We’ve published a lot at Mosaic about Sino-Israeli relations, and economic relations in particular. But most of that has been focused on the past few decades. Nathan Steinmeyer describes a much older case of commerce between China and the Land of Israel:
Excavators with the Israel Antiquities Authority and the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology made an unexpected discovery while excavating on Jerusalem’s Mount Zion: a small porcelain bowl fragment painted with a short Mandarin Chinese inscription.
With the excavation team on Mount Zion typically uncovering material dating from the Second Temple (ca. 516 BCE–70 CE) through Byzantine periods (ca. 324–634 CE), a Ming Dynasty (14th–17th centuries) bowl was certainly not what they expected. This is not the first early Chinese porcelain discovered in Israel, but it is the oldest to feature writing. The enigmatic inscription reads, “We will forever keep the eternal spring.”
The team determined the bowl fragment dated between 1520 and 1570, although how it ended up in Jerusalem remains uncertain. Historic writings do, however, mention close trade connections between the Ottoman empire, who ruled Jerusalem at the time, and the Ming Dynasty, with records of at least twenty official delegations from the Ottomans visiting the imperial court in Beijing during the 15th to 17th centuries.
Read more at Bible History Daily
More about: Archaeology, China, Land of Israel, Ottoman Empire