JERUSALEM, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- An exceptionally rare papyrus document of about 2,600 years old has been returned to Israel after its private owner in the United States agreed to give it back, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said Wednesday.
The document, which was discovered in a desert cave in Israel decades ago, includes four torn lines in ancient Hebrew, starting with the words "To Ishmael send ...," hinting that it is a piece of a letter with instructions to the recipient, according to an IAA statement.
"Ishmael appeared as the name of officials on paleographic finds such as bullae, or clay stamp seals, used for sealing royal documents in the administration," explained Shmuel Ahituv, a researcher who initiated a campaign to retrieve the document after finding a photograph of it in 2018.
It now joins two other documents from the same period that were discovered in desert caves between 1947 and 1956 and also contain the earliest Hebrew manuscripts.
The owner in the United States said the papyrus was given to his mother in Jerusalem in 1965 by a museum curator and an antiquities dealer.
He agreed to give back the fragile document after a visit to the IAA's conservation laboratory convinced him that the IAA has the best conditions to conserve and research it.
