I would love to find out more information about this piece of pottery I found on the beach of Ashkelon. I wonder if anyone has seen this design on other fragments of ancient pottery, or if it’s even ancient at all – I don’t know. I found this piece after a storm in Ashkelon, Israel along the beach north of the promenade, near the dome-shaped Holiday Inn that sits on the cliff above. After a storm here, a bunch of pottery sherds, shells, trash, seaweed, rocks, and marble wash up to shore. I love walking along the beach with my pugs and hunting for treasures. I especially love it when I happen to find an unusual pattern such as this cross design that looks like it’s been stamped into the clay. I don’t know why I had the instinct to turn this particular piece over. It was thrilling to see this little detail from the past waiting to be discovered. Most of the pieces along the beach are either smoothed over by continual tumbling in the sea, or are body sherds that have the typical lined pattern across them that you see everywhere in sandy areas and inland forest areas. When I first moved to Israel I was thrilled to find the lined pieces! But after a few years of seeing these pieces everywhere I looked (I still collect them though!) it became more exciting to find designs that are less usual.
If anyone searching the web comes across this piece and has any ideas about it’s time period in history, or any other interesting stories about ancient pottery please share – thanks! 🙂
CRISPIN BIXLER 