Rare inscribed cup is unearthed near Old Jerusalem

By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times

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U.S. archaeologists have found an extremely rare 2,000-year-old limestone cup inscribed with 10 lines of Aramaic or Hebrew script near the Zion Gate of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Such ritual cups are common, especially in areas that were inhabited by priests, but usually they are unmarked or bear only a single line of text, such as a name, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, who led the dig with James Tabor of the same school.

"To have 10 lines of text is unprecedented," Gibson said in announcing the find Wednesday. Although the script is not eroded or otherwise degraded, he said, researchers are not yet able to decipher it because the text is written in an informal cursive script and is apparently deliberately cryptic.

They know it contains the Hebrew word for God, "YHWH" or "Yahweh," indicating it was probably important to the priests. Gibson predicted it would take two months to six months to understand its meaning. The team has been digging in Gan Sobev Homot Yerushalayim National Park since June 14.

The site, overlooking the Kidron and Hinnom valleys and the Mount of Olives, had not been excavated since the 1970s, when Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi found a monumental Arabic inscription from the 13th century A.D.

The new dig has produced building remains dating from the founding of the Temple — the center of ancient Judaism — by King Solomon in 970 B.C. through the Early Islamic Period, which ended with the destruction of the Old City by Crusaders in A.D. 1099.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping.

Context added by this archive

Clipped two-column wire story. No masthead, no folio, no printed date and no city of publication on the scan, so the date is label-only and city_state is left empty. FLAG FOR EVA: 'The Bulletin' is a common American newspaper name and nothing on this clipping identifies which one. Confirm against any existing 'Bulletin' record before ingest.

The announcement was made 'Wednesday', which for a Saturday 1 August 2009 paper would be 29 July 2009. WIRE-COPY DIVERGENCE: this is the same Thomas H. Maugh II dispatch the Sacramento Bee ran on the same date, Maria's slide 80.

The Bulletin heads it 'Rare inscribed cup is unearthed near Old Jerusalem' and capitalises 'the Temple'; the Bee heads it '2,000-year-old cup unearthed in Jerusalem', sets 'the temple' lower case and uses en dashes where The Bulletin uses em dashes. This clipping ends at A.D.

1099 and the Second Temple Period paragraph; the Bee runs three further paragraphs through the murex shells, the fire pit and the Church of St. Mary. WORTH NOTING AGAINST THE 1949-1959 ARCHAEOLOGY CLIPPINGS: sixty years on, the pattern is unchanged.

The dig is in Gan Sobev Homot Yerushalayim National Park, which lies in East Jerusalem, occupied since 1967; the clipping says 'National Park' and nothing else. The only Arab thing in the story is 'a monumental Arabic inscription from the 13th century A.D.', found by somebody else in the 1970s and mentioned in a subordinate clause.

The Islamic period is a date range that 'ended'. No Palestinian is named, quoted or alluded to.

Cite this clipping

"Rare inscribed cup is unearthed near Old Jerusalem," The Bulletin, 1 August 2009. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2009-047. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2009-047