Shlomo Moussaieff Collection/London

Royal fingerprints may be preserved on the bottom edge of the lump of clay, or bulla, published here for the first time. A double line divides the two line inscription, which reads, “Belonging to Barak-el the king.” The name means “Blessed of El,” the god widely worshiped in the ancient Near East and the generic name for God in the Hebrew Bible. Unlike most Ammonite royal seals, including that of Ba‘alis, this one contains no iconography.