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Courtesy The Temple Mount Sifting Project

The fire that burned this fragmentary bulla black also baked and preserved it. The clay seal impression would have been used to seal a document or parcel. Barkay and Dvira have reconstructed the partial paleo-Hebrew text pressed into it to read “(Belonging) to Gaalyahu son of Imer.” The house of Imer was a well-known priestly family from the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E., making this bulla the first written item from the First Temple period to come from the Temple Mount itself.