STOP
Early Journal Content on JSTOR, Free to Anyone in the World
This article is one of nearly 500,000 scholarly works digitized and made freely available to everyone in
the world by JSTOR.
Known as the Early Journal Content, this set of works include research articles, news, letters, and other
writings published in more than 200 of the oldest leading academic journals. The works date from the
mid-seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.
We encourage people to read and share the Early Journal Content openly and to tell others that this
resource exists. People may post this content online or redistribute in any way for non-commercial
purposes.
Read more about Early Journal Content at http://about.jstor.org/participate-jstor/individuals/early-
journal-content .
JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary source objects. JSTOR helps people
discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content through a powerful research and teaching
platform, and preserves this content for future generations. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit
organization that also includes Ithaka S+R and Portico. For more information about JSTOR, please
contact support@jstor.org.
Brief Notes 141
tory of this vocabulary. If so, they are requested to communi-
cate it to the Cleveland Public Library.
Gordon W. Thayer,
Librarian of the John O. White Collection.
Cleveland Public Library,
Cleveland, Ohio.
The mosaic inscription at ' Ain Duk
This interesting Jewish Aramaic inscription, recently uncov-
ered by a bursting shell at 'Ain Duk, near Jericho, has been
variously published and explained, most fully by Pere Vincent
in the Revue Biblique for October, 1919.
Some of the characters are missing or uncertain, and their
restoration is more or less a matter of conjecture. I would like
to suggest the following as the probable reading :
no 1 ? -ion
rons pouo
hdv -o
JO ta 20 s ? p»3PT]
in nrn prnnoDi]
mriN pro nrrra
'n am 'p n&nipi
HOpO "73 p «]DD]
pnpin Kin 1 ?] j*»nm
rump mm pro
JON
'Honored be the memory of Benjamin the treasurer, the son
of Joseh. Honored be the memory of every one who lends a
hand and gives, or who has (already) given, in this holy place,
whether gold or silver or any other valuable thing; for this
assures them their special right in this holy place. Amen.
The reading of all the characters which are preserved seems
quite certain, though they are somewhat carelessly executed, and
several of them are made to resemble one another so closely that
they would be problematic in a less plain context.
The basis for dating the inscription afforded by the palaeog-
raphy is so insecure as to be almost negligible. It may be given
142
Brief Notes
some slight value, however, when taken in connection with the
few other indications. The date proposed by Vincent, the age
of Herod the Great, seems to me extremely improbable ; the evi-
dence points to a much later day. The spelling pO*J'2 is dis-
tinctly late; the relative pronoun is * 7 I. not **! (contrast the
Megillath Taanith) ; the noun f7QpD> 'valuable possession,' is
a later Eabbinical word, not even occurring in Onkelos, but fre-
quent in Talmud and Midrash, and noticeably common in Pales-
tinian Syriac (the Judean dialect of about the fifth century
a. d.) The abbreviation p. for tJ'J "Q. points in the same direc-
tion; and finally, the characters of the inscription correspond
as closely to those of the fifth century a. d., and the end of the
fourth century, as to those of any other time, judging from the
scanty material in Chwolson's Corpus and elsewhere. All
things considered, the fifth century seems to me the most prob-
able date.
C. C. TOEEET
Yale University.
An Assyrian tablet found in Bombay
The Assyrian clay tablet here presented was discovered in the
storeroom of a house in Girgaum, one of the wards of the city
to
