An ancient inscription paraphrasing the first two verses of Psalm 86 has been uncovered at a remote site in Israel’s Judean desert, archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said Wednesday.
The Byzantine Greek inscription, which dates from the early 6th century, was found on a monastery’s building stone at a dig site where there are no roads for vehicle access, university teaching fellow Oren Gutfeld told The Washington Times via telephone from a field location. His team had to use donkeys to transport equipment to the site.
“This psalm holds a special place in the [Hebrew] Masoretic text as a designated prayer and is notably one of the most frequently recited psalms in Christian liturgy,” epigraphist Avner Ecker of Bar-Ilan University said in a statement. “Thus, the monk drew a graffito of a cross onto the wall, accompanied by a prayer with which he was very familiar.
The koine, or “common,” Greek inscription was found on what the archaeologists described as “a sizable building stone” at a monastery at a former fortress called Hyrcania, which dates to the late second or early first century BCE.
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