According to scientists, the art of tattooing has been practiced by humans for at least 5000 years if not even longer than that. During that massive span of time, many vastly different cultures and peoples and ethnicity’s were familiar with tattoos and tattooing, but what their words were for tattoos and tattooing and how they were pronounced, and how they tattooed are mostly lost to us now. However all is not lost to us completely, in the possession of Museums, Universities and Institutes all over the world are fragments and pieces of tattooing history.

The Jewish Bible or also known as the Hebrew Bible or  as it’s known in Hebrew as the Torah , (Heb. Instruction), also  as well as The Five Books Of Moses, is as far as I know the oldest document in the world that specifically refers to tattoos with a specific and special word. The oldest physical Torah is found among the legendary Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written at various times between the middle of the 2nd century BCE and the 1st century CE.

“Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD.”
Vayikra 19:28 (Leviticus 19:28)

Here is the Hebrew for Leviticus, which is read from right to left. The word tattoo in Hebrew, in the language that God spoke to Moses in on Mt Sinai, is the second word from the right on the second line.

Leviticus 19:28 Hebrew

Vayikra 19:28 (Leviticus 19:28) is the only location in the entire Torah where (Ka ‘ aka) is written. What we can deduce from this is that tattoos existed in the Middle East at the time of Mt Sinai, which is thought to be around 1500 BCE, otherwise the text of 19:28 would have differed in how it was written. There is one other instance in the additional Jewish books that discusses tattoos and that is in the story of King Yehoakim, written in the second book of Chronicles, chapter 8.