By Joan E. Taylor

One of the more interesting archaeological excavations of recent years must surely be the attic of Albright Institute in Jerusalem. Its various mysterious treasures are being relocated and finding their way into better containers.

Alerted to this process by an article by Rachel Hallote in ANEToday some time back, I noted that there was among these attic objects a whole cylindrical jar. Since one of our goals in the Leverhulme-funded International Network for Dispersed Qumran Artefacts and Archival Sources (DQCAAS) is to trace the present whereabouts of jars from caves in the vicinity of Qumran, I thought it was worthwhile to have a look at this artefact. ASOR, after all, was one of the partners in a cluster of institutions that worked together on a cave survey expedition in 1952, and we have – with the permission of ASOR – made the ASOR photographs taken for this survey available on our website.

Granted permission by Albright Director Matthew J. Adams, who arranged for the jar to be viewed in his office, I was assisted in the task of examination by a recent arrival at the Albright, student Conor McCracken-Flesher. I am very grateful to him.

A mysterious cylindrical jar in the Albright attic. All images courtesy of Joan Taylor.

Joan Taylor inspects the vessel.

This mystery jar turned out not to be typical of the caves around Qumran. Clearly, it is different, in having a very wide open mouth and no foot, and a hole in the base. It is coarseware, and the fabric is red. There is some slight damage to the mouth, but otherwise it is in excellent shape. It is possibly Roman, but there was nothing very obvious that could be diagnostic about its shape in terms of dating. It seemed to have been lodged somewhere in which it was partially exposed, since over most of it there are white encrustations that look like bird droppings, and black deposits, but one side is a darker hue, devoid of debris, probably indicating that part was embedded in earth.

Conor McCracken-Flesher holds the vessel steady. Note the white deposits on this side of the jar.

But as we turned it around we noted that there was some writing: a number C184, and nearby a faded longhand inscription written in an old-fashioned style, in pencil, near the base. This was so faint it was no wonder no one saw it before, and we spent a long time trying to get our phone torches to shine sufficiently on the letters to decipher them. I took many photographs in the hope of improving the contrast digitally.

The pencil writing identifying the object (image enhanced).

Nevertheless, I realised that the first word was ‘Bee’ and then twigged that the second word was ‘hive’. It was a beehive. Of course! Conor brilliantly cracked the word ‘Solomon’ from ‘Solo’ that appeared readable, so then it all became clear that the inscription read: ‘Bee hive from Solomon’s Pool(s)’. There is a word below that might be ‘Bethlehem’. So some scholar of previous times made this identification, and it is surely right.

It reminds me of the Iron Age beehives found in Tel Rehov a number of years ago, though these were made of straw and unbaked clay. I had done some reading about beehives previously, mainly the work of famed writer on bees and beekeeping Eva Crane, and the technology is quite fascinating. This jar is clearly very important as it is entirely intact. I took some measurements for anyone interested: the base is 10.7 cm wide, the mouth is 20.3 cm, its length is 55.7 cm, it bulges and tapers from the mouth, so the circumference at the top is 72 cm, at its widest 77.2 cm and at the base 37 cm.

The hole in the base.

The most exciting thing, however, is that in the interior of the jar there are many residues of honeycomb (wax) which may well even have bits of bees embedded. This valuable organic material needs to be properly conserved and examined. There have been questions about what bees were brought to Israel/Palestine and when, and study of this material would be fascinating. There is also C14 dating that could be done. This is clearly a brilliant future project for anyone interested.

Residues of honeycomb still adhering to the interior of the vessel.

We then did some searches in the online library about who might have excavated a beehive in Solomon’s Pools and came up with nothing, so I suspect it was a chance find (seeing that it shows evidence of having been partially exposed) that was given over to the Albright at some point. The handwriting looks perhaps mid-20th century, not very contemporary.

And, when I told Matthew about this identification, it turns out this is an incredible coincidence. The Albright is currently doing an excavation and conservation project at Solomon’s Pools! Matthew and Mark Letteney published the preliminary results of this project recently in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly. Perhaps their work will indirectly shed some light on this peculiar jar. In the meantime, I wonder what other treasures are in the Albright attic.

Joan E. Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London.