Three Shekels for the Lord

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Two extremely important Hebrew inscriptions have recently surfaced on the antiquities market. One appears to be a receipt for a donation of three silver shekels to the Temple of Yahweh, pursuant to an order of the Israelite king. This is the oldest extra-Biblical mention of King Solomon’s Temple ever discovered. The other inscription records the petition of a widow for some portion of her late husband’s property. Both inscriptions, apparently by the same scribe, are written in Old Hebrew, or paleo-Hebrew, the script used before the Babylonian Exile. Both are on pieces of pottery, called ostraca because they bear an inscription.

Only one other extra-Biblical source mentions Solomon’s Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. But that source may be a century or more later than the ostracon at left, which some scholars have dated as early as the ninth century B.C.

A scientific report on the two inscriptions was recently published in the French journal Semitica¹ by three scholars—Pierre Bordreuil of the Centre National Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Felice Israel of the University of Genoa; and Dennis Pardee of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. The ostraca belong to London collector Shlomo Moussaieff. No one knows where they were discovered—or at least they’re not talking.

The text on the first ostracon, which measures about 4 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall (10.9 by 8.6 cm), is only 5 lines and 13 words long. All the words are complete and easily readable. See “A Temple Receipt” below for the text and translation. Most of the words are separated from one another by dots acting as word dividers. However, sometimes the word dividers are omitted, such as between LBYT and YHWH, which together are pronounced Beit Yahweh and mean “house (or temple) of Yahweh.” This omitted word divider may have important implications for the well-known “Beit David” inscription from Tel Dan (“Reading of ‘Beit David’ Inscription Strengthened”).

The Temple is designated by the Hebrew term BYT YHWH, “the house of the Lord,” many times in the Bible. But BYT YHWH had been found complete in only one extra-Biblical inscription, a faded ostracon from Arad with an obscure context, until this newly published ostracon was revealed. BYT YHWH has been reconstructed on the inscribed ivory pomegranate that supposedly served as the head of a priestly scepter in Solomon’s Temple, though some scholars dispute this reading.^a Since only a part of the last letter of “Yahweh” has survived on the pomegranate and the rest has been reconstructed, these scholars argue that the word should be reconstructed as “Asherah” (a pagan female deity) and not “Yahweh”; Both names end in the same letter. By contrast, “Yahweh” is clearly present and easily readable on the newly published Temple ostracon.

The osctracon describes the silver being donated to the Temple as “silver of Tarshish.” The Bible mentions Tarshish on several occasions, but whether it refers to a place, a kind of ship or a set of trade routes remains a mystery.

The New Jerusalem Bible, for example, explains in a footnote at 1 Kings 10:22 that the “meaning [is] uncertain, perhaps a place-name. Or ‘refinery ships’030for carrying metal.” The Temple ostracon supports the theory that it was a place, as most scholars now conclude. But what place? According to 1 Kings 10:22, gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks came from Tarshish. Spain has been suggested as a possible location. However, Harvard paleographer Frank Moore Cross suggests another possibility, based on a reference to Tarshish in a Phoenician inscription found on Sardinia and known as the Nora Stone.^b According to Cross, “Tarshish” there may refer to a Sardinian site where metal was smelted, suggesting that the name comes from a root meaning “to smelt.”

Several other Biblical texts connect Tarshish with silver. Jeremiah 10:9 mentions that “beaten silver is brought from Tarshish.” In support of the Spanish hypothesis, the authors of the Semitica article note that several classical sources refer to silver production in Spain. “Tarshish silver” may also simply refer to silver of very high quality.

The ostracon states that the money is to be given, as commanded by King Ashyahu, to one Zecharyahu for transmittal to the Temple. Ashyahu appears in a number of inscriptions,^c but nowhere with the title 031of king, and the Hebrew Bible lists no king of Judah or Israel by that name. However, the scholars who published the ostracon speculate that since royal names often appear in more than one form, this name might be another form of Yoash or Yehoash (often written in English translations as Joash and Jehoash). These names merely reverse the two elements in Ashyahu—ash, meaning “has given,” and the theophoric element yahu or yah, signifying Yahweh—yet each of these names means “Yahweh has given.” Two kings Yoash or Yehoash are known to have existed: a king of Judah who reigned from about 835 to 796 B.C., and a king of Israel who reigned from about 803 to 787 B.C.

A third possibility exists, that Ashyahu was King Josiah, who reigned over Judah from about 640 to 609 B.C. and instituted an important religious reform making the Jerusalem Temple the center for all worship of Yahweh. His name in Hebrew is composed of the same two elements Y’ash-yah, pronounced Yoshiah. (Y’ash is the imperfect form of ash.)

Which, if any, of these kings is referred to in the ostracon as Ashyahu depends on the date of the ostracon. The article’s authors date the handwriting on the ostracon to the latter part of the seventh century B.C., shortly before the Babylonian destruction of the Temple. Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni agrees with a seventh-century B.C. date for the inscription. On this basis, the two kings named Yoash or Yehoash can be ruled out, as the article’s authors do, leaving only Josiah (or Yoshiah) as a likely possibility.

Cross, on the other hand, would date the handwriting more than a century earlier. P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., of Johns Hopkins University agrees with him. If their dating is correct, the two kings named Yoash or Yehoash are better candidates. Because the suffix –yahu is associated with Judah—the suffix –yah was used in the northern kingdom of Israel—the King Yoash or Yehoash who ruled Judah from 835 to 796 B.C. is McCarter’s pick.

The name Zecharyahu, the intermediary mentioned in the ostracon, is well known from other inscriptions and from the Bible. BAR readers will recognize the name’s English form: Zechariah or Zachariah.^d

The ostracon’s final line contains the single letter shin, the standard abbreviation for shekelim. The number of shekels is indicated by three strokes. At this early date, before the introduction of coinage, a shekel corresponded to a weight of a little more than 11 grams.

Since the amount is the last item recorded, even though “silver of Tarshish” appears earlier, the article’s authors speculate that this may have been a standard receipt for a Temple donation. The amount may have been filled in only at the time of donation. The ostracon was then given to the donor as an official receipt.

Of course the authenticity of any artifact of unknown provenance must be questioned. I held these ostraca in my hands when I was in Moussaieff’s apartment, in 1996, collecting material for a BAR article.^e At that time, various scholars who had seen the ostraca had different opinions about the authenticity of the inscriptions; indeed, several scholars disputed the 032matter in front of me. Now, it seems, everyone is satisfied the inscriptions are authentic. Moussaieff has had the ink and the pottery sherds—and, most importantly, the white patina that had developed over the ink on part of the ostracon—tested at several laboratories, all of which gave the same answer. As the authors of the Semitica article state, “No anomalies in the ostracon or the ink have been disclosed by the laboratory analyses.” (“Ostraca Perform Well on Lab Tests: Awarded an ‘A’ for Authentic” for a more detailed description of the tests.) Moreover, it would take an expert in Near Eastern studies to compose the text authentically, the authors of the publication say, based on their line-by-line, word-by-word, letter-by-letter paleographical, philological and linguistic analyses.

The inscription on the second ostracon (“A Widow’s Plea”) contains eight lines of clearly readable text, with the exception of two or three letters that can confidently be restored. This ostracon measures about 4 inches wide by 4.5 inches high (10.55 by 11.14 cm). The inscription is a petition by an amah, a term denoting a woman in a particular relationship to a man. The Royal Steward inscription from Silwan records that the king’s royal steward was buried with his amah.^f Was she a slave-wife, as one scholar has suggested? A more likely suggestion, adopted by our authors, is that she was the wife of an ebed, usually translated “servant,” but actually identifying a high royal official. If that is the case, this petition is from the widow of an important royal functionary. Our authors translate amah as “maidservant,” the female equivalent of ebed. On the other hand, the use of amah here may be the appropriate designation for a woman presenting a discretionary petition.

The widow’s petition begins with a blessing formula: “May Yahweh bless you in peace,” b’shalom. We are not told to whom the petition is addressed.

Since her late husband died without offspring, his wheat field in Na‘amah (presumably the town in the Shephelah allotted to the tribe of Judah in Joshua 15:41) was given to his brother. According to Biblical law, if a man had no sons, his daughters would inherit; if he had no daughters either, his brothers would inherit (Numbers 27:8–9). That seems to be the case here. The widow, however, importunes some unnamed authority to give her some part of her husband’s inheritance, as promised her when the authority spoke to a certain Amasyahu. The widow does not demand anything by virtue of a legal right, apparently, but relies on the fairness of her request.

The word for inheritance in the inscription is nachalah. This is the first time the word appears in a Hebrew inscription outside of the Bible. In the Bible it appears frequently and refers to a person’s estate, usually in connection with an estate passing on to an heir. Estates were not allowed to pass out of a family’s hands.

The inscription is puzzling, however. According tothe law of levirate marriage, a man must marry his brother’s widow if his brother died childless (see Deuteronomy 25:5–6). Why wasn’t the husband’s brother, who had already received the wheat field in Na‘amah, required to do his duty by marrying his brother’s widow? Alas, the ostracon does not tell us.

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., of Johns Hopkins University, and Benjamin Sass, of Tel Aviv University, graciously assisted me and answered my questions in connection with this article.

Two extremely important Hebrew inscriptions have recently surfaced on the antiquities market. One appears to be a receipt for a donation of three silver shekels to the Temple of Yahweh, pursuant to an order of the Israelite king. This is the oldest extra-Biblical mention of King Solomon’s Temple ever discovered. The other inscription records the petition of a widow for some portion of her late husband’s property. Both inscriptions, apparently by the same scribe, are written in Old Hebrew, or paleo-Hebrew, the script used before the Babylonian Exile. Both are on pieces of pottery, called ostraca because they […]