LMLK Ligatures |
LMLK Home Biblical Accounts NonBiblical Accounts Theories HBRN MMST SUKE ZYF Generic x (cannot classify) 2-Top 2-Divided 2-Undivided 4-Cursory 4-Lapidarist Jars Personal Seals Incisions Paleography Typologies Corpus Stratigraphy Geography Displays Publications Credits Updates |
When 2 letters overlap or connect, either deliberately or coincidentally so that they appear as a single unit, they form a ligature (a word that means that they are tied or bound together). Of the 21 LMLK seals, ligatures appear on 4 of them: the H4C "BR", S2U "KE", S4L "SU", & M2T "MM". The S2DW & S2DR almost have "SU" ligatures like the S4L, which is interesting since you'll notice that these 4 ligatures represent 4 of the 5 LMLK seal sets--all except for the x2D. Also note that the H4C "BR" ligature appears in lines 1 & 5 of the Siloam Inscription from Hezekiah's tunnel (enclosed by yellow circles in this drawing): Drawing adapted from Kata-Pi Bible Resource Pages; photo from "The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (2nd ed. w/ supplement)" by James B. Pritchard This spectacular color photo is a close-up of the actual BR ligature in the 5th line, taken by Todd Bolen of BiblePlaces Dotcom while visiting the Istanbul Archaeological Museum: |
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This page was created on June 26, 2004, & last updated on October 1, 2005 |