Jerusalem - In what was said to be "the most significant archaeological discovery in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls," archaeologists have unearthed the earliest known written Hebrew text, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced Thursday.

The 3,000-year-old 15 x 15 cm osctracon (pottery shard inscribed with writing in ink) comprises five lines of text divided by black lines and and was found at excavations carried out at a 10th century BCE fortress.

It was discovered lying on the floor inside a building near the city gate of the site, known as the Elah fortress at Khirbet Qeiyafa, south-east of modern Jerusalem.

According to the university, carbon-14 dating of organic material found with the ostracon, administered by Oxford Universtiy, along with pottery analysis, dates the inscription to 3,000 years ago, the time of the Biblical King David. Consequently, it predates the Dead Sea Scrolls by approximately 1,000 years.

Although the inscription has yet to be fully deciphered, it contains the roots of the words "slave," "judge" and "king." It is thought to be part of a letter or a legal text that was written as a deliberate message by a trained scribe.

The university said it was hoped that the text inscribed on the ostracon would serve "as an anchor in our understanding of the development of all alphabetic scripts."

Excavations at the Elah fortress, the earliest known fortified city from the biblical period in Israel, began in June 2008.

The fortress was situated on the border between biblical Philistia and the biblical kingdom of Judea and it thought to have been a major checkpoint guarding the main road from the coast to Jerusalem.

It overlooks the Valley of Elah, believed to be the site of the battle between the future king David and Goliath, as recounted in the Old Testament (I Samuel 17.)

Only four per cent of the fortress site has been excavated to date.