BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Israel’s Oldest Chinese Inscription Found on Mt. Zion

Suggests trade between China and Ottoman Jerusalem

The fragment of the colorful bowl originating in China. Courtesy Emil Aladjem, IAA.

Excavators with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology made an unexpected discovery while excavating on Jerusalem’s Mt. Zion: a small porcelain bowl fragment painted with a short Mandarin Chinese inscription.

With the excavation team on Mt. Zion typically uncovering material dating from the Second Temple (c. 516 BCE–70 CE) through Byzantine periods (c. 324–634 CE), a Ming Dynasty (14th–17th centuries) bowl was certainly not what they expected. This is not the first early Chinese porcelain discovered in Israel, but it is the oldest to feature writing. The enigmatic inscription reads, “We will forever keep the eternal spring.”

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According to Joyce Leung, a Ph.D. student at Hebrew University who was not involved in the study, the inscription was likely meant as a blessing. The act of stamping the bottom of ceramic ware with such blessings was–and remains–a common practice in China.

The team determined the bowl fragment dated between 1520 and 1570, although how it ended up in Jerusalem remains uncertain. Historic writings do, however, mention close trade connections between the Ottoman Empire, who ruled Jerusalem at the time, and the Ming Dynasty, with records of at least 20 official delegations from the Ottomans visiting the imperial court in Beijing during the 15th to 17th centuries. The writings of merchants and scholars also mention such relationships, with the work of Chinese scholar Ma Li (1541) mentioning colonies of Chinese merchants in Lebanese coastal cities such as Beirut and Tripoli. In the work, Ma Li even mentions Jerusalem itself. It is likely through these trade relations that the bowl arrived on Mt. Zion, as trade helped spread exotic spices and goods, such as porcelain, from the Far East to the Middle East.

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