Nehushtan is the bronze serpent venerated in the Jerusalem temple, its name a pun on the Hebrew words for bronze and serpent. According to the wilderness tradition Moses fashioned it at Yahweh's command so that any Israelite bitten by the fiery serpents who looked upon it would live. By the eighth century it had become a standing cult-image to which the people burned incense, and the reforming king Hezekiah broke it in pieces, contemptuously calling it merely 'Nehushtan', a thing of bronze. Excavated bronze serpents from Timna, Hazor and elsewhere attest a broader Levantine serpent cult of healing and protection that lies behind the biblical object.