Ophel Inscription

The Ophel Inscription was found by archaeologist Eilat Mazar in 2012 during her excavations on the Ophel, just south of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It is a fragment of a large clay storage jar (pithos), bearing a short line of letters incised before firing, in an early alphabetic script. Dated by the pottery found with it to around −1000, it is the oldest alphabetic inscription yet found in Jerusalem.

Its few letters have been read in several ways, among them a label for the jar's contents, such as a kind of wine, or a personal name, and scholars disagree whether the language is Hebrew or another Canaanite dialect. Even so, it shows that someone in Jerusalem was writing in the time of David and Solomon, which bears on the debate over whether the city was then an administrative center with scribes. Together with the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon and the Tel Zayit abecedary, it adds to the evidence for writing in Judah at the time, though one short text cannot prove widespread literacy.