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Collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority/Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Contact with the broader Mediterranean world is evidenced by this delicately crafted glass vessel, or amphoriskos, from the sixth century B.C.E. The bottle (from Cave 34) was made by the core-formed technique, several centuries before the invention of glass-blowing. Core-formed vessels were crafted by dipping a “core” of sand and dung that had been modeled into the desired shape into a vat of molten glass. The intricate patterns of yellow and blue decoration were made from threads of heated glass that were applied while the basic vessel was still hot and molten. When the bottle had cooled, the sand core was removed, leaving a brilliant multicolored vessel.