Shema seal

The Shema Seal is an ancient Jasper seal that dates back to the 8th century BCE and mentions the King of ancient Israel, Jeroboam.

Discovery
Archaeologist Gottlieb Schumacher and his team began excavating at Megiddo and found the seal during a three-year excavation program. The seal was discovered in 1904, in an excavation dump. The layers in which it was found were dated to the eighth century BCE. Schumacher send the original seal to Istanbul but it never returned. Its current location is unknown. A bronze cast made before it was sent away.

Bulla
In the 1980s Yigal Ronen, a nuclear engineer and amateur antiquities collector from the Ben Gurion university, visited the Bedouin market in Be'er Sheva. He was offered a tiny clay lump stamped with the image of a roaring lion and ancient Hebrew writing. Ronen bought it for 10 Shekels, even though suspecting it to be a forgery.

It turned out to be authentical. It is not the original Meggido seal, but features the same images and dates from the same period as the original.

Text
"“Belonging to Shema (שמע) the servant of Jeroboam.”"Hebrew to English translation:

‘Ishm’ ‘bdyrbm’