Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem

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BAR recently published a fascinating article by Gabriel Barkay reporting on his excavation of a small rolled silver amulet, dating from the seventh or sixth century B.C. When the amulet was unrolled, it was found to contain the tetragrammaton—the four Hebrew letters yod, he, waw, he that form the unpronounceable name of God, sometimes transcribed in Latin letters as Yahweh or Jehovah. (See “The Divine Name Found in Jerusalem,” BAR 09:02.)

This truly sensational discovery is said to be the first time God’s name has been recovered in an archaeological excavation in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

The claim is technically accurate. However, another artifact containing the Divine Name, or at least a part of it, has recently surfaced in Jerusalem. Not only does this artifact predate the rolled silver amulet by at least 100 years in the First Temple period, but it is also all the more remarkable because it was probably used in the Temple service itself! If so, this is indeed a rare find; for of no other artifact may we say that it was probably used in the Temple service in the Solomonic Temple.

The artifact I refer to is a small inscribed pomegranate fruit made from a single piece of fine ivory; this pomegranate is 1.68 inches (43mm) high and .83 inches (21mm) in diameter, with a flat base into which a small hole was cut. The pomegranate consists of a central ball, or grenade as scholars prefer to call it, and a thin neck that expands into what were originally six petals, four of which have survived. Part of one side of the grenade is broken off. An inscription in paleo-Hebrew letters is incised around the shoulder of the grenade, just below the neck.

One important distinction between the occurrence of the Divine Name on the silver amulet previously reported in BAR and the occurrence of the Name on this small ivory pomegranate is that the silver amulet was excavated in a scientifically controlled, professionally directed excavation. The pomegranate was not.

I first saw the pomegranate in July 1979. I had come to Jerusalem to work on a long-term project, a book on the corpus of inscribed northwest semitic seals. Many of these seals are written in paleo-Hebrew script, the ancient alphabet used by the Israelites until after they returned from the Babylonian exile and adopted the so-called square Aramaic script still in use today (see “The Evolution of Two Hebrew Scripts,” BAR 05:03). I had come to Jerusalem to check the reading of some paleo-Hebrew inscriptions in the Israel Museum and in the Rockefeller Museum.

As I usually do when I visit Jerusalem, I made the rounds of the antiquities dealers. They know me, and they know what I am looking for—inscribed seals and seal-impressions from the First Temple period. Sometimes they even allow me to take pictures of their wares without buying.

One of the dealers I visited reported that, although he had neither inscribed seals nor seal impressions, he knew someone who had an ivory object with an old Hebrew inscription on it. Of course I was excited about seeing any new paleo-Hebrew inscription, but trying not to appear too eager, I simply told my friend that I would be pleased to look at the object.

Later he called me, and we fixed a time when I would return to his shop to look at the object. I arrived on time. I was invited to the back of the shop where we drank the obligatory tea and chatted about other things. Finally, he took down a box and removed a small ivory pomegranate, which he handed to me. There, incised into the ivory around the neck in a continuous circle, without word separation, was a paleo-Hebrew inscription. Unfortunately, several letters were missing where the grenade had 025026been broken off, but the remaining letters were easy to identify.

I immediately noticed that the shape of the letters was very similar to the letters in the famous Siloam inscription, which was found in the tunnel King Hezekiah of Judah built in about 705 B.C. in preparation for Sennacherib’s siege. The tunnel brought water from the Spring Gihon, outside the city wall, to a pool inside the walls of Jerusalem. The inscription on the ivory pomegranate was easily datable on paleographic grounds to the late eighth century B.C.

Since the pomegranate had not been excavated in a scientifically controlled excavation, I knew that I had to be careful: Was it a fake? The ivory pomegranate itself looked genuine. But perhaps the inscription had been incised by a modern forger. To find out, I examined the writing very carefully under a magnifying glass, paying special attention to the edges of the incision. I noticed traces of new incisions at the bottom of some letters, as if someone had tried to clean out caked earth from the incised letters with a small needle. Sometimes a calcic deposit forms on artifacts found in tombs and excavations; perhaps a needle was used to remove calcium deposits from the incised letters. The needle also removed most of the ancient patina from the incised letters, but traces of the same patina that covered the surface of the pomegranate could still be seen in the original incisions. The trace incisions were clearly added after the letters had been incised. This fact and the presence of patina in the incisions confirmed the paleographic evidence that both the inscription and the artifact were genuine.

I photographed the pomegranate and left the shop. When the photographs were developed, I examined the inscription more closely. Despite the lack of word dividers in the inscription, I easily recognized the Hebrew word for holy, qdsû or kodesh.^a This was followed by the word for priests, khnm or kohanim. Then came a blank space. Perhaps this was the end of the inscription and what followed after the space was the beginning of the inscription. After the space were three letters, lby. Then came the broken part. It looked like about four letters were missing. Then I dimly saw traces of a Hebrew he, followed by the word for holy, as described above. If the space between the m and the l marks the beginning of the circular inscription, then it reads like this:

lby³ [xxxx]h³ qdsû khnm

I knew of several paleo-Hebrew inscriptions on vases from Hazor, Arad and Beer-Sheva that contained the word qdsû or “holy.” More significant, however, was an ostracon 027(No. 18) from Arad that contained the phrase by³t yhwh³, “Temple of the Lord.”

Thus, it was very tempting to restore the missing letters as follows:

lby³[t yhw]h³ qdsû khnm

“Belonging to the Tem[ple of the Lor]d [Yahweh], holy to the priests.”

To anyone familiar with ancient Hebrew inscriptions, this restoration makes eminent good sense and is indeed in many ways obviously correct.

For what purpose was the pomegranate used? Although we cannot be sure, a small hole in the base provides a clue. This hole is about .23 inches (6mm) in diameter and .39 inches (10mm) deep. Apparently, a small rod—about 12 inches (30 cm) long—probably also in ivory, or less likely in wood or metal, was placed in the hole to provide a shaft for a small scepter. In two Assyrian reliefs from Nineveh, we see King Sennacherib (704–681 B.C.) standing in his chariot, holding in his left hand what seems to be a similar small scepter, the head of which is in the shape of a pomegranate.¹ Similar scepters with pomegranate heads were found in the 1930s by the British Expedition working at Lachish. These scepters date to the Late Bronze Age, more precisely to about the 13th century B.C. So the pomegranate as the head of a scepter is not uncommon.

Why is this ivory scepter so small? The answer lies in 028the fact that it is ivory; that is, the pomegranate was made from a single piece of ivory, which obviously limited the size.

Despite my efforts to learn from the dealer something of the provenance of the ivory pomegranate, I was unsuccessful. The object belonged to someone else, he told me, who himself did not know where it had come from. I could learn no more. Worse, I do not know where the object is today.

However, from the object itself and the inscription around it, we can conclude that it was probably used by the priests in the service of the Jerusalem Temple at the end of the eighth century B.C.

Where was the object found? Probably not far from Jerusalem, either accidentally or in an illicit excavation. It is possible that it was found in one of the many tombs carved in the limestone all around Jerusalem. But this is just a guess.

We should not be at all surprised that a pomegranate was used in the Temple in Jerusalem. Pomegranates, along 029with grapes and figs, are the best-known fruits of the Holy Land. These three fruits are mentioned together in several Biblical passages. In Numbers 20:5, God is asked “Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place [the Wilderness of Zin], a place with no grain or figs or vines [grape] or pomegranates?” And in Deuteronomy 8:8, it is said that the “Lord your God is bringing you into a good land … a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates.”

Several inscribed seals decorated with pomegranates surrounding the name of the owner have been found. These seals date to the eighth to seventh centuries B.C.²

In the past few years, several pomegranate-shaped pottery vessels have been found in excavations in Israel. At Tell Halif (Lahav), Professor Joe D. Seger excavated an Israelite tomb, probably from the eighth century B.C., in which he found a bowl with a raised pomegranate in the center. Two pottery vessels in the shape of pomegranates, dating to about 1000 B.C., were found in a Philistine temple excavated by Amihai Mazar at Tell Qasile. These pottery vessels confirm the popularity of pomegranate decorations in the Judean kingdom.

One reason the pomegranate was so popular is that it was probably a symbol of fecundity because of the multitude of seeds contained in the fruit.

According to the Bible, the hem of Aaron’s vestment was decorated with pomegranates (Exodus 28:33–34). Four hundred pomegranates decorated the capitals of the two freestanding bronze columns named Boaz and Joachin in front of the entrance to the Temple (1 Kings 7:42, 2 Kings 25:17, 2 Chronicles 4:13 [in some references the number of pomegranates is 100, e.g., 2 Chronicles 3:16 and Jeremiah 52:23]). So we should hardly be surprised that the pomegranate was used in the Temple service.

Thus, archaeological parallels confirm the popularity of the pomegranate, and the Biblical references confirm its association with the Israelite Temple and the priests.

This ivory pomegranate is unique, however, because it was probably used by the priests in the service at the Jerusalem Temple in the late eighth century B.C. If that is true, it is the only sacred object (qdsû or kodesh, holy) that survives from the Temple built by Solomon.

For more details, see A. Lemaire, “Une inscription paleo-hebraique sur grenade en ivoire,” Revue Biblique 88 (1981), pp. 236–239.

BAR recently published a fascinating article by Gabriel Barkay reporting on his excavation of a small rolled silver amulet, dating from the seventh or sixth century B.C. When the amulet was unrolled, it was found to contain the tetragrammaton—the four Hebrew letters yod, he, waw, he that form the unpronounceable name of God, sometimes transcribed in Latin letters as Yahweh or Jehovah. (See “The Divine Name Found in Jerusalem,” BAR 09:02.) This truly sensational discovery is said to be the first time God’s name has been recovered in an archaeological excavation in the Holy City of Jerusalem. The claim […]