Chicken Little

One of the problems that can occur in epigraphic work comes close to being something like a crossword puzzle. It is the sort of difficulty you can encounter when some part of the text you wish to decipher has, quite literally, been “ripped off.” That is, although the writing that remains is quite easy to read, at some point the page (or stone or tablet) has been partially destroyed–torn away, broken off, disintegrated into dust, or perhaps even eaten by worms!–so that only part of each line of text remains.

The question is, can you fill in all the blanks? As in a crossword puzzle, you might have a number of clues. Sometimes the phrasing is quite stereotypical. Sometimes a text is familiar to you from other biblical or Near Eastern documents. Sometimes you recognize a particular kind of text, whether legal or administrative, a treaty or a hymn. That will help you know what words or phrases are more likely to occur.

Nonetheless, filling in ancient blanks is a very tricky enterprise, necessarily dependent upon the epigrapher’s imaginative genius. And texts do have a way of resisting the best and most ingenious efforts. Even the simplest, seemingly straightforward document can have its quirks and pitfalls that may well lead you astray, so that you brilliantly fill in the blanks–but subsequently discover that you have nonetheless done so incorrectly.

To give you a sense of just how easy and how hard it is to fill in ancient blanks, we have created a special puzzle for you to work out. You can see that it is part of the story called “Chicken Little.” This certainly can help you reconstruct some of the missing portions of the text, for example, the names “Chicken Little” in line two and “Henny Penny” in line five. With your knowledge of the genre of the story you can fill in the first line as “Once upon a time.…” You will realize from your knowledge of the story that there will be phrases or sentences that are repeated.

There are some questions you will need to ask, such as, where does the line start on the left and where does it end on the right? Is the first line indented? Are all of the characters mentioned in the portion of the text that is still visible, or is there another character that might appear?

We invite you to try your hand at reconstructing the story. When you are done, check the solution here. What were the assumptions you made that turned out to be right, and which turned out to be wrong?

(From Puzzling Out the Past: Making Sense of Ancient Inscriptions from Biblical Times [An Exhibition at the Dubin/Wolf Exhibition Center, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, April 5th to November 15th, 1987].)