Temple Mount earth-filtering project discovers ancient clay tokens

More than a decade ago, a tiny clay token with a seal imprint depicting a wine jar (amphora) with a Greek inscription was discovered by a team working on the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Due to its resemblance to another clay token with an Aramaic inscription that had been found near the Temple Mount, scholars have wondered whether these sealings functioned as tokens for exchanging offerings used by pilgrims who ascended to the Temple.

Archaeologists are still trying to understand the nature of the 2,000-year-old mysterious clay token that was found in September 2011 while sorting pottery shards collected from previous siftings at the site. Archaeologist Gal Zagdon, who was in charge of the sifting facility, noted a tiny, irregularly shaped clay object. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that it was not a potsherd but a tiny lump of clay with a seal impression on it. Unlike common clay sealings (sometimes named bullae), its back side was pinched, suggesting it was a type of token given by hand to the recipient, unlike a sealing that was attached to a knot securing a document or container.

The seal impression depicts an amphora known from the second half of the first century CE (about 100 years before the Second Temple’s destruction). Six Greek letters appear around the wine jar; one of them was not well preserved in the imprint. The reading of the inscription, done with the kind help of Dr. Leah Di Segni of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) – an expert in ancient Greek epigraphy – resulted in the letters ΔΟΥ-ΛΟ[Υ] (DOULOU), the genitive (the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word) of the personal name Doulês. Such a name was common in Thrace, Macedonia and the northern regions of the Black Sea – areas where Jews had settled by the late Hellenistic-Early Roman periods.

The token may have been used as payment by pilgrims ascending to the temple

Two months after the discovery of the Greek token, another very similar one was found in excavations at the drainage channel under Robinson's Arch (below the Western Wall’s southern section), directed by Eli Shukrun and Prof. Ronny Reich of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

This token bore an Aramaic inscription that had initially been translated by the archaeologists as “pure to God.” However, HU Talmudic scholar Prof. Shlomo Naeh later suggested that the token was used by pilgrims ascending to the Temple as a token to receive their offerings after payment, with the writing on the sealing intended to prevent forgeries by including the abbreviations of the sacrifice type, the day, the month, and the name of the priestly division of that week. 

This practice is described in Mishna tractate Shekalim (5:4), the art of the oral Jewish law compiled in the 2nd century CE. Other scholars, including Prof. Ze'ev Safrai and Dr. Avi Shweika, criticized this interpretation and suggested other meanings for the token.

The Aramaic token adds further context to the Greek-inscribed token from the Temple Mount. Notably, it depicts a wine jar, aligning with the Mishnaic text that discusses nesachim, a term for the wine libation poured on the Temple altar and also used to refer generally to all the offering components. The researchers said it is plausible that this token was intended for Greek-speaking pilgrims, possibly including Jews from the diaspora. Significantly, the Mishna confirms the presence of Greek writing in the Temple, noting in another chapter of Tractate Shekalim (3:2) that baskets in the treasury chamber were marked with Greek letters.

In research conducted for the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Yoav Farhi examined several clay tokens found in Jerusalem. Among them the two mentioned above, another token from the Temple Mount Sifting Project with a poorly preserved impression and another found in 1970 during the Jewish Quarter excavations by Prof. Nachman Avigad that bore a seal impression depicting a chalice symbol that also appeared on shekel coins from the last days of the Second Temple period, typically interpreted as one of the Temple vessels. Farhi confirmed Di Segni’s reading of the Greek inscribed token from the Temple Mount and examined the composition of the clay of the tokens, with the help of Prof. Yuval Goren from Ben-Gurion University, finding similarities between the token from the Jewish Quarter and that from the Temple Mount.

Clay sealings from the Early Roman period (the last two centuries of the Second Temple period) are very rare finds in Israel, and those with a pinched reverse side are not known from any other sites. All four tokens studied by Farhi were found in the proximity of the Temple Mount, and were likely associated in some way with the activities that took place in the Temple. Their style is completely different from that of other known tokens from the Roman world.

Many questions remain unanswered regarding these tokens: Who used them? Who issued them? How were they used? What is the significance of the wine jar symbol on the Greek inscribed token? Who was Doulês? Is the last letter in this name, which was poorly preserved, really an Upsilon? Are there other possible readings of this inscription?

The Temple Mount Sifting Project launched exactly 20 years ago aims to recover archaeological artifacts from 400 truckloads of soil rich with archaeological artifacts removed from the Temple Mount and dumped in the nearby Kidron Valley. This soil had been excavated illegally by the Waqf during construction activities in the late 1990s. The project’s goal is to salvage as many artifacts as possible from the discarded soil and study them extensively to shed new light on the archaeology and history of the Temple Mount. The sifting is carried out as a tourism-education attraction, with over 250,000 people participating so far, an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of archaeological research. The project has yielded more than half a million artifacts that are kept in its storage awaiting scientific and more widely popular publication.

As a result of the war, the Temple Mount Sifting Project has been plunged into a state of uncertainty regarding its future operations. Most of the project’s major donors have redirected their resources to support issues directly connected to the war, leaving the sifting operation facing potential closure in the coming months. In the last year, the project was approved for several government grants, and one was received just a few days before the war started. Still, all other grants are now on hold due to the government reallocating all available budgets to war-related issues.