The Bullae of the Son of לחוא from the City of David

In the excavations conducted by Y. Shiloh in the City of David in Jerusalem during 1978–1985, an impressive hoard of 45 Hebrew bullae was found in the stratum destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Two of them, stamped by the same seal, were read ןבלהוא ̇םקילאל. The plene spelling with waw for the vowel o in the name להוא was a novelty in the Hebrew epigraphy of the First Temple period, as this was the first time that such a spelling had been found in a fully preserved and provenanced inscription. In this study, it will be shown that the third letter in the second name is, in fact, a ḥet rather than a he and, hence, that the name should be read לחוא. This name is built on the root wḥl, which implies that the letter waw on the bullae is not a mater lectionis. The misreading of this letter led to a series of far-reaching conclusions concerning some aspects of the pronunciation of the Hebrew spoken by the inhabitants of Judah in the 7th–6th centuries BCE and consequently the historical development of the orthography of the Hebrew script, conclusions that should now be revised.