In a press release on Monday, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced that a tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – was found in excavations outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls. The clay fragment (pictured) contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem.
The fragment was written by a highly skilled scribe that probably prepared tablets for the royal house of the time, said Wayne Horowitz, a scholar of Assyriology at Hebrew University Institute of Archeology, who helped decipher the script.
Tablets with diplomatic messages were routinely exchanged between kings in the ancient Near East, Horowitz said, and there is a great likelihood, because of its fine script and the fact it was discovered adjacent to in the acropolis area of the ancient city, that the fragment was part of such a “royal missive.”
Examination of the material of the fragment by Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, shows that it is from the soil of the Jerusalem area and not similar to materials from other areas, further testifying to the likelihood that it was part of a tablet from a royal archive in Jerusalem.
The leader of the excavation which uncovered the fragment, Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, said that this new discovery provides solid evidence of the importance of Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age (the second half of the second century B.C.E.), and acts as a counterpoint to some who have used the lack of substantial archeological findings from that period until now to argue that Jerusalem was not a major center during that period. It also lends weight to the importance that accrued to the city in later times, leading up to its conquest by King David in the 10th century B.C.E., she said.
You can find the press release in full below:
http://www.huji.ac.il/cgi-bin/dovrut/dovrut_search_eng.pl?mesge127893731332688760