Samaria Ostraca

The Samaria Ostraca are a collection of 102 inscribed pottery fragments discovered at the royal acropolis of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. The inscriptions, written with carbon-based ink in a professional cursive Paleo-Hebrew script, record the delivery of aged wine and refined olive oil. Unearthed in 1910 by George Andrew Reisner in a fill deposit beneath the floor of the so-called "Ostraca House," the sherds are regarded as one of the most important discoveries for reconstructing the economy, administrative organization, and scribal practices of ancient Israel in the 8th century BCE.

From a paleographic perspective, the handwriting on the ostraca represents a transitional phase in the history of the Hebrew alphabet in ancient Israel. The texts show more development than the 9th-century Mesha Stele from Dhibon but less maturity than the late 8th-century Siloam inscription in Jerusalem. The language is typically identified as a northern Hebrew dialect.

A distinctive feature of the corpus is its notational system, which employs Hebrew words for the regnal years nine and ten but shifts to Egyptian numerals for years fifteen and seventeen. The records measure goods in small units called nbl (jars) and identify places of origin associated with Manassite clans (e.g., Abiezer, Shemida, Heleq) located within a short radius of the capital, in the western Shechem Syncline.

Of the 102 ostraca found, only 63 are legible. The primary inscriptions are known as KAI 183–188. They are currently held in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeology Museums.