A clay tablet believed to be 3000 years old was found by archaeologists digging at the site of a Canaanite royal city. The tablet, which is inscribed with greetings and a request for the immediate dispatch of grain, appears to be a letter from a Canaanite official in what is now northern Syria to a governor stationed in Egypt or at a site near present-day Tel Aviv. Scholars say that the royal Canaanite city was conquered by the Pharaohs in the 13th Century BCE and was later a Philistine stronghold. Fifteen of the 19 lines of script on the tablet have already been deciphered. The excavation at Tel Afek involves students and scholars from the United States and Israel.
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