The three shekel ostracon is a pottery fragment bearing a forged text supposedly dating from between the 7th and 9th century BCE. It is 8.6 centimeters high and 10.9 centimeters wide and contains five lines of ancient Hebrew writing. The inscription mentions a king named Ashyahu (אשיהו ''’Ašyahu'') donating three shekels (about 20–50 grams of

silver Silver is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h₂erǵ-, ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, whi ...

) to the House of Yahweh. No king named Ashyahu is mentioned in the Bible, but some scholars believe it may refer to Jehoash (יהואש ''Yəhō’āš''), who ruled

Judea Judea or Judaea ( or ; from he, יהודה, Standard ''Yəhūda'', Tiberian ''Yehūḏā''; el, Ἰουδαία, ; la, Iūdaea) is an ancient, historic, Biblical Hebrew, contemporaneous Latin, and the modern-day name of the mountainous south ...

802–787 BCE. The ostracon was purchased by Shlomo Moussaieff from the Jerusalem antiquities dealer

Oded Golan Oded Golan ( he, עודד גולן) (born 1951 in Tel Aviv) is an Israeli engineer, entrepreneur, and antiquities collector. He owns one of the largest collections of Biblical archaeology in the world. Golan was accused by the Israel Antiquitie ...

. Doubts about the authenticity of this and other artefacts sold by Golan began to be expressed in the late 1990s, and in 2003 Professor

Christopher Rollston Prof. Christopher A. Rollston (born in Michigan, United States) is a scholar of the ancient Near East, specializing in Hebrew Bible, Greek New Testament, Old Testament Apocrypha, Northwest Semitic literature, epigraphy and paleography. Biograph ...

, a leading authority on

Northwest Semitic Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age ...

inscriptions, said he is "confident beyond a reasonable doubt" that the "three shekel ostracon" is a forgery. The same negative conclusion was reached on the basis of scientific examination of the

patina Patina ( or ) is a thin layer that variously forms on the surface of copper, brass, bronze and similar metals and metal alloys ( tarnish produced by oxidation or other chemical processes) or certain stones and wooden furniture (sheen produce ...

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9th-century BC works 8th-century BC works 7th-century BC works Archaeology of Israel Hebrew inscription forgeries Forgery controversies {{Hebrew-lang-stub

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