A bronze ritual incense shovel or batillum with a semi-cylindrical handle with decorative terminal, leading to a rectangular tray with sides. The reverse of the tray has a lion's paw support and four short legs such that the shovel can stand in a horizontal position.
Supplied with a purpose-made modern acrylic display stand
Roman / Jewish Holy Land: Circa 1st - 2nd century AD.
Condition: Very Fine; losses to the edges at the base; but the metal is strong and stable.
Length 28.5 cms (11.2 ins).
Weight 905 grams.
Provenance: Private collection of Gerry Sigel, Washington DC, acquired in Israel in the 1960s.
Incense shovels are often found in Israel. In the Jewish religion, it was used in the Temple of Jerusalem, to clean the lamps of the Menorah (Ex.25:38). After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. the incense shovel became one of the Jewish symbols.
Among the furnishings of the temple mentioned in the Bible are objects which may illuminate the function of the shovel represented here. These are the shovels, fire pans, and censers used in the service of the altar. The shovel is used to carry coals from the sacrificial altar to the incense altar in front of the holy of holies. The offering of incense was made each morning and evening and accompanied the offerings of meal, of the first fruits on Shavuot, and was displayed in the Temple with the showbread.
Since these have been found in the Italian sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as in Israel, archaeologists have connected them with pagan ritual. However, there was a tradition of the use of the shovels both in Temple ritual and as representations in post-destruction art, usually associated with Temple furnishings like the menorah. There seems to be no cogent reason, therefore, for denying a Jewish use for this shovel. Since all sacrificial activity was forbidden when the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. the burning of incense afterwards may not have been cultic, but merely for its pleasing odour.
Similar Mahta type bronze incense shovels were discovered in the Dead Sea caves in the 1960s.
Literature: For lists of published rectangular bronze shovels see Goodenough (1954) 4.197; Yadin (1963), 54-57; Rutgers (1999), 197-198.
Israel In Antiquity; The Jewish Museum in New York; Andrew Ackerman and Susan Braunstein; page 119.
See: O.W. Muscarella (ed.), Ladders to Heaven. Art Treasures from Lands of the Bible (Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 1981), p. 293, cat. no. 274.
Leonard Victor Rutgers, "Incense Shovels at Sepphoris?" in Eric M. Meyers (ed.), Galilee Through the Centuries. Confluence of Cultures. Papers Presented at the 2nd International Conference on Galilee in Antiquity Held at Duke University and North Carolina Museum of Art on Jan. 25-27, 1997 (Duke Judaic Studies Series, 1) (Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns, 1999) p. 177-198.
Erwin R. Goodenough; Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period (New York, Princeton University Press, 1954) 4, 195-208.
Rachel Hachlili; Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel (Leiden, Brill, 1988), 257-266.
J.W. Hayes; Greek, Roman and Related Metalware in the Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 1984), p. 203-207.