The Deir 'Alla inscription or Balaam inscription, known as KAI 312, is a famous inscription discovered during a 1967 excavation in Deir 'Alla, Jordan. It is currently at the Jordan Archaeological Museum. It is written in a peculiar Northwest Semitic dialect, and has provoked much debate among scholars and had a strong impact on the study of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions. The excavation revealed a multiple-chamber structure that had been destroyed by an earthquake during the Persian period, on the wall of which was written a story relating visions of Bal'am, son of Be'or, a "seer of the gods", who may be the same Balaam son of Be'or mentioned in and in other passages of the Bible. The Deir Alla inscription's take on Bala'am differs from that given in the Book of Numbers. Bal'am's god is associated with the goddess Šagar-we-Ishtar. Deities with such names, "Šagar-and-Ishtar" (or Aštar ) certainly are known to history, but quite separately. The enigmatic narrative also foregrounds the "Shaddayin" who establish a council. (שדין, deities). It also features the word "Elohin", taken to mean "gods" in the plural rather than the Hebrew deity. It was on ink on plastered wall; as in the plaster inscriptions at Kuntillet Ajrud, black and red inks were used. Red apparently emphasized certain parts of the text. The inscriptions were written with a broad nibbed pen with ink, an extremely early example. They represent the earliest point of evidence in the history of the West Semitic alphabet. The Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies describes it as "the oldest example of a book in a West Semitic language written with an alphabet, and the oldest piece of Aramaic literature."

Reconstruction and translation

When the text was found, it was broken into fragments, which were lying on the ground. The fragments are poorly preserved, and only a part of the text has been found. In all, 119 pieces of ink-inscribed plaster were recovered. The wall, near the summit of the tel, was felled by a tremor. Scholars have succeeded in arranging many of the fragments into two large 'combinations'. At least to some extent, they had use of information about which fragments were found close together or wide apart on the ground. Still, uncombined fragments remain. For the reading of damaged or missing parts of the text, they sometimes had to guess; however, where the same group of words seems to appear in several places, but with different parts damaged in different occurrences, they could reasonably reconstruct a combined text. The first complete translation and reconstruction of the inscription was published in 1981. Today, the text in modern Hebrew letters is available online. The text is difficult to read and to interpret. Here is one reconstruction and translation of the first combination: A more recent and complete English translation can also be found online. The second combination:

Language

Though containing some features of Aramaic, such as the word bar "(son of [Beor])" rather than the Canaanite ben, it also has many elements of Canaanite languages, leading some to believe it was written in a dialect of Canaanite rather than an early form of Aramaic. The inscription has been dated to 880–770 BCE. Klaus Beyer calls the language South Gileadite. Holger Gzella reckons the mixture of Canaanite vocabulary and narration with a primarily Aramaic grammatical core reflect a translation of a Syria-Palestinian story into a literary Aramaic text. The Semitic Etymological Dictionary categorizes the Deir Alla language as simply "dialect of the inscription from Deir Alla."

Unknown script and cannabis findings

In the 1960s, in addition to hundreds of vessels like bowls and jars, seven clay tablets were found with an unknown script. They haven't been fully deciphered, nor has their clay been tested to see if it's local to Deir Alla. Cannabis has been found as hemp here and at another Iron Age cultic site, Tel Arad in the Negev, as burned incense or drug.