Keeping it real?

Because the script of the tablet is so unusual, some scholars have questioned its authenticity; they think we might be dealing with a modern fake. A reason to be suspicious is the fact that the tablet does not have a clear provenance; as mentioned above, it was bought from an antiquities dealer in Istanbul at the end of the 19th century. Inconveniently, the provenance of the ‘sister tablet’ in Munich is also uncertain.

It is indeed suspect that these tablets were not found during official excavations. However, this circumstance unfortunately applies to many clay tablets (as well as other antiquities), and many illegally obtained objects have proven to be genuine. In a similar vein, the fact that the script cannot be identified, does not necessarily mean that it is a forgery; there are more examples of authentic objects inscribed with an otherwise unknown script.

In 1964, for instance, two cryptic tablets were found during an archaeological expedition at the site of Deir ‘Alla in the Jordan valley, which contain a unique type of alphabet. Another example are the 10 inscriptions found at Byblos, a site at the coast of Lebanon, that are written in the undeciphered Byblos syllabary.

Another potentially problematic factor is that the evidence for this script is very limited; to this date it is attested on only three documents. You might think that, if this was really a script that was used in antiquity, one would expect more samples. In this case, however, it is not really surprising that there are only a few texts. As we have seen earlier, some of the characters of the script are round. This is an indication that the script was normally inscribed with ink on a smooth surface such as papyrus, parchment or leather, rather than incised into a coarse material such as clay. It is therefore very well possible that this script was used much more extensively, but on perishable materials that are now lost.

All in all, we should not a priori exclude the possibility that our tablet is real. Considering the very modest text corpus, any attempts of decipherment are fruitless at this point. We can only hope that better documented discoveries in the future will help to better understand the script. Until then, the content of LB 892 will remain a secret for us.