American Professor Lectures at Hebrew University on Sinai Tablets

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

The recently discovered fragments of the Sinai tablets on Mount Serabit were the subject of a lecture by Prof. Robert Blake of Harvard University at the Institute of Chemistry of the Hebrew University. The subject of his lecture was “Proto-Semitic Inscriptions from Serabit in Sinai.”

The discovery of the fragments of the mysterious “Sinai inscriptions,” which have puzzled archaeologists for years, was the reward of painstaking work and a difficult journey into the interior of the Sinai peninsula by Professors Lake and Blake. The professors, members of the Harvard-Michigan Expedition, had great difficulty in reaching Mount Serabit, which is eleven days’ camel ride from the coast and is in an almost inaccessible part of the region.

After taking the important find to Cairo, where the inscriptions were deposited in the museum, the Professors set to work in an attempt to decipher them. Dr. Butin, director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem, likewise is engaged in deciphering the inscriptions.

The missing link between the language of pictures–hieroglyphics–and the language of letters–the alphabet–may lie in an interpretation of the socalled “Moses inscription,” as the Sinai inscriptions on stone slabs are known.

The Sinai slabs originally were found in 1906 by Sir Flinders Petric, the noted British archaeologist, but were not deciphered until 1916, when Professor Alan Gardiner, the noted British authority, deciphered one word, “ba alat,” which means “mistress.” In 1923, the German archaeologist, Professor Grimme, gave out a complete translation of the slabs, saying they referred to the finding of Moses in the bullrushes. Both Professor Gardiner and Petric, however, declared that Professor Grimme had misunderstood scratchings on the slabs for letters and that the translation had no scientific value.

Archaeologists say that one word “ba alat,” shows that the people of the Sinai Peninsula turned hieroglyphics or word pictures into a sort of alphabet. This is considered of great significance because from these people, the Phoenicians, or Aramaics, may have derived their alphabet, which they passed on to the Greeks, from whom was eventually derived the alphabet in use today.

Prof. Lake lectured last week at the Institute of Jewish Studies on “The Origins of Christianity.”

RAISE $10,000 MORE FOR CREDIT PLAN OF ORT

Judge Edward Lazansky was the guest of honor at a luncheon at the St. George Hotel, arranged by the American Ort.

Congressman Emanuel Celler presided at the meeting and the speakers were: Dr. David Lvovitch, European representative of Ort; Judge Jacob Panken, Judge of the Municipal Court and chairman of the Ort; Judge Algernon I. Nova, Judge of the Court of General Sessions; Dr. Henry Moskowitz, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Ort and Judge Edward Lazansky, Judge of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

At the luncheon, Brooklyn undertook to raise the sum of $40,000 toward the $100,000 Ort Credit Corporation. The Chairman of the Subscription Committee is Judge Algernon I. Nova, assisted by Senator Philip Kleinfeld, Hugh Grant Straus, Levi Rokeach, Harry Peyser, Bernard Bloch, Morris Saltzman, Israel Matz, Louis Boudin and Alexander Dolowitz and M. Michtom. The first subscription was made by Judge Mitchell May and a total of $10,000 was subscribed at the luncheon.

Dr. Lvovitch, who is in America on behalf of the European Ort, referred in his address to Judge Lazansky as one of the initiators of the Ort credit plan. Dr. Lvovitch praised the report of Felix M. Warburg on conditions in Europe. In his thoroughgoing and excellent report on conditions in Europe, Mr. Warburg stressed the fact that the progress made in the work was remarkable and its charitable aspect is almost eliminated, the colonists having started in many instances to repay the monies advanced to them,” he said.