Home of the Qathros family

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Entrance to the archaeological site, which is 6 meters below current street level

The Qathros family home ( Hebrew בית קתרוס Beit Katros , German 'Katros House' or Hebrew הבית השרוף English Burnt House ) was an ancient house in Jerusalem . The archaeological site excavated by Nahman Avigad is now a museum and is located at 13 Tifferet Israel Street . After the Six Day War , Israeli archaeologists had the first opportunity to examine the Jewish Quarter of the Old City . In ancient times, this part of the old town was a preferred residential area "on the same level as the temple, to which one had eye contact and which one could easily reach over the bridge."

Research history

What Nahman Avigad showed a reporter for the Jerusalem Post in January 1970 aroused great interest among the Israeli public: a house in the Old City, burned out and collapsed, in the condition that Titus ' legionaries had left it in AD 70. The finding of the severed arm of a twenty-five-year-old woman also contributed to the emotional impact of the excavation . These human bones were buried after their scientific investigation.

Avigad carried out the excavation on behalf of the Ministry of Construction and Housing .

Museum presentation

Today's museum is called The Burnt House Museum - Beit Katros . A multilingual presentation, which also uses lighting technology to indicate the destruction fire, familiarizes visitors with the ancient history of the house. It lasts about 30 minutes and, in addition to historical documentation, contains re-enacted scenes of a Jerusalem family, in which various attitudes towards resistance, violence and defense are discussed - in apparent security. During this "family drama" the news comes that the temple, believed to be indestructible, is on fire and chaotic battles have begun in which the sons valiantly defended the city. Towards the end, the ancient Jewish family articulates their dream that one day their children could play in this place again.

The House

Museum presentation

In Herodian times (37 BC to 70 AD), the building was a rather luxurious property with sides of about 13 to 15 meters and had several floors. The archaeological traces here and elsewhere in the Upper Town suggest that this entire area of ​​the town was destroyed in a large fire with intense heat, which burned all organic materials, including the wooden floors of the upper floors. Their loss made the walls unstable and caused the house to collapse.

An inner courtyard and the ground floor with a kitchen, a mikveh and four rooms (probably workshops) have been preserved. The plastered walls are preserved up to 1 m high; the floor of rammed earth shows signs of fire. The individual finds have been regrouped for the presentation in the museum; the room, which is now a kitchen, was originally used for other purposes; the actual kitchen of the house is located under the visitors' platform.

Avigad's team also uncovered an 11 m long wall using the runner-truss technique from the Iron Age II, which was 1.2 m wide and a maximum of about 3 m high. It cannot be seen in today's exhibition.

Single finds

Stone vessels

In the foreground: stoves, stone vessels; in the background: the "kitchen"

There were ovens, basalt mortars, cooking pots and many products from the Jerusalem stone cutting workshops. According to the thesis of Roland Deines , which has become generally accepted, such stone vessels were created especially for the requirements of the Jewish religious law , because stone, in contrast to ceramics, cannot accept any cultic impurity . Stone vessels were expensive, however, so that in the household living here, on the one hand, a great interest in cultic purity and, on the other, prosperity can be assumed; both fit the Jerusalem priestly aristocracy.

The following household appliances were offered by the stone cutting workshops: large stone vases, measuring cups, stone boxes, vessel lids and tables (for the wealthier population). The house of the Qathros family provided evidence that such objects were not decoration, but were for everyday use in an environment that was concerned with cultic purity.

The stone cutting and stone turning in the Jerusalem area experienced a strong boom with the arrival of the Romans. This also had to do with new processing technologies that were now available, but above all these stone vessels were useful “in the service of the purity laws, whose importance in everyday life also increased rapidly, not least in connection with the new, in part from the Babylonian diaspora elite that Herod brought to Palestine after he came to power. "

The interest in stone vessels spread from Jerusalem, in the immediate vicinity of the temple, to sections of the population who imitated the lifestyle of the Jerusalem priesthood. Therefore there are corresponding vessels in Qumran as well as in Pharisaic households, which is also mentioned in passing in the New Testament ( John 2,6  EU ).

The Qathros family

A stone weight with the Aramaic inscription was particularly interesting for the excavatorsדבר קתרס, "Belonging to the Qathros family." A family of this name is ingloriously mentioned in the Talmud (Pesachim 57a) as one of several families of the priestly aristocracy:

"Woe to me because of the house Qathros, woe is me because of their writing tube ! ... For they are high priests, their sons treasurers, and their sons-in-law temple overseers, and their servants beat the people with sticks. "

In addition to perfume bottles, two Roman gems depicting a scorpion or the deity Mercury point to wealthy residents. Ronny Reich suspects that the fire rubble was searched by looters, so that larger valuable objects that had survived the fire were recovered. This resulted in a concentration of relatively simple household appliances that were of no interest to looters and did not fully document the lifestyle in the Qathros house.

Traces of the destruction of Jerusalem

The house of the Qathros family was evidently destroyed when Jerusalem was conquered by the Romans: this is indicated by the layer of ash, charred wood, smashed vessels, spearheads, the remains of a lance and a severed arm of a woman's skeleton. The latter is the only skeleton find in the urban area that can be linked to the fighting in AD 70.

The following coins from the Jewish War were found here: 29 are dated to the 2nd year (of the Jewish War, beginning in AD 66), 10 to the 3rd year and three to the 4th year ( final coin i.e. 69 AD). ). This finding fits in with the fact that the upper city of Jerusalem was destroyed in the summer of 70 AD.

Web links

Commons : Burnt House  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Max Küchler : Jerusalem. A handbook and study guide to the Holy City , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-525-50170-2 , pp. 577-581.
  • Peter Hirschberg: Israel and the Palestinian Territories , EVA Leipzig 2011, ISBN 978-3-374-02841-2 , pp. 226–227.
  • Roland Deines: Jewish stone vessels and Pharisaic piety. An archaeological-historical contribution to the understanding of John 2,6 and the Jewish purity halacha at the time of Jesus (WUNT, 2nd row, 52), Mohr Siebeck, 1993, ISBN 9783161460227 (partially limited preview in the Google book search)
  • Ronny Reich: The Roman Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE: Flavius ​​Josephus' Account and the Archaeological Record , in: Gerd Theißen, Hans Ulrich Steymans, Siegfried Ostermann, Andrea Moresino-Zipper, Karl Matthias Schmidt (ed.): Jerusalem und die Länder : Iconography - Topography - Theology (FS Max Küchler), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-53390-1 , pp. 117-132. (partially limited preview in the Google book search)
  • Nahman Avigad: Jerusalem in Flames - The Burnt House Captures a Moment in Time , in: Biblical Archeology Review 9, 6 (1983) (Chapter 3 from the book by N. Avigad: Discovering Jerusalem ) ( online )
  • Hillel Geva: Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, Volume IV. Jerusalem, Israel Exploration Society 2010, pp. 120f. [Pottery], pp. 237–239 [Coins], pp. 248f. [Speer], pp. 288f. [Bone].

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 574 .
  2. ^ Malka Rabinowitz: House in Old City as Titus left it. In: The Jerusalem Post. January 16, 1970. Retrieved February 2, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 578 .
  4. ^ Ronny Reich: The Roman Destruction of Jerusalem . S. 124 .
  5. ^ Peter Hirschfeld: Israel . S. 227 .
  6. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 580 .
  7. ↑ Roland Deines: Jewish stone vessels . S. 90 .
  8. ↑ Roland Deines: Jewish stone vessels . S. 70 .
  9. ^ Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 115 .
  10. ↑ Klaus Wengst: The Gospel of John . 2nd Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2004, p. 110 .
  11. ↑ a b Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 579 .
  12. ↑ Cf. The Babylonian Talmud (Talmûd bavlî) according to the first censorship-free edition, taking into account the more recent edition and handwritten material, retransmitted. by Lazarus Goldschmidt; Vol. 2. 'Erubin; Pesahim; eqalim; License from the Jewish publisher in Suhrkamp-Verl., Frankfurt am Main; Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 2002, p. 481 [Pesachim 57a].
  13. ↑ Max Küchler: Jerusalem . S. 581 .
  14. ^ Ronny Reich: The Roman Destruction of Jerusalem . S. 125 .
  15. ^ Ronny Reich: The Roman Destruction of Jerusalem . S. 125 .

Coordinates: 31 ° 46 ′ 32.1 ″  N , 35 ° 13 ′ 57.3 ″  E