Dear Board;
-I would like to know the diffenrenes between Menorah 7 branches and 9 branches
-Meaning of the two letters : 
and :phoenician_taw_4:or 
? when they figured on old artifact
Thanks for all help
The 7 branches Menorah was
Jewish ritual object that served the ancient
Jewish Temple of Jerusalem known as the “2nd Temple” and as religious sources tell: also the “1st Temple” and the Tabernacle. It was a sacred object and supposedly there was one of its kind. It is assumed by some that it was rarely depicted visually due to Judaism’s (back then) attitude towards visual depiction of
Man,
animals and certain sacred objects. The extremely
rare Antigonus II Mattathias coins minted in Jerusalem that depicted the Menorah might represent a desperate situation in which the ruler used this symbol to link
his struggle (in the war against the
Roman’s) to a religious cause. Apart from that there are very few depictions of the Menorah from pre 70AD found in remains of non public structures. The Menorah description on the Arch of
Titus in
Rome was accepted as the true description of the last Menorah and was therefore adopted as the coat of arms of the State of
Israel. However the Menorah was not in use for religious purposes since 70AD and its picture, and often memory, are used with a nostalgic orientation only (a common urban
legend,
still heard though not always seriously, tells that the “real” Menorah is stored in the “
Vatican vaults” though historical sources hint it was destroyed during the events that followed the end of
antiquity).
The so called 9 branch Menorah – called in modern Hebrew (since the 19th century)“HaNukiya” (
comes from the holidays name Hanuuka) serves during the holiday as a platform for the 8 candles that represent the “8 days of
joy” that are the foundation of this holiday – on each day of the holiday the number of candles that match the days number In the holiday are lit. The 9th candle is not related to the holiday and the original custom and is called in Hebrew “Shamash” - “Servant”, or “Batman” (
military term) - and its purpose, and “only purpose” as religious custom says – is to lit each of the other 8 candles. So, theoretically, a “Hannukah menorah” might have only 8 candle places, though as it happens with tradition – the “Servant” was adopted as the 9th candle – which must be placed separately from the others.
Many Hannukah
lamps are designed completely different from the “7 branches Menorah” and in fact ultra-religious
Jewish families use a devise that looks like an aquarium (wind proof) that is put near a window or at the house entrance for a ground floor structure. The candles inside are lit on a vertical platform with the “Servant” placed at the end of the row. The “
Titus arch” design of Menorah used for the 9 branch Hannukah
lamp is more of an adoption of its form due to esthetic reasons – used mostly for “public” Hannukah
lamps or in secular homes. It’s a result of traditions changing and while accepted by many as the “classic Hannukah
lamp design” is a result of modern development of this custom. The whole mixture between these completely separate devices (yes related to the same Temple) somewhat reminds me of the common mistake of calling a modern semi circular open-air concert
area – “An
Amphitheatre”…
