Letters, Things and Texts. The case of the waw from Proto-Sinaitic to the Hebrew Biblical text

Abstract

An archaeological rest («toggle/clothing-pins»), recurring throughout the Fertile Crescent, from Mesopotamia down the Levant until reaching the eastern Nile delta, in Egypt, had the function of joining the fabrics that originally wore the canaanites. Throughout that territory, and during the coincident Middle Bronze Age, the alphabet created in Sinai by illiterate Semites moved towards one (Wadi el-Ḥôl) and another extreme (Ugarit) promoted by marginal scribes who could have been inspired by this object during the creation of the protosinaitic. In the later Hebrew biblical text, from an identical cultural and linguistic tradition, we find, on the one hand, the costumes as independent actors; and, on the other hand, some hooks (וָוׅים, wawîm), with the name of a letter (וָו, waw), which join the clothes that make up the divine sanctuary. Assuming the materiality of the writing, from the «toggle/clothing-pins» we move on to the form and function of the discourse. The dresses, a sign of divine protection after the expulsion from paradise, and the sanctuary, a sign of the presence of God amid his people after the departure from Egypt, are connected to the announcement and realization of creation (form), and link between Israel and other peoples (function), like the alphabet with the rite.