Biblical World Tracker

The Royal Seal Impression of King Hezekiah

ConfirmedAnnounced December 2015

A clay bulla the size of a fingernail, stamped with the words 'Belonging to Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah' in old Hebrew script. It was dug up in the Ophel in 2009 and sat unrecognised in the finds for six years until the inscription was read in 2015. It is the first seal impression of an Israelite or Judean king ever recovered from a scientific excavation rather than the antiquities trade.

Excavated in a controlled dig in the Ophel in 2009 and published after the inscription was identified in 2015 - which means, unusually for a royal bulla, that its findspot is documented rather than bought on the antiquities market. The reading 'Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah' is not disputed. Scholarly discussion has centred on the iconography, particularly what the winged sun and ankh symbols imply, not on whether the seal is genuine.

Find: Artifact
Place: The Ophel, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Period: late 8th century BC
Announced: December 2015

Found twice

The bulla came out of Dr. Eilat Mazar's excavation at the Ophel, just south of the Temple Mount, in 2009 - part of a group of thirty-four bullae recovered from a refuse dump beside a royal building. Its significance was missed at the time. In 2015 Reut Ben-Arieh of the Hebrew University read the inscription and identified whose seal it was, and the discovery was announced on 2 December that year.

What it is

A bulla is a lump of clay pressed over the cord binding a document or a sack and stamped with a seal, so that the item cannot be opened without breaking it. This one reads, in the palaeo-Hebrew script, 'Belonging to Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah'. The backs of the group show the impressions of coarse cloth and thick cord, which suggests these particular seals closed sacks of goods rather than letters.

Why the findspot matters more than the object

Seal impressions naming Hezekiah were already known, but they came through dealers, and an unprovenanced bulla can be neither dated by its context nor fully cleared of the suspicion of forgery. This one has a documented archaeological context in the royal quarter of the city it names. That is the difference between an object that supports an argument and an object that can only illustrate one.

The image on it

The seal carries a two-winged sun with the wings turned down, flanked by two ankh signs. Both are borrowed from Egyptian and wider Near Eastern royal imagery, where the winged disc signifies divine protection over the king. Their appearance on the seal of a reforming king who removed the high places has drawn steady discussion - most readings connect the downturned wings and the ankhs to the illness and recovery recorded in Isaiah 38, though that is interpretation rather than settled fact.

In Scripture

2 Kings 18:1-8
2 Kings 19:14-19
2 Chronicles 29:1-11
Isaiah 38:1-8

Sources

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