Ostraca from the Tel Arad site. Image by Facebook

By Ari Feldman June 15, 2017

Talk about photogenic: A group of Israeli scientists has engineered a way to read hidden writing on 2,500-year-old pottery shards using a modified digital camera.

The shards, which date to the First Temple period, were discovered in the 1960s near the Dead Sea. They were once pored over by scholars looking for still-visible words and sentences that describe life in the ancient Jewish kingdoms. Since then, however, they have been displayed in the Israel Museum, presumed to be of little further use.

But by taking pictures of the shards in a dark room using different light wave filters attached to their digital camera, the scientists were able to see previously-invisible words and phrases.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The newly-discovered inscriptions describe daily dealings of a military outpost near Tel Arad, and include numbers for orders of wine and flour as well as correspondence with the high command in Jerusalem.

The scientists involved in the experiment have hailed their system’s ease of use.

“It means that every university or archaeological dig can build the camera,” Arie Shaus, a PhD. in mathematics who was a member of the Tel Aviv University team, told the Times of Israel.

“We thought we had a great technique,” added mathematician Barak Sober, “but it turns out that we looked for she-asses and found a kingdom.”

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount