Theologie
David S. Vanderhooft
Wadi el-Hôl Inscription 2 and The Early Semitic Alphabetic Graph *ǵ, *ǵull-, »yoke«
Jahrgang 2 (2013) / Heft 2, S. 125-135 (11)
In the second of two early alphabetic inscriptions from the Wadi el-Hôl in Egypt, an unidentified graph appears twice. I hypothesize that the acrophone for the graph is the double ox-yoke with neck thongs on each end, which was called a *ǵullu, »yoke« in Proto-Northwest Semitic. According to this hypothesis, *ǵullu is the acrophone for the Proto-Semitic phoneme */ǵ/. On this basis, I offer a tentative decipherment of the inscription.