Expert: Clay seals sign of government

Impressions from ancient clay seals found at a small site in Israel east of Gaza are signs of government in an area thought to be entirely rural during the 10th century B.C., Mississippi State University archaeologist James Hardin said.

This could indicate that biblical accounts of David and his son Solomon described real kings rather than the backwater chieftains considered more likely by some archaeologists, said Hardin, an associate professor in the department of anthropology and Middle Eastern cultures.

The six fragments of clay, once used to seal documents or expensive goods, are described in a brief article in the December issue of Near East Archaeology.

“They’re little bitty mud balls, but they’re really important because of what they suggest about what’s going on,” Hardin, the lead author, said in a telephone interview from the university in Starkville.

After tying the scroll or other item, ancient officials would wrap part of the string with clay and stamp it with an official seal to show that it had not been opened.

The artifacts are important, said Israel Finkelstein, an archaeology professor at Tel Aviv University.

They “probably hint at” a city-state other than Gath on the southern coastal plain during the period, he wrote in an email. Gath was a major Philistine city-state when it was destroyed in the ninth century, according to archaeologists.

According to the Bible, it was the hometown of Goliath, the giant whom young David laid flat with stone and sling.

But Finkelstein, co-author of a book arguing that “10th-century Jerusalem was a small highland village that controlled a sparsely settled hinterland” rather than the great kingdom the Bible describes David and his son Solomon as ruling, was unconvinced by Hardin’s broader conclusion. It’s too far from Jerusalem — about 70 miles — to make connections, he said, and radiocarbon dating for the part of the Iron Age described could be anywhere from mid-10th century to 800 B.C.

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