In Depth:  Alan Millard

Dear Sir,

An Israeli professor claims a 3,000 year old inscription discovered in Jerusalem is evidence of King Solomon’s reign (March EN ). The two pieces of a storage jar excavated in 2012 have part of a message scratched on them. Neither the start nor the end is preserved and some letters are missing in the middle. Comparing the writing with notices on Egyptian and other jars, Gershon Galil reconstructs the message to describe inferior wine from year twenty or thirty of King Solomon. The words for ‘year’ and ‘Solomon’ are not present and only the equivalent of the ‘y’ of twenty or thirty survives, which could be part of a quite different word (e.g. ‘city’). Other experts have written about the inscription, each offering a different interpretation. This discovery cannot 'prove biblical authenticity'.