Nachal Mischmar
Nachal Mischmar ( Hebrew נחל משמר; Arabic مَحْرَس) is a valley on the Dead Sea . It is about halfway between Ein Gedi and Masada .
During an expedition of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1960, three papyri were found in Cave No. 1 , one of them in Hebrew / Aramaic, one in Greek, and a third written in both Aramaic and Greek. Comparisons of the scriptures suggest dating to the time of the Bar Kochba uprising . As with the documents found in the Nachal Ze'elim , these are likely to be treaty texts or census lists. The cave was known as the Scouts' Cave .
In a second expedition in March 1961, the archaeologists first came across finds from Roman times in the same cave, including potsherds, textiles and semi-precious stones. Then in a spacious pit behind a thick boulder they discovered a sensational copper hoard that had been ignored for 6,000 years: a treasure trove of 442 objects carefully wrapped in rush mats and attributed to the ghassulian culture. 429 copper objects were found , six made of hematite , one of stone, one of ivory and five of hippopotamus ivory . The copper objects alone weighed 140 kilograms, a very large amount for a single find. The cave was then renamed the Cave of the Treasure .
Using 14 C data from samples taken from the Rush Mats, the treasure is estimated to be around 3500 BC. BC and thus dated to the Copper Age.
Many of the copper objects were made in complex molds from lost wax , which suggests a not yet recognized preliminary stage of technical skills. The most magnificent pieces, the crowns, standards, sceptres and club heads, are cast from the bright, silvery shimmering arsenic copper. A high proportion of arsenic in copper leads on the one hand to particularly good casting properties and on the other hand makes the metal harder. They are among the oldest known objects in this technique and are considered to be the top performance of the Chalcolithic era worldwide . And the spectacular proof of how perfectly the people in the Middle East mastered the technology of copper processing. The simpler tools (like the flat axes) are made of almost pure copper. It is possible that some of the copper in these finds came from the mining regions on Wadi Araba ( Timna , Fenan ).
It is believed that it was a temple treasure that was hidden there. At En Gedi a temple from this period was excavated, from which the objects could come. However, this is only a guess.
literature
- Pessaḥ Bar-Adon: Expedition C - The Cave of the Treasure . In: Israel Exploration Journal 12 (1962), pp. 215-226, panels 35-42.
- Pessaḥ Bar-Adon: The Cave of the Treasure: the Finds From the Caves in Naḥal Mishmar . Israel Exploration Society, Jerusalem 1980.
- Hannah M. Cotton : 1Mish papList of Names and Account gr. In: James Charlesworth u. a. (Ed.): Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 38. Miscellaneous Texts from the Judaean Desert. Oxford 2000, pp. 201-204, panel XXXII.
- Baruch Lifshitz: The Greek Documents from Naḥal Ṣeelim and Naḥal Mishmar. In: Israel Exploration Journal 11 (1961), pp. 53-62, plate 23.
Web links
- The Nahal Mishmar Treasure
- Some pictures of the valley
- The so called Copper Crown in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Coordinates: 31 ° 22 ′ 51.4 " N , 35 ° 21 ′ 51.6" E