Bonetool Archives 2013

Decorated bone box from Givati Parking Lot Excavations, Jerusalem, Israel.

This miniature box has been found between two plastered floors, both dated to the late phase of the Byzantine period in Jerusalem (6th-7th cent. AD). The lid is decorated with an incised cross inside a double incised frame, and the inside of both parts of the box bears a painted picture. A high frame on the base of the box fits to a low carved frame on its lid, which allows hermetic closing of the box. It was found closed, and that is how the delicate paintings were preserved for almost 1400 years.
The picture inside the base of the box is of a male face on a background of gold. The man wears a white tonic with red stripes on his shoulder and he has dark hair. The picture inside the lid is smaller, and probably bears the image of a woman in a blue tonic, on a gold background.
The pigments were analyzed in the Hebrew University lab of Nano-Technology, and were found to be based on „white led“ (cerussa), a common material in the ancient world, also mentioned by Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius. The gold background leaf was added after the drawing of the pictures was finished. The fact that the gold leaf is spread inside the entire breadth of the box and is not shaped like a halo does not mean these are not saints. The conventions for Christian iconography were set only at 692 AD, and saints with no halo are known in Christian art before and after that year. During the 6th and 7th centuries AD, the number of saints worshiped by the church rose to a few hundreds, so it is difficult to recognise the persons in the images, but the option of Jesus and Miriam can not be ruled out.
The box was not used to store a a relic (reliquary). Instead, it was a personal sacred item carried on the body. When needed, the owner could open it, and make it the focal point for his prayers. Such private icons are known in literature since the 5th cent. AD, but the one from Jerusalem is the only one ever found complete and with paintings. A lid of an exact similar object, but without the preserved painting, was found in Jerash, Jordan.
Ariel Shatil

The box was published in Hebrew media in May 2011, an English scientific publication by Y. Tchekhanovits is forthcoming.

Photos: Clara Amit, Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).