Friends of ASOR present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on September 21 2023, at 3:00 pm EDT, presented by ASOR’s President Sharon Herbert moderated by Dr. Jennifer Gates-Foster.  In July of 1999 a University of Michigan/University of Minnesota team excavating at Tel Kedesh of the Upper Galilee uncovered a cache of over 1,200 small highly fired clay pellets carrying impressions of Greek gods and other subjects on their obverse and marks of papyrus records on the reverse.

In the 2000 season another 800 came to light. Impressed pellets such as these were used to witness and seal papyrus documents throughout the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman eras. Subsequent study proved the sealings found at Kedesh to date to the first ½ of the 2nd c BCE, years in which the Seleucid dynasty controlled the region.Excavation over succeeding years clarified the find spot of the sealings. They and the records they sealed were stored in an archive complex deep within a large administrative building of Achaemenid and Hellenistic date. The archive burned in the mid 2nd c BCE at the end of the Seleucid control of the region or shortly thereafter. The presence of such a relatively large archive at Kedesh indicates significant and unexpected administrative activity at the site in the waning years of the Seleucid Empire. The images chosen for the seal rings impressed on the sealings from Kedesh reflect choices made by individuals living in a mixed Greek and Phoenician environment in times of shifting identities and political affiliations.

The Kedesh archive contained the seventh largest number of Hellenistic sealings (2,043+) excavated in or clearly near their storage place, and is the only provincial archive known within the areas controlled by the Seleucids. The seals identified as impressing these sealings number 1,293. This is the 3rd largest number of seals known from any Hellenistic archive, coming in behind only the enormous archives from Seleucia and Delos. Although we cannot determine with any precision the numbers or subjects of the documents in the archive, the presence of such a relatively large body of material at Kedesh points to significant and unexpected administrative activity at the site in the waning years of the Seleucid Empire. In addition, the images chosen for the seal rings impressed on the sealings from Kedesh reflect choices made by individuals living in a mixed Greek and Phoenician environment in times of shifting identities and political affiliations. The existence of the archive itself and the function(s) it might have served in this remote Seleucid outpost shed light on the administrative practices of the Seleucid dynasts and their relations with local inhabitants of their vast and diffuse territories. The webinar will conclude with a live Q&A session led by Dr. Jennifer Gates-Foster of University of  North Carolina Chapel Hill. 

Sharon Herbert with co-director Andrea Berlin at Kedesh

Sharon Herbert, the current President of ASOR, is the Charles K. Williams II Distinguished University Professor of Classical Archaeology Emerita and Research Associate at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan(2019). Formerly, she served as the chair of the Department of Classical Studies and Director of the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology at Michigan, where she has enjoyed a remarkable career as a field archaeologist, teacher, and academic administrator since she joined the Michigan faculty in 1973. She is also the former Curator of Greek and Hellenistic Collections and Director Emerita (1997-2013) of the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum. Herbert’s research specialties include Hellenistic Egypt and the Near East and ancient ceramics. She is best known for her contributions to the archaeology of Israel, as director of the Tel Anafa excavations from 1978 to 1981 and as co-director of the Tel Kedesh excavations from 1997 to 2012. She has also conducted archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Italy, and Egypt. Her latest book (ARS 30) is on the Hellenistic archive at Kedesh.

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