Bible Synapse
Gezer calendar
Inscription · 10th century BC (uncertain) · Israel and Judah
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- Date
- 10th century BC (uncertain) (the writing on the tablet)
- Found
- Tel Gezer, Israel, 1908. Found in 1908 by R. A. S. Macalister during his excavations at Gezer for the Palestine Exploration Fund. Its layer was not recorded, so the date rests mainly on the style of the script.
- Now
- Istanbul Archaeology Museums, Istanbul
- Passages
- Exodus 23:16, Ruth 1:22, Amos 8:1–2, 1 Kings 9:15–17
What it is
A small tablet of soft limestone, about 11 centimetres tall, with seven short lines in an early alphabetic script. It sets out the farmer’s year in spells of one or two months: olive harvest, sowing, late sowing, hoeing flax, barley harvest, the main harvest, tending the vines and summer fruit. A name in the margin, probably Abijah, may be the writer’s.
How it connects to the Bible
It is among the oldest known texts in Hebrew or a language very close to it, and it comes from a city that the Bible says Solomon rebuilt (1 Kings 9:15–17). Its seasons match the farming year the Bible takes for granted: the “beginning of barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22), the “feast of ingathering” at the end of the year (Exodus 23:16) and the basket of “summer fruit” in Amos 8:1–2.
What scholars debate
Scholars disagree whether its language is early Hebrew or Phoenician, and some see it as a writing exercise rather than a working calendar.