Pomegranate: Sole Relic From Solomon's Temple, Smuggled Out of Israel, Now Recovered
SHANKS, HERSHEL
Pomegranate Sole Relic From Solomon's Temple, Smuggled Out of Israel, Now Recovered HERSHELSHANKS The renowned Paris-based biblical scholar Andre Lemaire spent the summer of 1979 in Jerusalem....
...the owner hardly needed the proceeds of the sale...
...Fischer claims he does not have a clue as to who the owner was...
...What is known is that at one point after 1983 it was smuggled out of Israel...
...It was there, Brown confirms, that Lemaire microscopically examined the pomegranate...
...Unfortunately, the part of the grenade that is broken off contained several letters of the inscription...
...I know him...
...What was it then, the hand of God...
...Yes," he said...
...But whoever cleaned the letters left some of the ancient patina in the incisions...
...The magazine called on the Israeli Attorney General and the Israeli Department of Antiquities to investigate—all to no avail...
...At the appointed day, Lemaire returned to the shop...
...Since last September this ivory pomegranate has been displayed in the Israel Museum, now its permanent home, where it sits in isolated splendor, the only object in a long, narrow, dimly lit exhibit hall...
...Negotiations for the purchase of the pomegranate were then completed and a final price of $550,000 was agreed upon...
...Lemaire said he would indeed like to see it...
...The person with whom he dealt— "who represented someone who represented someone else who represented the owner"— was surprised that he even offered it to the Israel Museum ("He didn't think I would be such an idiot"), but all the seller wanted was that price—$600,000...
...The date of the pomegranate inscription— earlier by a hundred years or more than Barkay's amulet—has been determined paleographically—that is, by the shape of the letters...
...Yes, I know him," he replied...
...There was nothing to do but sit and wait...
...He has, he says, "built an infrastructure of Jewish leaders...
...Certainty continues to elude us and we should not jump to conclusions, but it is difficult to avoid speculation...
...About the last two words of the inscription there is no question...
...he was approached through intermediaries...
...The ivory pomegranate was probably found somewhere near Jerusalem, perhaps in one of the many caves that were once used as burial chambers...
...Moreover, Altman had a widely known reputation, according to one reputable dealer, "for buying everything with an inscription on it...
...five years later the museum agreed...
...Saul Cantor...
...How the pomegranate was used presents something of a puzzle...
...He did say, however, that he was not told to whom to offer the pomegranate...
...Fischer was exultant...
...Last heard from, the Israel Museum's Gudea was serving as a paperweight in an assistant curator's office...
...We began with the same litany: "Can you help me locate the family of Paul Altman...
...So I began with the names.* I wasn't at * All names have been changed to preserve anonymity...
...That was the confirmation I was waiting for...
...Speculation has centered on Paul Altman, a Paris collector who died about three years ago...
...Payment was to be made by a deposit in a numbered account in Zurich...
...One rumor has it that when the museum could not raise the money, the owner of the pomegranate began to feel guilty about depriving Israel of its cultural patrimony—not to mention the breaking of its laws—and decided to save face by providing the museum with the money to "buy" the pomegranate...
...No," she replied...
...Most picked up a Jewish Telegraphic Agency story of a few paragraphs...
...problem...
...Upon discovering it and realizing that it was unusual and small, the worker might have concealed it and then smuggled it away from the excavation...
...The letters of this * Yahweh is the way scholars write the unpronounceable name of God which is pronounced in prayer as adonai and referred to otherwise by observant Jews as haShem, "the Name...
...Naturally this led to further confirmation and increased confidence that I had correctly identified the owner of the pomegranate...
...We call this individual the owner, even though that is somewhat a misnomer...
...The shapes of Old Hebrew letters changed over time, enabling scholars to construct a chronological typology based on these changes...
...I called someone I was virtually certain knew the identity of the owner...
...I could feel his face turn red, a smile cross his lips...
...But that exception probably did not apply to the original discovery of the pomegranate, so whoever originally discovered it did not own it and could not legally pass title to it to anyone else...
...I asked if they could help me locate the ex-wife or children of Altman who died a few years ago...
...Who found it, how and where remain a mystery...
...they would invariably reply...
...he1 asked...
...He told Fischer that Fischer could have the pomegranate to exhibit in a show Fischer was preparing at the Grand Palais in Paris...
...By showing it to Lemaire, and allowing him to publish the piece, the owner got a free expert judgment as to authenticity...
...Perhaps our readers can help...
...The price: $600,000...
...Most scholars agree that this is a very likely reconstruction, although at least one scholar has noted that the pagan goddess [baalajh would fit into this space as easily as Tahweh...
...On the contrary, if these people promptly denied ever having heard of Altman, perhaps I was barking up the wrong tree...
...These three fruits are mentioned together in several biblical passages (e.g...
...The antiquities dealer knew Lemaire from previous visits and told him that he had recently seen a small object with an inscription carved on it...
...For four months, museum fund-raisers pounded on doors, but came away empty-handed...
...We know that at one point the pomegranate was smuggled out of the country because it was publicly exhibited for the first time in a show at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1985...
...Guy Blancmer...
...According to Lemaire and Israel Museum officials, it was probably the head of a small scepter held by a Temple priest...
...Then I decided to throw in a less well-known person from Zurich...
...This—the First Temple—served as the focal point of Israelite veneration until it was destroyed by the Babylonians when they conquered and burned Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E...
...Jacques Wolzhoski...
...Finally, two years later, in December 1987, a tourist guide named Meir Urbach who lives in Gush Etzion on the West Bank walked into the office of Meir Mayer, the museum's public relations director, and threw on his desk a copy of Biblical Archaeology Review opened to Lemaire's article...
...He can't even say whether he was paid for his services...
...Offering it to the Israel Museum was his idea...
...Never heard of him...
...The pomegranate has a flat bottom with a small hole in the center, a quarter inch (6 mm) in diameter and 0.4 of an inch (10 mm) deep...
...found in a 1979 excavation in Jerusalem, conducted by Dr...
...These scepters, however, date to the 13th century B.C.E., centuries earlier than the Temple pomegranate...
...inscription are incised in Old Hebrew, the script used by the Israelites until they returned from the Babylonian exile in the late sixth century B.C.E., when they brought with them the square Aramaic script that we use today...
...Who...
...Another world-renowned expert, Frank Moore Cross of Harvard University, dates it about 50 years earlier, as does Professor Nahman Avigad of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel's leading paleographer...
...There is another possibility, however...
...The object was insured for $600,000—the owner got a free evaluation...
...the king himself is portrayed watching the battle in his royal chariot, holding a pomegranate scepter in his left hand...
...Indeed, it was probably the question of authenticity that led the owner to make it available to Lemaire through the dealer...
...This is the first time the museum has received a gift anywhere near this size when no one at the museum knows who the donor is...
...The acquisitions committee of the museum promptly approved the purchase, hoping to negotiate for a price somewhat less than $600,000...
...Although, as is usual in ancient inscriptions, there are no spaces between the words, scholars agree that Lemaire has correctly read the letters and correctly divided the words...
...that is where it should rest, he says...
...The whole thumb-sized object is a mere 1.68 inches high and .83 inches in diameter...
...they drank some tea...
...Then began a campaign to raise the money...
...Urbach claims not to know who owned the pomegranate, however...
...The museum often receives anonymous gifts, sometimes large ones like this...
...no one at the museum will divulge the source of these gifts, even though MOMENT has been able to learn the identity of the donor...
...The next earliest appearance of the name is on a silver amulet that dates to the late seventh or sixth century B.C.E...
...One hot day in July he walked into the shop of an antiquities dealer, looking, as usual, for anything with an inscription on it from the First Temple period, his scholarly specialty...
...But the donor is always known to the museum officials...
...These gifts from Altman were left to the museum anonymously...
...One reliable person who claims to know who the owner was and who has been in his company confirms that the owner was a Paris collector...
...This battle occurred in the late eighth century B.C.E., about the same time as our pomegranate...
...The museum claims to have absolutely no information about or knowledge of the identity of the person from whom the purchase was made or the person who provided the money...
...Actual examples of ivory pomegranate scepters with shafts about nine and a half inches long have been found in excavations conducted at Lachish, in southern Israel, by a British expedition in the 1930s...
...The letters of the Hebrew inscription are not the same kind of Hebrew letters we are accustomed to seeing today...
...Lemaire published the photograph, together with a description and analysis in French, in an obscure scholarly journal, the Revue Biblique, published by the Dominican fathers of the Ecole Biblique in East Jerusalem...
...He died a couple of years ago...
...Who...
...And any artifact that purports to have such a direct relationship to Solomon's Temple raises skeptical eyebrows...
...The part broken off probably had room for four or five letters...
...Before that, however, the antiquities dealer—whom Lemaire cannot name— permitted Lemaire to photograph the piece...
...It never occurred to me that they might be lying...
...Scouring my scrambled notes for further clues, I noticed a peculiar pattern...
...For some inexplicable reason, the Israel Museum's acquisition of this relic received only scant coverage in American Jewish newspapers...
...This incident may well have been in the mind of some members of the museum's acquisitions committee when they considered purchasing the pomegranate...
...With the press deadline staring me in the face, I decided to make one last try...
...And on the basis of the evidence now available, the scenario we have painted seems reasonable...
...my desk so I had to struggle with my memory of some of them...
...How come you know all these people and you never heard of Altman...
...The first two words create more of a * This transliteration is based on a system scholars often use to transcribe Hebrew letters into English letters...
...When the show closed, the pomegranate was returned, and again disappeared from sight...
...But when I noticed the pattern of who knew of Altman and who didn't, I began to get suspicious...
...In January 1984, however, worldwide attention was drawn to the object when Lemaire wrote an article about the pomegranate and its inscription in Biblical Archaeology Review, the world's largest circulation archaeology magazine...
...Despite this publicity, all efforts at finding the owner—or even identifying the antiquities dealer—failed...
...Meir Urbach is no ordinary tourist guide...
...After further identification—"a Paris collector"—they would tell me, "Never heard of anyone by that name...
...In his palace at Nineveh, the Assyrian king Sennacherib carved reliefs of his victory over the Judahite stronghold of Lachish...
...Again according to the owner, the pomegranate was purchased from a dealer (probably, though not necessarily, the same dealer in whose shop Lemaire saw the pomegranate in 1979*) who told him that the man who brought it in said it had been found by a worker in the excavation being conducted just south of the Temple Mount by Hebrew University Professor Benjamin Mazar...
...We know this because later^hat year, Yona Fischer, a curator at the Israel Museum, was contacted by a friend who had connections not only with archaeologists but also with collectors and antiquities dealers...
...In 1984, it was taken to Paris...
...Pomegranates, along with grapes and figs, are the best-known fruits of the Holy Land...
...Before that, if an ancient artifact was discovered on the surface of the ground or while digging on one's own property, it belonged to the finder or owner of the property...
...However, the committee decided against any carbon-14 testing and proceeded to approve the purchase...
...So there is a lacuna, a gap, in the inscription...
...The dealer who first showed Lemaire the pomegranate allowed him to take it, under arrangements Lemaire will not disclose, to the shop of Rafi Brown, the only dealer in Jerusalem who has a microscope...
...This, together with the shapes of the letters, resolved the question of authenticity, at least for Lemaire...
...So we would expect some pomegranate decorations inside the Temple and on some of the objects in the Temple...
...nounced the inscription authentic...
...Here is what Lemaire saw when he first saw it in 1979: lby[ ]h qds khnm* ?ins tsnp n[ All the letters are clear except the n at the end of the lacuna, which is only partially there, the rest having broken off...
...And, he says, he is not permitted to talk...
...In connection with that article, the antiquities dealer was able to get the artifact back into his shop so it could be re-photographed in color for the new article...
...We asked Yael Israeli, chief curator for archaeology at the Israel Museum, if she thought there was any connection...
...He is the son of Ephraim Urbach, one of Israel's greatest talmudic scholars...
...that is the only way to assure the pomegranate's authenticity...
...Kando hid the famous Temple Scroll—the last to be found and the longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls—beneath the floor of his house in Bethlehem before it was found there by Yigael Yadin after the Six-Day War...
...You are a good detective," he said...
...This narrows the field very considerably...
...Yes," I said, "that's it...
...Is there any connection between the anonymous donor and the then-owner of the pomegranate...
...Into this hole could have fit the thin shaft of a scepter, perhaps as much as 12 inches long...
...According to another scholar, a milligram of the pomegranate should be subjected to carbon-14 testing...
...Solomon built his Temple to the Lord in the mid-tenth century B.C.E...
...According to Lemaire, the inscription dates to the late eighth century B.C.E...
...Altman is known to have purchased most of his pieces in later years from Kando, the same dealer who originally handled the Dead Sea Scrolls...
...For it is, after all, the only known relic to have survived from Solomon's Temple...
...Henri Solbry...
...Finally, when Altman died, he left some extremely important pieces in his collection to the Israel Museum, including several ancient Hebrew inscriptions...
...On the other hand, people who were most likely to know who had owned the pomegranate had never heard of Altman...
...ifli...
...In that way American Jews learned for the first time that the Israel Museum had acquired the only relic ever found that scholars have attributed to Solomon's Temple...
...His concern was allayed, however, when he examined the letters of the inscription under a microscope.** Lemaire noticed traces of new incisions at the bottom of some letters, as if someone had tried to clean out caked earth from the incised letters with a small needle...
...If you want to see in it the hand of God, b'vakashah [be my guest, go ahead]," she replied happily...
...He knew, he says, that if word leaked out in Jerusalem and any attempt was made to trace the object, it might disappear forever...
...Either 400 or 100 pomegranates (depending on which biblical source is cited—1 Kings 7:20 or 2 Chronicles 4:13) decorated the capitals of the two freestanding pillars nairied Boaz and Yachin in front of the entrance to the Temple...
...Our sources include at least one person who actually spoke with the owner of the pomegranate...
...It could have been stolen from a Jerusalem excavation by an unknown worker who discovered it while digging there...
...In unvowelized Hebrew spelling, scholars can easily read kodesh kohanim, "holy to the priests...
...Around the shoulder of the central ball of the pomegranate, at the base of the neck, was carved an inscription in Old Hebrew letters, the kind that were used when Solomon's Temple still stood a few hundred yards away...
...The silver amulet containing the name of God found by Barkay in 1979 was excavated in what was originally a burial cave...
...When the museum opened in 1960, the star of the show was a newly acquired life-size head of King Gudea of Lagash, for which the museum paid the then-munificent sum of $30,000...
...The pomegranate was a popular symbol in ancient times, presumably because its multitudinous seeds symbolize fertility and fecundity...
...in fact it seems likely...
...Then one day in April 1988, out of the blue, and unbeknownst to anyone, the museum was advised by an agent that it would be the recipient of an unrestricted gift of one million Swiss francs, approximately $675,000, from a donor in Basel...
...More we cannot say because we have not been able to contact Altman's ex-wife (they were divorced) or his children...
...From a multitude of sources, to whom we have assured anonymity, MOMENT has been able to piece together some of the elements of the pomegranate's nine-year travail...
...The asking price was the same as the amount for which it had been insured in the Paris show where it was first exhibited...
...I walked in...
...Michel Clouday...
...What is left, however, is easily readable...
...According to the owner—whose credibility unfortunately is unknown—$3,000 was paid for the pomegranate that was later sold to the Israel Museum for $550,000...
...A few weeks buried in the ground with the right chemicals could create the patina in the incisions which could then be picked out, he contends...
...Lemaire reconstructs this part of the inscription as follows: lby[t yhw]h qds khnm oina tsnp nfin^ n]^ yy^J ^<\9 -e ; f-y-.yi Thus reconstructed, the first two words are I'bayt Tahweh, "belonging to the Temple of the Lord (Yahweh...
...Gabriel Barkay...
...The hem of Aaron's vestment was decorated with pomegranates (Exodus 28:33-34...
...Numbers 20:5, Deuteronomy 8:8...
...An antiquities dealer who attended the opening promptly—and embarrassingly—pronounced it a fake...
...Some scholars suggest that a more likely use for the pomegranate was as a decoration on an altar, or as a finial, a decorative piece on a throne or chair or on a ceremonial box...
...The antiquities dealer greeted the slender, middle-aged scholar...
...Aside from the fact that the Israel Museum is now the owner, the person we will call the owner probably never owned it in a legal sense...
...Fischer has kept all details of the transaction to himself and even now will not tell all...
...With this typology they can date inscriptions with considerable accuracy...
...The pomegranate consists of a center ball that scholars call a grenade, and a thin neck that expands into what were originally six pomegranate petals, four of which have survived...
...Then I paused, a long pause...
...Who was the owner...
...Or was it just a coincidence that a gift sufficient to purchase the pomegranate arrived just when it was needed...
...In addition, of course, the publicity added to the marketability and value of the piece...
...Getting it for the show was the simplest operation of this kind I ever did in my life— far easier than arranging for an engraving by Rembrandt," Fischer commented...
...In any event, for want of a better term, we will refer to the man who earlier had possession of the pomegranate as the owner...
...After Altman's death—if he owned the pomegranate—his family may have decided to sell it, or else sold it to someone who in turn decided to sell it...
...Back in 1979, the pomegranate's owner was greatly buoyed when Lemaire declared the pomegranate a genuine antiquity...
...Word came back that the donor approved...
...Since 1978, all ancient artifacts, wherever discovered in Israel, belong to the state...
...Almost all scholars and dealers interviewed in connection with this article are confident that the pomegranate and its inscription are authentic...
...Moreover, the denials had come across with conviction, although, unfortunately, I had to work over the telephone so I could not see the faces of the people I was talking to...
...But I didn't simply ask if they knew of Altman...
...We can reveal for the first time that the person who owned the pomegranate was a wealthy Paris collector...
...Indeed, its precise whereabouts from 1979 to 1988 are also unknown...
...He has been guiding for 18 years, primarily for leading American and Canadian Jews...
...Urbach asked Mayer if the museum would be interested in purchasing the pomegranate...
...In late spring, the museum was told it could pick up the pomegranate in Zurich...
...The museum's fund-raising effort proved dismally unsuccessful...
...If it is Tahweh, however, this is the oldest appearance of the holy name of God ever discovered, although only part of the last letter has survived...
...If the state could prove that the pomegranate was discovered after 1978 or in an illegal excavation before 1978, the state could lay claim to the pomegranate as against the Israel Museum—a highly unlikely scenario for any number of reasons...
...Through the donor's agent, the museum asked the donor if it would be appropriate to use the bulk of the money for the purchase of the pomegranate...
...One person in a position to know states that a Jerusalem dealer who is very close to Altman said that Altman once owned the piece...
...The pomegranate apparently remained somewhere in Jerusalem between 1979, when Lemaire first saw it, and 1983, when it was rephotographed for Lemaire's 1984 article in Biblical Archaeology Review...
...Since Lemaire does not have a car in Jerusalem, this is the most likely shop for Lemaire to visit...
...All the "outsiders" I talked to—the people who were not directly involved in the transaction—either knew Altman or knew of him...
...He paused...
...Meir Urbach has studied Talmud and archaeology at Hebrew University...
...Whenever a piece of this value is involved, authenticity becomes a major issue...
...In connection with the publication of Lemaire's article in Biblical Archaeology Review, the magazine interviewed Cross, who, on the basis of the shape of the letters, also pro* The dealer who sold the pomegranate and the dealer in whose shop Lemaire first saw the pomegranate was almost certainly Kando, the dealer who first handled the Dead Sea Scrolls...
...Scepters with pomegranate heads were not uncommon in ancient times...
...The entire inscription would then read "Belonging to the Tempfle of the Lor]d (Yahweh), holy to the priests...
...The shaft could have been made of ivory, wood or metal...
...In his article in Biblical Archaeology Review, Lemaire explained that he too was concerned about the possibility that it was a fake...
...One was the famous "Priest of Dor" seal inscription from the mid-eighth century B.C.E., which indicates there was a priest in Dor, the Mediterranean coastal city south of Haifa, attesting to the fact that there must have been a temple at Dor...
...and the dealer proceeded to show the scholar a tiny pomegranate, less than two inches high, carved from a single piece of fine ivory, and badly damaged on one side...
...The pomegranate was apparently in the hands of a professional who knew just how these arrangements are made...
...Then in 1988, the Israel Museum dramatically announced that it had purchased the pomegranate for $550,000, the money having been provided by an anonymous donor...
...Inside the "Happy Birthday" bag was the pomegranate, which Professor Avigad proceeded to examine meticulously...
...Are there any other signposts leading to Altman...
...I began with the name of a man I couldn't reach because he had an unlisted phone number in Paris...
...he could get it for Lemaire to see, if he liked...
...The museum drew the funds to pay for the pomegranate from a deposit made by the anonymous donor also drawn on a numbered Swiss account...
...Unfortunately Kando, now a very old man, has recently been diagnosed as having a brain tumor and is quite ill...
...The Israel Museum is especially sensitive to questions of authenticity because it was badly taken, in a famous incident museum officials are reluctant to talk about...
...When Itzchaq Tzur, the museum's deputy director for administration, flew to Zurich for the exchange, he took with him Professor Nahman Avigad, who would make his own judgment as to authenticity...
...The content of the inscription is what connects the pomegranate with Solomon's temple...
...Jacques Wilczynski," he corrected...
...Figuring that I had nothing to lose, I told him that I had identified Altman as the man who owned the pomegranate.^ "Who told you that...
...When the two men entered the appointed meeting place in Zurich, they were handed an American "Happy Birthday" bag by a man named David Jesselson, a former Israeli who lives in Zurich, an economist whose hobby is archaeology...
...Moreover, a large space between two letters tells us where the circular inscription starts and ends...
...Paul Altman, a Paris collector, always looking for old Hebrew inscriptions...
...The Paris exhibit lasted for two months in the autumn of 1985...
...Guy . . .," I paused...
...These suggestions were first proposed by Cross and appear to many a more likely solution to the puzzle of the pomegranate's use...
...I asked...
...We would be happy to publish the Altman family's response to these conjectures...
...There is no dearth of experts who know how to draw Hebrew letters of the eighth century B.C.E., he says...
...When he pronounced it sound, the payment money was released and Avigad and Tzur left with their precious "Happy Birthday" bag...
...Scepters are never mentioned in connection with the high priest or the Temple service...
...In the mind of at least one scholar, however, doubts remain...
...Initially, the Paris collector had doubts as to the authenticity of the piece, thinking it might well be a fake...
...Professor Lemaire probably first saw the pomegranate in Kando's shop, which is a stone's throw from the Ecole Biblique where Lemaire stays when in Jerusalem...
...Biblical Archaeology Review published a plea for the owner to identify himself or herself—"or at least to allow the Israel Museum to display the inscribed ivory pomegranate anonymously...
...One authority has called it in print "a rough imitation of a [Gudea] head in the Louvre...
...I knew an opening when I saw one...
...I can't tell you who told me," I said, "but I will tell you who I talked to...
Vol. 13 • December 1988 • No. 9
