"The Retrograde Hebrew and Aramaic Dictionary provides scholars with a tool to decipher and reconstruct ancient Jewish manuscripts and inscriptions. All entries of the dictionary are arranged alphabetically in retrograde sequence, i.e. beginning with the last character of each word. The lemma list ... has been compiled from the lexicon of the Hebrew Bible as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls and any Jewish manuscript or instription from Coile-Syria dating up to 135 C.E. Additionally it takes the Words of Ahikar and other texts from the ancient Jewish settlement on the Nile island of Elephantine into consideration"--P. [4] of cover.