The Mysterious Mount Zion Mug

Home > Magazines > BAR > Summer 2025

A fragmentary stone mug from the first century CE, discovered during the Mt. Zion excavations just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls, bears a remarkable secret: a carefully incised inscription partially written in a rare cryptic script previously known only from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Investigate this mysterious text and what it may reveal about Jewish ritual practices during the Second Temple period.

Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.

Join the BAS Library!

Already a library member? Log in here.

Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username

Footnotes

1. See Todd R. Hanneken, “Archaeological Views: Digital Archaeology’s New Frontiers,” BAR, March/April 2017.

Endnotes

1. Work was directed by Shimon Gibson, James D. Tabor, Rafael Y. Lewis, and Steve Patterson. For a preliminary study on the mug and its discovery, see Shimon Gibson, “New Excavations on Mount Zion in Jerusalem and an Inscribed Stone Cup/Mug from the Second Temple Period,” in David Amit, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Guy D. Steibel, eds., New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2010), pp. *32–*43.

2. We are grateful to Mareike Grosser, the project’s finds curator, who carefully cleaned the mug after its discovery.

3. Stephen Pfann, “The Mount Zion Inscribed Cup: Preliminary Observations,” in David Amit, Orit Peleg-Barkat, and Guy D. Steibel, eds., New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and Its Region (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2010), pp. *44–*85.

4. Shimon Gibson, “Common and Uncommon Jewish Purity Concerns in City and Village in Early Roman Palestine and the Flourishing of the Stone Vessel Industry: A Summary and Discussion,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 53 (2022), pp. 157–197.