While looking at the Babylonian incantation bowls found at Nippur and kept at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia during the academic year 1992–93, i when I had the privilege of being a fellow of the Annenberg Institute, I came across three ostraca which seem to have escaped notice so far. Professor Wansbrough has been interested in so many aspects of the history of the Near East that I hope that this new find will also please him.

Two of the ostraca in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania are Parthian. The third is written in the Aramaic script but contains apparently a Middle Persian inscription. I hope to publish it shortly.

Parthian ostracon 1 (pis. I-II)

One of the two Parthian ostraca, B2983 in the Museum collection, is written on a piece of pottery now measuring a maximum of 12 x 7 cm. The potsherd is not preserved in its entirety. It is chipped on the left, at the end of line 1, and the fact that lines 4–6 are missing their endings shows that there was a piece broken diagonally in the lower left side of the pottery piece. It is written in the chancery style of Parthian, both as far as its script and as far as its language is concerned. It is quite close in its opening style and ductus to the Parthian letter on parchment found at Dura Europos.

In his article ‘Lecture de la Fātiḥa’ Muhammad Arkoun develops principles for a contemporary rereading of scripture which differ markedly from those of classical exegesis. The latter rests upon the dogmatic certainty that scripture constitutes the only truth and the whole truth; hence it sees its task as rendering this truth accessible by recourse to a wide range of explanatory techniques. Arkoun's principles, on the other hand, are based upon the realization that in the present circumstances man's understanding of himself must be acquired not by remaining within the fold of one assumed source of truth but by transcending the panoply of ‘biophysical, economic, political, linguistic constraints’ which delimit his condition. As result, such knowledge must consist in repeated and risky forays ‘beyond the enclosures which all cultural traditions tend to erect after a phase of intensive elaboration’ (Arkoun, 1982: 50).