The year was 600 BCE , and a Judahite soldier named Ḥananyahu was in search of a crapulence . “ If there is any wine , send [ some ] , ” he write to a quartermaster from a fort about a solar day ’s walk of life away . For 2600 year , the message was hide . But researchers rediscover it on the back side of an ostracon , or text written on remains using ink , that has been displayed in the Israel Museum for decades , asThe New York Timesreports .
Ostracon No . 16 , excavated in 1965 , was part of a group of 100 Hebrew inscription discovered in the fortress of Arad , located in the southerly part of what was then the Kingdom of Judah ( in what is now Israel ) . Many were orders for provision address to Elyashiv , the Arad quartermaster .
Ḥananyahu’swinerequest went undiscovered because the ink it was written with could no longer be seen with the raw middle . As detail in anew cogitation , research worker from Tel Aviv University used multispectral imaging ( strike images at multiple unlike wavelength ) to reveal the invisible messages that had run unnoticed for more than 50 years . While the front side of the ostracon had already been well studied before this , the new imaging revealed 20 more words on the front side that had never been decipher before , including friendly greetings and a discussion of change oil and atomic number 47 . The back side , which was thought to be vacuous until now , revealed 17 new word , beginning with the request for wine . The investigator were n’t able to confirm incisively how much vino Hananyahu wanted , though .
Ostraca get harder to say after they ’ve been hollow , because the ink fades easily over sentence . The subject ’s writer make the case that all of these archaeological artefact discovered up until now should be subject to this sort of imaging . “ Although [ multispectral ] imagination can on occasion put up legibility advance even ten after the photograph of the ostraca , undoubtedly results would have been far ranking and more complete had [ multispectral ] imagination been done prior to the ink deterioration cognitive process , ” they write .
If this engineering had been usable back in 1965 , we might have been able to discern exactly how much wine Hananyahu wanted .
[ h / tThe New York Times ]
