Two Fragments from a Single Tablet?

Abstract

Abstract This article presents material, palaeographic, and epistolographic arguments in support of the hypothesis that two epistolary fragments recovered at the site of Raʾs Šamra in 1954—RS 18.286[A] and RS 18.[400]—originally belonged to a single tablet. Similar data suggest that the fragment RS 18.286[B], long thought to belong to the same tablet as RS 18.286[A], cannot in fact be accepted to have originated from this tablet. The reconfiguration of these fragments results in new interpretive possibilities and leads us to believe that the tablet of which RS 18.286[A] and RS 18.[400] comprise two parts originally bore a message from the queen to her son—the only such letter in our possession and hence a potentially important addition to our knowledge of Ugaritic epistolary protocol within the royal family.