NOTES AND NEWS OBITUARIES Professor Joseph Naveh, a giant of Se mitic epigraphy and palaeography, passed away on 11 November, 2011. His death is a great loss to the field of North-West Se mitic studies and in particular to the disci plines of epigraphy and palaeography. Naveh had an extraordinary eye for the different scripts used in antiquity and pos sessed high sensitivity for language usage in ancient Hebrew and in the various branches and epochs of Aramaic. This, coupled with the ability to make balanced and level-headed judgements of philologi cal and historical circumstances in con nection with the epigraphical material he was interpreting, made him an exception ally gifted scholar. He never sought to go beyond the province of his competence and knowledge, but within the limits he imposed on himself he was a virtuoso. Thus, at one point he formulated rules guiding the work of an aspiring epigra phist (On Sherd and Papyrus. Aramaic and Hebrew Inscriptions from the Second Temple, Mishnaic and Talmudic Periods, Jerusalem, 1992: 208-212 [Hebrew]); these are mostly rules that advocate hu mility and a ready acknowledgement of the limitations of the power of the scholar working on inscriptions. He concludes with a disarming disclaimer (pp. 211-212): 'It would be over pretentious if I were to claim that this book has fulfilled all the rules set up above. I am convinced that the reader will find that I have com mitted both sins of commission and omis sion with regard to those rules. Applying discretionary reasoning cannot be entirely objective. A different scholar may reach a conclusion that is different from mine, perhaps even one that is diametrically op posed to it. Scholars invest in their work something of their own personality and world-view, and their investigation is thus necessarily subjective'. Having had the good fortune to work with him over a long period of time, I de veloped a great respect for his sound eval uation of the sense of a text, for his open mindedness concerning the various possi bilities of interpreting a difficult passage in an inscription or a manuscript docu ment, and for his commonsense approach to the historical context in which a text may have been created. Once he had weighed the various possibilities for un derstanding a passage, he would reach a firm conclusion that was, as a rule, quite convincing. His books and articles have become the standard tools of the trade, and several have become authoritative handbooks for scholars and students. His style of writing was always lucid, straightforward and sparse. He was fair-minded and helpful when asked for advice, and was always kind and dedicated to his students and colleagues, but could be impatient with colleagues who professed to have easy solutions to scholarly questions, who sought to appro priate the work of other scholars, or who acted otherwise unethically. In most cases 113