Saturday, November 12, 2011

Largest Paleo-Hebrew Inscription in the History of the World

In case anyone ever wonders just how "into" LMLKology I am, the proof is on my roof:



Unlike most of my 400-pixel-wide blog photos, this one is linked to a 1663-pixel-wide version if you click on it.

For the sake of Guinness researchers (warning, repulsive images on their site), the actual size of the painted region spans:

  • 298" (24.8 feet; 757 cm) right-to-left in the image, east-to-west on the planet


  • 151" (12.6 feet; 384 cm) top-to-bottom = north-to-south


My measurement tolerance was about 1". At about 312 square feet, I'm not aware of any serious competition. Here's a quick survey of the closest contenders:

  • The famous Balaam plaster texts found at Deir 'Alla in highly fragmented condition spanned about 56 square feet (11.5 x 4.9 per P. Kyle McCarter's "Ancient Inscriptions", p. 96).


  • The largest/longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls (The Temple Scroll) spans about 28 square feet (generously granting its original size to have been about 1 foot tall), though it is not in Paleo-Hebrew as a few of the other fragments are.


  • The Mesha Stele (a.k.a. Moabite Stone) was a mere 10 square feet.


  • The largest Phoenician-alphabet letters I'm aware of are on the Nora Stone, which span just under 7 square feet in its present condition (it was probably a little larger originally). Its 4th line begins with "LM" (the middle of "peace"), & its 6th line begins with "LK" (the middle of a person's name). If rearranged to form "LMLK", it would only be about 8"x4", though still quite huge for an ancient inscription (a bulla recently auctioned by Robert Deutsch contained a "LMLK" only a few millimeters wide).


I've been wanting to do this ever since I bought the house 3 years ago, mostly because I thought it would look cool on Google's Maps or Earth program (or other satellite-image sites such as Bing, Mapquest, & Yahoo) the next time they update their images.

"...as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."--Joshua 24:15

And we definitely belong to the King!

G.M. Grena

P.S. No song for this article; considered "Up On a Roof" & "From a Distance", but neither seemed quite right.

1 comment:

Todd Bolen said...

I'm glad you were finally able to do this! I look forward to seeing it on Google when they update their imagery.