JERUSALEM, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Israeli scientists and archaeologists have developed an innovative method for determining the number of authors of ancient inscription collections discovered in excavations, Tel Aviv University (TAU) reported Thursday.
The study was carried out by a team of physicists, mathematicians and archaeologists from TAU and published in the journal PLOS ONE.
The team developed a unique algorithm that finds the number of writers by comparing and separating pairs of manuscripts in all possible combinations and determining whether they were written by different people.
The team used the new method on dozens of ancient ink inscriptions written on pottery vessels, dating back some 2,800 years ago.
These inscriptions were found at the ancient city of Samaria, which was the capital of the northern Kingdom of Israel.
These are short inscriptions in ancient Hebrew: the year of the king, the goods, the goods' origin, and sometimes the shipper's name.
For many years, researchers have wondered whether the inscriptions were written by representatives of the king outside the capital, or by the king's officials in the capital upon the arrival of the goods, to help understanding the kingdom's administration, as well as the distribution of literary knowledge.
Using the new manuscript analysis algorithm, it became clear that these administrative inscriptions were written by only two people, presumably Biblical writers or officials of king Jeroboam II.
The researchers said the two writers or officials probably acted at the same time, perhaps on shifts, and backed up each other.
