In a western Galilee excavation site, archaeologists unearth a massive stone covered in mysterious Aramaic engravings. Along the Mediterranean coast, scholars are puzzled by Phoenician markings on 4,000-year-old pottery shards. And in the deserts of Jordan, an ancient Moabite altar is discovered, but experts struggle to decipher the inscriptions adorning its surface.
What do each of these cases have in common? When Near East researchers found themselves stumped by the words on ancient artifacts, they all called Christopher Rollston.
Among the world’s leading Near East epigraphers, Rollston is a master of more than a dozen long-dead languages, from Akkadian to Ugaritic. He is a veteran of dig sites like Syria’s Umm e-Marra and Israel’s Megiddo. And, according to Eric Cline, professor of classics and anthropology, “He’s the go-to-guy when you’ve got an ancient inscription that needs translating.”
This fall, Rollston brings his skills and passion—not to mention his encyclopedic knowledge of texts from the Hebrew Bible to the Dead Sea Scrolls—to Columbian College. Or, more precisely, back to Columbian College. A popular visiting professor in the spring 2013 semester, Rollston will return to the school as a full-time associate professor of Northwest Semitic languages and literatures.
“I am delighted to be coming back to George Washington University,” Rollston said. “It is a great university with a distinguished faculty and stellar students. I have rarely enjoyed teaching as much as I did here.”
Rollston is a scholar of the ancient Near East, specializing in the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament Apocrypha, Northwest Semitic literature, paleography and biblical languages. Epigraphy—the translation of ancient inscriptions into modern languages—remains his true passion, and one that he’s eager to convey to students.
“There’s nothing more exciting than reading words that had been buried in the ground for millennia and brought to the light of day by the spade of an archaeologist,” he said. “Even now, although I have handled hundreds of ancient inscriptions, every time I hold one, adrenaline courses through my veins.”
From the Classroom to the Field
Rollston is the author and editor of hundreds of scholarly articles and five well-regarded books, including the acclaimed Writing and Literacy in the World of Ancient Israel: Epigraphic Evidence from the Iron Age (Society of Biblical Literature, 2010). A member of Phi Beta Kappa, Rollston has held two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, most recently at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. In addition to teaching at GW, he was a professor at John Hopkins University (where he also received his PhD) and the Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Tennessee. During the spring of 2014, he taught Northwest Semitic inscriptions at Tel Aviv University.
“Chris is the top epigrapher of our generation, a distinguished scholar and a dynamic teacher,” Cline said. “He’s a rock star—and we are remarkably fortunate to have him.”
In the fall, Rollston will teach classes in Law and Diplomacy in the Ancient Near East and Religion of Ancient Israel. He’s expected to revive his popular 2013 classes on the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gods and Goddess of the Ancient Near East, as well as possible future courses on ancient languages.
But the department sees Rollston’s impact extending beyond his initial course-load. His hire is the first step in the creation of a new major in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Cline said, while his presence lifts the department’s national and international profile. “Adding him as a component to our talented team gives us a Murderer's Row of great professors,” Cline said. “It turns our already-good department into a great one.”
Rollston and Cline were also chosen as co-editors of The Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research (BASOR), the leading scholarly journal of Near Eastern archaeology. Bringing BASOR to GW was a “coup,” according to Cline, one made possible by Rollston’s involvement.
Rollston plans to emphasize an interdisciplinary approach to his Columbian College classes, designing his work to appeal to students and faculty from religion and history to Judaic and women’s studies. He is anxious to involve students in his research endeavors, in particular an online database of ancient Hebrew inscriptions for which he hopes to enlist both humanities students and engineering and computer science majors. “GW students are engaged, ready to learn and anxious to reflect on the precise content and timeless themes of these ancient texts,” he said. “Involving students in research is a win-win.”
His current projects include a book on royal assassinations in the biblical age and another on exposing forgeries of ancient texts. In 2007, Rollston was called as an expert witness for the prosecution in Israel’s infamous “James Ossuary” trial. He testified that the Jehoash Stele—a sandstone tablet purportedly describing repairs to King Solomon's temple—is a modern fake, not an actual ancient inscription. He also maintained that the inscription on the ossuary, a limestone box that some believe held the bones of James, the brother of Jesus, is a fake as well.
At GW, Rollston said his primary goal will be to translate his passion for epigraphy to students, encouraging them to look at each engraving, each slash and curl on relics from ancient idols to cracked clay tablets, as a story about biblical times—a tale of “the greatest of kings or the lowliest of slaves.”
“Inscriptions are a unique and peerless window into the ancient world of humanity past,” he added. “They remind us of where we came from, and the successes and failures of people who lived so very long ago.”