Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation by Bartlett John R

Author:Bartlett, John R. [JOHN R. BARTLETT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2011-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.9 The ‘coenaculum’ as proposed by P. Donceel-Voûte. B. Lalor after P. Donceel-Voûte (1992: 82, figure 12).

Figure 4.10 Couch, base and wine-jar stand as proposed by P. Donceel- Voûte. B. Lalor after P. Donceel-Voûte (1992: 67, figure 7).

ASSOCIATED CEMETERIES

De Vaux describes a vast cemetery of 1,100 graves in ordered rows and three main sections 50 m to the east of Kh. Qumran; it was first described by Clermont-Ganneau (1874: 83), who excavated one grave on 29 November 1873, and found beneath the oval surface mound of stones a pit about 1 m deep, at the bottom of which was a row of mudbricks covering the corpse, whose head lay to the south. There were no grave goods. De Vaux (1973: 45–7) excavated twenty-six tombs from different sectors of the cemetery, and corroborates this picture, though finding that the loculus at the bottom was a cavity dug into the side of pit. One rectangular grave contained a woman; four women and one child were found ‘in the extensions of the cemetery over the hillocks to the east’ (de Vaux 1973: 47), though S. H. Steckoll (1969: 33–40) sees the cemetery as one unified cemetery and believes that women and children were not an irregularity in it. Steckoll in 1966 opened a number of graves, and argued from deformations of the skeletons that one occupant was a scribe by profession, another a labourer who carried heavy weights on his shoulders (Steckoll 1968: 323–44); de Vaux caustically and perhaps a little unfairly remarked (1973: 48) that the Israeli authorities had forbidden this Sherlock Holmes of archaeology to continue his researches. The presence of women raises questions in the light of Pliny’s remark that that the Essenes lived near the Dead Sea sine ulla femina, and Josephus’s comment that the Essenes were mostly unmarried, but the Community Rule (1QSa) and the Cairo Damascus document (CD) imply that the Essenes were married and make no reference to celibacy. P. Bar-Adon excavated a similar cemetery 800 m north of cAin el-Ghuweir, some 15 km south of Qumran (1970:

398–400; 1977: 1–25); here out of twenty tombs excavated there were twelve males and seven females and one boy, all oriented north–south with heads to the south; N. Haas (1968: 345–53) noted that these people had been less healthy than their Qumran contemporaries. Hanan Eshel (1993: 252–9) excavated a similar cemetery at Hiam el-Sagha on the mountain between ‘Ain el-Ghuweir and ‘Ain et-Turaba, and noted that similar burials had been recorded at Jericho (C.-M. Bennett 1965: 514–46, espec. 537). Eshel suggested that such graves might be those of nomads living between the Wadi Murraba?at and Wadi Turaba, with a burial ideology similar to that of the Qumran sect. Yet the link between these places and Qumran remains unclear. N. Golb (1993: 53–7; 1985: 68–82) suggested that the burials at Qumran were the graves of troops killed defending the site, which he sees as a fortress; but such a carefully dug and well laid out cemetery seems unlikely for the losers in 68 CE; P.

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