"Shema, servant of Jeroboam"
A royal official's seal from Megiddo names a king Jeroboam of Israel and shows the court apparatus around him.
DisputedObject8th century BC
A jasper seal engraved with a roaring lion and the words "Belonging to Shema, servant of Jeroboam" — the title used for a royal official. It is generally taken to belong to the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel, whose long reign 2 Kings records.
Belonging to Shema, servant of Jeroboam.
- Found
- Megiddo, Israel, 1904 — Gottlieb Schumacher's excavation
- Now held at
- Original lost; casts in the Israel Museum and elsewhere
- Language
- Hebrew
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
The original seal disappeared after being sent to Istanbul, so only casts survive; and which Jeroboam is meant rests on the style of the script rather than on the text.
How historians use it
A standard exhibit in Hebrew seal studies, usually assigned to Jeroboam II on palaeographic grounds.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Avigad & Sass, Corpus of West Semitic Stamp Seals (1997)
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.