The Silver Scrolls of Ketef Hinnom, Amulets of Ancient Jerusalem
The two silver scrolls from Ketef Hinnom in Jerusalem: Iron Age amulets bearing the priestly blessing of Numbers 6, the oldest known biblical text.
In 1979, during excavations of a group of rock-cut tombs at Ketef Hinnom, on the slope of the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem, a small deposit that had escaped looters was found. Among pottery, jewellery, arrowheads and bones were two tiny silver scrolls. Opened with great care, they revealed a text that would make them famous throughout the world and that changed our knowledge of the history of the Hebrew Bible.
Two amulets to wear at the neck
The scrolls are very thin sheets of silver, rolled into cylinders and pierced to be strung on a cord. The larger one is only a few centimetres long. They were probably worn as amulets and placed in the tomb with the deceased. The archaeological context and the letter forms, in the Palaeo-Hebrew alphabet, place them for most scholars between the late seventh and early sixth centuries BC, shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 or 586 BC.
A minority of scholars has proposed a later date, in the Persian or Hellenistic period, on palaeographic grounds. The debate remains open, but the early date is now the most widely followed, also in the light of the re-examination of the texts carried out in the years after the discovery. The pottery found in the same burial chamber also helps to fix the chronology of the deposit.
The priestly blessing
The engraved text is a version of the priestly blessing from the book of Numbers, chapter 6, which begins with the words “The Lord bless you and keep you”. It is the oldest known attestation of a passage that is now part of the Hebrew Bible, several centuries earlier than the Qumran manuscripts. The divine name YHWH appears written in full. The scrolls also contain other phrases, partly damaged, that seem to invoke protection against evil.
Reading the invisible
A full reading took time. The fragile, corroded sheets were opened in the laboratories of the Israel Museum, and a first edition of the text was published in the late 1980s. In the early 2000s a team of researchers re-examined the scrolls with high-resolution photography and new imaging techniques, improving the reading of many letters and confirming the general interpretation. Today the scrolls are on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Text and protection
The Ketef Hinnom scrolls show that, already in the Iron Age, the written sacred word could be worn as protection. It is the same principle that, in different forms, is found in Phoenician amulet cases, in Greek lamellae and later in the tradition of phylacteries. In this case, however, the text coincides with a liturgical formula still recited today in synagogues and churches, which makes the discovery all the more significant.
Two objects small enough to sit on a fingertip have thus altered our knowledge of the history of the biblical text. Born as personal amulets, meant to protect an inhabitant of Jerusalem more than twenty-six centuries ago, they have become documents of the first rank for epigraphy, for archaeology and for the history of the religions of the Near East.