JERUSALEM (JNS) – The Israel Antiquities Authority has successfully repatriated a rare First Temple-period document from the United States, the IAA announced on Wednesday.
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The papyrus document is written in ancient Hebrew script and is believed to have been found in a cave in the Judean Desert, according to the IAA.
The item consists of four torn lines that begin with the words, “To Ishmael send,” suggesting the fragment is part of a letter containing instructions to the recipient. It therefore likely dates back to the sixth or seventh centuries BCE, joining only two other documents from this period in the IAA’s Dead Sea Scrolls collection.
All three papyri come from the Judean Desert, where the dry climate enabled their preservation.
The story began when Ada Yardeni, Ph.D., a scholar of ancient Hebrew script, died in June 2018. Israel Prize laureate in Biblical Studies Shmuel Ahituv, the former head of the Department of Bible, Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, was asked to complete the publication of her work.