ABSTRACT
During the 8th season of the renewed excavations at Tel Lachish (1980) two unusual pottery fragments aroused our curiosity during pottery reading. One fragment, which showed traces of burning, had a narrow neck and a right-angled bend below the neck: it seemed to belong to a strange sort of tube or funnel. The other one, from an adjacent locus, looked like part of a wall bracket. Both pieces were found in Area P within an inner courtyard of the palatial building of the Middle Bronze. They were located in the burnt debris of Level P3, the latest phase of the Middle Bronze Age Palace (Ussishkin, 1983: 108, Fig. 4). The inner courtyard then had obviously served as a midden area since mud-brick bins, ovens, grinding stones, many storejars, cooking pots, bowls and jugs were found within the ashy layer overlaying the plaster floor. It was only during restoration (executed by the restoration workshop of the Tel Aviv University) that the two fragments were joined, a few more sherds added and the actual shape of a pottery boot emerged.
