Ivory pomegranate

The Ivory Pomegranate is a thumb-sized semitic ornamental artifact acquired by the Israel Museum. It is not actually made of ivory, but of hippopotamus bone and bears an inscription; Holy (Sacred) to the Priest of the House of God (YHWH).

At the time of its discovery, it was thought to have adorned the High Priest's sceptre within the Holy of Holies, thus potentially proving the existence of Solomon's Temple.

The Ivory Pomegranate is a small ornamental bone object engraved with a short inscription in paleo-Hebrew. The inscription is inscribed in circular fashion along the shoulders of the pomegranate which is the shape of the fruit in blossom stage. A significant part of the body of the pomegranate is broken including two breaks to the long petals of the fruit.

There is a vertical break on the body that cuts through the inscription, so that three letters are fragmentary and nine complete. Two areas of this fracture are lighter shades and considered to be new breaks on top of the ancient break. While it is still priceless as a Semitic artifact from 13th Century BCE, its connection to the Holy of Holies has been greatly disputed by Israeli and Italian archeologists specializing in Roman and Semitic artifacts as forgery.

The pomegranate was popular as a cultic object and was not unique to the worship of Yahweh. Archaeologist Aharon Kempinski has argued that, even if the inscription is authentic, the chance of it belonging to Solomon's Temple is extremely small as its origin is unknown and there were many "houses of Yahweh" outside Jerusalem, many of which "have not yet been excavated but are constantly ransacked by [illegal] treasure seekers". Baruch Halpern has suggested another interpretation of the inscription.

The word "house" can also mean, literally, a house where a family lived. The missing letters could read (Ahijah) "[hyja]H". At least three of the Biblical Ahijahs were priests and the inscription may be a reference to a priestly family rather than a deity. Halpern also notes that the unusual syntax of the inscription makes this interpretation philologically possible.

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