BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Rare Judean Pillar Figurine Discovery from Jerusalem

Archaeologists break the mold

Judean Pillar Figurine facial mold found at the Kishle area of the Tower of David Excavations in Jerusalem. Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

A remarkable discovery in Jerusalem sheds new light on one of the most enigmatic artifact types from Iron Age Judah: the Judean Pillar Figurines. These feminine figurines occur in two principal types: with heads that are modeled by hand or through the use of an open-faced mold. Over a thousand figurine pieces have been recovered from sites in eighth- through sixth-century BCE Judah—comprised of body fragments, both types of head, and less often, whole figurines—yet archaeologists have only found a handful of molds.

The scarcity of molds deepens the mystery of an already mysterious topic, since scholars continue to debate the meaning and function of these popular household objects. So many figurines were produced—where are all the molds?

If you are unfamiliar with Judean Pillar Figurines, see my web exhibit that uses digital imaging and color restoration techniques to explore how these objects were made and experienced in antiquity.

The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced the first-ever discovery of a Judean Pillar Figurine mold in Jerusalem. Contrary to the reporting of various news outlets, this is not the first mold of a Judean Pillar Figurine ever found (e.g., see here), though it is the first one found in Jerusalem.

The discovery was made in the Kishle area of the Tower of David—today a museum complex, but also an active center of archaeological excavation. As part of preparations for the museum’s expansion, archaeologists removed soil from Iron Age fills and retained it for sifting. During the sifting process, the team recovered this rare clay mold. After conserving the artifact, the IAA even produced a modern cast from the ancient mold, clarifying the facial features it produced more than 2,500 years ago.

Modern cast (at left) and ancient mold (at right). Courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority.

Jerusalem has yielded more Judean Pillar Figurines than any other site, with over 500 (and counting!) unearthed in the capital alone. The site with the second largest corpus, Tell en-Naṣbeh, is far behind, with just 186 examples. The newly discovered mold strengthens the possibility that at least some of Jerusalem’s many Judean Pillar Figurines were manufactured locally rather than being imported. This conclusion is supported by compositional analyses indicating that most of the figurines tested from Jerusalem were made from local clay. Interestingly, figurines tested from Tell en-Naṣbeh, about 8 miles northwest of Jerusalem, also appear to have been made from Jerusalem-area clay, as if Jerusalem were a production center.

At the same time, the circumstances of discovery leave important questions about Judean Pillar Figurine manufacture unanswered. Because the mold was recovered through a sifting project, it cannot be securely associated with a workshop or another clear production context. As archaeologist and Judean Pillar Figurine expert Erin Darby (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) communicated to Bible History Daily: “I am still hoping to learn more about how the mold was found (in the sift?), how samples were taken, and if samples were collected in such a way that we can identify other objects from the same locus.”

A Surprising Scarcity of Molds

What can explain the shortage of Judean Pillar Figurine molds compared to the high figurine counts?

The two main types of Judean Pillar Figurine: handmade (at left) and molded (at right), placed together by author. Credit: Françoise Foliot, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY 4.0 (at left); Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC-BY 0 (at right).

Maybe a low number of molds is exactly what we should expect. A single mold could presumably produce many figurines—why else, after all, create a mold? Yet this explanation raises another question. If relatively few molds generated so many figurines, why is it so uncommon to find groups of figurines that derive from the same mold, i.e., that are part of the same “mold family”? Despite the thousand-plus figurines that have been recovered, matches of this kind remain rare. Neither Darby nor I have found a match for the Jerusalem mold.

Hypothetically, a potter (JPF production did require a professional kiln) could create a new mold by taking an impression from an existing figurine, thereby creating a template for a new generation of molds. In that scenario, figurine design could be copied and reproduced, with small changes introduced through wear, shrinkage, and the skill of the individual maker. Diversity seen among molded Judean Pillar Figurine faces may reflect not only different molds and workshops but also different stages in chains of reproduction.

Another explanation for the scarcity of molds is that molds were handled strictly as tools. Unlike figurines, which have been recovered in houses, refuse areas, streets, construction fill, and, very rarely, tombs, molds would likely have been kept in workshops. Workshops are notoriously messy, loud, and smoky places, usually located outside main town and city quarters. These are not areas where archaeologists tend to dig. So maybe molds have generally not been found because archaeologists prioritize digging in more central settlement areas.

Updating Our Understanding of Figurine Manufacture

Scholars have noted that Judean Pillar Figurines with molded faces required more manufacture steps than Judean Pillar Figurines with handmade faces. In handmade examples, makers shaped the face directly from a continuous piece of clay that was used for the head and body, pinching the facial area to form two eyes and a nose. Molded figurines, by contrast, had heads and bodies created from separate pieces of clay, which required attachment via a tang.

Molded Judean Pillar Figurine head that has fallen away from its body, revealing the tang that attached the two. Credit: Mary Harrsch, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY 4.0.

The newly discovered mold provides occasion to observe that molding process more carefully. The Jerusalem mold is relatively shallow, and provides no indication that it was used to form a tang. Some Judean Pillar Figurine fragments preserve exposed tangs (because the molded head fell away from the body), showing join lines that indicate the tang was added separately. The Jerusalem mold provides evidence for that from the manufacturing tool itself. The mold confirms that the production process began with a facial impression alone; the tang that attached head to body belonged to a later stage of manufacture.

Counterintuitively, molding did not make figurine production simpler. Compared with handmade heads, molded heads required a number of additional steps. First the mold needed to be created and fired. Then, a maker pressed a”leather-hard” lump of clay into the mold, formed and attached a tang (which may have helped “wiggle” the clay free from the mold), inserted the head-and-tang into the lower body, and smoothed clay over the join line at the neck. Excess clay was trimmed from around the molded face, and the surface was sponged and refined where needed. After these steps, finally, the figurines were fired, whitewashed, and painted.

More than anything else, Judean Pillar Figurine molds appear to have introduced stylistic consistency. If speed were the goal, one might expect the makers to have used a simpler method, such as stamping the mold onto a wet, fully-formed figurine. Instead, the artisans added labor and produced molded heads separately, a choice that may have offered practical advantages: It could have produced more reliable impressions, reduced the risk of damaging an otherwise completed figurine, allowed workshops to standardize facial designs, or even enabled the circulation of partially completed parts among potters.

Whatever the explanation, the Jerusalem mold supports the view that Judean Pillar Figurine molds were designed to create the front portion of the head only, while attachment and finishing remained manual processes. Put differently, the molded heads were not “mass reproduced” in any modern sense: The mold enabled replication of a facial design, but the manufacture process still depended on skilled labor and a series of time-consuming handmade steps.

JPF Meaning

There is a long-running debate over what Judean Pillar Figurines represented and how they were used. Scholars have proposed several interpretations—sometimes understood to overlap—involving goddesses (usually Asherah), fertility, warding off harm, idolatry (the Ten Commandments prohibit graven images), and even the possibility that they were children’s toys. The Bible does not move the needle: It is unclear whether the Bible mentions Judean Pillar Figurines at all. There is no scholarly consensus as to Judean Pillar Figurine meaning or use, which, in any case, may not have been uniform across communities and periods.

Nonetheless, there is one framework for understanding Judean Pillar Figurines that has persisted. It distinguishes between two forms of Israelite religion: an “official” religion centered on the Jerusalem Temple and Yahweh alone, and a parallel sphere of popular or folk religion expressed through household rituals and objects like Judean Pillar Figurines.

The widespread use of Judean Pillar Figurines certainly reflects forms of household religious practice, but it does not necessarily follow that these practices constituted a sphere separate from official Yahwism. Biblical texts portray Judah’s eighth- to sixth-century kings, priests, and populace as repeatedly incorporating objects and deities into their religious practice that were later condemned by biblical authors, even within the Jerusalem Temple itself (e.g., 2 Kings 21:3–7). Rather than revealing idolatrous “popular” religion, the evidence seems to point to a contested religious landscape in which the boundaries of Yahwistic practice were being negotiated.

Perhaps the newly discovered mold offers an appropriate metaphor: Just as the mold gave shape to figurines without fixing their meaning or use, our interpretive categories should help us understand ancient religion without forcing it into any one single form.

Lauren K. McCormick is an assistant editor at Biblical Archaeology Review and a specialist in ancient Near Eastern religions, visual culture, and the Bible. She holds degrees in religion from Syracuse University, Duke University, New York University, and Rutgers University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship on religion and the public conversation at Princeton University.

Become a BAS All-Access Member Now!

Read Biblical Archaeology Review online, explore 50 years of BAR, watch videos, attend talks, and more

Related reading in Bible History Daily

Mothers, Goddesses, and Fertility

Carved Ivory Emerges from Biblical Jerusalem

Puzzling Finds from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud

Judean Pillar Figurines

All-Access members, read more in the BAS Library

Folk Religion in Early Israel: Did Yahweh Have a Consort?

Pagan Yahwism: The Folk Religion of Ancient Israel