archaeological Museums, Artifacts Archived 2012-11-01 at the Wayback Machine

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.
• Dever, William G. “Gezer”. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East vol. 2, Editor in Chief Eric M. Meyers, 396–400. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
• Pardee, Dennis. “Gezer Calendar”. In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East vol. 2, Editor in Chief Eric M. Meyers, 396–400. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.