A Rare 3,000-Year-Old Inscription Bears the Name of a Biblical Judge

From about the 8th century BCE—the time of the prophet Isaiah—onward, archaeologists studying the Land of Israel can draw on a relatively rich record of artifacts and inscriptions. But from the period corresponding to that of the biblical book of Judges—which takes place between Joshua’s conquest of Canaan and the time of King Saul, or around the 12th and 11th centuries BCE—only a handful of inscriptions have been found. Thus the recent discovery of a potsherd dated to circa 1050 BCE, with a single word written on it, was monumental. Amanda Borschel-Dan writes: