Photo by Gabi Laron.
Mr. Yeshu Dray of Restoration of Ancient Technology discerned the process Shikhin’s lamp makers used for etching patterns into soft chalk limestone. The crosses form points for one arm of a compass, which artisans used to inscribe circles. The intersecting arcs, shown in bold in the design, create the outline of a “Northern Darom” lamp, a type of lamp made at Shikhin between around 70 and 135 CE and distributed to other towns in the Galilee.
The Shikhin Excavation Project 