The McClelland sherd, Tell Jisr sherd or El-Jisr sherd is a fragment of pottery discovered by McClelland at Tell Jisr, near Rashaya in Lebanon and first studied by George E. Mendenhall in 1971. The ostracon displays a series of incisions in the pottery that have been suggested to be an early type of Bronze Age writing. The text has been compared to Byblian pseudo-hieroglyphic, but also Minoan Linear A and Linear B, Anatolian, Canaanite and various other old languages. It is regarded as a rare trace of early written communication and important for further academic investigation. The pottery sherd shows a badly defined row of symbols in what some consider to be an abstract linear rather than pictographic form of character. It has not been reliably dated however suggestions have been made of