"Given the past record of artifacts either faked or altered to support Israel's claims regarding the first Temple, caution is warranted. The only two other artifacts purporting to "prove" the existence of Solomon's Temple, an Ivory pomegranate and a stone tablet recording repairs to the Temple, both have been exposed as fakes. So this seal shows up just in the nick of time. Scholars were starting to ask embarrassing questions such as how there could be no remains of the Temple of Solomon at all, when one can hardly take a step in Egypt without tripping over remains of Egypt's history of the same time period.
Just looking at the photo,. it appears that the inscription is a different set of tools (and less finished) than the cultic depiction above. This follows the form of the previously known fakes; a genuine artifact with a faked inscription to increase its value. Such fakes are big business in Israel. Only last night the TV program "The Naked archaeologist": was showing how a Herodian clay oil lamp that sells for $400 will have a menorah added to it by a forger, which will then raise the price to $10,000.
People see what they want to see, and as the pomegranate and Temple tablet (and the James Ossuary) demonstrated, experts WANTED them to be genuine and missed the signs that they were fakes." -- Mike Rivero of What Really Happened
