Engraved in Memory

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When Oded Golan first invited me to his home in April 2002, it was to examine an inscription on a bone box—but not the one bearing the now-famous inscription, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” That one was not even in Golan’s apartment at that time. He showed me only a picture of it; he had already been able to read the inscription with the help of one of Israel’s most prominent paleographers, Ada Yardeni. (Whether Golan yet realized the significance of the inscription is another question; from the way he spoke of it, he did not.) What he wanted my help with when he invited me to his flat was another inscription on another bone box, or ossuary, that was considerably more difficult to decipher.

In the rush to declare the James ossuary inscription a forgery, which to my mind is not convincing,^a little attention has been paid to other ossuary inscriptions in Golan’s antiquities collection. It includes not only the James ossuary, but also two other ossuaries. One I shall call the Mother’s ossuary and the other, the Child’s ossuary.

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These other two ossuary inscriptions may have some bearing on the authenticity of the James ossuary inscription, but they are also extremely important in their own right. It is from this viewpoint that I first wished to examine them.¹

The Mother’s ossuary is the usual limestone box into which the bones of the deceased were placed after resting in a Jerusalem cave for about a year. During that time the flesh had fallen away and only the desiccated bones remained. Ossuaries were in use from about the turn of the era to 70 C.E., mainly in the Jerusalem area, which almost certainly fixes the time and place of this ossuary. It is about 22 inches long (enough room for the longest bone of the body), about 9 inches wide and 1 foot high. It flares up toward the top, so that it is a little longer and wider at the top than at the base. It is supported by four little feet and has a rounded, rather than flat, lid.

On one of the long sides, it has (like the James ossuary) incised rosettes and faint traces of red paint. The other long side (again like the James ossuary) is inscribed. But here there are two inscriptions. One inscription, in two lines, was carved with the ossuary turned upside down. The other inscription also in two lines, was incised while the ossuary was standing on its feet. Unlike the James ossuary inscription, both inscriptions on this ossuary are very difficult to read. Even after Ada Yardeni tried to read it—each of us has worked independently of the other—it took me a few days 055to decipher it because in this very cursive script several letters are very easily confused.

One thing makes it easier, however: The two inscriptions are of much the same content and deciphering one helps in deciphering the other. The inscription carved when the ossuary was inverted is the older one and is exceedingly difficult to decipher. It appears to have been carved by an uneducated engraver working from an awkward position (most of the letters are strongly tilted to the left). To make matters worse, it has been partially erased. Apparently, someone in charge was dissatisfied with the quality of the carving and ordered a new one to be incised by a more proficient engraver. Hence, the partial erasure of the earlier inscription.^b

For that reason, we will begin by considering the later inscription first. Here is the Hebrew (actually Aramaic) text and a translation (letters with dots over them or in italics are inferred or reconstructed):

1. אמפאד החשנכד הנזח הנהכ ליאמש תרב המאר הנרא

2. רמׁדתד התשנכד הנזח ׄהנהכ קחשא רב הננחד המאדׄו

1. Ossuary of mother, daughter of Samuel (Shemuel) the priest, servant (hazzan) of the congregation / synagogue (keneset) of Apamea

2. And who (is) the mother of Hananah, son of Ishaq the priest, servant (hazzan) of the congregation / synagogue (keneset) of Palmyra.

Although most of the letters are rather clearly incised, the words are not separated, and the letters are in more or less cursive forms that sometimes make them very difficult to decipher. This might seem surprising because it was only the people who could afford a relatively expensive burial in a limestone cave whose bones would subsequently be placed in an ossuary. This burial involves, as the inscription makes clear, a priestly family, no less. But, as L.Y. Rahmani, who wrote the standard catalog of ossuaries, has rightly observed, “The inscriptions tend to be carelessly executed, clumsily spaced and, often, contain spelling mistakes. This is true even in cases of renowned families, including those of high-priestly rank.”²

The translation indicates why, without naming her, I call this the Mother’s ossuary: She is not named. It is the ossuary of Mother (ima), daughter of Samuel the Priest. It is possible, of course, though in my view unlikely, that the woman’s name is Ima. (Some scholars have argued that Ima is a proper name on ossuaries, but ima is usually the equivalent of the English word for mother.³) The mother in this case was apparently married to a priest named Ishaq (probably an Aramaic form of the Hebrew Yitzkaq, or Isaac) and therefore their son Hananah was also a priest.

Here is the earlier Mother’s inscription, but it is even more difficult to decipher (again, letters with dots over them or in italics are inferred or reconstructed):

1. ׁרׄמׁדתׁד הׄתׄשׄנׄכׁד הׄנׄזח הנהכ הׄנׄנחד הׄמאׁדׄו

2. ׄאׄמׄפׄאׁד ׄה ׄתׄשׄנׄכׁד ׄהׄנׄזׄח ׄהׄנׄהׄכ ׄלאׄמuתרב המאד הנרא

1. And who (is) the mother of Hananah, the priest, servant (hazzan) of the congregation / synagogue (keneset) of Palmyra

2. Ossuary of mother, daughter of Samuel (Shemuel) the priest, servant (hazzan) of the congregation / synagogue (keneset) of Apamea.

This inscription likewise fails to give the mother’s name and notes that she is the daughter of a priest and the mother of a priest.

But the priests involved are not only priests. Each is also a hazzan. Here I have translated it “servant,” but the hazzan was an important official of the synagogue. In rabbinic tradition, the hazzan of the congregation played an official role, not only at the time of the synagogue service, but also as 056guardian of the sacred scrolls, teacher and executor of sentences of the local tribunal. (In the synagogue today, the hazzan is the cantor who chants the service and leads the congregation in prayer.)

Until now, the title has been encountered in ancient inscriptions only from the fourth or early fifth century C.E. Now we have it in an inscription before the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E.

These inscriptions are also important because they attest the existence of communities of Jews in Apamea and Palmyra. Apparently the mother whose bones were interred in this ossuary was brought to Jerusalem to be buried. Her father had served the synagogue of Apamea and her son the synagogue of Palmyra.

A number of ancient cities bore the name Apamea, but this one, since it is related to Palmyra, is very probably Apamea of Syria on the Orontes River, south of Antioch. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Apamea was one of three cities (the other two were Antioch and Sidon) that did not allow the Romans to kill or imprison a single Jew during the Great Jewish Revolt against Rome of 66–70 C.E.⁴

This ossuary inscription also confirms a diaspora Jewish community in Palmyra before the Great Jewish Revolt. All of this is important for establishing the extent as well as the existence of Jewish diaspora communities before the revolt. Inscriptions on other Jerusalem ossuaries evidence Jewish diaspora communities in Cyrene (Africa), Alexandria, Tyre and Anatolia.⁵

Is this ossuary inscription authentic? For me, the answer is clear: This cannot be a forgery. As Frank Cross recently stated in this magazine regarding 057inscriptions like this one, “Their authenticity is in their content, their uniqueness, and it would be absurd to remove them from the literature.”^c What he said of the Samaria papyri is applicable here: “They are incapable of being forged.” It would take a conspiracy that included seasoned scholars from a variety of disciplines to forge the inscriptions on the Mother’s ossuary, plus a faultless ability to engrave the two inscriptions (by faultless I do not mean to say that the inscriptions are beautiful, but, on the contrary, are sloppy and displaying no paleographical suggestion of forgery). As Cross said of the possibility that the Samaria papyri might be forged, so I say here: Nonsense.

The other ossuary that Golan claims was purchased with the Mother’s ossuary is the Child’s ossuary (it is only 15 inches long, too small for an adult), which includes a short inscription:

1. אעיי לבח

2. בקעי רב

1. Alas! [or “Too bad”; “unfortunately”] Bey‘a

2. son of Jacob.

The paleography of the letters might be characterized as “Palmyrenian cursive,”⁶ which connects the ossuary with the Mother’s ossuary in its reference to Palmyra.

But this ossuary and its inscription have another significance—one related to the authenticity of the James ossuary inscription. This requires some background:

No paleographer has questioned the paleography of the James ossuary inscription. Indeed, based on its paleography, I believe the inscription is authentic. So does Ada Yardeni. In a somewhat convoluted way, we may also say the same of Emile Puech of the École Biblique in Jerusalem. The indictment charging Oded Golan with forgery of this inscription admits that the first part of the inscription (“James, son of Joseph”) is authentic; according to the indictment, Golan added only the last two Aramaic words (“brother of Jesus”). According to Puech, the paleography of the inscription indicates that the entire inscription was by one hand. If that is true, the last two words cannot have been added by a forger.

Frank Cross also thinks that the paleography of the James ossuary inscription is, to use his word, “flawless.”⁷ Nevertheless, Cross believes the (entire) inscription is a forgery—for a reason other than paleographic. Cross detects a difference in the weathering between the badly weathered rosettes on one side of the ossuary and the clear inscription on the other side of the ossuary. This indicates to him that the clear, deep incisions of the inscription are recent.

In a lecture at the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2003,^d I suggested that this is not necessarily true, that different sides of an ossuary can weather at very different rates. But some of the clearest evidence that Cross’s argument is groundless now comes from this Child’s ossuary that we are examining here.

The Child’s ossuary, like the James ossuary, is decorated with six-petal rosettes. Like the James ossuary, the rosette areas bear faint traces of red paint. Between the two rosettes on the Child’s ossuary is a double trident in a geometric motif. But the most important point is that within the right-hand rosette of the Child’s ossuary is the short inscription, which (apparently purposefully) avoids covering any of the petals of the rosette.

The rosette and the inscription on the Child’s ossuary had to have weathered simultaneously. Yet the rosettes and the inscription are very different and were probably engraved neither by the same man nor with the same tool. The rosettes are lightly engraved. The inscription is rather deeply incised. This is not due to differential weathering, however. The inscription and the rosettes are different because they were engraved differently. The rosettes were made with a stylus; a sharp point drew a line as the stylus turned. The inscription, however, was probably made with an iron tool; the letters were gouged out. That is the reason for the difference in depth between the inscription and the rosettes in the Child’s ossuary. And that may also be the reason for the difference between the rosettes and the inscription in the James ossuary.

If this explains the different appearance of the inscription and the rosettes on the Child’s ossuary, it also explains the differences on the James ossuary. The inscriptions on both ossuaries, in my opinion, are authentic.

When Oded Golan first invited me to his home in April 2002, it was to examine an inscription on a bone box—but not the one bearing the now-famous inscription, “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.” That one was not even in Golan’s apartment at that time. He showed me only a picture of it; he had already been able to read the inscription with the help of one of Israel’s most prominent paleographers, Ada Yardeni. (Whether Golan yet realized the significance of the inscription is another question; from the way he spoke of it, he did not.) What […]