A Survey of Aramaic Ostraca Letters / מכתבים ארמיים הכתובים על חרסים

Scattered in over a dozen museums and libraries around the world (New York, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Paris, Strasbourg, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, Cairo, Elephantine, and Jerusalem) are 114 Aramaic ostraca, primarily from Elephantine, that have been studied or published. Most of these are letters and some forty have been identified palaeographically as having been written by a single scribe active ca. 475 BCE. They are usually inscribed on both sides, beginning on the concave side and concluding on the convex. Only occasionally does the praescriptio contain a full address and blessing. Usually, it is abridged or omitted. After the customary one- or two-word transition marker, the two most frequently used words were šlḥ, 'send' (a message or a letter) and hwšr, 'dispatch' (an object). Twenty examples are cited concerning the communication of information or the shipment of objects. Interest in personal welfare is keen and incidents from daily life, such as marking slaves and shearing sheep, are given expression. Religious elements also occur not infrequently. The name of God is usually spelled yhh and appears in various combinations, byt yhh, yhh ẓb't, and ḥy lyhh. The Sabbath figures in four ostraca and Passover in two. Ritual purity was a concern, as was payment for the marzeaḥ. A table lists all the ostraca by museum designation and place of publication. Several dozen, belonging to the Clermont-Ganneau collection in the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris, still await publication.