With what script did God write the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone, and with what script did Moses write the Book of the Covenant?  

 

Attempting to answer this question will lead us on a fascinating journey into ambiguities within the biblical text, ancient Egyptian and Canaanite history, controversies regarding the date of the Exodus, and the ability of Judaism to exist and thrive as the world’s oldest monotheistic religion. It will also lead us to question conventional wisdom about the spread of the proto-Sinaitic script to Canaan.

 

To state the obvious. The slaves released at the time of the Exodus came from Egypt. The official script of Egypt was hieroglyphics, which is a very ancient script. The earliest hieroglyphs were developed in about 3200 to 3000 BCE, and hieroglyphics became fully developed at the time of the Old Kingdom, between about 2686 to 2181 BCE. During this period, it was used for monumental inscriptions and pyramid texts. A cursive form of hieroglyphs, which we call hieratic, was also in use by scribes.

 

It is possible to say with a fair degree of certainty that the Ten Commandments and the Book of the Covenant were not written in hieroglyphics. If they had been written with this script, no one in the Israelite camp would have been able to read them.

 

Hieroglyphics is a pictorial script. By the Middle Kingdom (circa 2000 BCE) it had about 700 to 800 commonly used hieroglyphs, and years of training were required to master its writing. Basic literacy took only a few years of training, but advanced proficiency, including knowledge of grammar, artistic composition, and specialized vocabulary, took a decade or more of training. High-ranking scribes who inscribed royal tombs, temples, and complex religious texts would train for 20 plus years to perfect their skills. It is conceivable that Moses had some familiarity with hieroglyphics, given the educational years he spent in the royal palace, but it is doubtful that anyone else who left Egypt could have read more than a few words.

 

However, there was one other script known in Egypt, called nowadays a proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite script. This was a phonetic script rather than a pictorial one. In this script, each letter represented a sound. Despite the thousands of words we use, only a limited number of sounds are needed to express them. In this script, each sound is represented by a letter. The letters used were originally hieroglyphic letters and the sound it represented was the first consonant of the picture representation.  For example, the word for water in Hebrew is mayim. The hieroglyphic symbol for water, which was a squiggly line, was used as a symbol for the first consonantal sound of this word, namely the sound mu. Hebrew is a semitic language and with 22 hieroglyphic symbols it was possible to vocalize the sounds of all the consonants of the Hebrew language (although there were probably 27 or 29 letters in the early stage of the alphabet).1

 

Since this was the only alternative script available at the time of the Exodus, and this script was very suitable for the needs of the Israelites, the presumption has to be that this was the script used by God for writing the Ten Commandments and by Moses when he wrote the Book of the Covenant.

 

 

Evidence of Egyptian proto-Sinaitic script

 

Early evidence of the proto-Sinaitic script was discovered by the British archaeologist Sir William Flinders Petrie in the early 20th century in ancient turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula. The writing was found mainly on small stone slabs and monuments. Its location in the Sinai Peninsula, accounts for this script being called proto-Sinaitic.

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Its dating to the time of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, to between about 1900 to 1700 BCE, was based on a combination of archaeological, epigraphic, and historical methods. The inscriptions were found in association with Egyptian artifacts and structures, including a Temple of Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of mining, which was active during the Middle Kingdom during the 12th and 13th Dynasties. Many of the inscription were found next to or mixed with Egyptian hieroglyphic texts that mention pharaohs, officials, and mining expeditions, some of which mention Middle Kingdom rulers. Organic material found in the mining sites, such as wooden tools, charcoal, and remains of miners’ camps, have also been dated to the time of the Middle Kingdom using carbon dating. The range of 1900 to 1700 BCE is widely, although not universally accepted.

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Some investigators have suggested a later date of 1850 to 1550 BCE because of evidence of continued mining activity at Serabit el-Khadim into the Second Intermediate Period. Plus, evidence of greater linguistic refinement in some of the inscriptions.

 

Christopher Rollston has emphasized paleographic (letter shape) comparisons with later Semitic inscriptions and argued that some of the Serabit inscriptions appear more developed than others, implying a gradual evolution of the script.2 He suggested that the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions appear in phases, and that later examples belong to Hyksos-period (c. 1650 to 1550 BCE). Orly Goldwasser also considered the script as part of a linguistic evolution that took place over a longer timeframe than previously thought.3 She suggested that the inscriptions should be linked to the late 12th Dynasty and 13th Dynasty of Egypt but extending into the early Second Intermediate Period, and she came up with a dating of 1850 to 1550 BCE.

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Other evidence of this phonetic script was found in the late 1990s by Yale University researchers John and Deborah Darnell at Wadi el-Hol. This is a desert valley west of Thebes and near an ancient Egyptian military and trade route, and the inscriptions were found carved into a rock face. The surrounding area contained Middle Kingdom inscriptions, providing a time frame for when this site was in active use from around 1900 to 1800 BCE. The presence of Middle Kingdom pottery and artifacts also helped anchor the period of human activity at this site. The similarity of this writing to Egyptian Middle Kingdom hieratic writing supported an evolutionary approach to this writing. No direct radiocarbon dating was possible, since the inscriptions were on rock, leading to a margin of uncertainty within a century or so.

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Unlike those of Wadi el-Hol and Serabit el-Khadim, the proto-Sinaitic inscriptions at Lahun on ostraca (pottery fragments) or rock surfaces have not been well-published or widely studied. Lahun is a site in Faiyum, Egypt, known for its connection to the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. It is the location of the pyramid of Pharaoh Senusret II and a nearby workers’ village. The site has yielded many important papyri (e.g., the Lahun Papyri) containing Middle Egyptian texts. Based on the evidence, these inscriptions have been dated to the late 19th to early 18th century BCE.

 

Who invented the proto-Sinaitic script?

 

The proto-Sinaitic script bears a close resemblance to the old Hebrew script, and a number of scholars have speculated that it might even have been invented by the Hebrews, although this is a minority view.4 Clues from the Bible should be able to support or refute this notion. However, it is complicated by ambiguity in the biblical text. The Covenant of the Pieces between Abraham and YHWH states:

 

He [YHWH] said to Avram, "Know with certainty that your offspring will be foreigners in a land not their own, and they will enslave them and they will oppress them four hundred years (Genesis 15:13).

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However, this prophecy continues:

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And the fourth generation will return here, because the iniquity of the Emorites is not yet complete" (ibid 15:16).

 

There is an obvious contradiction here in that four generations do not equal 400 years. It is difficult to ascribe this to variant texts since we are dealing with a single prophecy. It is also difficult to know why the Bible introduced such a contradiction.

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The approach of traditional Jewish commentators has been to harmonize these two sentences. Hence, the authoritative medieval commentator Rashi joins the phrase “400 years” to “your offspring will be foreigners in a land not their own — four hundred years.” Based on chronology given in the Torah, and the fact that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sojourned in a land that was then not their own, it works out that the Israelites were in Egypt 210 years.5

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However, there is a biblical verse in the Book of Exodus that states:

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The habitation of the Children of Israel during which they dwelled in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. It was at the end of the end of four hundred and thirty years, and it was on that very day that all the legions of YHWH left the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:40-41).

 

Rashi notes, that when compiling the Septuagint, the Sages added the phrase “and in other lands” to this sentence above, thus rendering the verse: “And the habitation of the Children of Israel which they dwelled in Egypt and in other lands was four hundred and thirty years.”6 

 

Supporting evidence for the 200-year figure perhaps comes from the story of Joseph, in that it has been suggested that Joseph served the Hyksos as an important advisor, an idea which I support in my essay “Joseph — the right person at the right place at the right time.” The Hyksos period in Egyptian history occurred during the Second Intermediate Period when the Hyksos, a foreign Semitic-speaking group, ruled parts of Egypt, particularly Lower Egypt (i.e., northern Egypt, including the Nile Delta).

 

The start of this period began in 1650 BCE and their rule ended in about 1550 BCE, when the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt by Ahmose I, who began the New Kingdom. From the beginning of the Hyksos period to the Exodus was approximately 200 years.

 

In conclusion, it seems unlikely that Hebrews wrote the initial inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim and Wadi el-Hol. One might surmise that this new script was developed in Egypt by laborers rather than the ruling class. At some time during their stay in Egypt, probably when working as slaves, the Israelites picked up this script and adopted it as their own. This makes it very likely that this was the script used by God at Mount Sinai and by Moses when he wrote his Book of the Covenant.

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That Moses wrote in a book is mentioned in a few places in the Torah. The Bible mentions:

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And Moses wrote all the words of YHWH, and rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel (Exodus 24:4). 

 

Another reference is

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And so it was, when Moses finished writing the words of this Torah onto a book until their conclusion, that Moses commanded the Levites, the bearers of the Ark of the Covenant of YHWH, saying: “Take this book of the Torah, and place it at the side of the Ark of the Covenant of YHWH, your God, and it shall be there for you as a witness" (Deuteronomy 31:24-26).

 

It is unclear what exactly Moses wrote in this first reference, since the Ten Commandments had not yet been given. However, it is likely that the second reference above refers to the entire Torah being placed in the Ark of the Covenant.7

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How did the proto-Sinaitic script spread to Canaan?

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It is commonly assumed that Canaanite employees or slaves working in places in Sinai and/or Egypt took knowledge of this script back with them to Canaan. However, it is more likely that knowledge of this script existed among the Hebrew slaves while they were in Egypt, and they brought this script from Egypt to Canaan when they invaded Canaan. The name proto-Canaanite is therefore a complete misnomer, as the Canaanites had little to do with it.

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To examine this hypothesis, we need the date of the Exodus from Egypt, which would be also the date of the Giving of the Ten Commandments, and when this script began appearing in the land of Canaan.  

It is widely accepted by academics and archeologists that Ramses II was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. This is based on findings in the important Canaanite city of Hazor. Hazor is situated at the foot of the Galilee Mountains by the Hula Valley and it dominated the Via Maris, the main highway connecting Egypt to Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia. Evidence has been found in Hazor of a very significant conflagration in Hazor’s upper city, although not in the lower city. This accords with the biblical verse describing the destruction of Hazor during the Israelite conquest of Canaan:

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They killed every soul that was there —by the edge of the sword were they utterly vanquished — not one soul remained. And he [Joshua] burned Hazor with fire (Joshua 11:11).

 

This is the only city explicitly mentioned in the Bible as being burned down during Joshua's northern campaign. Found in the rubble of this layer was an Egyptian offering table with hieroglyphic writing indicating it was dedicated by a high priest of Ramesses II. The conflagration has therefore been dated to the middle of the 13th century BCE, towards the end of the Late Bronze Age. Carbon-dating of grain storage also accords with this date. This all suggests that the Israelite invasion of Canaan should be dated to about 1250 BCE, during the reign of Ramesses II.

However, there are a number of problems with this conclusion. Archeology at Hazor indicates that following this conflagration there was no significant settlement in the city for the next 100 to 200 years, other than in the upper city where settlement was of a semi-nomadic nature and the foundations found were only for tents and huts. This does not accord with the account in the Book of Judges of a recovery of Hazor. The rebuilding or strengthening of Hazor is described in Judges 4:2-3, when the king of Hazor comes into conflict with the Israelites at the time of the prophetess Deborah and her general Barak. It is quite possible that the conflagration seen in Hazor is from the conquest of Hazor at this time, and not the time of Joshua.

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And Elohim subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan [and also the king of Hazor], before the children of Israel. And the hand of the children of Israel prevailed constantly harder against Jabin the king of Canaan until they had destroyed Jabin, king of Canaan (Judges 4:23-24).

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It also does not accord with the dating of the city wall destruction at Tel es-Sultan, the ancient fortified city of Jericho. The precise dating of this destruction is controversial, although all archeologists would agree that Jericho was deserted at the time of Rameses II, in the 1200s BCE because of the ban on the city declared by Joshua (Joshua 9:26), and that the wall destruction occurred much earlier. Based on the Canaanite pottery reported by Kathleen Kenyon, Bryant Wood has dated this destruction to about 1400 BCE. in the Late Bronze Age.8

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From the Bible itself, one can date the Exodus from Egypt to 1446 BCE (I Kings 6:1), knowing that the Solomon began construction of his Temple in 966 BCE (see also my essay “The Egyptian Exodus – fact or fiction”?

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And it came to pass in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, in the month Zif, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord (I Kings 6:1).

 

It is helpful to review examples of proto-Sinaitic script that have been found in Israel, and their estimated dating.

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The Lachish Ewer is a jug with an early alphabetic script written in ink near the neck of the jug that was found in Lachish, an important Canaanite city. It is now in the British Museum. The inscription is fragmentary and difficult to interpret, but is believed to contain a personal name or a dedicatory phrase. It was found in a Late Bronze Age II layer, and is thought to date from the 15th to 14th century BCE. The pottery styles and associated artifacts in the same layer also match Egyptian and Canaanite pottery from this time.  

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However, some scholars argue for a possible 14th-century BCE date rather than 15th century, due to stylistic variations and surrounding pottery, and some suggest even earlier than this to the 13th century BCE.9

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The Book of Joshua records that Lachish was conquered by the Israelites. It likely then became a Judahite city, although whether this happened immediately after the conquest or sometime after is unclear from the Bible (Joshua 10:31-32).

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The Izbet Sartah Inscription is an early alphabetic inscription on a pottery ostracon (a potsherd) discovered in 1976 by Moshe Kochavi in Izbet Sartah, a small, Israelite, early Iron Age, rural settlement in central Israel near Tel Aphek and modern-day Rosh HaAyin. This village is thought to be the biblical Ebenezer (1 Samuel 4:1). The ostracon has been dated to approximately 1200 to 1100 BCE, placing it in Iron Age I, a time associated with early Israelite settlement. The inscription consists of several lines of text, with the final line believed to be an abecedary (a list of the letters of the alphabet in order). It was found in an undisturbed layer, and the ostracon matches the ceramic style of collared-rim storage jars and other early Iron Age pottery. The site was only occupied for a short time, from the late 13th to early 11th century BCE, and was then abandoned. The 11th century BCE would therefore be the latest possible date for the script. If the identification with Ebenezer is correct, the abandoning of the site occurred in the late Judges period, when Eli was High Priest in Shilo and Samuel had just received his first revelation. The stratigraphic dating is fairly strong, although the lack of a continuous occupation at the site means the margin of error is around ± 50 years.

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The Gezer Sherd was discovered in Tel Gezer by the Irish archaeologist R.A.S. Macalister during excavations at Tel Gezer and is thought to be from the 10th century BCE, a period traditionally linked to the reign of King Solomon. Tel Gezer is in central Israel, near the modern city of Ramla, and it controlled a strategic position along the Via Maris, a key trade route linking Egypt and Mesopotamia. Gezer was a major Canaanite city-state until it was captured by the Egyptian Pharaoh, who slaughtered its Canaanite inhabitants and then gave the city as a gift to his daughter when Solomon married her:

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Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, and conquered Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slayed the Canaanites who inhabited the city, and given it for a gift to his daughter, Solomon’s wife. And Solomon built Gezer, and the lower Beth Horon (1 Kings 9:15-17).

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The artifact is a small limestone sherd believed to be an agricultural calendar, and it lists the eight periods of agricultural activity in the year: two months of harvest, two months of planting, two months of late planting, one month of hoeing flax, one month of barley harvest, one month of measuring grain, two months of pruning vines, and one month of summer fruit.

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Macalister's excavation methods were less precise by modern standards, which complicates absolute dating, and the 10th century BCE dating remains an estimate rather than an absolute certainty.

The Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon was discovered in 2008 at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortress above the Elah Valley. The site is dated to about 1000 to 975 BCE, corresponding to early Iron Age II, and possibly the time of King David. The inscription is difficult to fully decipher due to the faded text and fragmentary condition. It may be a legal or ethical text, possibly related to social justice or governance. Suggested translations include words meaning "king," "judge," "servant," "do not oppress," and "God." It was found in a well-defined, sealed stratigraphic layer. Charcoal and olive pits found in the same stratigraphic layer as the ostracon were subjected to radiocarbon (C-14) dating, and the results yielded a date range of 1020–980 BCE (±30 years), aligning with the estimated time of King David’s reign. Pottery found in the same layer as the ostracon belonged to the Iron Age I–II transition period, specifically 1000–975 BCE. The combination of stratigraphy, radiocarbon dating, pottery analysis, and paleography makes the 1000–975 BCE date highly reliable, with a margin of error of ±30–50 years.

 

To sum this all up, the proto-Sinaitic script was developed in Egypt as early as 1900 or 1800 BCE. It is unlikely that it was developed by Hebrews. However, it was sufficiently familiar to the Hebrew slaves that God was able to inscribe the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone and Moses wrote a Book of the Covenant using this script and it would have been understood. There is good evidence that at least by the 12th to 11th centuries BCE, at the time of the Judges, the Israelites were a literate or semi-literate society. We are not talking about reading and writing in a major urban center, but personal writing in a village setting. It seems reasonable to assume, therefore, that it was the Israelites who brought this script into Canaan. It makes little sense that a non-literate society, namely the Canaanites, would have been the agents to disseminate this script, and not the Israelites.

 

The importance of this proto-Sinaitic script in the development of Judaism cannot be underestimated. One might even assert that without this script, a Torah could not have been given over at this time. A transmission that remained entirely oral or that was accompanied by two tablets of the Covenant written in hieroglyphics that no one could read could not have been the basis of this fledgling faith. 

This will not be the last time that an advance in technology will have a significant impact on the spread of religion. This is true for both Judaism and the other monotheistic religions. The discovery of printing will allow the wide dissemination of the message of the Bible. The use of tapes, will enable the promulgation of religious messages. The internet and such programs as zoom are having a significant impact on the spread of Jewish learning.  

 

This also means that it was likely the Israelites who gave over this script to the sea-bearing people, the Phoenicians, who in turn taught it to the Greeks, who were using this script by the 9th century BCE.

Unlike semitic languages, the Greek language requires vowels. The Greeks used spare hieroglyphic letters that had sounds that were not needed for their vowels. such as an ayin, which means an eye, for the sound o. Its hieroglyph and proto-Sinaitic letter was a circle shaped like an eye. This was used by the Greeks as an O.

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It is worth noting that the Jews changed from the proto-Sinaitic script to an Ashuri script when they were exiled to Babylon (586 BCE). This script is a form of the Aramaic alphabet, which was widely used in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. Over time, the Jews adapted the square Aramaic script, and this eventually replaced Paleo-Hebrew for religious and official writings.

 

References

1. Hebrew did not need symbols for vowels, since it is built upon mainly three-lettered root letters. Once one knows the root of a Hebrew word and its conjugation, the reader can add in the appropriate vowels based on their knowledge of the language. There was therefore no necessity for symbols for vowels. The Masoretes were active roughly between the 6th and 10th centuries CE, primarily in Tiberias and Jerusalem in the Land of Israel, as well as in Babylonia, and they worked to preserve and standardize the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). One of their main contributions included adding vocalization (Vowel Points). They developed a system of nikud to indicate vowel sounds, ensuring the correct pronunciation and reading of the text. Even today, most literature in Hebrew is written with consonants only, and the reader adds in the correct vowels.

 

2. Rollston, C. A. (2016). "The Early History of the Alphabet: The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions 2.0, Canaanite not Hebrew." Rollston Epigraphy and Rollston, C. A. (2020). "Scripture and Inscriptions: Eighth-Century Israel and Judah in Writing." In C. A. Rollston (Ed.), Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence.

 

3. Goldwasser, O. (2006). "Canaanites Reading Hieroglyphs. Part I – Horus is Hathor? Part II – The Invention of the Alphabet in Sinai." Ägypten und Levante, 16, 121–160 and Goldwasser, O. (2011). "How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs." Biblical Archaeology Review, 37(2), 40–53.

 

4. W. F. Albright, The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment (1949), Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel (1973), John R Harris, The Hebrew Language (1891), Israel Finkelstein, and Neil Asher Silberman. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (2001), and most recently Douglas Petrovich, The World’s Oldest Alphabet. Hebrew as the Language of the Proto-Consonantal Script, Carta Jerusalem, 2015.

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5. Rashi to Genesis 13:15.

 

6. Rashi to Exodus 12:40 based on Mechilta, Megilla 9a.

 

7. According to Rashi, based on the Mechilta DeRabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the first source refers to the text of the Torah from the beginning of Genesis until the giving of the Torah and the commandments they were commanded at Marah. The second reference refers to the entire Torah. Other references to Moses’ writing are Exodus 17:14, Numbers 33:2, and Deuteronomy 31:9.

 

8. John Garstang has argued that Jericho was destroyed around 1400 BCE, aligning with a biblical timeline. Garstang, John, and J. B. E. Garstang. The Story of Jericho. London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1948. However, their conclusions were challenged by Kathleen Kenyon, who concluded that the walls of Jericho were destroyed around 1550 BCE, at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, likely by an Egyptian or natural event. She found no evidence of a walled city or significant occupation during the Late Bronze Age (1400–1200 BCE), the period traditionally associated with the Israelite conquest. Kenyon’s findings were challenged by Bryant Wood: “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho? A New Look at the Archeological Evidence” by Bryant Wood in Biblical Archeology Review March/April 1990.

 

9. Diringer, David. The Lachish Ewer: An Early Alphabetic Inscription Discovered at Tell ed-Duweir. London: Oxford University Press, 1941. However, other scholarship has debated whether it could be slightly later, possibly into the 13th century BCE. W. F. Albright initially leaned toward a 14th-century BCE date but later revised it to the 13th century BCE based on comparative analysis of early alphabetic inscriptions. William F. Albright. The Proto-Sinaitic Inscriptions and Their Decipherment. Harvard University Press, 1966. Also, Yariv Hacham's study, titled "The Lachish Ewer: A Pottery Ewer Dated to the 13th Century BCE with a Proto-Canaanite Inscription," is available as a PDF on Academia.edu. However, there is no indication that this study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal or as part of an academic volume. It appears to be a standalone paper shared by the author on the platform.