Qumran: Wooden Artifacts

Wooden artifacts are rare finds in the material culture of the ancient Near East, and few specimens from the Roman period have survived. Because of unusually arid climatic conditions at Qumran, however, many wooden objects were retrieved including bowls, boxes, mirror frames, and combs. Their fine state of preservation facilitates the study of ancient woodworking techniques.

Similar to most ancient combs, these combs are two-sided. One side has closely-spaced teeth for straightening the hair, and the other side provides even more teeth for delousing the scalp. Both combs are fashioned from boxwood.

This deep bowl has a flat base, expertly turned on a lathe. Several concentric circles are incised in its base, and the rim of the bowl is rounded. Most wooden objects found in the Qumran area are of "acacia tortilis," a tree prevalent in the southern wadis "valleys" of Israel.

QUMRAN PHYLACTERY CASES

Phylactery A case is constructed of two pieces of stitched leather. It contains four chambers and each compartment can hold a minute slip containing a prayer. Meant to be worn on the arm, phylactery case B has only one compartment. It is formed of a single piece of leather folded in two, with one half deeply stamped out to contain a tiny inscribed slip. A fine leather thong was inserted at the middle, and the halves were folded over and stitched together.

LAYOUT OF PHYLACTERY CASES IN COMPUTER IMAGE

               C         D         B

                    A         E

Reference
    Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, I, p.7. Oxford, 1955.

Leather Scroll Fasteners Found at Qumran

Tabs and thongs like these may have been used to bind and secure individual scrolls. The fastening method is thought to consist of a slotted tab folded over the edge of the scroll (see "Prayer for King Jonathan" scroll fragment) with a thong inserted through the tab's slot. The thong then could be tied around the scroll. Fasteners were generally made of leather and were prepared in different sizes. The leather thongs may have also been used in the making of phylacteries.

Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority (90-100)

Reference:

Carswell, J. "Fastenings on the Qumran Manuscripts." In Qumran Grotte 4:II. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, VI, pp. 23- 28 and plates. Oxford, 1977. 

Linen Textiles Found in Qumran Cave

The textiles shown here are two out of scores of pieces collected together with scrolls and other objects from the floor of the Qumran Cave 1 in the spring of 1949. The textiles were examined at the H. M. Norfolk Flax Establishment in England, and the material was identified as linen. A total of seventy-seven pieces, plain and decorated, were cataloged and described by the renowned textile expert Grace M. Crowfoot.

It is possible that all of the cloths found at Qumran are linked with the scrolls. Some of them were certainly scroll wrappers; the remains of one scroll was found wrapped in a small square of linen. Other cloths, found folded into pads, may have formed a packing for worn-out scrolls inside the scroll jars. Still other pieces--with corners twisted or bound with linen cord--may have been used as protective covers, tied over the jar tops.

The wrapped scrolls may have been concealed in the cave at a time of national panic or simply buried, as was a common practice, when they wore out. The condition of the cloths would coincide with either suggestion.

This cloth is cut along three sides, rolled and oversewn with a single thread; the fourth edge has a corded starting border in twining technique, followed by a woven strip and an open unwoven space. It was found folded into a pad and was probably used as packing material for discarded scrolls.

The edges of this cloth are cut, rolled, and whipped on two opposite sides with single thread. On the other two sides, a double thread was used. Two corners are twisted, and the third has a piece of string knotting it, indicating that it was probably used as a cover for a scroll jar.

Reference:
    Crowfoot, G. M. "The Linen Textiles." In Qumran Cave I. Discoveries in the Judaean Desert, I, pp. 18-38. Oxford, 1955.

New Section of Ancient Sewer Discovered in Jerusalem

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a new section of an 2,000-year-old drainage channel that links the ancient City of David to the plaza in front of the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site.

“It connects the dots between the where Jews lived in the ancient city of Jerusalem, the city of David, and the plaza. For the first time, they connect,” said Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat in an interview on Fox News.

Archaeologist Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa and his team first uncovered the sewer in 2007. The walls of the tunnel, made of ashlar stones 3 feet deep, reach a height of 10 feet in some places and are covered by heavy stone slabs that were the road's paving stones.

The channel also served as an escape hatch for Jews desperate to flee the conquering Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70 CE. As the temple was being destroyed, people took shelter in the drainage channel and lived inside it until they fled Jerusalem through its southern end, the historian Josephus Flavius wrote in “The War of the Jews.”

Archaeology has been a politically explosive issue in Jerusalem. Palestinians including the late Yasser Arafat have even questioned a Jewish role in ancient Jerusalem. At the Camp David in 2000, Arafat insisted that there never were Jewish temples on the Temple Mount.

Barkat said no excavations had taken place under Muslim holy places. “There is no tunneling under the Temple Mount. There is not and there will not be,” he said.

The entire tunnel could be opened to the public within a year.

James ossuary inscription.

( Israel Antiquities Authority/AP / June 13, 2012 )

An inscription in Hebrew reading "Ya'acov", the Hebrew name for James, is seen on an ancient box used to bury human bones, or ossuary.

Bones in Bulgaria might be John the Baptist's, new research says

By Thomas H. Maugh II

 

Bones found in a Bulgarian church are claimed to be from John the Baptist. The knucklebone that researchers dated is in the upper left. (Oxford University / June 15, 2012)

 A small collection of human bones found under a Bulgarian church are the right age and ethnicity to support the claim that they belonged to John the Baptist, researchers said. Radiocarbon dating indicates the bones came from the 1st century and mitochondrial DNA indicates they belonged to a person of Middle Eastern origin, the research team said. "Whether that person is John the Baptist is a question that we cannot yet definitely answer and probably never will," said archaeologist Thomas Higham of Oxford University, who conducted the radiocarbon dating.

John the Baptist was an early preacher who, according to the Gospels, foretold the coming of Jesus and baptized him in the River Jordan. He was ultimately beheaded at the order of King Herod. Oxford historian Georges Kazan has shown that, in the latter part of the 4th century, monks had taken relics of John out of Jerusalem, including portions of his skull. The Roman emperor at the time ordered them brought to Constantinople and had a church built to house them. Other records suggest that, perhaps one or two centuries later, some of the relics were sent to other churches as gifts.
 
The bones in question were discovered in 2010 by Bulgarian archaeologist Kazimir Popkonstantinov, who was excavating under an ancient church on the Bulgarian island known as Sveti Ivan, which translates into English as Saint John. He found six human bones, including a knucklebone, a tooth and the face part of a cranium, all in a small marble sarcophagus under the church floor near the altar. Animal bones were also in the sarcophagus. Higham and Oxford archaeologist Christopher Ramsey attempted to date all of them, but only the knucklebone contained enough cartilage for dating.

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Archaeology journal says burial box of Jesus' brother is genuine

By Thomas H. Maugh II

Israeli Consul General Meir Romem inspects the ancient stone box that was purported to hold the bones of James, brother of Jesus, when it was on display last year at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. (AP Photo/Frank Gunn / June 13, 2012)

A limestone box bearing the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" in Aramaic appears to be genuine, the prestigious Biblical Archaeology Review in a long story written by editor Hershel Shanks. The ossuary, dating from AD 63, has been highly controversial, with Israeli authorities claiming it is a forgery and prosecuting antiquities dealer Oded Golan, who originally sold it. That trial ended in March when a judge acquitted him of forging the inscription on the ossuary, saying that the prosecutor had not proved claims that the ossuary was a fake. Shanks has provided no new evidence of the ossuary's authenticity, but he does refute some of the government's key arguments in that trial.

The 20-inch-long box is slightly trapezoidal in shape, wider at the top than the bottom. The lid is slightly convex. Such boxes were used in the 1st century to hold bones after a person's flesh had melted away in a cave. The controversial box was discovered in a private collection by paleographer Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne University in Paris, but it has never been clear where the box was originally found. The discovery was first announced in the pages of Biblical Archaeology Review in October 2002 and, shortly thereafter, the ossuary was placed on display at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in conjunction with a religious meeting.

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New find sheds light on ancient site in Jerusalem

By MATTI FRIEDMAN





JERUSALEM (AP) — Newly found coins underneath Jerusalem's Western Wall could change the accepted belief about the construction of one of the world's most sacred sites two millennia ago, Israeli archaeologists.

The man usually credited with building the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary is Herod, a Jewish ruler who died in 4 B.C. Herod's monumental compound replaced and expanded a much older Jewish temple complex on the same site.

But archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority now say diggers have found coins underneath the massive foundation stones of the compound's Western Wall that were stamped by a Roman proconsul 20 years after Herod's death. That indicates that Herod did not build the wall — part of which is venerated as Judaism's holiest prayer site — and that construction was not close to being complete when he died.

"The find changes the way we see the construction, and shows it lasted for longer than we originally thought," said the dig's co-director, Eli Shukron.

The four bronze coins were stamped around 17 A.D. by the Roman official Valerius Gratus. He preceded Pontius Pilate of the New Testament story as Rome's representative in Jerusalem, according to Ronny Reich of Haifa University, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the dig.

The coins were found inside a ritual bath that predated construction of the renovated Temple Mount complex and which was filled in to support the new walls, Reich said.

They show that construction of the Western Wall had not even begun at the time of Herod's death. Instead, it was likely completed only generations later by one of his descendants.

The coins confirm a contemporary account by Josephus Flavius, a Jewish general who became a Roman historian. Writing after a Jewish revolt against Rome and the destruction of the Temple by legionnaires in 70 A.D., he recounted that work on the Temple Mount had been completed only by King Agrippa II, Herod's great-grandson, two decades before the entire compound was destroyed.

Scholars have long been familiar with Josephus' account, but the find is nonetheless important because it offers the "first clear-cut archaeological evidence that part of the enclosure wall was not built by Herod," said archaeologist Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, who was not involved in the dig.

Josephus also wrote that the end of construction left 18,000 workmen unemployed in Jerusalem. Some historians have linked this to discontent that eventually erupted in the Jewish revolt.

The compound, controlled since 1967 by Israel, now houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-capped Muslim shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. The fact that the compound is holy both to Jews and Muslims makes it one of the world's most sensitive religious sites.

The dig in which the coins were discovered cleared a Roman-era drainage tunnel that begins at the biblical Pool of Siloam, one of the city's original water sources, and terminates with a climb up a ladder out onto a 2,000-year-old street inside Jerusalem's Old City. The tunnel runs by the foundation stones of the compound's western wall, where the coins were found.

The drainage tunnel was excavated as part of the dig at the City of David, which is perhaps Israel's richest archaeological excavation and its most contentious.

The dig is being carried out inside the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, and is funded by a group associated with the Israeli settlement movement that opposes any division of the city as part of a future peace deal.

The excavation of the tunnel has also yielded a Roman sword, oil lamps, pots and coins that scholars believe are likely debris from an attempt by Jewish rebels to hide in the underground passage as they fled from the Roman soldiers.