DJE 23 is a Hebrew inscription found in the village of Bayt Hadir, 15 km southeast of Sanaa, Yemen.
It dates to the period of the Himyarite Kingdom in which the ruling class had converted to Judaism, or sometime between 380 and 530.
[4] Later, Maria Gorea would publish an edition of the inscription alongside a study in French.
The 2015 French edition of Gorea benefits from access to new photographs taken by Christian Julien Robin that help make out elements of the inscription previously difficult to reconstruct.
the fourteenth wa[rd]The inscription lists the mishmarot ("guards"), enumerating the twenty-four Priestly divisions (and each of their places of residence in Galilee) that were appointed to protect the Solomon's Temple after the return of the Jews that were expelled during the Babylonian exile.
[6] The term mishmarot is not biblical, but is first attested in Qumran and then in rabbinic literature.
[7] DJE 23 has variously been interpreted as providing evidence for the existence of an either Priestly[8] or rabbinic form of Judaism in southern Arabia.