How to Read Ancient Texts: With a Focus on Select Phoenician Inscriptions from Malta

How to Read Ancient Texts foregrounds the principles of interpretation that scholars employ when reading ancient inscriptions.In order to better come to grips with Canaanite, such as Phoenician, inscriptions, we need to first understand how people wrote and read texts in the ancient Mediterranean world, including that of the Greeks and Romans.The use of continual script and lack of punctuation did not pose insurmountable problems to the ancients, since spoken language is not built on a division between words but on two-second spurts of sounds with pauses in between.This shows the crucial role that lectors and consequently orality played in antiquity.It is clear that philological analysis is crucial when it comes to reading Phoenician inscriptions, such as those examined here.However, in texts with no word division, no punctuation, and no vowels (such as Phoenician inscriptions), context plays a crucial role.That context turns out to be threefold: the textual context that an inscription