Today, I received my copy of the new issue of ZDPV, which has an article by Stefan Wimmer and yours truly (Wimmer, S., and Maeir, A. 2007. The Prince of Safit: A Late Bronze Age Hieratic Inscription from Tell es-Sâfi/Gath. Zeitschrift Des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 123(1): 37–48). The article discusses a small Egyptian Hieratic inscription that was found in the 2006 season at Tell es-Safi/Gath in the excavations in Area F. The inscription is similar to other Hieratic inscriptions from Southern Canaan dating to the Late Bronze Age (in fact, Stefan, Mario Martin and myself have already published an earlier one from Safi, published several years ago in Egypt and the Levant [Maeir, A., Martin, M., and Wimmer, S. 2005. An Incised Hieratic Inscription from Tell es-Safi, Israel. Egypt and the Levant 14: 125–34]). These inscriptions are part of the evidence for the intense involvment of the Egypt in Canaan during the latter part of the Late Bronze Age.
The sherd itself is dated to the end of the Late Bronze Age and the suggested reading is:
“PN (”personal name”), the prince of Sa-Pa-[...].”
Without going into all the details (read the article!), we raise the suggestion that the partially surviving toponym “Sa-Pa-[...]” may refer to a site with a name such as Sapit/Zefat/etc. We suggest connecting this to the ‘Zefat” and “Valley of Zefata” that are mentioned in the region of the Shephela in the Bible (Judges 1:17; 2 Chron 14:9); and also, we suggest that perhaps this is a name of Tell es-Safi itself.
In other words, perhaps the site of Gath had two names in ancient times - Gath and Zefat. This would explain, perhaps, why the site was named Tell es-Safi in later times, while the name Gath was forgotten - not due to a change in the name, but rather, a continuation of one of the original names.
Similar situations are known from other sites in the ANE, where one site has two names - such as Jerusalem/Zion; Laish/Dan; Bethel/Luz; etc.
Very interesting - although I’m sure that this won’t be accepted by all …
Aren
