Type: Partial Roman Perfume Bottle and other glass pieces.

Age: 100 BC-400 AD

Era: Roman

Excavated: Beth-Shan

This perfume bottle was found in the ruins of Beth-shan, a city in the territory of Issachar assigned to Manasseh. ‘The Canaanites had not been driven out (Joshua 17:11, Judges 1:27), but in the strength they were put to task-work (Judges 1:28). The most famous episode in the Bible, featuring Beth-Shean (Beth-shan), follows the death of King Saul on Mt. Gilboa: The Philistines came to strip the slain, and they found Saul and his three sons laying on Mt. Gilboa. They cut off his head and stripped him of his armor…they places his armor in the temple of Astaroth, and they impaled his body on the wall of Beth Shean. When the men of Jabesh-Gilead heard about what the Philistines had done to Saul, all their stalwart men set out and marched all night to Beth Shean. They removed the bodies of Saul and his sons from the wall and came to Jabesh and burned them there, then they took the bones and buried them under the tamarisk tree in Jabesh, and fasted for seven days (1 Samuel 31:9-13; cf. 1 Chronicles 10:8-12). Beth Shean is represented by the modern Beisan, in the throat of the Vale of Jezreel where it falls into the Jordan Valley, on the southern side of the stream from Ain Jalud. The ruins of the ancient city are found on the plain, and on the great mound where the citadel probably stood. Between the town, and the stretch of marsh land to the south, runs an old road from east to west up the Vale of Jezreel, uniting in Esdraelon with the great caravan road from north to south. Multiple excavations at Beth Shean in the past century have revealed a 6,000-year history of settlement at the site. Located near the intersection of two well-traveled ancient routes, Beth Shean had strategic value as early as the fifth millennium BC, when it was first settled. Civilizations rose and fell at the site throughout the Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age. Some of the most impressive finds at Beth Shean came form the Late Bronze Age, when Egyptian Pharaohs ruled much of Canaan and used Beth Shean as a crucial administrative center to rule over its vassal kingdoms.

The lower city is Roman Scythopolis and the mound is the ancient city of Beth-Shan.