If you haven’t read this essay by Robert Deutsch yet you need to.
In 1904 the German engineer Gottlieb Schumacher conducted archaeological
excavations at Tell el-Mutesellim, ancient Tell Megiddo, and among other finds he
recovered a remarkable Hebrew seal (Fig. 1), belonging to a high official of
Jeroboam II, King of Israel (ca. 784 – 748 BCE). The large seal is made of jaspis and
measures 37 x 27 x 17.5 mm. It depicts a Neo-Assyrian-style roaring lion2 of a
superior glyptic quality and a palaeo-Hebrew inscription divided into two lines,
reading lšmʿ / ʿbd yrbʿm, i.e., “Belonging to Shema, servant of Jeroboam” (WSS 2). Since its discovery, it has been regularly cited in scholarly publications and has even become an emblem adopted by some firms. In this article we shall examine a recently published bulla, also depicting a roaring lion and bearing the “same” inscription as Jeroboam’s official. Having studied the specimen in detail, the authors of this article demonstrate that the bulla is not a genuine 8th century BCE artefact but rather an embarrassing modern forgery.
Zwinglius Redivivus 