Ancient Hebrew inscription refers to lousy wine

(ANNB) - An ancient eight-letter inscription — dating back to King Solomon’s reign in Jerusalem some 3,000 years ago — was deciphered by a researcher from the University of Haifa, shedding light on the Solomonic kingdom’s impressively sophisticated administrative system.

The carving was discovered on a clay jug in the Ophel area, near the southern wall of the Temple Mount, by a Hebrew University archaeological team headed by Dr. Eilat Mazar. It is considered the most ancient Hebrew engraving to emerge from the archaeological digs in Jerusalem to date.

However, the meaning of the cryptic inscription eluded researchers until Professor Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa interpreted it as a classification of a type of wine stored in the jug. He published his findings in the journal “New Studies on Jerusalem.”

According to Galil, the first intact letter of the inscription was actually the last letter of a longer word that got cut off and represented the date. The middle portion refers to the type of wine in the jug, a cheap variety. The final letter was also cut off from a longer word, and according to

Galil listed the location from which the wine was sent. Galil estimated that the carving was written in the middle of the tenth century BCE, after King Solomon built the First Temple, his palaces, and the surrounding walls that unified the three areas of the city — the Ophel area, the city of David, and the Temple Mount. These tremendous infrastructural projects contributed, Galil said, to the sudden need for copious quantities of poor-quality wine.