Page 398 - עידן האימפריות

commenced in the second half of the 7th century BCE, or maybe even in
its last third, and it continued until the destruction of Jerusalem. The rosette
stamp impressions bear only a symbol without a caption, and from this aspect
they continue the concentric circle incisions, while the incisions express
a limited abstract model of the rosette. The scope of the rosette system’s
operation was similar, or slightly smaller, than the late lmlk systems and the
concentric circle incisions which operated in the beginning and the middle
of the 7th century. 28 types (=seals) are known, and a total of 247 stamped
handles were discovered in excavations and archeological surveys. A total
of 158 rosette handles (64 percent of the entire finding) were found around
Jerusalem. The main collection centers of this system are Jerusalem (87
handles) and Ramat Raḥel (57 handles), while the Benjamin Region lost its
significance and its place in this system (only 15 rosette handles were found
there). On the other hand, the Judean Shephelah was again represented by
this system with 49 handles (about 20 percent of the entire corpus), including
24 rosette handles that were found in Lachish.
The administrative system of the stamped jars operating in Judah at
the end of the First Temple Period, when Judah was a vassal kingdom
of Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon, continued to exist after the destruction of
Jerusalem. During this period, the operation of a new system of jars with
shapes similar to the rosette jars commenced in Judah, bearing different and
diverse types of lion stamps impressed on their handles and sometimes on the
bodies of the jars. Similar to the rosette system, a single central iconographic
motif was also used on the lion stamp impressions, without any writing.
Ten different types of seals were specified in this system, and a total of 129
stamped handles are known, of which 100 were found in Ramat Raḥel (71)
and Jerusalem (29). Nebi Samwil appears in this system for the first time as a
significant factor (12 handles).
An additional system of stamp impressions on jar handles is known
from the 6th century BCE, which is limited in the quantity of types (=seals)
and stamped jar handles, and whose geographical and chronological extent
is extremely small as well. In this system, which operated concurrently
with that of lion stamp impressions, a place name – mwṣh (in one or two
rows, with three or four letters) – was impressed on the jar handles or on
the bodies of the jars. The assumption is that this was a system intended to
solve a specific problem of supply to the Babylonian governor who lived

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