MMST

MMST (Hebrew Mem, Mem, Shin, Tau) appears exclusively on LMLK seal inscriptions, seen in archaeological findings in Israel, and its meaning has been the subject of continual controversy.

Charles Warren excavated the first two specimens in the original 1868-1869 excavations at Jerusalem (Warren, 1870); however, those were both only partial impressions showing the final two letters ST. The first complete inscription was published by Frederick Jones Bliss after excavating it from Tell Ej-Judeideh (Bliss, 1900), later determined to be Biblical Moreseth-Gath. Beginning then, here is a list of all the ancient sites scholars have associated with it:

These proposals fall into two main streams of thought. One philosophical school places MMST in a geographical region based on the identification of three other regions surrounding Hebron, Socoh, and Ziph (the other words on the LMLK seals). The chief problem is that the majority of the seal impressions were not found in any particular region associated with one of the four inscriptions. For example, the majority of HBRN stamps were found at Lachish significantly to the west. An alternative strategy identifies MMST in the vicinity of Jerusalem (which includes Ramat Rachel) based upon the datum that the majority of MMST stamps were excavated in and around there. The chief problem is that there were more HBRN stamps than MMST found at Jerusalem and more Z(Y)F stamps than MMST found at Ramat Rachel (Grena, 2004, pp. 354–60).

In further support of a Place Name interpretation is the notion that MMST was lost from the Hebrew Masoretic text, but preserved via a corrupt Greek transliteration in the Septuagint version of the book of Joshua, 15:59-60 (Rainey, 1982, p. 59):

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