Memphis Stela

General Notes

According to D.-S., Aimé-Giron reported in a letter in December 1926 to the CIS that he had encountered the inscription at Memphis and that it was likely from Saqqara. A.-G. had doubts about the authenticity of the inscription. By chance, D.-S. came across the inscription in the hands of an Egyptian merchant in Cairo and published it before it was lost; D.-S. sees it as authentic (Syria 56, 79–80). There are some suspicious features about the paleography and orthography, but it is difficult to determine authenticity from a photograph, most notably the spelling of the name, which A.-G. reported as perhaps being composed during a time in which gutturals (Ḥ > ˀ and ˁ > ø) were no longer pronounced. Perhaps for this reason, TAD places the inscription last, assuming it is of a later date. The difficulty of this theory is that BˁL retains an ˁ. The paleography blends the lapidary and cursive forms, which is common of Imperial Aramaic. It is especially common for Y and ˀ to remain lapidary while most other forms are cursive. It is unclear from the photographs if Z is cursive or lapidary; one would expect lapidary. The “W”-shaped Š is rather curious. These do appear on sources from Mesopotamia and Anatolia, but rarely in Egypt in the Persian or later periods—though I state this anecdotally (Moore).