¹ Lapp, Paul W., Late Royal Seals from Judah, BASOR 158(1960), 11–22Google Scholar.

² For general bibliography on the stamps prior to 1958, see Lapp's study mentioned in the preceding note. Important studies since then include the following: Yadin, Yigael, The Fourfold Division of Judah, BASOR 163(1961), 6–12Google Scholar; Yohanan Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rahel: Seasons 1959 and 1960 [henceforth RR (1959–60)] (Roma, 1962), 51–56; The Land of the Bible (Philadelphia, 1967), 340–46Google Scholar; and Cross, Frank M. Jr., Stamps, Judean, Eretz-Israel 9(1969), 20–27Google Scholar.

³ The Excavations of Tell Beit Mirsim, Vol III: The Iron Age (Aasor, XXI-XXII; New Haven, 1943), 74–75; for earlier hypotheses, see the bibliography in Diringer, David, Le iscrizioni antico-ebraiche palestinesi (Firenze, 1934), 155–57Google Scholar.

⁴ Diringer, David, On Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions Discovered at Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish)-II, PEQ (1941), 91–101Google Scholar; The Royal Jar Handle Stamps, BA 12(1949), 73–74Google Scholar.

⁵ BA 12(1949), 84–86Google Scholar.

⁶ Apud Tufnell, Olga, Lachish III: The Iron Age [henceforth Lachish III] (London, 1953), 344Google Scholar. A mid-eighth-century date for the beginning of the series is also accepted by Yadin, BASOR 163(1961), 12Google Scholar.

⁷ BASOR 158(1960), 11–22Google Scholar.

⁸ Ibid., 21.

⁹ Ibid., 18–21. For Ginsberg's argument, see his Judah and the Transjordan States from 734 to 582 B.C.E., Alexander Marx Jubilee Volume (New York, 1950), 349–51Google Scholar and nn. 12–14.

¹⁰ Eretz-Israel 9(1969), 20Google Scholar.

¹¹ The Land of the Bible, 340–46, and RR (1959–60), 51–53.

¹² In his argument in The Land of the Bible he presents a total of six points, but only the first three are determinative. His fourth point, viz., that the number of seals is relatively small, pointing to a short period of use for the series as a whole, can fit more than one set of chronological circumstances. His fifth point is that Sennacherib's destruction of Lachish would account for the strikingly small percentage of two-winged stamps found there as compared to the tells in the hill country. The unusually high percentage of scarab stamps at Lachish does indeed call for explanation, but if other prior considerations make the 701 date for the destruction of Lachish III improbable, as will be argued below, then one must simply propose an alternative explanation for the imbalance. His sixth argument is that the confined area in which the stamps have been found, namely, within the area of Judah, eliminates the period of Josiah, who ruled over a much wider area. The outlines of an answer to this objection will be indicated below.

¹³ The Land of the Bible, 342; RR (1959–60), 51. Since the first paragraph of his palaeographical argument in The Land of the Bible is unclear, it should be read in the light of his comments in RR (1959–60), 51.

¹⁴ BASOR 158(1960), 21.

¹⁵ Lapp, ibid. Also see Cross, Epigraphical Notes on Hebrew Documents of the Eighth-Sixth Centuries B.C. Ill: The Inscribed Jar Handles from Gibeon, BASOR 168(1962), particularly his comments on zayn, p. 21, and mem, p. 22; also Eretz-Israel 9(1969), 20Google Scholar.

¹⁶ E.g., Lachish III, Pl. 46B: 4 and 5; also see Cross's comments on the occasionally lowered shoulder of the class 3 mem: BASOR 168(1962), 22.

¹⁷ E.g., Y. Aharoni, Excavations at Ramat Rahel: Seasons 1961 and 1962 [henceforth RR (1961–62)] (Roma, 1964), Pl. 38:11, 12.

¹⁸ E.g., RR (1961–62), Pl. 38:12 and 39:6, 9.

¹⁹ Avicad, N., The Epitaph of a Royal Steward from Siloam Village, IEJ 3(1953), 137–52Google Scholar.

²⁰ Pritchard, James B., Hebrew Inscriptions and Stamps from Gibeon (Philadelphia, 1959), 12Google Scholar. See also the comments by Wright, G. E. in his review of Pritchard's monograph on the Gibeon water system, JNES 22(1963), 211Google Scholar and n. 1.

²¹ BASOR 168(1962), 18–23.

²² JNES 22(1963), 211, n. 1.

²³ RR (1959–60), 51.

²⁴ RR (1961–62), 123–24.

²⁵ RR (1959–60), 13, 38, 40, and especially RR (1961–62), 31.

²⁶ Only a plate and a half of VB pottery are published (RR [1959–60], Fig. 27, and RR [1961–62], Fig. 35:6–10). Compare the deep bowl with low carination, straight sides, and pointed rim (RR [1959–60], Fig. 27:1) with Fig. 11:5, 6, and 7 in the same volume. The large crater with handles and half-moon rim (Fig. 27:3) is quite similar to those from Str. VA shown in Fig. 11:19, 21, and Fig. 28:33. If there is a difference, it is that the example from VB is not burnished, while the parallels are all burnished. As for the lamps with the heavy bases (Fig. 27:5–8), Str. VA provides several parallels: Aharoni, Y., Excavations at Ramat Rahel, IEJ 6(1956), 142Google Scholar, Fig. 10:1; RR (1959–60), Fig. 11:32–34 and 36–38. Only the pottery forms shown as Nos. 2 and 4 in Fig. 27 have no parallels in the published pottery of Str. VA. But a cooking pot of nearly identical shape is attributed to Loc. 505 of Str. II at Lachish (Lachish III, Pl. 104:684). As for the remaining sherd, No. 4, it is without obvious parallel in Iron Age sites.

Turning to the VB sherds published in (RR (1961–62), one may compare the shallow saucer-like bowl with the straight sides (Fig. 35:6) with RR (1959–60), Fig. 28:2–11, especially No. 5; also RR (1961–62), Fig. 16:1–14. The burnished bowls with the thickened rims like Fig. 35:7 are particularly numerous: cf. RR (1959–60), Pl. 28:22–26 and 29 but especially No. 22; also RR (1961–62), Fig. 16:35–39 and Fig. 17:11–49. The bowl shown as No. 8 in Fig. 35 is related to No. 7, but the rim is flatter; cf. the example from Str. VA shown as No. 1 in the same figure. The large crater (Fig. 35:9) is paralleled in RR (1959–60), Fig. 11:14, and in RR (1961–62), Fig. 18:1–6, especially No. 1. All the craters in Fig. 18 have handles, but since the one drawn in Fig. 35:9 is only a sherd, it too may have had handles (one appears to be tentatively represented in the drawing). The cooking pot illustrated in Fig. 35:10 may be, as Aharoni says, eighth-century (RR [1961–62], 60); there are no parallels among the VA cooking pots from Ramat Rahel, and Albright attributed the closest parallel from Tell Beit Mirsim to Stratum Ai (The Excavation of Tell Beit Mirsim, Vol. I: The Pottery of the First Three Campaigns [Aasor, XII; New Haven, 1932], Pl. 56:3). However, nearly the identical form is found at Lachish in several different loci attributed to Str. II as well as III (Lachish III, Pl. 93:442). The same form was also found in the homogeneous “Pottery Cache” of Beth-zur Str. Ill dated by Paul and Nancy Lapp to the end of the monarchy; see Ovid R. Sellers, et al., The 1957 Excavation at Beth-zur (Aasor, XXXVIII; Cambridge, 1968), Fig. 19:1 and p. 55. Since the material found under the VA floors is fill, one would expect sherds to be present from all previous periods of the mound's occupation. What is significant is the predominance of late forms.

²⁷ Lachish as Illustrating Bible History, PEQ (1937), 176. See also his comments in Excavations at Tell ed-Duweir, PEQ (1937), 235–36.

²⁸ Lachish III, 55.

²⁹ Albright, William F., Recent Progress in Palestinian Archaeology: Samaria-Sebaste III and Hazor I, BASOR 150(1958), 24Google Scholar.

³⁰ Buchanan, Briggs W., Review of Lachish III, AJA 58(1954), 335–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Crowfoot, J. W., Crowfoot, G. M., and Kenyon, K. M., The Objects jrom Samaria: Samaria-Sebaste III (London, 1957), 204–08Google Scholar.

³² G. Ernest Wright, Reviews of Lachish III, JNES 14(1955), 188–89, and, especially, VT 5(1955), 97–105.

³³ Lachish III, 340.

³⁴ Wright, VT 5(1955), 102; Buchanan, AJA 58(1954), 336.

³⁵ There were some 45 examples of class 3 stamps found at Lachish (Lachish III, 346). However, the majority are either unpublished or are from the surface or other unclear find-spots. Between the table on page 342 of Lachish III and Diringer's original publication of 172 stamps, one can pinpoint the find-spots of 14 of the two-winged handles. See Diringer, PEQ (1941), 89–109.

³⁶ Lachish III, 56.

³⁷ Starkey, PEQ (1937), 235–36. See also the section in Lachish III, Pl. 113. A-C, and Pl. 124, which gives the position of the section.

³⁸ Lachish III, 94, Pl. 113, A-C, and Pl. 114, Squares G/H/J.17.

³⁹ Ibid., 342. The number of the handle is 7146.

⁴⁰ Ibid., Pl. 113, A-C, C-B, and B-Z.

⁴¹ Some uncertainty over the depth of debris is generated by the fact that the horizontal scale given for Section A-C on Pl. 113 does not correspond exactly with the vertical scale at the right-hand margin. Since the handle was found at G/H.17, this puts the find-spot at the right-hand end of the section A-C. What exactly is represented by the hump at the right end of the section is not clear. But since Pl. 21:1 and 6 and Pl. 114 show all of this area excavated down to the level of the roadway, the simplest explanation is that the section was drawn before excavation had proceeded east of this point and that the hump represents temporarily unexcavated material. Cf. the east end (left) of Section C-B. After the excavation was completed, the lines of 1087 and 1072 were evidently continued on the drawing through the hump to the east, producing a confusing palimpsest.

⁴² Miss Tufnell's argument for two levels of use for Roadway 1072 of Level II is wholly unconvincing (Lachish III, 95–96). She interprets Section A-C (Pl. 113) as showing one level of use of 1072 from the gate eastward to the hump of brick debris where she proposes that the upper 1072 surface continues at the level of the top of the hump while a lower 1072 surface dips down, keeping to the top of the burnt destruction debris of Level III. The interval between the two proposed 1072 surfaces consisted of “fine earth wash or silt” (95). We are asked to believe that in the 100 years between the destructions of Level III in 701 B.C. and the lower phase of 1072 in 597 B.C. (her dates), the level of the road surface rose not at all but remained exactly at the level of the destruction debris of Level III with not even the hump of brick debris being leveled down to allow proper drainage from east to west. Then in the ten years between 597 and 587, the level of the roadway rose nearly a meter – not, however, through occupation debris or a series of re-surfacings but through the deposit of fine silt, the worst possible surface for a street in wet weather. Such a reconstruction is clearly incredible. The deposit of silt can only be due to puddling from, the heavy winter rains during a period of abandonment, the drainage to the west being blocked by the heaped debris of the destroyed Level III gate. This interpretation is confirmed by the following observations of C. H. Inge, who supervised the excavation of the length of roadway between the hump of brick and the gateway to the west: “It [Roadway 1072] went downhill from the remains of the inner gateway into a kind of ditch between the mound formed by the collapse of the houses on either side. This ditch rapidly filled with mud, and three layers of water-laid deposit, probably attributable to three separate floodings, are visible. This deposit brought the road up to the level of the heaps of ruins and of the later gate level, and the surface was then metalled with a thin layer of broken burnt brick” (ibid., 95).

Geologist Reuben Bullard has demonstrated to the staff of the current excavations at Gezer how rapidly thick deposits of silt can build up even in one season of heavy rains, and it is possible that the silting could have occurred in a brief time. However, Inge's mention of three discernible deposits followed by a new use surface is most provocative. If Level III were indeed destroyed in 597, three winters of rain and silting would bring us down to 594, a year when we know there was a rebellion in Babylon with similar stirrings in the west (Bright, John, A History of Israel [Philadelphia, 1959], 307–08Google Scholar). Such events would be ample reason for the resettlement and refortification of so strategic a site as Lachish (Level II). I would not care, however, to place much weight on an argument based on such fine interpretation of stratigraphic evidence.

⁴³ Lachish III, 120–21, and Section A-C, Pl. 113. Miss Tufnell also allots Locus 1072 to Level III; if this is the case, it must be only at the far eastern end of the excavated roadwa y where Level III destruction debris lensed out and the Level III road rose to meet 1072.

⁴⁴ Ibid., 121.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 342, No. 7071.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 121, and Pl. 124.

⁴⁷ Ibid., Pl. 124.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 95.

⁴⁹ Ibid., 117.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 110–11. 51

⁵¹ Ibid., 340.

⁵² Ibid., Pl. us, Square J.15.

⁵³ Ibid., 342 in row “Ziph.” The number of the handle is 6212.

⁵⁴ For Room 1073 see Ibid., Pl. 115, Square J.15.

⁵⁵ PEQ (1937), 235.

⁵⁶ Lachish III, 56.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 149.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 120 and III, respectively. Also Pl. 115, Square J.15. Note especially the allusion to 1073 in the description of Loc. 1070.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 121.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 342 in row “Mmšt,” No. 7080. Cf. the elevation on Pl 115, Square J.15.

⁶¹ Ibid., 124, Pl. 114, Square H/G.17, and Pl. 21:5.

⁶² Ibid., 340.

⁶³ Ibid., 342 in row “Sokoh,” No. 7165, and in row “Hebron,” No. 7164.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 95 and 96. These statements render impossible her later suggestion tha t the class 3 handles were introduced into Room 1089 from Alley 1095 (340); the surface of Alley 1095 was at least two meters below the level of Road 1072.

⁶⁵ See Diringer, PEQ (1941), 93, 95, 97, and 99. For the location of Area AG, see Lachish III, 131 and Pis. 118 and 119.

⁶⁶ Lachish III, table on page 140.

⁶⁷ Ibid., 315.

⁶⁸ Since it is clear that the four-winged stamps also belong to Level III at Lachish, indeed are predominant, the hypothesis of Cross that all the Imlk stamps are to be dated to the time of Josiah receives strong support (Eretz-Israel 9 [1969], 20). In this same regard note should be taken of an intriguing statement by Bliss and Macalister concerning their finds of royal stamps: “In one case at Zakariya three specimens of the two-winged type were found in a few inches of debris upon a flooring and above this [emphasis added] occurred another flooring, upon which were three specimens of the four-winged type” (Bliss, F. J. and Macalister, R. A. S., Excavations in Palestine [London, 1902], 109Google Scholar). No one would want to claim this as evidence that the four-winged stamps are the later; but unless this is a slip in recording, it is evidence that the two types of stamps were in simultaneous use. That only two-winged stamps were found under the surface and only four-winged stamps on top would have to be considered pure coincidence.

⁶⁹ Macalister, R. A. S., The Excavation of Gezer (London, 1912Google Scholar), Vol. I, 22–29; Kurt Galling, Assyrische und Persische Präfekten in Geser, Palästinajahrbuch 31 (1935), 81.

⁷⁰ Adding the number of Imlk stamps from Gezer which I have studied in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum together with those that can be deduced from Macalister's casual remarks about the stamps in his preliminary reports, it appears that the absolutely minimum total of stamps from Gezer would be 31. It may easily run as high as 50, judging from the remarks of W. F. Albright, The Administrative Divisions of Israel and Judah, JPOS 5(1925), 45.

⁷¹ Correspondence dated June 2, 1970. I wish to record here my sincere thanks to Dr. Kenyon for her willingness to share this information and to give her permission to be quoted.

⁷² See n. 68, above.

⁷³ A. Alt, Judas Gaue unter Josia, Palästinajahrbuch 21(1925), 100–16 (Kleine Schriften, II, 276–88); M. Noth, Das Buck Josua (2e Aufl.; Tübingen, 1953), 92ff.; The History of Israel (New York, 1958), 272–74.

⁷⁴ I would like to thank Profs. G. Ernest Wright and Frank M. Cross, Jr. for their counsel in the preparation of this paper.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: After this article had gone to press there appeared the two-part study of A. D. Tushingham, A Royal Israelite Seal (?) and the Royal Jar Handle Stamps, BASOR 200(1970), 71–78, and 201(1971), 23–33. Tushinc-Ham's conclusions on the date of the stamps agree perfectly with the argument presented here, and our analyses of the evidence from Rama t Rahel are almost word for word the same. But his interpretation of the meaning of the stamps as proclaiming the reunited monarchy is not possible, it seems to me, in view of the total absence of the impressions from the north. As he says, at least a thousand examples are no w known; and yet not one has been reported from a northern site. Surely one or two will turn up eventually, but the statistical situation will not be changed. And the question for Tushingham remains: how can that symbol which s i claimed to be the symbol par excellence of the reunification of the country be so completely restricted to Judah alone?