Artifact
Ketef Hinnom Scrolls
c. 600 BC
The oldest known biblical text ever discovered, providing powerful evidence that the Torah was being copied and revered as Scripture centuries before the earliest previously known manuscripts. Their use as personal amulets shows that ordinary Israelites carried God's blessing with them in daily life.
About this artifact
Discovered in 1979 by Gabriel Barkay during excavations of burial caves at Ketef Hinnom, a site overlooking the Hinnom Valley just south of the Old City of Jerusalem. Among the grave goods in a repository cave were two tiny silver scrolls, rolled up and originally worn as amulets. When painstakingly unrolled using advanced techniques at the Israel Museum, they were found to contain the Priestly Blessing from Numbers 6:24-26 — 'The LORD bless you and keep you' — inscribed in paleo-Hebrew script. Dating to approximately 600 BC, they predate the Dead Sea Scrolls by nearly 400 years, making them the oldest surviving texts of any portion of the Hebrew Bible.
On the timeline
Inscribed on rolled silver near Jerusalem around 600 BC, on the eve of the Babylonian exile — the oldest known text of Scripture, carrying the priestly blessing.
