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November 10, 2006
Friday Pot Blogging
Today I want to turn to another type of pot that is not in the study collection. This is the lmlk jar or Iron Age II oval-shaped storage jar. Here are two examples from Timnah.
They are both from the late 7th century BCE. They are both very nearly the same shape; they both have four handles. Both are about 55 cm tall. The one on the left has one of the famous l'melek seal impressions on one of its handles and the one on the right does not. I'm not sure which of the several possible l'melek stamps is on the jar illustrated on the left. On a purely statistical basis (based on the finds from Timnah), it is most likely of the type that reads lmlk above a two or four winged disk and šwkh below the disk. These are the most common types from Timnah. lmlk should be understood as meaning "belonging to the king" and šwkh (as well as hbrn, mmst and zyp which occur on many seals) as a place name. A good reference, with lots of pictures and drawings and discussion of the seals can be found at The LMLK Research Website.
Such jars ranged in height from 55 to 70 cm and volume from 40 to 52 liters.
What I want to mention about these jars is a point recently made by my old Gezer boss, Sy Gitin. These jar belong is a class of jars whose use spans a much larger period than the late 7th century BCE. As Gitin points out, proto-versions of this class of jar have been found from the 10th century at places like Beersheba, Gezer and Ekron, among others. While Gitin identifies five sub-types, most of the differences are quite subtle. Perhaps most interestingly, Gitin, 521, hints of the possibility that these jars may have been "royal storage jars" over the complete span of their use and not just in the 7th century when some of them were stamped with lmlk seals.
The history of stamping or inscribing jar handles is very old. As part of my work on the short cuneiform alphabet I studied a jar handle from early 13th century Sarepta in Lebanon (KTU 6.70) that has "An amphora, which Yiddinba'alu has made for (l) Chudashi, his lord." written on it in what is likely a early version of Phoenician.
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Posted by DuaneSmith at November 10, 2006 01:55 PM | Read more on Archaeology |
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