Researchers have read a 3,800-year-old letter without ever opening its cover.
The letter was discovered in Kanesh, an ancient trading city in what is now Turkey.
A woman named Anna-anna wrote it to her husband, who was away on business.
In the message, she asks about silver that other people owed him and urges him to recover it.
The letter sat inside a sealed clay envelope, just as it was thousands of years ago.
In the past, scholars had to break such envelopes to read the text hidden inside.
Now a new scanning technology allows them to read the words while keeping the clay whole.