The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced the discovery in Jerusalem of a pottery sherd inscribed in Akkadian cuneiform, believed to be a request from the king of Assyria to the king of Judah for tribute. This is the first Assyrian inscription from the First Temple period discovered in Jerusalem. The sherd is about 1 inch (2.5 cm) in size and was discovered in material that had been swept into a Second Temple-era drainage channel. It likely originated from an earlier structure above, which dates to the First Temple period. The pottery sherd is approximately 2,700 years old and dates to the reign of Hezekiah, Manasseh, or Josiah, when Judah was a vassal state of Assyria. Petrographic analysis reveals that the sherd is composed of clay from the Tigris River basin in Mesopotamia, rather than local clay from the southern Levant. A preliminary translation suggests that the inscription concerns a delay in tribute due to the king of Assyria. In a video (see link below) from the City of David, an expert summarizes the inscription as follows: “And here we actually have a direct letter signed with the seal of the king of Assyria addressed to the king of Judah saying to him, ‘Dear king of Judah, send the tribute quickly by the first of Av and if not the consequences will be severe.’” One possible biblical connection to this artifact appears in 2 Kings 18:7, which records that Hezekiah “rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him.”
Source: https://www.iaa.org.il/en/page/news-index (See Rare Evidence for Royal Assyrian Court Communication to the King of Judah for the First Time in Jerusalem: An Assyrian Inscription from the First Temple Period Was Discovered, [Oct. 22, 2025])
City of David video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoyFwyAlwMk
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