Tuesday, October 11, 2016

High priest's bell?

WELL, MAYBE: Sound of the Kohen Gadol’s Golden Bell Rings Again in Jerusalem. Jews again hear the little bells on the hem of the High Priest's garment as he enters the Holy Temple of Jerusalem... (Hana Levi Julian, The Jewish Press).
As we enter the final hours of the day before Yom Kippur, archaelogist Eli Shukrun posted news on Facebook of a unique, tiny power-packed find in Jerusalem five years ago to remind the Jewish People of our ancient heritage and the future still to come.

A golden bell that belonged on the garment of the Kohen Gadol who served in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem was discovered in an excavation near the Western Wall.

Shukrun, who notes the find is of tremendous significance to the Jewish world, returned to the area to demonstrate once more with an expert audiologist, as she put it, the “only archaeological discovery that was ever in the Holy of Holies.”

[...]
With video and audio.

I am not an archaeologist, so judge what follows accordingly. I would say that it is possible that this bell came from the high priest's vestment, but I don't think that is the only possible understanding. I have given another suggestion here, with which I have never seen any archaeologist engage. Other past posts on the bell are here, here, and here.