Prize Find: Pomegranate Scepters and Incense Stand with Pomegranates Found in Priest’s Grave - The BAS Library
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1990 Excavation Opportunities

Prize Find: Pomegranate Scepters and Incense Stand with Pomegranates Found in Priest’s Grave

By Michal Artzy

BAR recently published a beautifully carved ivory pomegranate with an important inscription on it.a As partially reconstructed, the engraved inscription around the neck of the pomegranate reads as follows: “Belonging to the House of Yahweh, Holy to the Priests.” Based on this reading, many scholars have concluded that the ivory pomegranate originally came from the Jerusalem Temple constructed by King Solomon. But how was the pomegranate used? Several suggestions have been made. One is that it was the head of a small scepter. A small hole had been carefully carved into the bottom of the pomegranate, into which […]

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Footnotes

1.

André Lemaire, “Probable Head of Priestly Scepter From Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem,” BAR 10:01; see also Hershel Shanks, “Was BAR an Accessory to Highway Robbery?” BAR 14:06; Shanks, “Pomegranate, Sole Relic From Solomon’s Temple, Smuggled Our of Israel, Now Recovered,” Moment, December 1988; Nahman Avigad, “The Inscribed Pomegranate from the ‘House of the Lord,’” Israel Museum Journal 8 (1989), p. 7.

2.

See “Pomegranate ‘Priceless’ Says Harvard’s Frank Cross,” BAR 10:01.

3.

Avigad, “The Inscribed Pomegranate,” p. 13.

4.

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) is the religiously neutral term used by scholars, corresponding to B.C.

5.

We were assisted by archaeologists and volunteers from the University of Haifa, Denmark, Italy and the United States (Univ. of Mass. at Amherst and the Program of Nautical Archaeology, Texas A & M). Mr. and Mrs. Robert Shay of Philadelphia and Prof. Daniel Hillel made major donations.

6.

See Baruch Margalit, “Why King Mesha of Moab Sacrificed His Oldest Son,” BAR 12:06.

Endnotes

1.

Claude F-A. Schaeffer, Enkomi-Alasia, Paris, 952.

2.

H. W. Catling, Cypriot Bronzework in the Mycenaean World (Oxford Clarendon Press, 964).

3.

See Baruch Margalit, “Why King Mesha of Moab Sacrificed His Oldest Son,” BAR 12:06. See also A. Spalinger, “A Canaanite Ritual Found in Egyptian Reliefs,” Journal of the Society of the Study of Egyptian Archaeology 8 (1978), pp. 47–60.

4.

Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel, vol. 2 (New York McGraw Hill, 1961). But see Lawrence E. Stager and Samuel R. Wolff, “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01.

5.

Aeschylus, The Agamemnon.