During a 2013 excavation near the Temple Mount area of Jerusalem, Dr. Eilat Mazar and a team from the Hebrew University at Jerusalem discovered an inscription on a fragment of pottery. The fragment is from a storage jar called a pithos, and the script, a form of proto-Canaanite, while only partial and not yet fully deciphered, is the earliest alphabetic text ever found in Jerusalem.

It has been dated to the tenth century B.C., and archaeologists believe it may have belonged to a non-Israelite living in the area during the time of Kings David and Solomon. It and other fragments appeared to excavators to be part of fill rubble used in the construction of a tenth century building (Megan Sauter, “Jerusalem’s Earliest Alphabetic Text,” Bible History Daily at BiblicalArchaeology.org, July 10, 2013).

It’s pretty amazing to think that yesterday’s junk may be tomorrow’s archaeological find. A pile of rubble from an ancient construction project becomes an important source of information in piecing together the use of language in the lands of the Bible.

It also adds to the growing mountain of proof that, despite the voice of skeptics, the reigns of King David and King Solomon where real, were a crossroads of cultures and trade (2 Chronicles 1:13-17, 2 Chronicles 8:17-18), and were therefore influential to the Middle East and beyond during the tenth century B.C.