Multispectral imaging reveals biblical-period inscription unnoticed for half a century

Abstract

Most surviving biblical period Hebrew inscriptions are ostraca—ink-on-clay texts. They are poorly preserved and once unearthed, fade rapidly. Therefore, proper and timely documentation of ostraca is essential. Here we show a striking example of a hitherto invisible text on the back side of an ostracon revealed via multispectral imaging. This ostracon, found at the desert fortress of Arad and dated to ca. 600 BCE (the eve of Judah’s destruction by Nebuchadnezzar), has been on display for half a century. Its front side has been thoroughly studied, while its back side was considered blank. Our research revealed three lines of text on the supposedly blank side and four "new" lines on the front side. Our results demonstrate the need for multispectral image acquisition for both sides of all ancient ink ostraca. Moreover, in certain cases we recommend employing multispectral techniques for screening newly unearthed ceramic potsherds prior to disposal.

A Brand New Old Inscription: Arad Ostracon 16 Rediscovered via Multispectral Imaging

“…Using this system, we produced spectral cubes of ten images for each side of the ostracon. We selected the best images (taken at 830 nm for the recto and 890 nm for the verso), based on an algorithm that we developed (described in Faigenbaum et al 2012 andShaus et al 2017). In order to improve the legibility of the images, we performed contrast and brightness manipulations via the freely available ImageJ 1.48V and IrfanView 4.38 software applications.…”

“…The facsimiles of the inscription were created by us manually, aided by computer software. For further technical details, see Faigenbaum-Golovin et al 2017. Figure 1 depicts the recto, comparing an image taken shortly after the excavations with a current color image and with an 830 nm image taken via our multispectral imaging system.…”

Forensic document examination and algorithmic handwriting analysis of Judahite biblical period inscriptions reveal significant literacy level

“…The examination process is divided into three steps: analysis, comparison, and evaluation. The analysis phase includes a detailed examination of every single inscription and, if necessary, its high quality regular or multispectral images [4,5,[35][36][37], according to the following features (for an example, see Fig 3):…”

“…Since, arguably, some other ostraca mention the same individuals (e.g., a son of Eliashib is mentioned within a list of names in Ostracon 38; Malkiyahu, probably the commander of the fortress, is mentioned in Ostraca 24 and 40), in our view, the same short life span is true for the majority of, or even the entire corpus. The texts provide invaluable information regarding daily life of the Judahite army personnel (e.g., [4,5]), and contribute to the research fields of history of Ancient Israel, Hebrew epigraphy and biblical exegesis.…”

Algorithmic handwriting analysis of the Samaria inscriptions illuminates bureaucratic apparatus in biblical Israel

“…Several factors can hamper an algorithmic analysis of ancient Hebrew ostraca via readily available means. First, the poor state of preservation of the ostraca (Fig 1) cannot be fully remedied by existing image acquisition methods [18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. Second, the imperfect digital images present a challenge for image segmentation and enhancement methods [25,26].…”