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Three Shekels for the Lord

Ancient inscription records gift to Solomon’s Temple

By Hershel Shanks

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 […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Hershel Shanks, “The Pomegranate Scepter Head—From the Temple of the Lord or From a Temple of Asherah?” BAR 18:03; “Was BAR an Accessory to Highway Robbery?” BAR 14:06; “Pomegranate: Sole Relic from Solomon’s Temple, Smuggled out of Israel, Now Recovered,” Moment, December 1988; André Lemaire, “Probable Head of Priestly Scepter from Solomon’s Temple Surfaces in Jerusalem,” BAR 10:01.

2.

See Joan G. Scheur, “Searching for the Phoenicians in Sardinia,” BAR 16:01.

3.

See, for example, items 96, 97, 98, 234, 456 and 605 in Nahman Avigad, revised and completed by Benjamin Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society et al., 1997).

4.

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., reads the first letter as a mem, rather than a zayin, however.

5.

See Hershel Shanks, “Magnificent Obsession,” BAR 22:03.

6.

See Hershel Shanks, “The Tombs of Silwan,” BAR 20:03.

Endnotes

1.

Pierre Bordreuil, Felice Israel and Dennis Pardee, “Deux Ostraca Paleo-Hebreux de la Collection Sh. Moussaieff,” Semitica 46 (1997), p. 49. An English version of this paper is scheduled to appear in the March 1998 issue of Near Eastern Archaeologist, formerly Biblical Archaeologist.