(ORDO NEWS) — Experts in ancient languages have finally been able to decipher a unique inscription left on a stone in Saudi Arabia.
Additional analysis showed that the age of the artifact is approximately 1400 years. The text contains the name of Uthman ibn Affan, who was the third caliph.
During survey work in Mecca, experts discovered a stone on which an ancient inscription was present. Some time later, the Saudi Arabian Heritage Authority confirmed that the text had indeed been left in the year 24 AH. In other words, the age of the find is exactly 1419 years.
This is one of the oldest such texts, so the artifact was immediately recognized as one of the most important archaeological finds of recent times.
Experts say that the text on the stone is the real documentary evidence of how Islamic history was born.
The inscription was written in Arabic letters. It is quite primitive and does not contain any punctuation marks. Several specialists worked simultaneously on deciphering the text.
Thanks to this, we quickly managed to find out what is written in the first line of the message left. On the stone was written “I Zuhair believed in God and wrote the time of death of ibn Affan in the twenty-fourth year.”
Soon, an additional comparative analysis was carried out. The experts found that this inscription has much in common with the content of the text, which was previously found in the province of Al-Ula.
In another message, the year of the death of the second Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab was indicated. It is worth paying attention to the fact that this is already the third artifact among the most ancient documents containing Islamic inscriptions.
The most ancient document on the stone is the text of Salama, which scientists discovered in Yanbu Al-Nahla. It was abandoned in 23 AH.
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