What are they? Petrified Tootsie-Rolls, ceramic hot dogs, toy cigars? Are they perhaps ancient exercise equipment used by pre-Israelite boxers? Do BAR readers have any better suggestions? If so, send them to us, and BAR will pass them on to the excavators, who readily admit they are stumped by this find of some 278 sausage-like, multi-colored clay hickeys from Biblical Lachish. The hickeys were recently discovered in Levels VI or V in renewed excavations which began at Lachish in 1973 under the direction of David Ussishkin of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Level VI at Lachish […]
