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Israel Museum, Jerusalem

SOLOMONIC RELIC? The famous inscribed ivory pomegranate, whose authenticity has been questioned, may have been the head of a scepter from Solomon’s Temple. Its inscription, as partially reconstructed, reads as follows: lby[t yhw]h qdsû khnm, or “Belonging to the Tem[ple of Yahwe]h, holy to the priests.” The paleo-Hebrew letters yod (blue), taw (yellow) and heh (red) have been reconstructed from the broken portion of the pomegranate by paleographer André Lemaire and others.