(Not) an empty vessel

The results were, it’s safe to say, surprising: the scan showed an even mass of clay, without anything in it. Our object, then, is not an envelope encasing a letter, but a solid hump of clay posing as an envelope. In other words: what we’re dealing with, here, is a forgery. Not the revealing of a text that is thousands of years old, but the unmasking of a hoax.

As mentioned, the envelope had some curious characteristics. Assyriologist Jan Gerrit Dercksen, who specializes in these kinds of cuneiform tablets, already had his doubts.