Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Hasmonean artifacts recovered in West Bank village

FOR HANUKKAH: Hanukkah discovery: Rare Hasmonean lamp, Second Temple stylus found near Jerusalem. The Civil Administration said the artifacts add to a growing corpus of Second Temple–era material recovered in recent years across the West Bank (Shir Perets, Jerusalem Post).
The lamp, exposed during work led by the head of the unit, was found together with a Second Temple–period writing implement believed to have been used on wax tablets. According to the Civil Administration, the discovery offers fresh evidence of Jewish life and settlement continuity around Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago.
The artifacts were discovered at Nabi Samuel, a village in the West Bank.

Another Hasmonean-era oil lamp is nice to have, but it is not especially rare.

The stylus, however, is a rare find. Reportedly a (much older??) iron one was found a few years ago at Mount Ebal. No indication what the newly recovered one was made of.

Confusingly, they are not the objects in either photo. The lamp and coins in the top one came from Tel Yavneh (a.k.a. Yavneh Yam). The second photo is of a bronze half-face lamp discovered in 2021. See here, here, and here.

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