The handle is the most personal part of any ancient vessel. To make one, the potter rolled a coil of wet clay, pressed it against the jar wall, and smoothed the joins with his thumbs. Those finger marks often survive in the fired clay. When you grip an authentic handle from Tel Shiloh, you place your fingers exactly where the potter placed his.

A handle is also the rarest kind of find. Every jar had walls all around but only a handle or two, so for each handle the soil returns, it gives up plain body shards by the basketful. Archaeologists prize handles as the most telling fragments, preserving the twist of the coil, the pressure of the attachment, sometimes even a fingerprint. That is why handles are the scarcest class of shard we offer, and why they carry the collection's highest price. This is the collector's piece, and the one we expect to run out of first.

These are original handles excavated at Shiloh, the city where Joshua set up the Tabernacle (Joshua 18:1) and where Hannah prayed for the son who would become the prophet Samuel (1 Samuel 1). The vessels they once carried span the city's long history, from the Bronze and Iron Ages (3300-586 BCE) through the Roman and Late Roman periods (63 BCE to the 6th century CE). For all those centuries, jars like these hauled water, wine, oil, and grain up the same slopes where the Ark of the Covenant rested.

Each handle is authentic, one of a kind, individually selected, and documented. No two are alike, so the piece you receive will have its own shape, texture, and story.