‘Send wine’ ancient Israelite urges in newly revealed message

An apparently blank bit of pottery that’s over 2,000 years old actually contains an important message from an ancient Judean requesting more wine be urgently sent to his frontier outpost.

Under multispectral imaging, the apparently blank reverse of the ancient pottery shard is revealed to contain the vitally important message – ‘If you have wine send [it].”The message on a shard of pottery known as an ‘ostracon’ was so faded it wasn’t visible to the human eye but detailed reexamination using multispectral imaging has revealed several new lines of text including a friendly request by a soldier to his friend asking for more wine.

The shard is one of a large number of ostraca found at a fort at Tel Arad in the Beer Sheba Valley of southern Israel dating to the 6^th century BC – just before the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah by the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar in 586BC.

A study of the Hebrew writing on the ostraca last year made headlines for two reasons.

To begin with the messages showed the lively and complex military bureaucracy and adminsitration behind the running of the fort – with very large amounts of supplies including many hundreds of litres of wine being supplied to the garrison; some of whom may have been Cypriot/Greek mercenaries.

The other more extraordinary claim was that as several people appear to have been the authors of the various messages, it might be possible that the degree of literacy in ancient Judea was high enough for the early books of the Bible to have been composed before the coming of Nebuchadnezzar and not after as previously supposed.

That debate is set to run and run but there is absolutely no denying that the soldiers of the frontier forts were well supplied with wine.

The researchers focused their attentions of ostracon no. 16. First uncovered in 1965 and dating to 600BC, the legible text on the shard is a note from a man called Hanayahu to Elyashiv, both men are thought to have been quartermasters in neighbouring forts (Hanayahu around Beer Sheba itself and Elyashiv at Arad).

The front of the ostracon deals with a transfer of silver (possibly payment for soldiers) and the multispectral imaging has revealed several more lines although they are largely incomplete.

The true find is the reverse of the shard, which contains a whole message relating to wine.

Hanayahu writes: “If there is any wine send [an amount is written but not clear].”

He also adds that another man, Ge’alyahu, has taken with him a ‘bat’ of “sparkling wine”.

A bat or bath is a liquid measurement used by the ancient Israelites that is thought to amount to 22-24 litres. Ge’alyahu is mentioned on the front of the shard as well and is named as an intermediary of someone called Azaryahu.

For whatever reason it would appear he went on his way with part of Hananyahu’s garrison’s wine supply hence the, possible, reason he is asking Elyashiv for more. Either way, his request for ‘more wine’ is not the only example we have of an ancient soldier in a remote posting asking for further supplies of alcohol. Correspondence discovered in north Britain near Hadrian’s Wall famously includes a request from a Roman cavalry officer to his commander urgently requesting more beer for his Gallic troops.

His reference to ‘sparkling’ wine is interesting too. It seems very unlikely this was the ancient Israelite equivalent of methode traditionnel but could it have been new wine, still sparkling and bubbling due to fermentation?

Or perhaps it is just a usual epithet used in conjunction with wine – that might just as easily have been ‘bright’ or ‘foaming’.

Either way, it is interesting to speculate and to see what further examination of ancient pottery might reveal.

For more details of the research click here.

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