The headline of the Science Section of the New York Times for Tuesday, September 28, 2004, read, “Solving a Riddle Written in Silver.” I recognized the picture underneath the headline right away. It was a portion of a silver amulet that was one of two discovered in Jerusalem in 1979. The article described the scholarly debate concerning the date assigned to the amulets by the excavator and his team in the latest issue of the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. They claim that these two objects contain the two oldest Biblical texts ever discovered to date. Unfortunately the BASOR is very technical. It discusses the style of the letters and how this is used to date the amulets. This is important to answer the critics who have suggested the amulets were not as old as the excavator claimed they were. The present article will not deal with the technical aspects of the debate, as important as they are, but rather I would like to take you behind the scenes and share some of the human interest stories relating to the discovery, unrolling, announcement and publication of these two amulets...