BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

An Assyrian Letter to the King of Judah

Evidence of Assyrian authority found in Jerusalem

For the first time, a fragment of a cuneiform inscription from the First Temple period (c. 1000–586 BCE) has been excavated in Jerusalem. The inscription, believed to be part of a royal correspondence between the court of the Assyrian Empire and the royal court of Judah, pertains to a delay in payment, possibly of a required tax. This scenario fits nicely with the historical context of Judah’s vassalage to the Assyrian Empire as recorded in the Hebrew Bible. It provides a remarkable view into the Assyrian administration of Judah.

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Royal Correspondence

The small clay fragment, which measures about an inch wide, preserves only about 20 cuneiform signs. Yet even these few signs provide a mountain of information, especially since this is one of only two cuneiform inscriptions ever discovered in Jerusalem from the First Temple period. A second fragmentary inscription was found nearby but is still undergoing analysis. Both inscriptions were found in the Davidson Archaeological Park, less than 100 feet from the Western Wall.

According to researchers, the newly announced inscription was likely a bulla used to seal a letter that was written on perishable material, such as papyrus. This can be assumed based on the unusually thin clay upon which the inscription was written, as well as its steep curve and the indentation of what was probably a cord on the backside of the inscription. Such bullae, used to seal documents or containers, were common in the Assyrian Empire and often included a summary of the letter to help the messenger better communicate its contents. It is this very summary, written in the Assyrian dialect of Akkadian, that the inscription contains.

While only part of the original message, the preserved text mentions a due date on the first day of the month of Av, likely for the delivery of a tax or other obligation. The inscription then mentions a chariot officer. Within the Assyrian Empire, chariot officers were high-ranking individuals who could carry messages on behalf of the royal household, as was likely the case with the Jerusalem fragment. Based on this limited information, the team proposes that the letter was likely about a delay, intentional or otherwise, in sending tribute to the Assyrian court.

Petrographic analysis of the clay confirmed that the letter was composed in the Assyrian heartland, near the Tigris River. Paleographic and linguistic analysis of the inscription further supports Assyria as its place of origin. It also fixes the date of the inscription to the eighth or seventh century BCE, during the period in which Judah was a vassal of the Assyrian Empire. While no Assyrian or Judahite king is mentioned, the limited context available in the inscription suggests it likely dates to the reign of Hezekiah, Manasseh, or Josiah.

“While we cannot determine the background for this demand, whether it stemmed from a mere technical delay or was taken as a deliberate step with political significance, the very existence of such an official appeal would seemingly attest to a certain point of friction between Judah and the imperial government,” said Peter Zilberg and Filip Vukosavović, the Assyriologists who studied the fragment, in a press release. They further hypothesize that it could date specifically to the period of Hezekiah’s tax revolt from Sennacherib, as recorded in 2 Kings 18:7.

This inscription marks the only known instance of direct Assyrian royal communication with the Judahite court ever discovered in Jerusalem, although archaeological finds from elsewhere—as well as the biblical text—suggest such communication was not uncommon. “We did not have any evidence for correspondence between Assyria and Judah, which we have always attributed to the fact that such letters might have been written in Aramaic and did not survive,” Zilberg told Bible History Daily. “We have waited for an Assyrian text from Jerusalem for quite a while, and now we finally have it! We do know of emissaries of the Judean court receiving wine rations in Nimrud. But as opposed to the Assyrian province of Samaria and Megiddo, the textual corpus of legal/administrative texts and letters from the Neo-Assyrian period is quite limited [for Jerusalem].”

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The new fragment was spotted during wet sifting of materials excavated from a Second Temple period drainage channel. During construction, the channel cut through the buried ruins of a nearby First Temple period administrative building. This caused material from the earlier building to be mixed in with the drainage channel. Although discovered in a secondary context, the fragment’s location strongly indicates the administrative importance of the area around the Temple Mount during the First Temple period, especially given the presence of the second cuneiform inscription and other finds from the area.

“I spent many years studying Neo-Assyrian legal and administrative texts and Neo-Assyrian letters, which relate to the southern Levant,” said Zilberg. “To tell you the truth, I was not expecting such an amazing find.”

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