Pottery Shard Containing Oldest Hebrew Text Ever Found is Being Deciphered in America
"The words 'slave, king, land' and 'judge'—indicate that it may be a legal text, lending weight to some scholars' belief that King David wielded considerable power over the Israelites."
(California)—On the trail of the recently excavated 3,000-year-old pottery shard bearing five lines of the oldest Hebrew text ever found that may verify the existence of King David's reign in Israel, we find it now being hyper-examined at Megavision, a digital archiving lab near Santa Barbara .
This "world treasure" sent shock waves around the world when it was found and once the text is deciphered it has the potential to produce many aftershocks.
"To find any text is really off the charts," said David Willner, an expert in Jewish antiquities, "And to have five lines of text is extraordinary." (Photo by: Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)
According to a Los Angeles Times report, a few words already deciphered—"slave," "king," "land" and "judge"—indicate that it may be a legal text, lending weight to some scholars' belief that King David wielded considerable power over the Israelites. (The interpretation of the full text will be published in scholarly journals by Hebrew University).
Greg Bearman, a Pasadena scientist who has done extensive imaging work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, was quoted as saying ancient scribes often wrote on broken bits of pottery because the material was plentiful and cheap and papyrus and parchment were rare.
"It's an exciting thing," said Megavision Chief Executive Ken Boydston, of the shard. "It's almost like passing on genetic codes for our cultural heritage."
