Qumran cemetery

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The Qumran cemetery is in eastern Qumran in the West Bank, part of Palestinian area which is under Israeli occupation. It is a large area leading to a descent from which four finger-like ridges point eastward. On these ridges more tombs are located. The current estimate of tombs in the cemetery is over 1100. The largest section, that on the plateau proper, has two east-west paths which divide it into three parts. There are also two small cemeteries near Qumran, one ten minutes' walk north of the main cemetery and one to the south, on the other side of Wadi Qumran.

Qumran archeological place

Qumran is an archaeological site in the West Bank managed by Israel's Qumran National Park. It is located on a dry marl plateau about 1.5 km (1 mi) from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the Israeli settlement and kibbutz of Kalya. The Hellenistic period settlement was constructed during the reign of John Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE) or somewhat later, , was occupied most of the time until 68 CE and was destroyed by the Romans possibly as late as 73 CE. It is best known as the settlement nearest to the Qumran Caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden, caves in the sheer desert cliffs and beneath, in the marl terrace. The principal excavations at Qumran were conducted by Roland de Vaux in the 1950s, though several later unearthings at the site have since been carried out.

West Bank Part of the Palestinian territories near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia

The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the Mediterranean coast of Western Asia, bordered by Jordan to the east and by the Green Line separating it and Israel on the south, west and north. The West Bank also contains a significant section of the western Dead Sea shore. The West Bank was the name given to the territory that was captured by Jordan in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and subsequently annexed in 1950 until 1967 when it was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israeli occupation of the West Bank the military occupation of the West Bank by the State of Israel

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank began on 7 June 1967 during the Six-Day War when Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and continues to the present day. The status of the West Bank as an occupied territory has been affirmed by the International Court of Justice and, with the exception of East Jerusalem, by the Israeli Supreme Court. The official Israeli government view is that the law of occupation does not apply and it claims the territories are "disputed". Considered to be a classic example of an "intractable" conflict, the length of Israel's occupation was already regarded as exceptional after two decades and is now the longest in modern history. Israel has cited several reasons for retaining the West Bank within its ambit: a claim based on the notion of historic rights to this as a homeland as affirmed in the Balfour Declaration; security grounds, internal and external; and the deep symbolic value for Jews of the area occupied.

Contents

Excavation

The cemetery at the Qumran site is said to be a unique cemetery because how all of the graves differ from each other in one way or another. The characteristics of some graves point towards one tradition, while other characteristics point towards another. This makes it very difficult to determine to whom all the skeletons belong. There are up to 1,200 graves, found throughout all six cemeteries: the primary cemetery, the three extensions of the primary, the north cemetery (about 10 minutes away from the primary cemetery) and one south of Wadi Qumran. Despite the large number of tombs present in the cemeteries, Roland de Vaux only excavated 43 graves, while Solomon H. Steckoll examined ten. [1] and Broshi and Eshel three, [2] However, excavation of Jewish burials has been halted. Of de Vaux's 43 tombs, forty skeletons were fit to examine. Twenty-two of these are now in Germany (Collectio Kurth) and eighteen are in French institutions (Musee de l’Homme, Paris and Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem). [3]

Roland de Vaux 20th-century French archaeologist

Father Roland Guérin de Vaux OP was a French Dominican priest who led the Catholic team that initially worked on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He was the director of the Ecole Biblique, a French Catholic Theological School in East Jerusalem, and he was charged with overseeing research on the scrolls. His team excavated the ancient site of Khirbet Qumran (1951–1956) as well as several caves near Qumran northwest of the Dead Sea. The excavations were led by Ibrahim El-Assouli, caretaker of the Palestine Archaeological Museum, or what came to be known as the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.

Solomon H. Steckoll was a journalist with an interest in ancient Jewish matters. He carried out excavations in the Qumran cemetery and later wrote books about the Jerusalem temple and the gates of Jerusalem.

The majority of the graves are aligned very neatly with the heads to the south and the feet to the north. Within the southern extension of the primary cemetery, there are also some graves with the head to the east and their feet to the west. The graves themselves are made seen through the piling of field stones on top in an oval shape. Some have larger stones at the head, some at the feet. The graves are dug straight down with the depth ranging from 0.8 meter to 2.5 meters. At the bottom of the graves, is a small cavity, or a loculi. Here the body is laid. From there the body is protected by a stone or clay brick, meant to act as a cap. The bodies themselves are laid on their backs in solitude, or in some cases with a second body. Some of the bodies were buried in coffins, while others merely wrapped in shrouds. They were buried with no possessions except for a minimal amount that had some second temple period pottery buried with them at their feet and some were found with jewelry. [4]

Bedouin Intrusion

Most theories suggest that the bodies were from the second temple period. There are some theories that many of the graves belong to or were borrowed by Muslim Bedouins, considering Bedouins still inhabit that area. Bedouin are known to intrude on other communities cemeteries, so it would not be unusual if they did so at the Qumran location. Part of excavating the graves is to figure out which grave consists of whom.

Some characteristics or occurrences that support that the grave may be occupied by a Bedouin opposed to a second temple period being are as follows:

Mecca Saudi Arabian city and capital of the Makkah province

Mecca, also spelled Makkah, is a city in the Hejazi region of Saudi Arabia. 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah, in a narrow valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level, 340 kilometres (210 mi) south of Medina, its population in 2012 was 2 million, although visitors more than triple this number every year during the Ḥajj ("Pilgrimage"), held in the twelfth Muslim lunar month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah.

Josephus First-century Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer

Titus Flavius Josephus, born Yosef ben Matityahu, was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry.

Philo Hellenistic Jewish philosopher

Philo of Alexandria, also called Philo Judaeus, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt.

Other cemeteries

For many years after the examination of the cemetery, Qumran's tombs were considered unique, as no similar examples had been found. However, more recently a number of cemeteries have yielded single north-south shaft tombs. The small cemetery at Ein el-Ghuweir, 13 kilometers south of Qumran, produced 18 shaft burials of which 13 had a north-south orientation, four were nearly so, and the last was east-west. There were twelve men and six women. [11] The archaeologist believed he had found another settlement of the same sect he thought was at Qumran. [12] Further south, the cemetery at Hiam el-Sagha contains twenty north-south tombs, mostly north-south and two were examined. One held a 3-4-year-old child and the other a 25-year-old man. Shaft tombs have been found in Jerusalem, one at Talpiot, another at Mamila, and at Beth Zafafa around 25 tombs were found. [13] Hachlili states, "The tombs at Jerusalem (and Hiam el-Sagha) show no real proof that they are Jewish graves, except for their considerable similarity in form to the Qumran burials." [14]

Beit Safafa

Beit Safafa is a Palestinian town along the Green Line, with the vast majority of its territory in East Jerusalem and some northern parts in West Jerusalem.

In 1996 and 1997 a rescue excavation was carried out at Khirbet Qazone near the southern end of the Dead Sea in Jordan. This site has an estimated 3,500 tombs, mostly looted, all with the same characteristics as the Qumran graves. Twenty-three undisturbed burials were examined. These Qumran-type tombs held Nabataeans. [15]

Dead Sea salt lake bordering Jordan and Israel

The Dead Sea is a salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

Jordan Arab country in Western Asia

Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab country in Western Asia, on the East Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and the east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and Israel and Palestine to the west. The Dead Sea is located along its western borders and the country has a short 26-kilometre (16 mi) coastline on the Red Sea in its extreme south-west, but is otherwise landlocked. Jordan is strategically located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. The capital, Amman, is Jordan's most populous city as well as the country's economic, political and cultural centre.

Nabataeans Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant

The Nabataeans, also Nabateans, were an Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the Southern Levant. Their settlements, most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu, gave the name of Nabatene to the borderland between Arabia and Syria, from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Their loosely controlled trading network, which centered on strings of oases that they controlled, where agriculture was intensively practiced in limited areas, and on the routes that linked them, had no securely defined boundaries in the surrounding desert. They maintained territorial independence from their emergence in the 4th century BC until Nabataea was conquered by Trajan in 106 AD, annexing it to the Roman Empire. Nabataeans' individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture. They were later converted to Christianity during the Byzantine Era. Jane Taylor, a writer, describes them as "one of the most gifted peoples of the ancient world".

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Schultz 2009, p.196.
  2. ↑ Broshi 2004, p.139.
  3. ↑ Broshi 2004, p.139.
  4. ↑ Shultz, Brian. Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 13, No. 2. (2006), pp. 198.
  5. ↑ Shultz, Brian. Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 13, No. 2. (2006), pp. 214.
  6. ↑ Shultz, Brian. Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 13, No. 2. (2006), pp. 198, 202, 210.
  7. ↑ Shultz, Brian. Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 13, No. 2. (2006), pp. 210, 211, 214.
  8. ↑ Shultz, Brian. Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 13, No. 2. (2006), pp. 204, 215, 217.
  9. ↑ R. de Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 129.
  10. ↑ Shultz, Brian. Dead Sea Discoveries, Vol. 13, No. 2. (2006), pp. 219.
  11. ↑ Bar-Adon 1977, p.16-17.
  12. ↑ Note the title of Bar-Adon 1977: "Another Settlement of the Judean Desert Sect at 'En el-Ghuweir on the shores of the Dead Sea".
  13. ↑ Hachlili 2000, p.665.
  14. ↑ Hachlili 2000, p.666.
  15. ↑ Politis 2006.

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References

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