{"id":8252,"date":"2020-02-11T16:00:45","date_gmt":"2020-02-11T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/?p=8252"},"modified":"2021-08-19T09:51:05","modified_gmt":"2021-08-19T06:51:05","slug":"find-finder-of-the-month-a-bulla-of-an-unknown-type-discovered-by-the-schwartzes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/2020\/02\/11\/find-finder-of-the-month-a-bulla-of-an-unknown-type-discovered-by-the-schwartzes\/","title":{"rendered":"Find & Finder of the Month: A Bulla of an Unknown Type, Discovered by the Schwartzes"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month we present you with Miriam and Elie Schwartz, of Philadelphia, PA, who found a small pottery shard, which may look unimportant at first glance (even to some of our seasoned archaeologists). However, on careful examination, some interesting features begin to stand out: one side of the pottery shard, which otherwise looks like just any piece of an ordinary cooking pot shard, seems to have a border surrounding two characters, resembling an six pointed star and a T with a curved leg (perhaps a Greek Tau?).<\/em> Our initial impression is that we’ve encountered a rare Byzantine-period clay sealing (bulla), but further work is needed before we can say anything definitive. We can, however, with a fair amount of certainty, say that the style and material don’t match any of the well known First Temple period clay sealings  (Sorry, Elie & Marie, we know you were hoping for this).<\/p>\n

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a clay sealing (Bulla, <\/strong>pl. Bullae<\/strong>) is a piece of clay which was affixed to a knotted string, sealing a rolled document,  package or container. Once the piece of moldable clay was attached, a seal was stamped on it, leaving an impression validating that the object had not been opened by the unauthorized. While a relatively large number of sealings have been discovered from earlier periods, particularly the First Temple period, sealings from later periods are a rarer phenomenon.<\/p>\n

It was great to see the excitement on the faces of the Schwartzes, who happened upon this exciting artifact when they made a stop by us during the semester break at Pennsylvania State University, where they serve as educators in the OU’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus<\/em>. Include us in your next visit to Jerusalem, and you too can (and will!) touch a piece of history!<\/p>\n

\"\"

Miriam and Elie Schwartz holding the rare clay sealing they found<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month we present you with Miriam and Elie Schwartz, of Philadelphia, PA, who found a small pottery shard, which may look unimportant at first glance (even to some of our seasoned archaeologists). However, on careful examination, some interesting features begin to stand out: one side of the pottery shard, which otherwise looks like just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":9526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[60,118,347],"class_list":["post-8252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finds","tag-bulla","tag-find-of-the-month","tag-sealings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/02\/\u05d1\u05d5\u05dc\u05d4-\u05e2\u05e8\u05d1\u05d9\u05ea.jpeg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8252"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9527,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8252\/revisions\/9527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmsifting.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}