Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• A fragment of a cuneiform seal that’s now the first direct evidence of official communication between the kingdoms of Judah and Assyria has emerged at an archaeological site in Israel.
• According to the cuneiform writing on the seal, which was meant to summarize a longer document, the king of Assyria demanded that the king of Judah pay his taxes.
• The seal is thought to be from the same time period when Assyria conquered Judah and made it a vassal state required to pay tribute to the Assyrian king.

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The ancient Assyrians couldn’t exactly take to the phones like the IRS, making incessant calls demanding that loyal subjects of the kingdom pay their taxes by the deadline, but they did have vaguely threatening clay tablets promising to punish late payments. Some things never change.

Even kings were not exempt from taxes. Between the 8th and 7th centuries B.C.E., also known as the First Temple Period, the Neo-Assyrian empire conquered the southern kingdom of Judah and other adjacent regions, declaring them to be vassal kingdoms under their rule. Kings Hezekiah and Manasseh were the heads of Judah during this period. Ancient texts do not make either sound thrilled to bend the knee.

Hezekiah’s refusal to pay tribute to his rival is described in the Bible and led to Assyrian king Sennacherib’s forces barging into Judah. While the reluctance of the king to pay his taxes may have not been the only reason behind the Assyrian invasion, it is linked to a 2,700-year-old clay fragment of a royal seal recently unearthed in Jerusalem’s Old City at an archaeological site at the Davidson Archaeological Park next to the Western Wall. Overdue taxes were supposed to be paid by the first of the month of Av, the fifth month of the Jewish calendar that is between July and August.

Assyrian accounts of the time revealed that Sennacherib demanded exorbitant tribute payments from Judah after Jerusalem had been crushed. A royal envoy from the Assyrian court, known as a “chariot officer” or “the holder of the reigns,” apparently delivered the message with the seal, though both messenger and king go unnamed. The Iron Age fragment is only an inch long, but carries a message with the resonance of a booming voice.

“Dear king of Judah,” it reads in Akkadian, an ancient language related to Arabic and Hebrew, “send the tribute quickly by the first of Av—and if not, the consequences will be severe.”

Archaeologist Ayala Zilberstein of the Israel Antiquities Authority is excavation director at the Davidson site, located west of the Temple Mount, where she and her team have been investigating the remains of a building from the period during which the Judeans became Assyrian vassals. She and her team keep finding other seals and more evidence that suggest high-level administrative business carried out by people involved with the court and the king. It was her colleague Moriah Cohen who identified the seal while sifting through a pile of rubble.

“At first I thought the markings were decorative,” she recently told The Jerusalem Post. “Then I realized it was writing, and when I understood it might be cuneiform, I screamed. Everyone ran over. To think I was the first person in 2,700 years to touch it was incredible.”

While cuneiform writings on clay tablets and prisms have survived for millennia, there had been no direct evidence of official correspondence between Assyria and Judah until the discovery of this artifact. It was not locally produced. Petrographic analysis revealed that the source of the clay it is made from lies far north of Jerusalem in the Tigris river basin, near Assyria’s most powerful cities.

“We have the connection between archeology, history, and science,” Assyriologist Peter Zilberg of Bar-Ilan University told The Times of Israel. “This artifact is very, very important in connecting the history of the Land of Israel to the Bible and to the history of the ancient Near East as a whole.”

Both the Bible and Assyrian sources say that Hezekiah eventually relented. He later sent a message to the king of Assyria at Lachish, admitting he had done wrong and giving the Assyrians permission to extract payment from him. Hezekiah was fined 300 silver talents and 30 gold talents for his tax delinquency. Even back then, this is what happened if you didn’t pay your taxes.

Elizabeth Rayne is a creature who writes. Her work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Ars Technica, SYFY WIRE, Space.com, Live Science, Den of Geek, Forbidden Futures and Collective Tales. She lurks right outside New York City with her parrot, Lestat. When not writing, she can be found drawing, playing the piano or shapeshifting.