Den of the Letters

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Coordinates: 31 ° 25 ′ 57.4 "  N , 35 ° 20 ′ 34.5"  E

Den of the Letters

The Cave of Letters ( 5 / 6Ḥev ) is an archaeological site that belongs to the Nachal Chever cave group ( Wadi el-Chabra ). The finds reflect the dramatic situation in the final phase of the Bar Kochba uprising (August / September 135 AD). They also offer illustrative material of everyday culture in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The most interesting objects are presented today in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Exploring the cave

Although it was visited both by Bedouins (who left their cigarette butts there) and in 1953 by the archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni , the letter cave turned out to be the richest cave of the 1960/61 expedition led by Yigael Yadin . The work of the archaeologists in the branched, approximately 150 meter long natural cave was technically very complex. The site was so difficult to access that the archaeologists had to have their material transported by army helicopter. Working in the cave was not only burdened by heat and dust, but also by guano for the bat population there.

Context: Bar Kochba uprising

The letter cave was a place of refuge for some Jewish families during the Bar Kochba uprising, but it became a trap for them: although the Roman legionnaires refrained from climbing after the refugees on the steep rock face, they set up a post above the cave. So they controlled the only access route, because climbing down into the valley from the cave was and is impossible.

Excursus: literary evidence

The sources for the Bar Kochba uprising are far worse than for the Jewish War , which Flavius ​​Josephus described in great detail. After all, Dio Cassius described the Roman tactics that were also used in Nachal Chever: The general Sextus Iulius Severus “isolated small groups, deprived them of food and locked them up. So he managed to smash, wear out, and wipe them out rather slowly, but in a safer way. Very few of them survived. ” Hieronymus still remembered in the 4th / 5th. Century that the Judeans “got into such distress that they, together with their wives and children ... went underground in underground passages and secluded themselves in the very deepest caves. (... sed in tantam habitiatores Judaeae venisse formidinem, ut et ipsi cum conjugibus et liberis, auro et argento quae sibi auxilio fore aestimabant, in foveas terrae demersi sint, et profundissima antra sectati.) "

The most important finds

List of all texts found with their signatures: see Nachal Chever .

Thanks to the desert climate, organic materials were very well preserved. The knives still had their original handles; the antique glass bowls had not developed an iridescent patina. Turned wooden plates have the same shape as you know from their ceramic counterparts.

Depot of bronze objects

In the background: bronze bowl, key, bronze jugs. In the foreground: knife and sickle.

Shortly after the double entrance, the first hall (Hall A) of the letter cave opens. A basket with bronze objects from Italian production had been placed there - apparently booty from the rebels:

The rebels apparently intended to use these items themselves, despite their reference to the Roman cult. They made the motif of the libation bowl , Thetis riding on a triton , unrecognizable in order to profane the bowl. Similar edits were made to the pitcher handles.

The Mishnah describes a process with which a Jew can profanise a pagan idol: “If he has cut off the tip of his ear, the tip of his nose, the tip of his finger, he has compressed it, even if he has not removed anything, he has it desecrated. "

Keychain

A narrow gap leads from the first hall to hall B, at the left end of which the elongated hall C branches off. There were a number of interesting landfills there. In the front area there was a bunch of keys with six keys in a typical Roman shape. This find can be interpreted as meaning that the refugees had locked their apartments and expected to return there. It didn't come to that anymore.

Babatha's personal hiding place

Braided wicker basket.

Text finds in Babatha's depot: see Babatha .

In a corner of Hall C, Babatha, a comparatively wealthy woman, had deposited her personal effects. From her correspondence, it is learned that she “survived two spouses and spent most of her life litigation.” In addition to these documents, she owned the following items:

  • a basket of willow branches
  • four water hoses
  • one case
  • a brightly painted wooden jewelry box (empty) with a semicircular lid and a pull-out bottom
  • four knives
  • a sickle
  • four keys
  • Wooden panels
  • Ball of yarn
  • two jugs
  • an iron frying pan
  • a bronze mirror in its original wooden packaging, which has the shape of a table tennis bat.
Big glass bowl.

Two small glass bowls and one large one had been wrapped in palm fiber packaging material as luxury goods for their protection. The large, almost water-clear faceted bowl is of very good quality: “The faceting, which is sparingly distributed and with a pronounced sense of the relationship between empty and decorated surfaces, consists of two bands of circular cuts with double lines set between them. The edge is notched and provided with a precisely cut band of beveled rectangles. "

Skeleton finds and textiles ("skull niche")

Children's clothing: tunic with pouch, sandals, belt.

Years later, after Bar Kochba's followers had starved to death in this cave, people came here again to bury the skeletons, at least in a makeshift manner. Baskets with the remains of eight women, six children and three men were placed in a 12 m long gap that branches off from Hall C. Of great interest to the archaeologists were the clothing of the buried, namely tunics and cloaks:

  • Women's clothes with a typical gamma pattern,
  • Men's clothing with citi
  • a children's tunic (0.38 × 0.45 m) with three tied bags containing herbs, spices and seeds, apparently as amulets. The stripes (clavi) of a tunic were imitated by colored weft threads.

Due to the desert climate, these are well-preserved sets that show how Jews were dressed in the Roman Empire. Yadin published 92 textile finds from the letter cave, 254 further textile fragments were recovered from a subsequent excavation in 2000/2001. Only one copy violates the prohibition of the Torah to mix wool and linen ( Schatnes ) by sewing with a linen thread on a woolen fabric. The clothes were carried or worn during the escape and are patched in many places. The discovery of a dyed, unspun wool ball shows that the wool was first dyed and then spun; the basic colors were yellow, red and blue. A ball of wool was apparently intended for the production of zizit and shows how the blue color (techelet) mentioned in the Torah was achieved: it was an imitation purple based on aluminum, iron, calcium, indigo and crimson.

Fresco of the synagogue of Dura Europos : outer clothing with a notched ribbon pattern, underclothing with vertical stripes ( National Museum Damascus ).

Two color-contrasting vertical stripes on the tunics correspond to the “typical costume of the Roman East.” The tunic of a 14 to 15 year old boy was best preserved; it had the dimensions 0.90 × 0.65 m.

The upper garment (coat) consisted of a large rectangular piece of fabric. Different colored samples showed whether it was a man's or a woman's coat; the former had a notched band pattern, the latter a notched gamma pattern. These decorative patterns are z. B. can also be seen on the frescoes of the synagogue of Dura Europos. A particularly well-preserved lady's mantle measures 1.40 x 2.70 m and shows that the gamma pattern tapered towards the four corners of the fabric. There were also scarves with fringes, including a black mourning scarf.

There were even remnants of the hairnets worn by the women as headgear.

There were also some modern looking sandals made of cowhide in the find. The principle is still in use today: two reinforced leather strips are attached to the sole on both sides of the ankle. They have slits at the top through which a strap was passed, which was connected to the sole next to the big toe. "These straps could be tightened with a leather sleeve and adjusted to the foot."

Bar Kochba archive

In the farthest corner of Hall C, the trapped had created a hiding place. Under balls of wool, metal objects, cosmetics, beads, leather and textile pieces was a bundle of 15 letters from Bar Kochba (signature: Schimeon Bar Kosiba ). Jehonatan ben Beajan and Masabala ben Schimeon, his military leaders in En Gedi , stand out as addressees .

The uprising had already entered its final phase. Bar Kochba had difficulty mobilizing his people, or because of Roman pressure, they were simply unable to carry out his orders. In the midst of all this chaos, Bar Kochba ordered a delivery of fruit and twigs for festive bouquets on the festival of Sukkot . The bundle of letters was wrapped with string and provided with a clay bull.

literature

  • Yigael Yadin: Expedition D - The Cave of the Letters , in: Israel Exploration Journal 12 (1962), pp. 227-257, pls. 43-48.
  • HJ Polotsky: The Greek Papyri from the Cave of the Letters , in: Israel Exploration Journal 12 (1962), pp. 258-262, pl. 48.
  • Yigael Yadin: The Finds from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters. Judean Desert Studies [1]. Jerusalem 1963. (excavation report without the text finds)
  • Naphtali Lewis (ed.): The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri. Judean Desert Studies 2. Jerusalem 1989. ISBN 965-221-009-9
  • Yigael Yadin, Jonas C. Greenfield, Ada Yardeni, Baruch A. Levine (eds.): The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters: Hebrew, Aramaic and Nabatean-Aramaic Papyri. Judean Desert Studies 3. Jerusalem 2002. ISBN 965-221-046-3
  • Richard A. Freund: Secrets of the Cave of Letters: Rediscovering a Dead Sea Mystery. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books 2004. ISBN 978-1-59102-205-3
  • Othmar Keel , Max Küchler : Places and landscapes of the Bible. A handbook and study guide to the Holy Land . Volume 2: The South, Göttingen 1982, pp. 403-411.
  • Jodi Magness: The Archeology of the Holy Land: From the Destruction of Solomon's Temple to the Muslim Conquest , Cambridge 2012
  • Robert Wenning : Notes on Palestinian textiles in the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine times from an archaeological point of view. In: G. Völger et al. (Ed.): Splendor and Mystery. Clothing and jewelry from Palestine and Jordan , Cologne 1987, pp. 144–149.422. ( PDF )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Jodi Magness: Archeology . S. 261 .
  2. ^ Richard A. Freund: Secrets of the Cave of Letters . S. 91 .
  3. ↑ Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and Landscapes . S. 403 (Text only passed down as an extract from the monk Xiphilinos.).
  4. ↑ Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and Landscapes . S. 404 .
  5. ↑ Hieronymus: Commentatorium in Isaiam Prophetam. In: Patrologia Latina. Migne, accessed February 14, 2018 (column 51, commentary on Isaiah 2:15).
  6. ↑ a b Jodi Magness: Archeology . S. 262 .
  7. ↑ Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and Landscapes . S. 407 .
  8. ^ Jodi Magness: Archeology . S. 263 .
  9. ↑ Dietrich Correns (ed.): The Mishna . Wiesbaden 2005, p. 579 (treatise Aboda zara, IV 5).
  10. ↑ Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and Landscapes . S. 409 .
  11. ↑ Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and Landscapes . S. 410 .
  12. ↑ a b c Irène Lewitt (ed.): The Israel Museum . Jerusalem 1995, p. 81 .
  13. ↑ Axel von Saldern: Antique glass . CH Beck, Munich 2004, p. 363 .
  14. ↑ a b c d e f Robert Wenning: Notes . S. 145 .
  15. ↑ Orit Shamir: The High Priest's Garments of mixed wool and linen (sha'atnez) compared to textiles found in the Land of Israel . In: Cecilie Brøns, Marie-Louise Nosch (Ed.): Textiles and Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean . Oxford 2017, p. 202 .
  16. ^ Robert Wenning: Notes . S. 145-146 .
  17. ↑ a b c d Robert Wenning: Notes . S. 146 .
  18. ^ Jodi Magness: Archeology . S. 264 .
  19. ↑ Othmar Keel, Max Küchler: Places and Landscapes . S. 411 .