Glass Vessels and Beads from the Late Bronze Age Temple at Tel Sera’, Israel

Excavations of the Late Bronze Age temple precinct at Tel Sera’ (Tell esh-Shari’a) in the western Negev, Israel, have yielded two glass cylinder beads and fragments of four New Kingdom Egyptian coreformed vessels. The Late Bronze III settlement strata (X and IX) at Tel Sera’ represent the zenith of Egyptian activity in the province of Canaan during the 19th and 20th Dynasties (13th to mid-12th centuries B.C.). While the number of glass objects from Tel Sera’ is not large, these objects make a significant contribution to the record of glass object types in the Levantine region of the ancient Near East. They also underscore the significance of glass as an elite product in the cosmopolitan cultural framework of the Hurriandominated northern Syro-Levant and Mesopotamia, and of powerful Egypt and its Asiatic vassal states.