event · E0458

Isaiah Bulla בולת ישעיהו

A broken oval clay seal impression about a centimeter across, in three registers around a grazing doe, reading לישעיהו — "Belonging to Yesha'yahu" — with the letters נבי (nvy) below. It came out of wet-sifting of debris from Eilat Mazar's 2009 Ophel excavations at the foot of the Temple Mount, from the same refuse layer as — and about three meters from the findspot of — the Hezekiah bulla (Hezekiah Bulla), and was published in 2018. If the damaged edge once carried an aleph, the second word is "the prophet," and this fingernail of clay would be the sealing of Yeshayahu himself; whether it did is a genuinely open philological fight, and the atlas grades the reading contested. The object is in state custody with the Ophel excavation finds; no verified inventory number or permanent display.

I. Who

Hebrew: בולת ישעיהו
Also known as: Yesha'yahu Nvy bulla, Ophel bulla of Yeshayahu
Era: bible

II. When

Traditional: c. 3184–3234 AM — the Ophel refuse layer's academic range laid onto the AM scale via the atlas's Chizkiyahu anchor (accession 3199 AM ↔ 715 BCE); Chizkiyahu's traditional reign, 3199–3228 AM, sits inside it.
Academic: late 8th – early 7th century BCE, from the same Ophel layer as the Hezekiah bulla
Date range: late 8th – early 7th century BCE (Iron Age IIB)
Duration: ≈50 years
Precision: approximate

III. Where

Places: Jerusalem

IV. What

Events: Hezekiah Bulla

Why it matters

Tanakh keeps putting Yeshayahu and Chizkiyahu in the same room — the king's men sent to the prophet in the crisis of 701, the prophet walking into the sick king's chamber — and the Ophel sieve produced their two bullae three meters apart, from the same century and the same dump. That much is fact. The leap — that לישעיהו נבי means "Belonging to Yeshayahu the prophet" — hangs on a single restored aleph at a broken edge, and on it hangs the difference between a common Judean name and the only artifact ever found bearing a Hebrew prophet's name and title. Mazar herself published it with a question mark. The bulla is the atlas's test case for how far a damaged inscription can honestly be pushed: the find is real, the proximity is real, and the reading is a maybe.

V. How do we know

Claim	Evidence	Confidence	Sources
The bulla was recovered in 2009 in Eilat Mazar's Hebrew University excavations at the Ophel, south of the Temple Mount — not in situ, but recognized during wet-sifting of excavation debris — from an Iron Age IIB refuse layer, about three meters from the findspot of the Hezekiah bulla (Hezekiah Bulla). It was published by Mazar in Biblical Archaeology Review in February 2018.	archaeology	★★★★★	E. Mazar, 'Is This the Prophet Isaiah's Signature?', Biblical Archaeology Review 44:2 (2018) Isaiah bulla — discovery and context
The surviving text reads לישעיהו ("Belonging to Yesha'yahu") with נבי (nvy) on the register below. Mazar proposed — with explicit hedging — that a restored aleph would yield נביא, "the prophet." The maximal reading is genuinely disputed: Yesha'yahu was a common Judean name, nvy is itself attested as a personal name, the expected definite article ha- is absent, and the restored letter falls exactly on the damaged edge. Philologists including Christopher Rollston have argued the title cannot be demonstrated from the surviving letters; the atlas therefore grades the identification contested, not the object. "Contested" here means the reading, and only the reading: the bulla itself is a provenanced find from a scientific excavation, not a market object.	archaeology	★★★★☆	Isaiah bulla — the reading debate (Mazar's proposal and Rollston's critique) Times of Israel — announcement and scholarly caveats (2018)
The pairing the maximal reading would attest is exactly the pairing Tanakh narrates: when Sancheriv's army stood before Jerusalem, King Chizkiyahu sent his officials "to Yeshayahu son of Amotz, the prophet" — the king and the prophet as working contemporaries in the same city where both bullae surfaced. The Hezekiah bulla anchors the king's side of that scene beyond dispute; whether this bulla anchors the prophet's side is the open question.	biblical archaeology	★★★★☆	Yeshayahu 37:2 (the king's men sent to Yeshayahu the prophet) Melachim II 19:2 (the same scene)
The AM placement (c. 3184–3234) lays the layer's academic range onto the AM scale via the atlas's schematic royal chronology (Chizkiyahu's accession 3199 AM ↔ 715 BCE); his traditional reign, 3199–3228 AM, falls within it. Above the Persian-period seam the two chronologies diverge, and the atlas positions by this anchor per the standing existence-point rule while stating both. Schematic placement for the atlas timeline, per the same convention as Hezekiah Bulla and Taylor Prism.	tradition reconstruction	★★☆☆☆	Melachim II 18–20 (the reign of Chizkiyahu)