Digging beneath the ruins of a 19th-century synagogue that was destroyed by the Jordanians during their occupation of the West Bank, the archaeologist Oren Gutfeld has uncovered a number of Second-Temple-era artifacts. Among them is a scale weight whose inscription includes the name of the high priest’s family. Eli Mandelbaum writes:
This is the second time that such a weight has been uncovered. Excavations at the nearby Burnt House found a similar weight.
Gutfeld explained that he himself unearthed the weight, which has two lines of Aramaic text and a lyre between them. This was initially obscured by a burnt layer, which is presumably from the burning of Jerusalem [by the Romans in 70 CE]. While the first line of text has not been fully deciphered, the family name of the high priest was discernible.
“It doesn’t happen very much that I get emotional when I find artifacts. But here, I went pale and even felt a small tremble to see the name of the high priest,” [Gutfeld said].
Read more on Ynet: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4854160,00.html