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Rollston Epigraphy
Personal blog · rollstonepigraphy.comhistoryother
Rollston Epigraphy is a personal blog at rollstonepigraphy.com about history. Since 2016, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-02-19, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
A blog on ancient inscriptions and writing systems. Commenters link posts on the earliest alphabetic writing from a Syrian city and on a disputed claimed Biblical manuscript.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Rollston Epigraphy. Ancient Inscriptions from the Levantine World
Most-linked posts?
- /?p=9212 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-11-23
What Hacker News says?
The tldr is that they don't know it's alphabetic for sure (see below quote). The main scholar (Glenn Schwartz) who co-oversaw the '94-'10 excavation isn't an expert in writing. He put it out there around 2010 and said "maybe it's alphabetic, idk" and there was not much followup from the community. So he consulted with some writing experts who helped him with the 2021 paper where he goes over the evidence for differe…
Comment linking /?p=921
on “Evidence of oldest known alphabetic writing unearthed in ancient Syrian city”Submitted The New 'Jerusalem' Papyrus: Not So Fast as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe article is well cited. They handily beat out newspapers by providing links to earlier blog posts on the research. You might want this one: http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=921 > I will convey my own perspective regarding these four inscribed clay cylinders: namely, the script is Early Alphabetic (based on the clear morphology of the letters), the language is arguably Semitic, and the date is early (based on t…
Comment linking /?p=921
on “Evidence of oldest known alphabetic writing unearthed in ancient Syrian city”http://www.rollstonepigraphy.com/?p=896 It could be real, could be fake. Theirs lots of evidence for it being fake which the new work doesnt adequately deal with. If they are real, it poses problems for modern critical scholarship because the words for god are not sympathetic with modern theories and establishes a date for deuteronomy far earlier than modern critical scholarship supports. On the other hand, they're…
Comment linking /?p=896
on “Is a long-dismissed forgery the oldest known Biblical manuscript?”