Lachish letters

The Lachish Letters are a series of letters written in carbon ink containing ancient Israelite inscriptions in Ancient Hebrew on clay ostraca. The letters were discovered at the excavations at Lachish (Tel Lachish). The ostraca were discovered by British archaeologist James Leslie Starkey in January–February 1935, during the third campaign of the Wellcome excavations. They were published in 1938 by Professor Harry Torczyner (name later changed to Naftali Herz Tur-Sinai) and have been studied extensively since then. Seventeen of them are currently located in the British Museum in London; a smaller number (including Letter 6) are on permanent display at the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem. The primary inscriptions are known as KAI 192–199.