2,000-year-old cup unearthed in Jerusalem

BY THOMAS H. MAUGH II, Los Angeles Times

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

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 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. From the Second Temple Period, 573 B.C. to A.D.

70, the team found a housing complex with a "mikveh," or purification pool, and a well-preserved vaulted ceiling. Inside the house were three bread ovens dating to A.D. 70, the year when Roman Emperor Titus and his troops sacked the city.

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 four-column wire story, no masthead, no folio, no printed date; date is label-only. 'ARCHAEOLOGY' in the reversed bar above the headline is a SECTION FLAG, not a deck; there is no deck. The right-hand third of the clipping is a 'High Blood Pressure?' clinical-trial advertisement and is not part of the article. WIRE-COPY DIVERGENCE: the same Thomas H.

Maugh II dispatch as The Bulletin's on slide 79, same date, different headline and different typesetting. Where The Bulletin prints 'the founding of the Temple — the center of ancient Judaism —', the Bee prints 'the founding of the temple – the center of ancient Judaism –', lower case and with en dashes; verified from a magnified crop.

The Bee also compresses 'two months to six months' to 'two to six months' and breaks the cryptic-script paragraph in two. The Bee runs the story to its end, through the murex shells, the fire pit, the Byzantine mosaic floor and the Church of St. Mary; The Bulletin's clipping stops earlier.

The closing paragraphs of the Bee version were read at page magnification; the opening paragraphs and the 'temple' sentence were transcribed from magnified crops. The observation in the record for The Bulletin about Gan Sobev Homot Yerushalayim National Park and occupied East Jerusalem applies identically here.

Cite this clipping

"2,000-year-old cup unearthed in Jerusalem," The Sacramento Bee, 1 August 2009. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2009-048. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2009-048