Rare Document Reveals 2,700-Year-Old Jewish Ties to Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, Israel -- On the same day the United Nations group UNESCO basically denied any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, a newly discovered piece of history calls that claim into question.

This rare find links the Jewish people to Jerusalem as far back as 2,700 years ago.

The small papyrus document contains the earliest mention of Jerusalem ever found outside of the Bible.

"Prior to this there were only two other papyrus written in Hebrew found from this period at all," IAA scroll researcher Oren Ableman told CBN News.  "And perhaps the greater significance is that for the first time we have in Hebrew the name Jerusalem on an artifact."

Both the style of the script as well as carbon-14 analysis dated the artifact to the first Jewish Temple period, in the seventh century B.C.

According to the IAA, the fragment says: "From the king's maidservant, from Na'arat, jars of wine, to Jerusalem."

Photos by Shai Halevi.

Eitan Klein, deputy director of the IAA's unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, said the document is a shipping certificate from a place called Na'arata, or Na'aran, to Jerusalem.
 
"And in the shipment certificate we mention that two jars of wine are going to be shipped from Na'aran to Jerusalem," Klein explained.

Na'arat is mentioned in the book of Joshua as a place located on the border between the tribes of Benjamin and Ephraim.
The IAA's unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery seized the fragment from Palestinian looters, excavating without a license.

"We succeeded to catch the item," Klein said. "We understood that we have something very, very important in our hand.  We read it and we understood its value."

Klein said they had taken it from the same area where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found decades ago.

"Until today, only in the Judean Desert have scrolls been found because the conditions in the Judean Desert are the best for these organic materials," said Pnina Shor,  curator and director of the Dead Sea Scrolls unit of the IAA.

Shor says it's not that other writings didn't exist; it's just that they weren't preserved by the desert dry heat but instead disintegrated.

"This particular papyrus is actually a miracle because here we're talking about a papyrus from First Temple times," Shor told CBN News.

Ableman says the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is clear.

"This is a period we know from various historical accounts both from the Bible and from external sources that there was the kingdom of Judea at this period.  The Jews today very much consider ourselves the continuation of this kingdom," Ableman said.

In addition to the Jerusalem connection, Shor says if the reading is correct there's also a new understanding of the role of women at that time.

"If it's 'amat ha'melech' -- that's the slave, a woman officer or slave of a king," Shor explained. "So not only are we talking about Jerusalem, we're also talking about women who are in high office."

As for the UNESCO vote, experts agreed it wasn't based on facts.

"Leave UNESCO aside – it's a political decision," said Dr. Shmuel Ahituv, professor emeritus at Ben Gurion University. "It has nothing to do with reality."

Ableman agreed, saying, "It has no meaning whatsoever for archaeologists or historians. I deal with research not with politics."

"I'm an archaeologist. I just explained in length all the reasons why this papyrus is so very important. And why it is dated to the First Temple time," Shor said.  "So you tell me."  

Ableman added it's not only an important find for Jewish history but also for development of the world.