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First Temple-era seal discovered
Posted on Monday, October 03, 2005 (CDT) by Thoth
 A First-Temple period seal has been discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem's Temple Mount, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday, in what could prove to be an historic find.
The small - less than 1 cm - seal impression, or bulla, discovered Tuesday by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount would mark the first time that an written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period.
The 2,600 year old artifact, with three lines in ancient Hebrew, was discovered amidst piles of rubble discarded by the Islamic Wakf that Barkay and a team of young archaeologists and volunteers are sifting through on the grounds of a Jerusalem national park.
The seal,
which predates the destruction of the First Jewish temple in 586 BCE,
was presented Tuesday night to the press at an archaeological
conference at the City of David sponsored by the right-wing Elad
organization.
Barkay said that the find was the first of its kind from the time of King David.
He has not yet determined
what the writing is on the seal, although three Hebrew letters --
thought to be the name of its owner -- are visible on one of its line.
The seal was found amidst
thousands of tons of rubble discarded by Wakf officials at city garbage
dumps six years ago, following the Islamic Trust's unilateral
construction of an mosque at an underground compound of the Temple
Mount known as the Solomon's
Stables.
After the Antiquities
Authority voiced disinterest in thoroughly sifting through the rubble
discarded by the Wakf, Barkay applied -- and eventually received –a
license from the Antiquities Authority to sort through the piles of
earth thrown into the garbage dump in search of antiquities, and has
since found scores of history-rich artifacts, from the First Temple
Period until today amidst the rubble, including a large amount of
pottery dating from the Bronze Ages through modern times, a large
segment of a marble pillar's shaft, and over 100 ancient coins, among
them several from the Hasmonean Dynasty.
While inexact, the ongoing
sifting project, which is now being sponsored by Elad, has being called
virtually unprecedented since archaeological excavation has never been
permitted on the Temple Mount itself.
Meanwhile, in a separate
major archaeological development in Jerusalem, a Jewish ritual bath, or
mikva, dating back to the Second Temple period, and a First Temple Wall
have been found in an underground chamber adjacent to the Western Wall
tunnels, the Antiquities Authority's Jerusalem regional archaeologist
Jon Seligman said during a tour.
The site is part of a new
state-of-the-art tourist center at the Western Wall tunnels, which will
be open to the public in two months' time.
The impressive site, which
incorporates ancient and modern Jewish history in an attempt to reach
out to Israeli youth, includes an elaborate audiovisual show, and nine
magnificent glass sculptures, which serve to highlight both recent
discoveries of artifacts and infrastructure dating back thousands of
years, including one of the world's oldest aqueducts, as well as modern
day Jewish history, such as the Holocaust and Israel's fallen soldiers.
Article Source
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