LMLK seal
The LMLK seal appears on the handles of several large storage jars from the Kingdom of Judah, where it was first issued during the reign of Hezekiah around 700 BCE.
Seals bearing these four Hebrew letters have been discovered primarily on unearthed artifacts in and around Jerusalem, with some in northern Israel.
The 20 sites where the most specimens have been found are:[7] Beginning with the editio princeps by Charles Warren in 1870, a diverse assortment of theories has been promulgated to explain their function.
[citation needed] Researchers frequently use a lowercase "x" as a wildcard character when referring to a series such as x4C instead of using an uppercase "G", "H", "M", "S", or "Z" for the first letter designator.
The first significant evidence to support this datum came from the landmark excavations at Timnah led by George L. Kelm and Amihai Mazar.
[10] Several hundred seal impressions made on the same type of jar handle have been found in the same contexts as the LMLK stamps.
