Yehud Stamp Impressions from Ramat-Raḥel: An Updated Tabulation

Abstract

The 2011 publication of the corpus of the Yehud stamp impressions of the Persian and Early Hellenistic periods included 582 items—307 of them were excavated at Ramat Raḥel. A few additional handles with Yehud stamp impressions were discovered since then, mainly in Jerusalem, but 33 more stamped handles were discovered in the “Babylonian-Persian Pit” at Ramat Raḥel (five of these were previously published and one is unidentified). Forty-one more were discovered during processing, cataloging, and restoration of material from the 2009–2010 seasons (three of them are unidentified), bringing the total number of identified Yehud stamp impressions from all sites to 647. In this paper we present all the unpublished stamped handles, as well as a final tabulation of Yehud stamp impressions excavated at Ramat Raḥel, and reflect on the significance of the site for the administration of the province during the Persian and early Hellenistic periods.