Archaeologists recently discovered the burial site of a female Sarmatian warrior who they believe lived in the 1st century CE. (The Sarmatians, who populated what is now Ukraine and southern Russia during antiquity, are thought to have been the basis for the Amazons of Greek legend.) Among the numerous artifacts was a stone seal engraved in the old version of the Hebrew alphabet, which fell into disuse during the Second Temple period. Jim Davila writes:

As far as I know, this type of seal was only made between the 8th and 5th centuries BCE. . . . It is in one of the northwest Semitic languages, but I don’t know enough about the paleography of this period to identify whether it is Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic, Ammonite, Edomite, or Moabite. . . .

The letters are inscribed backwards on the seal so that the mirror-image imprint it leaves will read in the right direction. This is normal for such objects. . . . The seal reads לאלישב (l’lyšb), “belonging to Elyashiv.” Elyashiv (Eliashib) is attested as a man’s name in the Hebrew Bible in Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, and on at least a couple of 7th-century BCE Hebrew seals. I can’t find it in any of the other languages, but I haven’t looked comprehensively and some of them may well have used it, too.

The big question is, what was this turn-of-the-era Sarmatian woman in Russia doing with a Northwest Semitic seal from four to eight centuries before her time? . . . [I]t could have been a family heirloom. It certainly raises other questions about trade between Eastern Europe and the Middle East from the late Iron Age to the Hellenistic period. Assuming this report is accurate in its particulars, this is an extraordinary discovery.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”