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Ketef Hinnom

A burial site on the western slope of the Hinnom Valley, just southwest of Jerusalem's Old City walls. In 1979, in a tomb excavated by archaeologist Gabriel Barkay, a team found two tiny rolled silver scrolls inscribed with the priestly blessing (Numbers 6:24-26, already on these pages) and dated to roughly 600 BC — before the Babylonian exile, the oldest known fragment of biblical text in existence, centuries older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unrolling them without destroying the brittle silver took three years of conservation work; they were almost certainly worn as amulets rather than read as scripture, and now sit in the Israel Museum.

in the text Num 6:24
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