Jennifer Jackson

JACKPOT. Although the newly excavated temple at Tayinat doesn’t add much to our understanding of Iron Age temple architecture, its most significant contribution came from the discovery of numerous gold, bronze and iron objects, cultic vessels and other valuable items in the temple’s inner shrine. The most important was a broken cuneiform inscription containing the text of Esarhaddon’s Vassal Treaty (or Covenant). An important covenant document like this, deposited in the temple’s inner shrine, provides a striking parallel to the placement of the Tablets of the Law inside the Ark of the Covenant within the holy of holies of Solomon’s Temple.