The Rise of “National” Scripts in the Iron Age II: A Proposal

Northwest Semitic paleographic data has inspired a consensus that several “national” scripts had become well-established by the Iron IIB. Many treat these scripts as expressions of self-contained identity. Moreover, they are often framed in ways that gloss over aspects of scribal training. Questions remain, however, regarding the behavioral processes that affected such developments. To account for these processes, we propose a “franchise” model of scribal training: a few centers produced scribal lineages that, once established, operated semi-independently. While some scribes may have been held “on retainer,” most likely hired themselves out on a localized “freelance” system. The selection of national scripts was thus inadvertent and not motivated by exertions of “national” identity. Royal courts of the Iron Age IIB unintentionally adopted “micro-features” of the alphabetic script that had been formalized in the scribal lineage(s) prestigious enough to enjoy employment in major centers. Rather than serving as a distinctive marker of national consciousness imposed from the top-down, the development of “national scripts” was the natural effect of local patronage and “elite emulation” of micro-features by more peripheral scribes. The nationalization of scripts was therefore incidental to the emergent national consciousness and driven by individual scribes and the training regimens connecting them.