Les Manuserits arameens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Samarie vers 450-332 av. J.-C.

• Author: Reymond, Eric D.
• Position: Book review

Les Manuscrits arameens du Wadi Daliyeh et la Scunarie vers 450-332 av. J.-C. By JAN DUSEK. Culture & History of the Ancient Near East, vol. 30. Leiden: BRILL, 2007. Pp. xxvi + 700, plates. $257.

The present book appeared in 2007, only six years after the editio princeps of the Samaria papyri was published in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series (D. M. Gropp, "Wadi Daliyeh 11: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh," in Wadi Daliyeh II: The Samaria Papyri from Wadi Daliyeh and Qumran Cave 4, Miscellanea, Part 2, ed. Douglas M. Gropp, M. Bernstein, et al. [Oxford: Clarendon., 2001], 1-116). Although the editio princeps provides photographs of all thirty-seven manuscripts, it gives a transcription of and commentary on only twelve of the papyri. Moreover, it includes only a summary of what can be gleaned from the papyri in terms of historical and cultural information. By contrast, the present book attempts to give a reading of and interpretation to all thirty-seven Samaria papyri and to derive any and all information from them that might shed light on the history of Samaria.

The book is divided into three major parts. The first concerns the history of the research on the Samaria papyri, beginning with their discovery in 1962, as well as the discovery of bullae and seals. The second concerns the texts themselves and contains the transcriptions of each manuscript, however fragmentary, as well as an introduction to their structure and formulae. The third section attempts to interpret these various texts and artifacts and to draw conclusions about three historic "levels," namely the circumstances of their deposit; what they reveal about such things as the relationships of the people mentioned in them, onomastics, and measurement; and what they can tell us of Samarian history in general. A final chapter sums up the history of Samaria during the Persian era. A series of plates at the back of the book contains photographs of all the papyri.

Although they came to the attention of P. W. Lapp and Frank M. Cross in 1962 and were described in 1963, no single complete transliteration of any of these manuscripts was published until 1985. Studies of the papyri in the 1960s and 1970s by Cross were limited generally to various facets of the texts, but not to elucidations of individual specimens. In the first part of the book, Dusek summarizes Cross's interpretation of the onomastics, writing, and history as revealed by the papyri, before treating more...