A tiny clay fragment, dating back 3,400 years, is the oldest text discovered in Jerusalem.

The clay chip is a key find which indicates the importance of the city in the Bronze Age, around 1,400 BC, researchers at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University said.

It was discovered during an excavation in an area just south of the walls of the Old City in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

The miniscule chip is believed to have been part of the royal archives and indicates the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the late Bronze Age, the Hebrew University said in a statement.

The clay fragment was found by researchers sifting through debris removed from beneath a tower from the 10th century BC.

According to an expert from the university’s Institute of Archaeology, the script on the fragment, which contains snippets of words such as “you were” and “them,” appears to have been very carefully formed.

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A live grenade from the Ottoman-era has been found inside a wall in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Israel Antiquities Authority says workers doing restoration at the city’s historic stone walls were digging through crushed stone when they found a “fist-sized chunk of metal.”

The antiquities agency said on Wednesday the workers concluded it was a grenade hidden there about 100 years ago.

Police bomb disposal experts later identified it as an Ottoman-era grenade holding 200 to 300 grams of explosives — enough to kill a person at close range. The bomb squad took it away and blew it up in a safe place.

Jerusalem’s Old City was controlled by the Ottoman Empire for 400 years before the British captured it in 1917. It has been the site of countless battles.

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A 2,000-year-old incense altar has been uncovered at a hospital construction site in Israel.

Israeli archaeologists say workers have uncovered an ancient pagan altar while clearing ground for construction of a hotly disputed hospital emergency room.

They say the discovery proves an ancient cemetery at the site that has been at the center of protests by ultra-Orthodox Jews does not contain the graves of Jews.

Protesters claim an emergency room extension at Barzilai Hospital in the city of Ashkelon is being built on an ancient Jewish cemetery. They demonstrated there when officials began removing graves this week, and rioting erupted in ultra-Orthodox areas of Jerusalem.

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Excavators rushing to clear an area for the building of a museum had to exhume more than 1,000 skeletons from a medieval Muslim cemetery, damaging bones in the process.

Muslim groups have been attempting to halt construction of the Museum of Tolerance because it is to be built on top of the cemetery, which dates back at least to the 14th century.

Haaretz published pictures it said were from the excavations showing full human skeletons and fractured human skulls. In one photo a skull is seen bearing multiple fractures. Another shows a skull peering through a mound of dirt.

The newspaper cited unnamed workers as saying that several skeletons and graves had been damaged during the excavation. It also quoted the lead archaeologist in charge of the dig Gideon Sulimani as saying that the job was rushed. Sulimani could not be reached for comment.

The museum will be modeled on an existing one in Los Angeles that opened in 1993 and receives over 250,000 visits a year. Organizers have said it will use interactive technology to present scenarios on social issues of the day including hate crimes and terrorism.

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A 14th-century aqueduct, which supplied water to Jersualsm for nearly 600 years, has been found.

Photographs from the late 19th century showed the aqueduct in use by the city’s Ottoman rulers, nearly 600 years after its construction in 1320. The photo shows an inscription dating back to the aqueduct’s early days.

It was uncovered during repairs to the city’s modern-day water system. Public works projects here proceed in cooperation with antiquities officials in a city where turning over a shovel of dirt anywhere can turn back the pages of time, said Yehiel Zelinger, the archaeologist in charge of the excavation.

The team has found two of nine arched sections of a bridge about 9 feet (3 meters) tall on the west side of Jerusalem’s Old City, Zelinger said.

Though archaeologists knew the aqueduct was there, the find represents the first time they have had a glimpse of the intricate bridge system used for centuries to combat gravity and shuttle water from faraway sources, Zelinger said.

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