Mt. Zion excavation and cup

JERUSALEM EXCAVATION: Archaeologists Return to Dig Key Area Near Temple Mount (Popular Archaeology). The excavation of the Mt. Zion site, just outside the Temple Mount, are described in the free article, Digging into First Century Jerusalem's Rich and Famous. Notable in the article is a section on the Mt. Zion cup, an inscribed stone cup excavated there:

"Among the special finds from the 2009 season of excavations was a soft white limestone cup dating from the first century C.E. bearing an incised inscription, with ten or perhaps eleven lines of script on its sides," wrote Gibson.**

The cup (pictured left) was found in four pieces within a fill layer containing 1st century pottery fragments above a barrel-vaulted ceiling of a mikveh. It represented a well-known type of 1st century cup found in excavations throughout Jerusalem and beyond. The inscription on the cup has not yet been completely and definitively translated, but study of the cup and the historical context of its finding suggests that it might have been a ritual cleansing cup, used for the washing of hands before engaging in liturgical functions. Suggests Gibson, "the discovery of the cup in the area of the Upper City of Jerusalem, in which priestly families are known to have resided (including the Qatros family), may hint at the original priestly function that this specific vessel had some two thousand years ago."**

Most of the inscription remains undeciphered. There is more on it in the article and there is further background here and here and links