User:Samlidbury/sandbox

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The majority of incantation bowls were written in Jewish Aramaic by Jewish scribes. The majority of the Mesopotamian area's population was either Christian, Manichean, or those of the ancient Babylonian religion, all of whom spoke Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. Zoroastrians who spoke Persian also lived here. Mandaeans and the Jews, both minority populations, each used their own Aramaic dialect. The majority of recovered incantation bowls were written in Jewish Aramaic. These are followed in frequency by Mandaean Aramaic, and then by Syriac. A handful of bowls have been discovered that were written in Arabic or Persian. An estimated 10% of incantation bowls were not written in any real language but pseudo-script. They are thought to be forgeries by illiterate “scribes” and sold to illiterate clients. The bowls are thought to have been regularly commissioned across religious lines.

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The inscriptions often include scriptural quotes, even quotes from rabbinic texts. The text on incantation bowls is the only written material documenting Jewish language and religion recovered from the period around the writing of the Babylonian Talmud. Scholars say that the use of rabbinic texts demonstrates that they were considered to have supernatural power comparable to that of biblical quotes. The bowls often refer to themselves as "amulets". The Talmud discusses the use of amulets and magic to drive away demons, incantation bowls are certainly one of those things.

"Cisjordan Corpus" section to add to Tell Keisan
Phoenician era Tell Keisan, particularly during the second half of the 11th century BC, is one of the find spots of silver hoards belonging to the Cisjordan corpus of hacksilber. The hoard was found in the courtyard of a domestic complex inside of a Phoenician Bichrome jug in Stratum 9a, Area B, L635. The hoard is the dated the earliest of the hoards in the Cisjordan corpus. The hoard includes cut ingots, sheets, wires, rods, jewelry, four linen wrapped bundles of hacksilber sealed with unbaked clay bulla e, and loose fragments. The total weight of the hoard was 345g.Tell Keisan along with Tel Dor are the only locations in the Near East where bundles sealed with bullae have been found. The silver found here contains copper percentages, (19 ± 12.6%), that is much higher than naturally occurring amounts. Eshel et al infers that this indicates that copper was intentionally added to the silver. This is one of the factors that causes Eshel et al to refute the idea that the Cisjordan corpus was quality controlled.