The tablets

Some time before the creation of the Psalm 119 scroll, I had always wanted to know how clay tablets with inscriptions on them would look, feel, and sound. Being extremely interested in Ancient Near Eastern history, I was fascinated by clay tablets and how whole civilizations based their economy on them. In fact, the origin of writing can be traced back to clay tablets. For the Wikipedia article that gives you an overview, click here.

So, I decided to go for it. Since I love Paleo-Hebrew (could you tell?) I thought I'd write the 1st chapter of Genesis on clay tablets, using my favorite script - the Tel Dan stele script. Now there is absolutely no evidence that the Israelites ever used clay tablets for writing, but I thought it was cool so I went ahead and did it anyway.

The preparation process was painstaking. I had to translate the Masoretic Hebrew script (see my previous post, Paleo-Hebrew comparison) into Paleo-Hebrew letter by letter. I had a digital version of the Hebrew Old Testament on one side of the screen, and my word processor on the other side, typing what I saw and interpreting each alef, bet, gimmel, etc. into Roman alphabetic keystrokes, which in turn showed up in Paleo-Hebrew script on my word processor. Makes me tired remembering that. Come to think of it, that's what I had to do with my Psalm 119 scroll, too.

Once I had the Paleo-Hebrew transcription printed out on sheets of paper, it was time to make the tablets. I took some Prang self-hardening clay and sliced it with a knife into four tablets (at the time, I didn't know it was going to be four). I then massaged the slice of clay with my hands until I got a good tablet.

I then used a mechanical pencil to carefully incise the surface of the tablet with the Hebrew characters. At first, I wasn't sure it would work, as a test with some regular clay proved to be disastrous. I then realized that it depended on the wetness of the clay. If it was too wet, the clay was too easy to penetrate with the thin tool I was using. This would result in a line that was too thin and could be easy to erase by accident. If it was too dry, the clay would clump up and be virtually impossible to write on.

So I used a careful application of spray bottle, keeping the surface just moist enough to allow a perfect incision that, if done correctly, would cause the surrounding clay to follow the pencil downwards slightly. Needless to say, from the photos below it is easy to see that this was not achieved every time. Take this close-up, for instance:

This was my first tablet and there so are many signs of amateur craftsmanship that I cringe to look at it today. Some of the places where the letter curves were particularly difficult, so I was forced to employ a sort of pointillism in achieving the flowing lines. You can see the evidence of this if you look closely. Later on in the project, I learned how to avoid this, resulting in a better-looking body of text:

The clustering of the text toward the bottom of Tablet 3 looks cool, but was really a result of poor planning. I was trying to avoid ending a tablet in the middle of a verse, and as a result I ended up cramming dozens of characters into a tiny spot.

It felt good to finish the project. When they were dried, I now had four clay tablets that made a satisfying clinking sound when they rub together, similar to what the ancients heard thousands of years ago.

  All four tablets together

 Another close-up