Amulet Atlas

amuletsKetef Hinnom silver scrollsכתף הינום

said KEH-tef hi-NOM, 'shoulder of Hinnom'

also: Ketef Hinnom amulets · the silver scrolls · KH1 and KH2

amuletThe LevantIsraelconfidence mediumneeds checking

Two sheets of silver, tiny, rolled tight, each scratched with a passage of the Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers. They were found rolled and had to be opened; the method for doing it without losing them took three years to develop. They hold what may be the oldest surviving text of the Hebrew Bible.

cited

When

late 7th to early 6th century BCE cited

PeriodIron Age Judah, First Temple period
How the date is knownexcavated — dug up in a dated context
NoteThe cited article gives both 'dated to 600 BC' and 'late 7th to early 6th century BCE'. The years here are that century-span in astronomical form; the tomb complex itself is dated to the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

FormScroll
Made ofSilver
GoesIn the grave
Made bynot published in the sources this project read
It saysportions of the Priestly Blessing of Numbers 6:24–26 (palaeo-Hebrew)
NoteNo published measurement was read; the article calls them tiny. Worn is given as grave because the findspot is the one placement the excavation establishes.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

The story

Ketef Hinnom is the shoulder of rock where the Valley of Rephaim meets the Valley of Hinnom, on the old road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, beside St Andrew's Church. Gabriel Barkay reported the first season there in 1975: a salvage excavation on the hill between the church road and the road down into the valley, prompted by a block of stone 2.80 m long lying on the surface, which turned out to be a threshold still in place in a monumental complex. Underneath were rock-cut burial chambers in natural caverns, Iron Age Judahite, of the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.

In 1979 the two silver scrolls came out of one of those chambers. The excavation report describes them as apparently once used as amulets. They are dated to the First Temple period, late seventh to early sixth century BCE, before the Babylonian Exile. They are now in the Israel Museum.

Inference — two things about this object are unusual for the atlas at once. It is a written charm that survives from before the tradition it belongs to had a canon to quote from, and it is a charm whose text is not a spell but a blessing. Whether the people who rolled them up would have called them amulets is a question the excavation cannot answer, and the cited report does not claim more than 'apparently'.

cited

How it is made and carried

Silver, hammered thin, inscribed, rolled, and worn or carried. How they were suspended is not published in what this project read; what is documented is where they ended up, which is a burial chamber.

inference

Where you can see one

An accession number appears here only where it was read off a catalogue page that is linked. No link, no number.

What this is near

descendantTefillinthe commandment that puts the same kind of verses in a box on the body — and the object this one keeps getting read backwards throughkinMezuzahthe other Jewish text-in-a-container, fixed to a doorpost instead of worndescendantKameathe written Jewish amulet as a class, of which this is the oldest dated survivortraditionPractical Kabbalahthe tradition of writing a holy text to carry, a thousand years before it had that namematerialSilverthe metal that let a text this small survive two and a half thousand years in a tombpracticeGrave depositthe practice that is the reason this object exists to be readparallelTa'wizthe same object in another scripture — a verse, rolled small, wornparallelQur'an pendantscripture in a case at the throat; this is that idea's oldest dated instance in the atlasstoryDating a charmthe long read about what it means to date an amulet; this one is dated by a tomb, a threshold stone and three years of unrolling

What names this one

Each in its own words, from its own page.

originKameathe oldest surviving Hebrew written charm, six centuries before the Talmudic practice this record starts fromoriginMezuzahthe oldest surviving Hebrew text-object in the atlas, and the thing every argument about this one eventually reaches forparallelQur'an pendantthe oldest dated instance of this idea anywhere in the atlas: a blessing, rolled small, carriedoriginTefillinthe oldest surviving Hebrew verses written small and carried — six centuries before the earliest tefillin findsoriginPractical Kabbalahthe oldest object in the family: silver strips carrying the Priestly Blessing, written to be worn a thousand years before the tradition had a nameparallelLeadthe same idea in silver: a thin sheet, a written formula, rolled and worn, aimed at protecting rather than bindingcarried-bySilvertwo rolled sheets of this metal, and the oldest surviving text of the Hebrew BiblepracticeFoldingthe oldest rolled charm this atlas dates, found still rolled in a Jerusalem burial chambercarried-byGrave depositsilver worn in life and found in a burial chamber, carrying the oldest surviving biblical text knownpracticeInscribingthe oldest dated thing this practice made: a blessing punched into silver and worn to the grave around 600 BCEkinJoseph Navehthe rolled silver amulet strip from Jerusalem — the object class his palaeography dates

Where this came from

Elsewhere

Record updated 2026-09-16. This record as JSON. Every field carries its own provenance; the tier chips above say which.

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