Eilat Mazar, Jewish archeologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem holds a 3000 year old Ancient Pottery Jar Inscription discovered near the Temple Mount (Photo by Ouria Tadmor/Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Shoved, pushed and compressed under to support and stabilize the earth fill that was under the ancient second floor within a large building structure that was discovered dating to the 10th century B.C.E. when Israel’s most famous kings, King David and his son, King Solomon ruled in Jerusalem. There the Jewish archeological team discovered the oldest known written inscription ever discovered in Jerusalem along with pieces of six other large jar of the same type of construction.
There was one problem; all the archeologists are baffled at what is the meaning of the text. This 3,000 year old text of apparent Canaanite origins was discovered along the top of a large earthenware jug with the earliest alphabetical written text ever discovered in the city of Jerusalem.
Though clueless as to the interpretation of the text, the letters from the left to right spell out the letters M, Q, P, H, N, possibly L, and N. According to Mazar, there is no known word known in any western-Semitic language and so the meaning of the inscription still remains elusive. Yet, Mazar speculates that the inscription could have identified the content within the vessel or possible the name of the owner of the vessel. The news articles do not suggest what it may mean by reading the letters from right to left.
Inscribed on the clay of a neck-less ceramic jar, the clay fragment was discovered near the Southern wall of the Temple Mount near what is called the Ophel where the priests lived during their rotations of duty within Solomon’s Temple.
Dated to the 10th century during the era of the beginnings of the United Kingdom of Kings David and Solomon, the textual artifact has been dated to over 250 years before the reign of Judah’s famous and illustrious King Hezekiah. This was the king ruling when King Sennacherib of Assyria penned the people of Jerusalem during a siege of the city like a canary in a cage yet whose entire army was annihilated and vaporized by a bolt of fire from the heavens estimate to have been over a million volts.
Pottery Jar fragment with unknown
Canaanite language discovered by Hebrew University archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (photo credit: Dr. Eilat Mazar/ Noga Cohen-Aloro)
Such an analysis, according to Mazar, the text comes from the Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe who lived in the mountains near Jerusalem and inhabited the region and built Jerusalem prior to the conquest of King David, according to the Book of Samuel. According to the Book of Kings, Jerusalem was known as Jebus. According to the Book of Joshua Adonizedek led a confederation of Jebusite and other tribe against Joshua and was defeated by the incoming Israelites, yet Joshua wrote in Joshua 15:63 that the Tribe of Judah was not able to dislodge the Jebusites from their mountain refuge in Jebus (Jerusalem) with these words; “to this day the Jebusites live there with the people of Judah.”
According to rabbinic literature, Abraham purchased the Cave of Machpelah from the Jebusites and at that time they made a covenant with Abraham that his descendants would not take control of Jebus against the will of the will of the Jebusites. This covenant was engraved into bronze, and as such the Children of Israel in the days of Joshua were not able to conquer the mountain refuge of the Jebusites called Jebus.
In the literature of
the classical era rabbis, King David was also prevented from entering the city
of Jebus, so he promised the reward of military captaincy to whom ever was able
to destroy the bronzes. It was Joab, in the Masoretic version of the texts who
led a surprise attack upon the city by ascending the water supply tunnels from
the Gihon Spring, one of the most fortified regions of Jebus and later
Jebusalem (Jerusalem) which included towers, which truly would have been a
surprise attack, unexpected by the inhabitants living inside the city. This
battle according to the Septuagint states that the Israelites now allying
themselves with King David had to attack the Jebusites “with their dagger(s)
which also may not be incompatible with the historical evidence as they fought
their way into the city.
King David, in spite of conquering the city, also according to the rabbinic history paid the Jebusites the full value of the city from money that was collected from all of the Israelite tribes, so the city of Jerusalem now became common property for all the twelve tribes of Israel. Earlier, according to the Book of Samuel, when King David desired to take control and possession of the city of Jebus, the strongest fortress in the Canaan, they gloated that even the “blind and the lame” could defeat David’s army.
II Samuel 5:6-10 – “The king and his men went o Jerusalem to the Jebusite inhabitants of the land, and [one of them] spoke to David, saying, “You shall not enter here unless you remove the blind and the lame,” as if to say, “David will not enter here.” David then captured Zion fortress, which is called the City of David. David declared on that day, “Whoever smites the Jebusite and reaches the stronghold and the blind and the lame, that David detests…! Therefore [people] say, “The blind and the lame [are here]; he shall not enter the house!” David settled in the fortress and called it “The City of David.” David built around [the city] from the Milo and inward, David kept becoming greater, and HaShem, the G-d of Legions, was with him.”
The Ophel Archeological Gardens on the Southern Side of the Temple Mount [Photo by Robert Mock]
According to Rashi, one of the great sages of Judah in quoting from a Jewish midrash argues that the Jebusites had two statutes in the city of Jebus, with their mouths containing the words of the covenant between Abraham and the Jebusites; one figure, depicting a blind person that represented the Patriarch Isaac, and the other statute depicting a lame person, representing the Patriarch Jacob, whose thigh was lamed with his struggle with the angel of Esau.
The pottery was discovered last year in December 2012 but the details of the discovery were only recently released to the public in a paper in the Israel Exploration Journal, written by Mazar, Ben-Gurion University’s Shmuel Ahituv and Hebrew University’s David Ben-Shlomo. Ahituv was the scholar who studied the inscription and Ben-Shlomo studied the composition of the jar.
Until the year of July, 1993, the name of King David had not been found in archeological remains. At that time at Tel Dan in Northern Galilee, a team of archeologists under the direction of Professor Avraham Biram discovered a triangular piece of a victory pillar erected by the king of Syria that was inscribed in Aramaic. This 9th century BCE basaltic rock that was inscribed in Aramaic included the words, “Beit David” or the “House” or Dynasty” of David.
Later, in February, 2005, Professor Eilat Mazar began digging at the site of the Stepped Stone Structure just south of the Ophel and the Temple Mount nearby to the Gihon Spring a “Large Stone Structure” that has been identified as the Palace of King David. Slowly the G-d of Israel is letting the revelation of the House of Judah’s royal family of Kings David and Solomon to become fully revealed and will gradually unfold into an archeological reality; real people, real places and a real living archeological history.
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The Battle for the Minds of the Human Race is now coming to its fullest revelation. The forces of Darkness battled against the Forces of HaShem’s angels of Light as the final battle over 2000 years ago for the souls of men on Planet Earth. It was the divine rule of HaShem that the Sheep of the House of Judah would be sent into one last exile, yet out of this epic war would set the stage for the restoration for Lost Ten Tribes of the House of Israel and the final redemption of All Israel; the Ten Lost Tribes of the House of Israel and the Jews of the House of Judah.
The Roman Empire was a major part of this Drama of the Ages then and continues to be so today with its Christian descendants, the Roman Catholic Church and her children of the Christian Protestant faith. They will all be participants in the Final Act of that Divine Drama.
These participants not only include the Jews of the House of Judah, the Lost Ten Tribes of the House of Northern Israel; both of the House of Jacob (Israel), but will include the Roman Edomites of the House of Esau, the brother of Jacob of the House of Isaac and the Arabs of the House of Ishmael, the brother to Isaac of the House of Abraham.
If you want to learn more, Contact “Kol Ha Tor Vision”, the Voice of the Turtledove. Here is a joint Orthodox Jewish and 10-Triber Mission to bring awareness of the imminent fulfillment of the Biblical Prophecies regarding the Redemption of all Israel (12 Tribes Re-conciled and Re-United).
The author of this blog is a supporter of Kol Ha Tor Vision and while we are publishing material that may be relevant to the Lost Ten Tribes of the House of Israel, the leadership of Kol Ha Tor do not necessarily agree with everything we have published. Yet, we understand, until the Messiah son of David comes to give us full insight into what is happening to our lives and our world today, we may know only in part while we continue to support the rabbanim of Israel and seek reconciliation with the Jews of the House of Israel until we are finally one family; the family of our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
This reunification will truly be a super Event of all Times that will entail Establishing Shomron (the Ancient Bible Heartland of the Patriarchs) and the Judean Wilderness as part of the Land of Israel, and preparing the “Land” for the Return of the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel and then the Redemption of All Israel.
For inquiries about Kol Ha Tor Vision for the Lost Tribes of Israel, we invite you to make a personal Visit to Israel and stay at “Shomron Lives!”,a Spiritual Retreat and Guest House in Samaria, that hosts Shomron (Samaria) Tours to reacquaint the Returning Lost Tribers of the House of Israel.