The Aramaic ostraca from Arad

Record summary

Excavations at Tel Arad produced a substantial group of Hebrew and Aramaic ostraca from fortress contexts, including administrative, military and supply-related texts. Their discovery during the 1960s provided evidence for literacy, provisioning and bureaucratic practice in the southern Levant and helped refine the chronology of the site’s Iron Age phases. The corpus is valuable for comparison with biblical-era administrative traditions, but readings, joins, dates and archaeological associations are not equally secure. The texts illuminate institutional activity without functioning as a complete narrative history.