Near a busy ceramic workshop on the edge of ancient Yavne, sometime during the seventh century BC, a craftsman misplaced a small limestone seal carved with a scene of worship–a bearded man raising his hand toward the moon and a star. Rediscovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority almost 2,700 years later, the object offers a rare, intimate link between an industrial corner of a Levantine town and the astral cults that the Bible’s own writers condemned by name. Christoph Uehlinger of Zurich, together with Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists Pablo Betzer, Revital Golding-Meir, and Daniel Varga, and Gunnar Lehman of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, documented the seal in their description of the excavation site in the journal Tel Aviv.
The Discovery Found in an Ancient Potter’s Quarter
The seal was found in Area U of the Yavne East excavations, part of an extensive Iron Age ceramic production complex on the city’s outskirts. The industrial zone housed nine kilns, several potter’s wheels, and multiple work surfaces. The workstations were equipped with storage jars, a mortar, and loom weights, about three meters from a potter’s wheel and some twenty meters from the kilns. The complex was part of a working site rather than a temple or shrine.
Intact and small enough to fit within the palm of a hand, the seal measures 14.6 millimeters long, 13.2 millimeters wide, and 8 millimeters high. The seal is carved from reddish crystalline limestone and pierced lengthwise, suggesting it was almost certainly used as a pendant or perhaps a personal ornament rather than solely for administrative sealing.
Left; The impression made by the seal. (Assaf Peretz/Israel Antiquities Authority) Right; Neo-Assyrian palace relief depicting Tiglath-Pileser III making a similar gesture of worship. (British Museum/Public Domain)
A Tiny Seal With an Unusual Story
Its presence stands out precisely because it doesn’t seem to belong. Researchers describe it as the only clearly foreign element found in the workshop's immediate environment. About 160 meters north, in Area H, excavators discovered several tombs with features in the Assyrian funerary tradition, including two burials covered by large inverted ceramic vessels and a crypt built of mud brick. There was also an unknown type of tomb in the region during this period. Taken together, the seal and tombs point to a non-local population with a presence in Yavne, rather than a temporary imperial influence.
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Double-pot’ burial in Area H (photo by Assaf Peretz /Israel Antiquities Authority)
Decoding the Symbols of Astral Worship
The seal’s engraved base depicts a bearded male figure, dressed in a long, ankle-length two-piece garment, standing with his left side facing three symbolic elements, one arm extended forward with the palm. The researchers interpreted the gesture as a sign of worship or ritual greeting. Arranged vertically before him are an offering stand or pedestal at the base, a crescent moon above it, and, higher still, an eight-pointed star. The crescent and star are linked to the Mesopotamian moon god Sin and the goddess associated with Venus, reflecting prominent astral deities in the Assyrian-Babylonian pantheon. To the worshiper’s right is a cypress-like tree, indicating an outdoor ritual setting rather than a temple ceremony.
Neo-Assyrian stone relief depicting Ashurbanipal as a mounted archer in full military dress. Palace reliefs such as this illustrate the imperial culture and artistic traditions that influenced the southern Levant during the Iron Age, when the Yavne limestone seal was produced. (Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin/CC BY-SA 4.0)
Astral Religion During the Seventh Century
Researchers documented similar seals from Akko, Tell Jemmeh, Jerusalem, Megiddo, and Shiqmona, each featuring the same core scene: a worshipper, an offering stand, a crescent moon, a star, and a tree, arranged differently. The Yavne find indicates a regional shift in iconography from solar imagery in the eighth century BC to planetary and lunar symbols during the seventh century, reflecting evolving religious practices across the southern Levant.
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The authors link a deliberate shift in the symbols with the westward expansion of the Assyrian Empire and changes in imperial religious policy spanning the reigns of the Assyrian Kings, from Tiglath-Pileser through Ashurbanipal. Researchers identified this period as the Assyrian century, running from 730 BC to 630 BC. In terms of purely religious history, the seals also add to the growing number of scaraboids produced and widely distributed throughout the Levant, which align with regional adaptations through rituals and astral cults.
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Excavated remains of the Iron Age pottery workshop in Area U at Tel Yavne. The industrial complex contained kilns, stone-paved work surfaces, and pottery-making installations. Nearby, archaeologists discovered the seventh-century BC limestone stamp seal depicting a worshipper before astral symbols.(Assaf Peretz/Israel Antiquities Authority)
Yavne’s Potter and the Assyrian Economy
The pottery complex where the seals were found carries its own economic relevance. About 20 kilometers south of Yavne, the city of Ekron once hosted a major olive oil production center under Assyrian rule. This industry required vast quantities of ceramic storage containers. Yet, no pottery workshops have been identified in Ekron itself. Yavne, by contrast, had a substantial ceramic production facility capable of manufacturing olive oil containers. Although no direct evidence of oil or wine production has been found at Yavne, the researchers still consider it a possibility that the site supplied ceramics to Ekron and other centers within the larger Assyrian economic network.
Conclusion
The Assyrian-style tombs uncovered nearby, with their inverted double-vessel burials and mud-brick crypts, may belong to deportees resettled from Mesopotamia, a practice documented in the territory of Ashdod and at Tel Hadid, or to individuals otherwise connected to the Assyrian government. The discovery of these seals also supports the hypothesis that Assyrian influences in the Levant weren’t limited to military or administrative dominance but also gave rise to complex cultural traditions. Local populations adopted, reinterpreted, and even adapted elements of Assyrian culture, as evidenced by the presence of this small stone in a pottery workshop in ancient Yavne.
Top Image: The Assyro-Levantine limestone stamp seal discovered at Tel Yavne, shown with photographs, seal impression, archaeological drawings, and cross-sections. Source: Assaf Peretz/Israel Antiquities Authority) drawings by Yaakov Shmidov (Israel Antiquities Authority), Ulrike Zurkinden (Corpus of Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant Project).
By Ramsey Hardin
References
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