Rare 1,300-year-old medallion decorated with menorahs found near Jerusalem’s Temple Mount
Archaeologists in Jerusalem have unearthed a rare 1,300-year-old lead medallion, decorated on both sides with the image of a seven-branched menorah – the ceremonial candlestick unique to the Second Temple.
Researchers believe the medallion was worn on a necklace by a Jew in the late 6th or early 7th century, when the city and surrounding areas were under Christian rule. Byzantine Empire – just a few decades before the city fell, first to the Sasanian Persians in 614, then to the predominantly Arab and Islamic invaders around 638.
“One day, while digging inside an ancient structure, I suddenly saw something different, gray, among the stones,” Ayayu Belete, an archaeologist with the nonprofit City of David Foundation, said in the release. “I picked it up and saw it was a pendant with a menorah on it.”
This discovery is a surprise for archaeologists because Jews were not allowed to enter the city at the time. Centuries earlier, the failure of the Jewish people’s revolt of Bar Kochba (also spelled Kokhba) of 132–136 (the third major rebellion against Roman rule in Judea) led the Roman Emperor Hadrian to declare that Jerusalem would be rebuilt as “Aelia Capitolina” and that the surrounding province of Judea would be called Syria-Palaestina. This ancient name was inspired by the long dead Philistinesbiblical enemies of Israelites who had lived along the nearby Mediterranean coast.
Rare medallion
The new medallion was discovered inside a late Byzantine-era building, which had been buried under a thick layer of rubble from construction work led by the city’s Umayyad rulers decades after the Islamic conquest, the statement said.
The medallion is disc-shaped, with a loop at the top. The two sides represent a seven-branched menoraha type of menorah that was only used in the Second Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. (Nine-branched menorah are used today at Hanukkah.) The top of each candlestick branch on the medallion has a horizontal crossbar with flames rising above it. One side of the medallion is well preserved, but the other side is covered with a natural patina due to weathering; analysis shows that it was composed almost entirely of lead.
Only one other millennia-old lead medallion bearing the menorah symbol has been previously discovered, according to the release. “A pure lead pendant, decorated with a menorah, is an exceptionally rare find,” say IAA archaeologists. Yuval Baruch, Filip Vukosavovic, Esther Rakow-Mellet And Shulamit Terem wrote in the statement. “The double appearance of the menorah on either side of the disc indicates the deep meaning of this symbol.”
Hadrian’s city
Jews were supposedly forbidden from entering the city during the Byzantine era, and had been since the Roman victory in the Bar Kochba Revolt. But according to Gunter Stembergerprofessor emeritus of Jewish studies at the University of Vienna, the ban was sometimes relaxed and many Jews lived in neighboring towns and territories.
However, it is unclear exactly how important these medallions were to their owners. “Were they private objects of Jews who came to the city for various reasons – perhaps merchants, or people on administrative missions, or individuals who came to the city as secret pilgrims and under unofficial circumstances? wrote the archaeological team in the press release.
The new medallion reveals that “during periods when imperial edicts forbade Jews from residing in the city, they kept coming,” said Baruch, an archaeologist with the IAA’s Jerusalem district.
The fact that the medallion was made of lead indicates that it was worn as an amulet – and probably hidden – rather than as jewelry, according to Baruch. “Lead was considered a common and particularly popular material for making amulets at that time,” he said.
