Image Details

The finest china graced the tables of homes in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter during the first century C.E. In this photo, an elegant stone table supports a set of imported red-slipped ware called eastern terra sigillata.

Although a few fragments of imported ware have been discovered at Qumran, almost all of the site’s pottery was likely produced in the settlement’s workshops. The unpainted and undecorated Qumran pottery is generally much plainer than that found in the Jewish Quarter and in Herod’s palaces at Jericho and Herodium.