Royal Seal of Biblical King Hezekiah found.
For the first time, the royal seal of King Hezekiah in the Bible has been found in an archaeological excavation. The stamped clay seal, also known as a bulla, was discovered in the Ophel excavationsled by Dr. Eilat Mazar at the foot of the southern wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The discovery was announced in a recent press releaseby the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology, under whose auspices the excavations were conducted.
The bulla, which measures just over a centimeter in diameter, bears a seal impression depicting a two-winged sun disk flanked by ankh symbols and containing a Hebrew inscription that reads “Belonging to Hezekiah, (son of) Ahaz, king of Judah.” The bulla was discovered along with 33 other stamped bullae during wet-sifting of dirt from a refuse dump located next to a 10th-century B.C.E. royal building in the Ophel.
In the ancient Near East, clay bullae were used to secure the strings tied around rolled-up documents. The bullae were made by pressing a seal onto a wet lump of clay. The stamped bulla served as both a signature and as a means of ensuring the authenticity of the documents.
