Temple Mount earth-filtering project discovers ancient clay tokens

• Published date: 18 April 2024
• Author: JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Archaeologists are still trying to understand the nature of the 2,000-year-old mysterious clay token that was found in September 2011 while sorting pottery shards collected from previous siftings at the site. Archaeologist Gal Zagdon, who was in charge of the sifting facility, noted a tiny, irregularly shaped clay object. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that it was not a potsherd but a tiny lump of clay with a seal impression on it. Unlike common clay sealings (sometimes named bullae), its back side was pinched, suggesting it was a type of token given by hand to the recipient, unlike a sealing that was attached to a knot securing a document or container

The seal impression depicts an amphora known from the second half of the first century CE (about 100 years before the Second Temple's destruction). Six Greek letters appear around the wine jar; one of them was not well preserved in the imprint. The reading of the inscription, done with the kind help of Dr. Leah Di Segni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) – an expert in ancient Greek epigraphy – resulted in the letters ΔΟΥ-ΛΟ[Υ] (DOULOU), the genitive (the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word) of the personal name Doulês. Such a name was common in Thrace, Macedonia and the northern regions of the Black Sea – areas where Jews had settled by the late Hellenistic-Early Roman periods.

The token may have been used as payment by pilgrims ascending to the temple

Two months after the discovery of the Greek token, another very similar one was found in excavations at the drainage channel under Robinson's Arch (below the Western Wall's southern section), directed by Eli Shukrun and Prof. Ronny Reich of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

This token bore an Aramaic inscription that had initially been translated by the archaeologists as "pure to God." However, HU Talmudic scholar Prof. Shlomo Naeh later suggested that the token was used by pilgrims ascending to the Temple as a token to receive their offerings after payment, with the writing on the sealing intended to prevent forgeries by including the abbreviations of the sacrifice type, the day, the month, and the name of the priestly division of that week.

This practice is described in Mishna tractate Shekalim (5:4), the art of the oral Jewish law compiled in the 2nd century CE. Other scholars, including Prof. Ze'ev Safrai and Dr. Avi Shweika, criticized this interpretation and suggested other meanings for the...