68
Ed Metzler
first text in alphabetical script, this
would be
a good reason for placing
it at the top of the
alphabetical
order, because everybody who wanted
to learn
how to read and write the newly invented
alphabet had to begin with this very
Alef in the
absence of any
other alphabetical literature.9)
In this case a
similar reason should be expected
for placing
Bet next after Alef.
§
5. Investigating why the letter Bet holds the
second place in the alphabetical order I
searched
for the first Bet in the
text of the Ten Command-
––––––––––––––––
in the thirteenth century B.
C. E. But the real
age of the
Achiram sarcophagus
is around 600 B. C. E. The
female mourners
on it are
typical of the time
of the prophet Jeremiah,
as
correctly pointed out by
M. Haran in the
Israel Exploration
Journal, vol.
8 (1958) no. 1. It
is contemporary with Pharaoh
Nechoh,
who is identical with Ramses II,
and generally misdated
more than six
centuries earlier as well as the
Achiram sarcophagus
with him, cf.
Immanuel Velikovsky, Ramses
II and his Time,
(1978)
chapter 3.
9) The priority of the Tablets of the
Law (Luchot ha-Berit) as the first legal
document in alphabetical script after its
invention,
and the beginning of alphabetical
literature would be threatened,
if the
cuneiform adaptation of the
linear alphabet by Ugarit,
which has the same alphabetical
order as the 22 letters of the
ancient Hebrew alphabet
except for eight additional
letters,
is dated back
to around 1400 B. C. E., as
most scholars do.
However, the
last two centuries
of Ugarit before its
final
destruction are
contemporary with the first two
centuries of
the Israelite
monarchy (ca. 1030–830
B. C. E.), and
hence
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