by
Victor H. Mair
University of Pennsylvania
On August 7, 1990, I received through intramural mail two photocopies of sheets from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Professor Robert Kraft of the Department of Religion had sent them to me on behalf of Neil Altman whom I had never met and with whom I had never discussed the manuscripts. Mr. Altman had merely called me on the telephone about a week earlier and I had agreed to examine two strange symbols that he had found on the manuscript of the "Rules of the Community" (1QS) to determine whether or not, as he requested, they were "ancient Japanese signs."
When I opened the envelope that Professor Kraft sent to me for Mr.
Altman, it seemed immediately obvious that the symbols were either
stylized forms of or rather clumsy attempts to write the Chinese character
. This character means "God;
divine king, deceased king; emperor." In Modern Standard Mandarin, the
word that this character stands for would be pronounced tì
according to Wade-Giles romanization (sounds like "dee") and in Old
Sinitic reconstruction, from a time closer to the presumable age of the
Dead Sea Scrolls, it would have been pronounced roughly *tigh or
*tikh.
The two symbols occur on pages 139 and 142 of what is labeled "IX -- The
Order of the Community." Other than what I could glean from that
heading, since I do not read Hebrew, I had absolutely no idea what the
contents of the text were. The two symbols appear thus: 
(p. 139), 
(p. 142). The
angular extensions of the topmost stroke and the two horizontal lines
are a sure sign of Chinese brush calligraphy or, more likely, an effort
to approximate it with some other type of writing instrument. The
technical term for these two strokes are respectively chih-tien
("vertical dot"), in which the tip of the brush moves upwards first and
then downwards, and p'ing-kou ("flat hook") in which the brush is
lowered toward the writing surface as it reaches the rightmost extremity of a
horizontal stroke and then stretches downward and to the left to form the
hook.1 These are very distinctive traits in Chinese
calligraphy that, aside from the overall shapes of the two graphs in
question, help to identify them as sinographs (han-tzu). Just as
it is possible to imitate in a conventional fashion with pencil or pen
the essential wedge-shaped strokes of the stylus in cuneiform
writing,
so
it is possible to approximate roughly the effect of Chinese brush
strokes with other types of writing instruments. Nonetheless, it is
important to remember that the shapes of cuneiform and brush calligraphy
are a function of the tools and materials used for these scripts.
Attempts to reproduce them in another medium will consequently stand out
as artificially derivative.
is the "standard" (k'ai-shu) form of
the graph I have been discussing. This means that the two strange
symbols on the Dead Sea Scrolls which appear to be mimicking it could
not possibly be dated before about 100 CE when the standard form of the
characters came into being. My impression, moreover, is that the two Dead Sea
Scroll symbols are much later, perhaps by as much as 700 or even more
years. I base this judgement on the general appearance of the symbols in
comparison with those on manuscripts I have examined which date to
approximately that period and were found in Central Asia.
I stated above that I consider these two symbols on the manuscript to be clumsy attempts at writing a specific Chinese character. Before I go into the specific analysis of what led me to that conclusion, I should state that this was also part of my initial reaction when I looked at these two symbols. In the first place, they remind me very much of the crude efforts to write characters of Central Asians (e.g., Sogdian Manichaeans, Khotanese Buddhists, and Uighur Moslems) who came in contact with Chinese civilization. Since I have worked extensively on such documents that were recovered from the sites of Tun-huang (in the Kansu Corridor), Turfan (near the eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert), and other sites in Chinese Central Asia, the two odd Dead Sea symbols actually struck me as having a quite familiar appearance. To a certain extent, they also have the look of characters that are often drawn by students in first- and second-year Mandarin classes or of Sinophilic autodidacts and other kinds of serious neophytes who are attracted to Chinese characters.
As for the revealing errors that give the two symbols away as definitely not having been drawn by an accomplished Chinese calligrapher, the one on p. 142 has hooks at the left and right extremities of both its horizontal lines while the one on p. 139 omits both of the hooks on the left side but keeps them on the right side (the hook on the lower of the two lines is noticeably exaggerated). As a matter of fact, the second horizontal line should be hooked at both left and right extremities, while the first horizontal line should not have hooks at either extremity. More precisely, there should be a hsiang-sheng-tien ("upward dot," basically the "vertical dot" inverted, the brush tip moving first upwards, then downwards, and finally ever so slightly to the left) at the left end of the second horizontal line, and a hook (p'ing-kou) at the right end. The symbol on p. 142, furthermore, lacks one of the two vertical lines that should appear between the two horizontal lines. Both symbols deteriorate rather badly below the second horizontal line, but the one on p. 142 is still vaguely recognizable as trying to reproduce the lower component of the character for ti ("God"). Unfortunately, it replaces the "cloth" radical (no. 50, pu), which should be in this position, with what appears to be a yin-ch'iang ("chanting cricket") stroke. The final vertical stroke, however, is clearly reminiscent of the strong vertical stroke of the pu radical. The triangle at the bottom of the symbol on p. 139 is wholly impermissible in proper Chinese calligraphy. In any event, these are typical kinds of errors encountered in the writing of Chinese characters by relative beginners. It is very easy to mangle this extremely complicated script.
On Tuesday, August 14, Mr. Altman and his wife came to my office to pick
up my report. I had already written out by hand the above paragraphs but
had not found the opportunity to type them up. While he was in my
office, Mr. Altman showed me p. xvi of a book entitled The Dead Sea
Scrolls of St. Mark's Monastery.2 Figure 1 on that page
gives ten "marginal markings" that were found on the Isaiah Scroll. Mr.
Altman asked me whether I believed that any of the ten symbols
reproduced there were Chinese characters. Number 6 ( 
) looks exactly like the hurriedly written form of
(shih, "corpse; effigy used to represent
a spirit during sacrificial ritual") which is still very common today
but has probably been written more or less in this fashion for about
1,800 years. Number 4 ( 
) could well be the
Small Seal (hsiao-chuan) script form of 
(jih, "sun") which would have been current from about 221-207 BCE
but is still used when one wishes to affect an archaic appearance. I
would not dare to hazard a guess concerning the possible identity of
numbers 5, 8, 9, and 10.
Numbers 1, 2, 3, and 7 of Figure 1, however, are extremely interesting.
Number 7 ( 
), in particular, is certainly a
debased transformation of the same symbol that occurs on pp. 139 and
142. The topmost stroke has a greatly elongated neck, but carefully
keeps its tell-tale hook. The first horizontal line is identical to that
of the symbol on p. 142 (viz., incorrectly hooked at both ends) and the
second horizontal line is hooked only on the right extremity (both ends
should be hooked). As with the symbol on p. 142, there is only one
vertical line (stylistically slanted like the ones on pp. 139 and 142;
this is permissible and even encouraged in handwritten forms of the
character) between the two horizontal lines, but here it is the left
one, whereas the symbol on p. 142 has only the right one, while the
symbol on p. 139 correctly has both. The final vertical stroke lacks
only a crosspiece with downward bent arms to prevent it from being a
perfect radical no. 50 which is what should be found at the bottom of
the graph for "God."
Item number 1 of Figure 1, namely 
, is probably
a further deformation of the same symbol. The upper five strokes have
been compressed into a zigzag, but the hooked right extension of the
second horizontal stroke is clearly depicted. Somewhat puzzling is the
short cross-stroke at the foot of the symbol, but I suspect that this is
all that remains of the crosspiece of radical no. 50 which belongs at
the bottom of the graph.3 No. 2 ( 
)
might then be an extreme simplification of No. 1, and No. 3 ( 
) an unusual cursive variant of No. 2. Having
struggled to read handwritten letters from hurried friends in China and
having had to decipher the abbreviated Running Style (hsing-shu)
and even more pared-down "Grass" (i.e., Cursive) Script
(ts'ao-shu) on manuscripts, it is not entirely unusual to find
Chinese graphs being so drastically reduced.4 What is
unusual, however, is the deliberateness with which it appears to have
been carried out here, especially in no. 1, no.2, and no. 3 of Figure
1. That is to say, once again, that these graphs do not have the natural
appearance of quickly written authentic Chinese brush- or pen-writing.
On the contrary, they look as though someone acquainted with, but not
wholly adept at, advanced styles of Chinese calligraphy tried (more or
less unsuccessfully, to my mind) to copy them. They are stiff and
stilted instead of being smooth and flowing.
Aside from the above findings, I shall refrain from making any other statements concerning the significance of these remarkable symbols on the Dead Sea Scrolls because I am wholly ignorant of what issues are involved. My sole intent has been to describe the symbols as accurately and objectively as possible from the viewpoint of a Sinologist.
1. Descriptions of 60 different types of Chinese brush strokes are given in Chiang Yee, Chinese Calligraphy: An Introduction to Its Aesthetic and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 153-162.
2. Such, at least, was the wording of the running head. Since I only saw a single photocopied page, I have no other information concerning publication data.
3. This symbol is graphically very closely linked to 
which appears in
the top left margin of p. 133 (1QS, IV) which Mr. Altman brought to my
office on August 14, 1990.
4. See Fang-yü Wang, Introduction to Chinese Cursive Script (New Haven: Far Eastern Publications, Yale University, 1958; sixth printing, 1972) for a description of this enormously difficult writing system.
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Three calligraphic styles of the Chinese graph for "God" (ti) from a primer. From right to left: Standard, Running, Cursive. The upper forms are written with a brush and the lower forms with a ball-point pen. A center line is drawn in lightly to assist the novice in maintaining a symmetrical balance. The small type set graphs are tips on how to achieve the correct forms. Note that the topmost stroke in these properly executed forms is a hsiang-tso tien ("leftward dot"), in which the tip of the brush travels first ever so slightly to the left, then downward to the right, and then lifts ever so slightly to the left (also called a "tiger's claw"). This is in contrast to the incorrectly executed pseudo "vertical dots" of the topmost strokes of the two symbols on pp. 139 and 142 of 1QS. |
© 1990. Victor H. Mair. All Rights Reserved.
This report, originally written in 1990, is posted with permission of the author.
Page references for 1QS are to Scrolls from Qumrân Cave I: The Great Isaiah Scroll, The Order of the Community, The Pesher to Habakkuk from photographs by John C. Trever (Jerusalem: The Albright Institute of Archaeological Research and the Shrine of the Book, 1972).