Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Tory Thorpe <torythrp AT yahoo.com>]

Will:

A Moses figure (real or not) would have been literate in Egyptian. We can at least put that question to rest. The question is what script and language would he use? What script would Asiatics from Egypt and always on the move use? I'm thinking a cursive script for fast transmission and recording of information on just about any medium available, i.e. stone, rocks, leather, limestone, ostraca, parchment, or whatever.

You wrote: "So if Moses wrote in it, it would have been in Egyptian, which would be unintellible to non-Egyptian speaking Hebrews."

They presumably were all capable of understanding and speaking Egyptian by the time of the Exodus even if only relatively few were literate. I do not see it as improbable the idea that hieratic was used to write some Hebrew words. The Arabic script seems to have some connections to hieratic. What I am saying is that a narrative composition in the 15th century BC, in the region of Egypt/Canaan is more likely to be in hieratic than anything else since the examples that survive are just that. Even 1,000+ kilometers in Assyria and Babylonia, their narration, story telling, and even their year-names and annual limmu name recording were probably all written first on perishable mediums in a cursive script prior to being copied on non-perishable medium of clay tablets with a stylus.

Tory Thorpe
Tel Aviv, Israel