Al Jib jar handles

[1] Most of the handles found show a standard inscription: gb'n gdr followed by one of the following proper names 'zryhw, 'amryhw, dml', hnnyhw nr', or šb'l.

The translation of the word gdr was debated by scholars; Pritchard proposed it to mean a walled vineyard enclosure, by comparison with Numbers 22: 24-25 and Isaiah 5:5.

After we had looked over what could be roughly estimated as 35,000 fragments of pottery, there appeared a broken jar handle carefully and clearly inscribed with the letters GB’N in the Hebrew script of the 8th-7th centuries B.C.

This sample of significant evidence is a token, we trust, of the wealth of interesting detail which awaits the excavator of the slope immediately above.Pritchard described the larger set of discoveries in 1957 as follows:[2] In the 1956 season at el-Jib we had the good fortune of finding four inscribed jar handles in the tons of debris which we took from half the area of the pool down to a depth of 10.50 meters.

The discovery helped establish Pritchard's reputation; Prichard cataloged the finds in Hebrew Inscriptions and Stamps From Gibeon (1959), which also included the first in-depth discussion of concentric-circle incisions on jar handles associated with LMLK seals.