Rare 1,300-year-old medallion decorated with menorahs found near Jerusalem's Temple Mount

Archaeologists in Jerusalem have unearthed a rare 1,300-year-old lead medallion decorated on both sides with the image of a seven-branched menorah — the ceremonial candlestick unique to the Second Temple.

Researchers think the medallion was worn on a necklace by a Jewish person in the late sixth or early seventh century, when the city and surrounding region were under the rule of the Christian Byzantine Empire — only decades before the city fell, first to the Sasanian Persians in 614 and then to mostly Arab Islamic invaders in about 638.

According to a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the medallion was discovered in part of the "City of David" archaeological site near the southwest corner of Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which is now the location of several Islamic holy sites in "al-Haram al-Sharif" (which means "the Noble Sanctuary" in Arabic).

"One day while I was digging inside an ancient structure, I suddenly saw something different, gray, among the stones," Ayayu Belete, an archaeological worker for the nonprofit City of David Foundation, said in the statement. "I picked up the object and saw that it was a pendant with a menorah on it."

The discovery is a surprise to archaeologists because Jews were restricted from entering the city at that time. Centuries earlier, the Jewish people's failed Bar Kochba (also spelled Kokhba) Revolt from 132 to 136 (the third major rebellion against Roman rule in Judaea) led the Roman emperor Hadrian to declare that Jerusalem would be rebuilt as "Aelia Capitolina" and that the surrounding province of Judaea would be called Syria-Palaestina. This ancient name was inspired by the long-dead Philistines, biblical enemies of the Israelites who had lived along the nearby Mediterranean coast.

Rare medallion

The newfound medallion was discovered inside a Late Byzantine-era building, which had been buried beneath a thick layer of rubble from construction work directed by the city's Umayyad rulers a few decades after the Islamic conquest, the statement said.

The medallion is disc-shaped, with a loop at the top. Both sides depict a seven-branched menorah, a type of menorah that was used only in Jerusalem's Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70. (Nine-branched menorahs are used nowadays at Hanukkah.) The top of each candlestick branch on the medallion has a horizontal crossbar with flames rising above it. One side of the medallion is well preserved, but the other side is covered by a natural patina from weathering; analysis shows it was made almost entirely of lead.

Only one other millennia-old lead medallion bearing the menorah symbol has ever been found before, the statement said. "A pendant made of pure lead, decorated with a menorah, is an exceptionally rare find," IAA archaeologists Yuval Baruch, Filip Vukosavović, Esther Rakow-Mellet and Shulamit Terem wrote in the statement. "The double appearance of the menorah on each side of the disc indicates the deep significance of this symbol."

Hadrian's city

Jews were supposedly forbidden from entering the city in Byzantine times and had been since the Roman victory in the Bar Kochba revolt. But according to Günter Stemberger, an emeritus professor Jewish Studies at the University of Vienna, the prohibition was sometimes relaxed, and many Jews lived in nearby cities and territories.

However, it's unclear what significance these medallions held for their owners. "Were they private objects of Jews who came to the city for various reasons — perhaps merchants, or those on administrative missions, or individuals who came to the city as secret pilgrims, and under unofficial circumstances?" the archaeological team wrote in the statement.

The newfound medallion reveals that "during periods when imperial edicts were issued prohibiting Jews from residing in the city, they did not stop coming there," said Baruch, the IAA's Jerusalem District archaeologist.

The fact that the medallion was made from lead indicated it was worn as an amulet — and probably hidden — rather than as jewelry, according to Baruch. "Lead was considered a common and particularly popular material for making amulets at that time," he said.