Ivory Pomegranate

Bought in a Shop, Published in Paris, Displayed in Jerusalem

The object is small — about an inch and a half high and less than an inch across — carved in the shape of a pomegranate, with six petals at the top, two of them broken, and a hole in the base where a rod would have been fitted. It is called ivory, but it is not elephant ivory: the material is a hippopotamus tooth. That the carved object itself is ancient is not in dispute between any of the parties here — what is disputed is only the writing cut into its shoulder.

The inscription is the reason anyone knows about it. Cut around the shoulder in paleo-Hebrew, and preserved only in part because a third of the shoulder has broken away, it is read as lby[t yhw]h qds khnm — belonging to the tem[ple of Yahwe]h, holy to the priests. Note the brackets. The two most consequential words in the reading, the ones that make this the temple of the God of Israel rather than any temple anywhere, sit in the missing section and are reconstructed.

A. Lemaire of the Sorbonne first saw it in an antiquities shop in Jerusalem in 1979, published a note on it in Revue Biblique in 1981, and made it famous with a longer article in 1984. The Israel Museum acquired it a few years later for a reported $550,000, and displayed it for some fifteen years in a room of its own with a light on it — because if the reading holds, this is the only object from the temple of Solomon that anyone has ever seen.

The Committee, the Break, and the Letter That Changed Its Mind

In 2005 a committee drawn from the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Israel Museum published its examination in the Israel Exploration Journal and concluded that the inscription is modern. Their central argument was about the break. The shoulder is broken along an ancient fracture, and the committee reported that certain letters stop short of that fracture — as though someone had engraved around a damaged edge, which an ancient carver working on an undamaged object would have had no reason to do. The object came off display. The inscription was named in the indictment in the Israeli forgery trial, though it was not among the charges attached to any individual defendant.

The case has not stayed closed, and the reason is that the argument turns on a handful of microscopic observations that people can look at again. A. Lemaire never accepted the verdict, and answered it in print. At a meeting in the Israel Museum on 3 May 2007 the parties looked at the disputed letter together under the microscope, and two members of the committee accepted that the report had been mistaken about it: the letter did run into the break. The concession is smaller than it sounds, and the account that reports it — written by advocates of authenticity — says why. The break that letter runs into is a modern one, so what it establishes is that the letter was cut before that modern break, not that it was cut in antiquity. The committee's published re-examination that year corrected the point and left the conclusion where it was, in one flat sentence: the inscribed pomegranate is a modern forgery. Then, in June 2015, the paleographers A. Yardeni and A. Lemaire, with the dealer R. Deutsch — himself a defendant acquitted in the forgery trial that had named this inscription — examined the object together under the Israel Museum's microscope while a Reflectance Transformation Imaging team from the University of Southern California photographed it. Yardeni had written the previous year that she could not confirm the inscription's authenticity; after that session she wrote to say she had changed her mind about the critical letter. That account comes from H. Shanks, who convened the meeting and who has argued for authenticity for forty years, and it should be read as the advocate's account that it is.

So the state of the question is this: a published institutional verdict of forgery that has not been withdrawn, and a live, specific, checkable objection to the observation the verdict leans on hardest, pressed by paleographers of the first rank. That is a real dispute rather than a rhetorical one, and it has not been resolved.

Half Genuine Is a Category, Not a Compromise

The useful thing about this object is that it forces a distinction most readers have never had to make. An ancient artefact and an ancient inscription are two separate claims, and a forger who wants to sell the second has every reason to start with the first. Old material passes a materials test because it is old. A carved bone pomegranate of the right period, bought cheaply on the market, is the ideal blank; the value is added afterwards, with a graving tool. That is what the committee concluded happened here, and whether or not they are right about this piece, the technique is real and well documented.

The second thing to notice is the brackets in the reading. Even taking the inscription as ancient, the words that make it a temple of Yahweh are restored, not preserved. Restoration is normal epigraphic practice and often defensible, but a restoration is a proposal, and an article that prints the restored reading without the brackets has quietly turned a proposal into a fact. Pomegranates were a common decorative motif; the priestly service used them; a bone finial inscribed as holy to the priests of some sanctuary would be a real and interesting object even if it named no temple at all.

What Scripture says about pomegranates is not affected either way. They are stitched around the hem of the high priest's robe with golden bells between them in Exodus 28, and carved by the hundred on the capitals of the pillars of the temple in 1 Kings 7. The motif is well attested, in the text and in the archaeology of the region. This one small object would be a vivid illustration of it. It has never been the evidence for it.

Scripture references

• Exodus 28:33 — Pomegranates of blue, purple and scarlet around the hem of the priestly robe, with golden bells between them
• Exodus 28:36 — A plate of pure gold engraved like a signet: HOLY TO YAHWEH — the formula the inscription echoes
• 1 Kings 7:20 — Two hundred pomegranates in rows around the capitals of the temple pillars
• 2 Kings 12:11 — Temple money weighed out to the workmen — the world of objects a temple furnishing would have belonged to

Sources

• Holding institutionY. Goren, S. Ahituv, A. Ayalon, M. Bar-Matthews, U. Dahari, M. Dayagi-Mendels, A. Demsky and N. Levin, "A Re-examination of the Inscribed Pomegranate from the Israel Museum" — The joint Israel Antiquities Authority and Israel Museum committee — the holding institution reporting on its own object · Israel Exploration Journal 55/1 (2005), 3-20. Print onlySupports: The verdict that the object is ancient and the inscription modern, and the argument from letters stopping short of the ancient break
• Scholarship"The Inscribed Pomegranate from the Israel Museum Examined Again" — S. Ahituv, A. Demsky and Y. Goren, members of the 2005 committee, as the Biblical Archaeology Society reports the authorship; some listings add A. Lemaire, who dissents from their conclusion, and this app could not settle the author list from a source it could read · Israel Exploration Journal 57 (2007), 87-95; the forgery conclusion is on p. 92. Print only; the copy on JSTOR refuses automated requestsSupports: The 2007 re-examination, which corrected the committee's reading of one letter and restated the conclusion that the inscription is modern
• ReferenceH. Shanks, "Verdict: Not Guilty" — Hershel Shanks, Biblical Archaeology Society — an advocate of authenticity · 14 March 2012. The source for the $550,000 the Israel Museum is reported to have paid, and for this inscription's place among the forgery charges at the trialSupports: The purchase price and the inscription's appearance in the indictment
• ReferenceBiblical Archaeology Society, "Analysis of Microscope Photographs: The Ivory Pomegranate Inscription - Preserved and Missing" — Biblical Archaeology Society staff, August 2007 - advocates of authenticity, reporting a meeting they attended · First-hand account of the 3 May 2007 microscope session, with page citations into Israel Exploration Journal 57 (2007). Also the source for the material being a hippopotamus toothSupports: The concession about the disputed letter, and the 2007 article's restated conclusion
• ReferenceBiblical Archaeology Society, "Ivory Pomegranate Revisited: A Relic from Solomon's Temple?" — Biblical Archaeology Society, summarising H. Shanks's account in Biblical Archaeology Review 42:02 (March/April 2016) · Written by advocates of authenticity. The source for the object's dimensions, the reading with its brackets, the 1979 sighting and 1981 and 1984 publications, and the June 2015 microscope session at which A. Yardeni revised her view of one letterSupports: The physical description, the publication history, and the 2015 re-examination as its participants describe it
• ScholarshipC. Rollston, "The Israeli Forgery Trial: The Verdict is Given" — Christopher Rollston, George Washington University · Rollston Epigraphy, 14 March 2012. Records that F. M. Cross stated in an open letter that he considered this inscription a modern forgery. Served over plain httpSupports: The judgement of one further senior epigrapher against the inscription

Further reading

• Biblical Archaeology Society: the pomegranate revisited

Reflect

Two of the words that make this object matter are not on it — they are reconstructed inside brackets. Where have you built something important on a reading rather than on a text?