Looted Seal Impressions Authenticated After Quarter Century

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In October 1975 a hoard of bullae (seal impressions) began trickling onto the Jerusalem antiquities market. Ultimately, the hoard included more than 250 bullae. In 1986 Nahman Avigad, one of Israel’s most prominent and highly respected archaeologists and epigraphers, published these obviously looted bullae.1

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Footnotes

See Hershel Shanks, First Person: “What to Do with Unprovenanced Artifacts,” BAR 39:02.

For more on the Avigad hoard, see Hershel Shanks, “Jeremiah’s Scribe and Confidant Speaks from a Hoard of Clay Bullae,” BAR 13:05.

Endnotes

Nahman Avigad, Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1986).

Yuval Goren, “The Jerusalem Syndrome in Biblical Archaeology,” SBL Forum (2005), http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?articleId=374.

Mitka Ratzaby Golub, “The Distribution of Names on Hebrew Bullae from the Time of Jeremiah: A Comparative Study,” Israel Exploration Journal 62 (2012), p. 206.