The Ophel Excavations, 1986/Photo: Ilan Sztulman

A “butterfly storage jar” did not store butterflies for ancient collectors. The term derives from a double-triangle pattern, resembling butterfly wings, that was incised on some storage jars of this type (though not on this example). Found in the corridor to the northwest of Building D’s eastern room, the jar lay smashed beneath the rubble from a fiery destruction, part of the Babylonian devastation of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. (see photograph of jar in situ). The recovery of nearly all the sherds made possible the restoration of the jar’s graceful form with the use of only a few modern patches, which exhibit a color slightly pinker than the other fragments.