Jerusalem

Jerusalem, Jebus, City of David, Moriah – the city that became 3000 years ago the focal point of Judean, and later Jewish, identity is known by many names. Most of them appear in the Bible, but apparently not all of them. In the reign of Hezekiah (727–698 BE), a new administrative system was formed in the kingdom of Judah for collecting agricultural produce and distributing it between various sites. This system probably came into being as part of the preparations for the moment when an opportunity would present itself for Judah to rebel against the Assyrian empire, which seized control over the Land of Israel already in the days of Ahaz, Hezekiah’s father, and which destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel in 722–720 BCE. Such an opportunity arose with the death of Sargon II, king of Assyria, on the battlefield in 705 BCE, but the revolt was harshly suppressed by his son Sennacherib four years later.

The administrative system created by Hezekiah is reflected in stamp seal impressions on the handles of jars used to store agricultural produce – grain, wine or oil. Those impressions feature a two-winged symbol or a four-winged beetle, accompanied by a Paleo-Hebrew inscription. The inscription’s first word is always lmlk “(Belonging) to the king” – an indication that the jar’s content belonged to the royal treasury. The second word is the name of a settlement: Hebron, Ziph, Socoh or Mmsht. The first three cities are well known from the Bible and appear, for example, in the list of the cities of Judah in Joshua 15. However, no city named Mmsht is known (it cannot be Mamshit in the Negev, which was founded only in the first century BCE). Presently, the scholars think that Mmsht is an abbreviated form of Hebrew Memshelet “(seat of) government.” Then, this is likely a reference to Jerusalem, although the royal palace at the nearby site of Ramat Rachel, built in the reign of Hezekiah, is also a possibility. Over 2000 jar handles with lmlk stamp impressions have been found throughout Judah, and dated to the time of Hezekiah or to the early reign of his son Manasseh. The handles were discovered at various sites, not only in the four cities mentioned in the inscriptions, and those cities were probably administrative centers for gathering agricultural produce raised in taxes or grown on royal farmland, and for distributing it further. If Mmsht is indeed a reference to Jerusalem or to a royal palace built nearby, the stamped jar handles are one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the city’s central role in Judean and Jewish history.

Jar handle with a stamp “(Belonging) to the king, Mmsht,” Judah, ca. 700 BCE (© Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem, photo: Moshe Caine)