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The Arad ostraca, also known as the Eliashib Archive, is a collection of more than 200 inscribed pottery shards (also known as sherds or potsherds) found at Tel Arad in the 1960s by archeologist Yohanan Aharoni.[1] Arad was an Iron Age fort at the southern outskirts of the Kingdom of Judah, close to Beersheba in modern Israel.[2]
One hundred and seven of the ostraca are written in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet and dated to circa 600 BCE. Of the ostraca dated to later periods, the bulk are written in Aramaic and a few in Greek and Arabic.[3]
The majority of the Hebrew ostraca are lists of names and administrative letters to the commanders of the fort; everyday correspondence between military supply masters, requests for supplies, and so on. Most of them are addressed to Eliashib (also transliterated Elyashiv; not to be confused with the biblical high priest Eliashib), thought to be the quartermaster of Arad.[4]
Eighteen ostraca consisting mainly of letters addressed to Eliashib were found in a chamber of the casemate wall of the fort.[5] These are known as the Eliashib Archive.
- ^ Pike 2020, p. 203: About two hundred inscriptions were discovered at Arad in excavations carried out from 1962 to 1964, most of them ostraca.; Aharoni 1968, p. 9: over 200 ostraca were found
- ^ Mendel-Geberovich et al. 2017, p. 113; Sci-News.com 2020; Pike 2020, p. 203; Borschel-Dan 2020
- ^ Pike 2020, p. 203: One hundred and seven of the inscriptions from Arad are written in Hebrew, ... The bulk of the re-maining Arad inscriptions are ostraca written in Aramaic (fifth to fourth century b.c.), with a few later inscriptions in Greek and Arabic.; Kershner 2016: composed in ancient Hebrew using the paleo-Hebrew alphabet
- ^ Borschel-Dan 2020: The sherds were used for everyday correspondence between military supply masters, and were mostly addressed to a person named Elyashiv, who is thought to be the quartermaster in the fortress.; Pike 2020, p. 204; Kershner 2016: Eliashib, the quartermaster of the remote desert fortress
- ^ Boardman, Edwards & Sollberger 1992, p. 399: He is known also in this later period from a small archive, consisting of eighteen ostraca, which were found in one of the chambers of the casemate wall ... These ostraca are mainly letters directed at him as 'Eliashib'