DailyHebrew.com

In cooperation with Google, the Israeli Museum Jerusalem has placed five of the most well known Dead Sea Scrolls online viewable in high resolution images. The texts included so far in the project are the Great Isaiah Scroll, the Community Rule Scroll, the Commentary on Habakkuk Scroll, the Temple Scroll, and the War Scroll.

If you live in the Chicago area, there is a free public lecture tonight by Chris Woods at 7pm in Breasted Hall related to the new, excellent Oriental Institute exhibit of the same name. Even if you cannot make the lecture, the exhibit is well worth the time–and you could download for free the official publication to whet your appetite.

The ability to represent language graphically, to make language visible, stands as one of humanity’s greatest intellectual and cultural achievements. Given in conjunction with the special exhibit, Visible Language, this lecture explores how and why humans first invented writing by comparing the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Mesoamerican inventions–the four instances in history when writing was invented–out of nothing. In this lecture, Christopher Woods discusses cultural contexts and structural features of each of these systems, focusing on important similarities and differences between them.

UPDATE: A recent article discusses the positives and some negatives of the new exhibit.

From Sasson's List:

Hazor Law Code Fragments

The Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in Memory of Yigael Yadin have recovered two fragments of a cuneiform tablet preserving portions of a law code at Hazor.

The text parallels portions of the famous Law Code of Hammurabi, and, to a certain extent even the Biblical “tooth for a tooth”. The team is presently working its way down towards a monumental structure dating to the Bronze Age, where more tablets are expected to be found.

The tablet is currently being studied at the Hebrew University. More details to follow as soon as possible.

The excavations are sponsored by the Hebrew university and the Israel Exploration Society, and take place in the Hazor National Park.

The oldest known cuneiform tablet fragment from Jerusalem was recently found in a fill area of the Ophel according to Eliat Mazar, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Hebrew University excavations recently unearthed a clay fragment dating back to the 14th century BCE, said to be the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem.

The tiny fragment is only 2 cm. by 2.8 cm. in surface area and 1 cm. thick and appears to have once been part of a larger tablet. Researchers say the ancient fragment testifies to Jerusalem’s importance as a major city late in the Bronze Age, long before it was conquered by King David.

In the article,  Wayne Horowitz indicates that it may have been part of the correspondence between Jerusalem and Egypt known from the Amarna tablets.

According to Horowitz, the high quality of the tablet piece indicates that it was most likely part of a message sent from a then-king of Jerusalem to the pharaoh in Egypt. Horowitz said that the fragment, which is made of Jerusalem clay, indicated that Jerusalem was one of the central cities of the area at the time.

The next part is referring to the Siloam Tunnel Inscription, which is of course a linear inscription in Ancient Hebrew and not a cuneiform tablet as the report indicates:

The most ancient piece of writing found in Jerusalem before the Ophel fragment was a tablet unearthed in the Shiloah water in the City of David, dating back to the eighth century BCE – nearly 600 years “younger” than the Ophel find.

 (HT: Sasson's List)

UPDATE 1: See Duane's comments for more on Jerusalem scribal traditions.

UPDATE 2: The AlphaGalileo.org article adds little by way of new information.

UPDATE 3:Christopher Rollston weighs in here (with a short addendum by John Huehnergard about a difficulty with the official reading/interpretation).

UPDATE 4: Seth Sanders clarifies nicely what is known about the situation in Late Bronze Age Jerusalem.

UPDATE 5: Seth strikes again bringing the topic of the Canaanite dialect of the Levantine Amarna Texts back into conversation.

The NY Times has a brief and relatively even-handed article on Hershel Shanks, the (in)famous (the in- or lack thereof, of course, depends on one's opinion of "Biblical Archaeology" and a host of other controversial issues) founder of BAR.