Archaeologists in Jerusalem have unearthed the most ancient written document ever found in the Holy City – a tiny fragment of a letter thought to be addressed to Akhenaten, the “heretic” pharaoh who ruled Egypt during the 14th century B.C.

Discovered outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, the document consists of a minuscule clay fragment -- about one square inch -- covered with cuneiform script in ancient Akkadian.

Thought to date back some 3,400 years, the fragment appears to have been part of a tablet from the royal archives.

Indeed, the script on the chip, which includes the words “you,” “you were,” “later,” “to do” and “them,” is of a very high level, according to Wayne Horowitz, a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology....