West Semitic Research Project

Coin from the First Jewish Revolt, 68/69 CE. When the Jews revolted against Rome in the year 65 C.E., they minted their own coins as a symbol of their break from the Roman Emperor. This coin was minted during the third year of the revolt. The obverse (left) shows a Temple vessel, and the inscription “Shekel of Israel” in paleo-Hebrew, the archaic Hebrew alphabet. The reverse depicts pomegranates, and the inscription “Jerusalem the Holy.”

Photograph by Kenneth Zuckerman, West Semitic Research. Courtesy University of Southern California Archaeological Research Collection.

One of the Dead Sea Scrolls, written on copper, early 1st century CE. The Copper Scroll is unique among the Dead Sea Scrolls, being the only one inscribed in metal. The scroll was found in Qumran Cave 3, rolled up into two parts. The copper was so heavily oxidized that it had to be cut into twenty-three half-cylinder segments, rather than unrolled. The text lists a vast quantity of buried treasure. Unfortunately, after 2,000 years the directions for finding the treasure remain rather obscure. One paragraph in Column 8 reads, in Hebrew, “In the irrigation cistern of the Shaveh, in the outlet that is in it, buried at eleven cubits: 70 talents of silver.”

Photograph by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman, West Semitic Research. Courtesy Department of Antiquities, Jordan.

A cylinder seal from the Persian Period c. 5th-4th centuries B.C.E. This is a roll-out image, side view and seal impression image of a cylinder seal in the Spurlock Collection, showing three Magi, or Zoroastrian priests. Each Magus holds a bundle of sticks, and all rest upon a winged sun-disk. Note how the artist has used the pattern in the agate stone to form an apex with the sun-disk.

Photograph by Bruce Zuckerman, Marilyn Lundberg and Wayne Pitard, West Semitic Research. Courtesy Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia, Ur III period, c. 2100-2000 BCE. The Ur III period in what is today southern Iraq saw the last great flowering of Sumerian rule, language and literature. Sumerian is an ancient language unrelated to any other known language, and seems to have been the first language to be written down. Thousands of economic and administrative clay tablets have been found in the Sumerian language and cuneiform script. These tablets also include seal impressions made with cylinder seals, small inscribed cylinders that were rolled across a tablet to verify a transaction, much in the same way we use a credit card today.

Photograph by Kenneth Zuckerman and Marilyn Lundberg, West Semitic Research. Courtesy University of Southern California Archaeological Research Collection.

The Ammonite inscription pictured here was found in the 1960s on the site of the Citadel, or fortress, of Amman, Jordan, ancient Rabbath-Ammon. It is generally believed to be a building inscription, of either a temple or the Citadel itself, although some have suggested that it is an oracle or instruction from the god Milkom, god of the Ammonites.

This is the most extensive text as yet discovered in the Ammonite language.

Photograph by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman, West Semitic Research. Courtesy Department of Antiquities, Jordan.

Cylinder Seal rollout from c. 2500-2350 BCE. Cylinder Seals are small objects carved from stone or shell, about the size of a AAA battery, up to a size D battery. They were used much like a signet ring in the Middle Ages, or a credit card today, in that they were rolled across clay tablets to verify a person’s participation in an economic transaction. In other words, they were the ancient equivalent of a signed charge card.

Photograph by Bruce Zuckerman, Marilyn Lundberg and Wayne Pitard, West Semitic Research. Courtesy Spurlock Museum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.