2,500-year-old seals may show Jews rebuilding Jerusalem after 1st Temple exile

Almost Heaven

Well-Known Member
  • Rare evidence of when and how Jerusalem was resettled after the Babylonian exile of 586 BCE has been discovered in an excavation in the City of David, just outside the Old City walls.
The two recent discoveries in an ongoing excavation in the Givati parking lot — a clay “official” seal impression and a strange DIY pottery sherd seal with fake writing — help illuminate the enigma that is 6th century BCE Jerusalem history. There are only 10 other similar artifacts discovered in Israel that date to the Persian period (circa 536 BCE-333 BCE).

“The Persian period is a black hole in archaeology,” Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dr. Yiftah Shalev told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. “Every time we find something, it’s like lighting a new candle — it gives a new light.”

During the Persian period, Jews are traditionally thought to have accomplished a “return to Zion” after the exile that followed the destruction of the First Temple, as depicted in the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The twin discoveries were uncovered in what appears to be a sort of shanty camp set up in the courtyard of an earlier Iron Age building destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and filled with two meters of debris.
“We knew there was a bureaucracy during the Persian period,” said Shalev. But the two seals — evidence that officialdom continued in the ruined city — represent “the first time that these things are shown in context in Jerusalem.”
Shalev said they date to the start of the Persian period and illustrate “how people are beginning to rebuild.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/2500-...-rebuilding-jerusalem-after-1st-temple-exile/
 

athenasius

Well-Known Member
Oh we are getting closer! I think a lot of these discoveries are perfectly timed by God. They prove the truth of Israel's ancient claim to the land, and they prove that the Jews belong there.

God planned it from the beginning before time began. Somebody tossed them aside or looked up, distracted perhaps, and lost the seals in just that spot, never saw they fell, and wandered off the stage of history, leaving them to remain hidden till GOD calls them forth.

And this is the PERSIAN period. Babylon fell by the later years of Daniel's life, to the Medo Persian empire.

AGAIN the Iranians (the Persians) are risen as a world power, and this time instead of helping the Jews rebuild, under Cyrus, they want to annihilate the Jews. And AGAIN this portrays the rebuilding of the Temple.

God is once again, reminding the world that empires rise, and FALL at HIS command. In a season when the next Temple, the Tribulation temple will rise again.
 
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