The cuneiform inscriptions found in Israel and Palestine are a small but varied body of texts in cuneiform recovered from sites across the area of modern Israel and Palestine. The inscriptions show that the region participated in the wider scribal culture of the Ancient Near East, with texts ranging from legal and administrative records to scholarly, diplomatic, and formulaic inscriptions, with scattered distribution and mixed origins. The published corpus includes 91 texts, with finds from many sites and several scripts and languages, especially Akkadian, as well as Sumerian and Elamite.
They are among the earliest written sources from the region. The corpus shows that cuneiform remained important in diplomatic, legal, and administrative settings after alphabetic scripts appeared, and allow scholars to begin reconstructing how the region of modern Israel and Palestine fit into the ancient Near Eastern world.
Overview The collection is found on tablets, seals, and other inscribed items. The most notable findspots include Tel Hazor, Jerusalem, Tel Megiddo, Tel Aphek, Gezer, and Tel Hadid, where the texts often appear in fragmentary form or as isolated objects rather than in large archives. Hazor yielded the largest known group of cuneiform texts from the region and has yielded legal fragments that closely resemble Mesopotamian law collections. The Jerusalem fragment is the oldest written document known from the city, dating to the 14th century BCE.
Some texts belong to the Late Bronze Age world of Ancient Egyptian, Hittite, and Levantine diplomacy, while others date to the Assyrian period and preserve the movement of deportees, goods, and scribes.
The Hazor law fragments have attracted scholarly attention because they echo the structure of the Hammurabi tradition, perhaps bearing witness to the transmission of Mesopotamian learning westward into the Levant.
Table
In 1971, Albert Glock published a list of 26 then-known cuneiform inscriptions from the region.
The table below shows all 91 cuneiform sources known from the region as of 2006.
By periodBy genre Site Total Middle Bronze Age (MB) Late Bronze Age (LB) Uncertain Neo-Assyrian Late Administrative Documents Letters Royal Inscriptions Private Inscriptions Academic Tablet Miscellaneous Cylinder Seals Alphabetic Cuneiform Aphek 8 8 2 1 2 3 Ashdod 4 1 3 3 1 Ascalon 1 1 1 Beer Sheva 1 1 1 Ben Shemen 1 1 1 Tell Beit Mirsim 1 1 1 Beth Shean 2 1 1 1 1 Beth Shemesh 1 1 1 Gezer 5 (1) 1 1 2 3 1 1 Hadid 2 2 2 Hazor 15 8 5 2 5 3 3 4 Hebron 1 1 1 el-Hesi 1 1 1 Jemmeh 1 1 1 Jericho 3 1 2 1 2 Keisan 1 1 1 Khirbet Kusiya 1 1 1 Megiddo 5 (1) 4 1 1 3 Mikhmoret 1 1 1 en-Nasbeh 1 1 1 Qaqun 1 1 1 Samaria 7 4 3 2 1 3 1 Sepphoris 4 4 3 1 Shechem 3 (1) 1 1 1 1 1 Shephelah 1 1 1 Taanach 17 17 6 9 1 1 Tabor 1 1 1 Wingate 1 1 1 Total 91 (3) 13 42 6 18 9 29 17 7 5 9 8 13 3
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