Ketef Hinnom Silver Amulets

A Collapsed Ceiling, and a Bored Thirteen-Year-Old

Ketef Hinnom means the shoulder of Hinnom — the rocky spur above the bend of the Hinnom valley, southwest of the Old City, in the grounds of a Scottish church. G. Barkay excavated a First Temple period family tomb there in 1979: five chambers around a central hall, benches with carved stone headrests, and under three of the benches a repository where bones and grave goods were swept once the flesh had gone. The tomb had been used to store rifles in Ottoman times and looked archaeologically hopeless.

The reason it was not hopeless is that the ceiling of one chamber had partly collapsed in antiquity, sealing what lay beneath. Barkay's own account of how that was discovered is disarming: the volunteers included twelve- and thirteen-year-olds from a Tel Aviv youth archaeology club, and one of them, bored with being parked in a corner, banged on the floor with a hammer and came up holding almost complete pottery vessels. That was the repository, sixty centimetres deep and holding over a thousand objects — pottery, arrowheads, needles and pins, bone and ivory, glass, gold and silver. The boy was sent home with the rest of the youngsters and the repository was excavated by students and adult volunteers. He did not find the silver plaques, and the popular version of the story in which he did is wrong.

No individual finder is recorded for the plaques themselves, but the circumstances are: the larger came from the middle of the repository, seven centimetres above the floor, and the smaller was recovered while sifting dirt from the lower half of the deposit at the innermost end. Both were rolled tight. It took about three years of experimentation to unroll them without destroying them.

What Is Actually Written On Them

This needs to be said precisely, because the popular summary is looser than the objects. The smaller plaque, about eleven by thirty-nine millimetres with twelve surviving lines, is the one carrying the priestly blessing. It preserves the whole of Numbers 6:24 — may Yahweh bless you and keep you. From 6:25 it preserves only the first half, make his face shine upon you; the words "and be gracious to you" are not on the silver. From 6:26 it preserves only the second half, and give you peace; the words "Yahweh lift up his countenance upon you" are not on the silver either. Its opening lines also carry a phrase with no parallel in Numbers at all, calling God the one who helps and who rebukes evil — which is why these are read as protective amulets rather than as a scripture portion.

The larger plaque, about twenty-seven by ninety-seven millimetres, is not primarily a Numbers text. Its legible lines parallel the covenant formula of Exodus 20:6 and Deuteronomy 7:9 — the great God who keeps the covenant and lovingkindness towards those who love him and keep his commandments — before turning to redemption and to God as restorer and rock. Its blessing then begins, may Yahweh bless you and keep you, may Yahweh make his face shine, and the plaque disintegrates. Whether more of the blessing followed is a reconstruction, not a reading.

So what these objects show is that the language of the priestly blessing was in circulation, in writing, in Judah, before the exile. That is a genuinely large thing. It is not the same as saying that the book of Numbers existed in its present form, and it is not the same as saying anyone at Ketef Hinnom was copying Scripture.

The Date Has Been Fought Over Twice

Barkay dated the plaques palaeographically to the late seventh or early sixth century BC, later revising towards the early sixth. J. Renz, in the standard German handbook of ancient Hebrew epigraphy with W. Rollig, argued the script was too poorly preserved to date with confidence and that a Hellenistic date, third or second century BC, could not be excluded — the repository had functioned as a sort of bin over centuries and did contain later material.

That challenge was answered. Between 1994 and 2004 the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California re-imaged both plaques with advanced photographic techniques, and G. Barkay, A. G. Vaughn, M. J. Lundberg and B. Zuckerman published a new edition in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research in 2004. Their conclusion was that the late pre-exilic period is the proper context: only eight late-Hellenistic vessels came from the repository and all from its uppermost layer, no letter form points to a Hellenistic date, and both plaques were separated from the Hellenistic material by three metres horizontally and twenty-five centimetres vertically. P. K. McCarter said the study should settle the controversy, and for most of the field it did.

The live challenge today is different and it is not resolved. N. Na'aman argued in the Israel Exploration Journal in 2011 for a new decipherment of the missing section of the larger plaque and, on that basis, for an early Second Temple date — not long after the rebuilding of the temple — reading the texts as expressing hopes pinned on the new temple and the return to the land. S. Ahituv published a rejoinder the following year. If Na'aman is right, the headline claim about these objects collapses. He has not persuaded the majority, and this app follows the late pre-exilic dating, but a reader should know that a serious scholar has argued otherwise in a peer-reviewed journal within the last fifteen years.

One overclaim to refuse in passing. Because the plaques carry a text also found in the Pentateuch, they are sometimes cited as proof that the five books of Moses existed in the First Temple period. That is more than the silver can carry, and specialists said so at the time — the amulets show that material also found in the Pentateuch was written down before the exile, which is a claim about a blessing, not about a book.

Scripture references

• Numbers 6:24 — Yahweh bless you and keep you — preserved in full on the smaller plaque
• Numbers 6:25 — Only the first half of this verse is on the silver
• Numbers 6:26 — Only the second half of this verse is on the silver
• Deuteronomy 7:9 — The covenant-and-lovingkindness formula paralleled on the larger plaque
• 2 Kings 23:10 — Topheth in the valley of Hinnom — the ravine these tombs look down into

Sources

• ScholarshipG. Barkay, A. G. Vaughn, M. J. Lundberg and B. Zuckerman, "The Amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A New Edition and Evaluation" — Gabriel Barkay, Andrew G. Vaughn, Marilyn J. Lundberg and Bruce Zuckerman, West Semitic Research Project, University of Southern California · Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 334 (2004), 41-71. The standard edition, based on new imaging. Paywalled and not reachable by automated request, so no link is given · paywalledSupports: The readings of both plaques, and the answer to the proposed Hellenistic date
• ScholarshipN. Na'aman, "A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom" — Nadav Na'aman, Tel Aviv University · Israel Exploration Journal 61/2 (2011), 184-195. The linked page is the university's own record and carries the full abstract; the article is print only. S. Ahituv replied in IEJ 62 (2012), 223-232Supports: The proposed early Second Temple dating and its reasoning
• ScholarshipJ. D. Smoak, "From Temple to Text: Text as Ritual Space and the Composition of Numbers 6:24-26" — Jeremy D. Smoak, University of California, Los Angeles · Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 17, article 2 (2017). Open access. Its first footnote is the cleanest bibliography of the whole dating disputeSupports: The state of scholarship on the amulets and on the blessing's composition
• Holding institution"Amulets with a blessing formula from Ketef Hinnom" — University of Nottingham, Jerusalem: Fall of a City - Rise of a Vision; objects courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority, photograph by Nachum Slapak, Israel Museum · Gives the inventory numbers IAA 1980-1495 and IAA 1980-1496 and the dimensions. Cited via the Internet Archive because the exhibition site no longer accepts connectionsSupports: The inventory numbers, the holding institution and the dimensions
• ReferenceG. Barkay on the excavation of Ketef Hinnom, in interview — Gabriel Barkay, interviewed by Gila Yudkin · The excavator's own first-person account of the youth volunteers, the hammer, and the sequence of events at the repositorySupports: The correction to the popular story that a thirteen-year-old found the silver plaques

Further reading

• G. Barkay's own account of the excavation, in interview
• N. Na'aman, "A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom" (abstract)

Reflect

Someone in Jerusalem, six centuries before Christ, wore the words "Yahweh bless you and keep you" against their skin. What words would you want that close?