the oldest piece of West Semitic literature transmitted in a still debated Semitic language. The Deir Alla Inscription is datable to ca. 840–760 BCE; it was written in red and black inks on a plastered wall; 119 pieces of inked plaster were recovered. The wall, near the summit of the tell, was felled by yet another tremor. History The town was a sanctuary and metal-working centre, ringed by smelting furnaces built against the exterior of the city walls, whose successive rebuildings, dated by ceramics from the Late Bronze Age, sixteenth century BCE, to the fifth century BCE, accumulated as a tell based on a low natural hill. The hopeful identification of the site as the biblical Sukkot is not confirmed by any inscription at the site. Deir Alla was the first Bronze Age city excavated in Jordan. The initial expectations were of establishing a relative chronology of Palestine pottery in the transition between the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, established through meticulous stratigraphy. It was intended to span a gap between established chronologies at Jericho and Samaria. The oldest sanctuary at Deir Alla dates to the Late Bronze Age; it was peacefully rebuilt at intervals, the floor being raised as the tell accumulated height, and the squared altar stone renewed, each new one placed atop the previous one. The final sanctuary was obliterated in a fierce fire; the blackened remains of an Egyptian jar bearing the cartouche of Queen Twosret gives a terminus post quem of c. 1200 BCE, a date consonant with other twelfth-century urban destruction in the Ancient Near East. Unlike some other destroyed sites, Deir Alla's habitation continued after the disaster, without a break, into the Iron Age; the discontinuity was a cultural one, with highly developed pottery of a separate ceramic tradition post-dating the destruction. Ayyubid/Mamluk era A sugar mill, dating from the Ayyubid/Mamluk era, was in use in the village until 1967. Ottoman era In 1596, during the Ottoman Empire, Deir Alla was noted in the census as being located in the nahiya of Gawr in the liwa of Ajloun. It had a population of 46 Muslim households and 4 Muslim bachelors. They paid a taxes on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, sesame, cotton, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues, water buffalos and a water mill; a total of 10,500 akçe. Modern era The Jordanian census of 1961 found 1,190 inhabitants