Inside the Israel Antiquities Authority

040

General Amir Drori, who led an army to the gates of Beirut in the Lebanese War, lost the last battle he ever waged in uniform when he was edged out for the post of chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces seven years ago. He was soon, however, laying siege to cities the length and breadth of the Holy Land—dead cities—and outflanking powerfully entrenched bureaucracies.

As first director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Drori has staged a dazzling administrative coup that has brought archaeology in Israel to the fore as a large-scale enterprise uncovering more of the country’s past than ever before.

Only 54 employees were listed on the work roster when he took over his duties five years ago. Today he deploys over 3,000 people, mostly ordinary workers but more than 200 of them professional archaeologists, in digs from the Lebanese border to the Red Sea.

This transformation of Israel’s official archaeological arm reflects in part a new government awareness of archaeology’s potential as a tourist attraction. It also reflects the personal orientation of a goal-oriented military man turned loose on a sleepy government department.

His appointment in 1988 as director of the government’s Department of Museums and Antiquities, as it was then known, caused widespread surprise and some unease. The post had always been held by a professional archaeologist and was widely considered to be both too specialized to be held by a nonprofessional and too narrow to interest a general who had risen to the position of deputy chief of staff. It was almost as if General Norman Schwarzkopf had hung up his uniform to run some obscure mapping division within the Department of Defense.

Drori was not altogether a novice. He received a B.A. in archaeology from Hebrew University in the 1960s, while on leave from the army to pursue academic studies. Many of his classmates, like Yoram Tsafrir and the late Yigal Shiloh, had become 041mainstays of Israel’s archaeological community, and Drori had stayed in touch with them.

For several months after his appointment, Drori maintained a low profile as he took the measure of his modest new command. “At the beginning, I had no clear idea of what I wanted to do,” he said in an interview with BAR. “I began to learn the subject.” The Department of Antiquities was then only one of 35 departments within the Education Ministry, tucked away on the fringes of the ministry’s consciousness and budget. Housed in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, an isolated location that contributed to the ivory-tower atmosphere, the department had been just drifting and lacked direction and energy when Drori took over.

The Department of Antiquities was responsible for enforcing the Antiquities Law that protects any antiquity uncovered in the country—that is, any man-made object predating 1700. Among the items in its storerooms were the Dead Sea Scrolls. It was also responsible for conducting salvage digs whenever antiquities were uncovered in the course of building roads or structural foundations around the country. However, the limited number of inspectors permitted by the budget frequently allowed building contractors to bulldoze an ancient grave or other finds without reporting them, and thus avoid construction delays. The salvage digs were usually small probes of limited importance. The prestigious excavations at major sites were left to archaeologists from Israeli universities, as well as foreign expeditions.

“When I took over, I wanted to define my objectives,” says Drori. “My first conclusion was that antiquities are the biggest natural treasure in this country; they are also an economic asset. A tremendous physical development was going on in this country, yet we had to find a way to preserve our antiquities.”

Drori concluded that the department was too small, too powerless and too poor to do its job properly. The solution he proposed was to transform it into an independent authority with enhanced powers and the legal right to raise money from outside sources. Within six months, he was able to draft a legislative proposal establishing such an authority and shepherd it through the Knesset into law. On April 1, 1990, the Israel Antiquities Authority officially came into being.

The transition was not always smooth. In reorganizing his bailiwick from six archaeological districts to three, he eliminated the Jerusalem district headed by Dan Bahat. Bahat clashed with Drori over the change and left the Authority, depriving it of a brilliant archaeologist with an exceptional ability to communicate with the public.

One of Drori’s first moves was to speed up the pace of Dead Sea Scroll research. In the 1950s the Jordanian authorities, who were then in possession of most of the scrolls, entrusted decipherment to a small international committee of scholars. After an initial brisk start, the pace became agonizingly slow, to the growing annoyance of other scroll scholars. Previous 043directors of the Department of Antiquities had treated the international committee, on which no Israelis sat, like an extraterritorial body. Not wishing to treat the scrolls as war booty, they viewed the committee’s workings as virtually independent of Israeli supervision—even though the scrolls had been in Israeli possession since the capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israel, however, was being blamed for the delay in publication of the scrolls. Some critics even implied dire motives for participation in a “cover-up.” Drori cut the Gordian knot by taking control of the scrolls away from the committee and appointing an Israeli scholar, Professor Emanuel Tov, as chief editor. He increased the number of scholars working on the scrolls to more than 50 and set a deadline for each to finish his work. Those who failed to do so, he warned, would have their texts taken from them and reassigned to other scholars. A terminal date of 1997 was set for completion of work on the last scroll. This is the deadline for submission of manuscripts, not for final publication, which would be a few years later. Meanwhile, volume ten on MMT is now camera-ready and is to be printed probably within the next six months. Three more volumes are to be published in 1994. Tov’s comment on Drori is “I am full of appreciation for Drori’s efforts. He sees the speedy publication of the scrolls as a matter of honor.”

When the Huntington Library in California announced in 1991 that it would make available to scholars photographs of the still-unpublished scrolls that had been sent abroad for safekeeping, Drori threatened a lawsuit. By making the scrolls public, he said, the institution would deny the legitimate publication rights of those scholars to whom texts had been assigned. The ensuing chaos would make it difficult, for the public at least, to distinguish between scholarly readings of the scrolls and interpretations by quacks who would win headlines with sensational “revelations.” However, as the legal difficulties of pursuing such a suit became apparent and when other unsanctioned versions of the scrolls appeared, including that of the Biblical Archaeology Society, the ex-general beat a tactical retreat. He authorized publication of the Antiquities Authority’s definitive authoritative microfiche version of the scrolls edited by Tov (Brill, 1993).

The Dead Sea Scrolls, however, were only a small part of the Authority’s concerns. Rapid development of the country was turning up ancient artifacts almost every day at building sites. Drori quintupled the number of antiquities inspectors to 70 and set up a network of inspection offices around the country to ensure close supervision. He financed this by enforcing the law requiring those responsible for developing a site—whether the Public Works Department constructing roads or private contractors building homes or industrial sites—to pay for the salvage digs. The number of such digs increased from several dozen a year to more than 200 in 1993.

But even more ambitious projects were afoot. A confluence of economic interests had made the time ripe for major archaeological projects in Israel. Government tourist authorities were prepared to invest considerable sums in the development of archaeological sites. At the same time, the large influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia had created a large pool of unemployed. It was decided to launch a number of major digs and restoration projects as tourist attractions that would at the same time provide abundant jobs. The Authority was given the central role in organizing the effort.

The major project was at Beth-Shean, a provincial town in the Jordan Valley with a high level of unemployment and an antiquities site that was virtually untouched.^a More than 300 local persons were hired—“We’re the largest employer in town,” says Drori—for a project expected to last at least five years. So massive is the undertaking that four separate archaeological teams are involved on a rotating basis—two from the Authority and two from Hebrew University. The teams have uncovered an opulent city, particularly from the Roman-Byzantine period, that has already become a major tourist attraction.

Similar projects have been launched at Maresha in the Judean foothills, where an underground city from the Hellenistic period has been found, almost as large as the city on the surface; at Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast;^b and at other sites around the country. The idea is to transform these sites from excavations where archaeologists perform their obscure readings of ancient bones to vivid panoramas of history understandable to the lay person.

To accomplish this, emphasis has been placed on restoration work. “There was only one man dealing with restoration in the old Antiquities Department,” notes Giora Solar, in charge of restoration for the Authority. “Now we have 200 people.”

At Caesarea, one of the country’s major archaeological attractions, 30 restorers worked last summer to strengthen a Byzantine bathhouse as it was being excavated. It was one of 13 such restoration projects being conducted simultaneously around the country. The restorers, most of them trained by the Authority, strengthened walls with temporary supports to prevent their collapse, put up a roof to protect against winter rains and summer sun, replaced crumbly old stones 044with stout new ones, used special material to strengthen the adhesion of ancient plaster on ancient walls and restored mosaic floors. When the archaeologists have completed their dig, the restorers will take over the site to prepare it for visitors. In some cases, they may reconstruct parts of ancient structures to make them more meaningful to lay people. “I not only have manpower,” says Solar, “but equipment worth millions that no one would have dreamed of in the past.”

With some 300 excavations being conducted in Israel this year, plus the restoration projects, archaeology has become a major national enterprise. “Our archaeological activity is unmatched anywhere in the world,” says Drori. The Authority’s permanent job slots have been quadrupled in the past five years to about 200. Nearly 3,000 other people, from professional archaeologists to laborers, are being employed by the Authority on an ad hoc basis. The budget has increased in this period from $2 million to $22 million.

Some members of the archaeological community, speaking anonymously, claim that the Authority has become a handmaiden of tourism interests and is excavating much too rapidly to permit proper scientific recording of all that is found. This criticism is dismissed by those associated with the digs, but there is concern expressed even within the Authority that the amount of archaeological remains being exposed will prove difficult to preserve against the ravages of weather and visitors.

While the large-scale excavations have become its most visible flag, the Authority has extended its activities in numerous new directions:

Lab Work—When he took over, says Drori, he found only one lab specialist employed by the Antiquities Department, an expert in metals. Today a dozen in-house experts work in areas ranging from glass to waterlogged wood, and the Authority has a well-equipped laboratory. Three experts, two of them recently immigrated from Russia, are employed at the Rockefeller Museum to remove cellophane tape that had been used to hold together the fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The adhesive from the tape on the back of the scrolls had penetrated the parchment and darkened letters to the point of illegibility. The restorers clean each fragment with a mineral compound, Fuller’s Earth, which sometimes even makes letters legible again. They then place the fragments between special polyester screens that hold the scrolls together as a single document and do them no damage. The painstaking work will take years to complete.

Antiquities Robbers—Looting is a plague that has worsened as the deteriorating economic plight of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has turned many residents of those areas to digging for illicit buried treasure.^c In plundering antiquities sites, the robbers not only steal valuable objects but disrupt the archaeological context in a way that deprives the site of historical value. Falling back on his military expertise, Drori has reorganized and reequipped the Authority’s unit that fights the groups that burrow into antiquities sites, usually at night. In one recent three-month period, 150 arrests were made (so far, this has led to fines, but no jail sentences). “The damage these robbers do is tremendous,” says Drori. “I also want to get the white-collar people they sell this material to.”

Computerization—A project has been launched that will put into readily retrievable form the masses of information on archaeological sites and finds in the Holy Land gathered over the past century.

Fund-Raising—A controversial proposal to sell some of the many duplicate antiquities in the Authority’s storerooms, such as Second Temple-period oil lamps, was made last year by Authority Treasurer David Sternfeld as a means of raising money for the Authority’s rapidly expanding functions.^d As might be expected, the proposal has evoked strong opposition within the archaeological community, but also some support. Drori himself considers it a trial balloon that has been shot down. “It’s not practical. We’re not talking about it.” What he has done instead is authorize the creation of Friends of the Antiquities Authority associations in the United States and England. When the exhibition of Dead Sea Scrolls opened in Washington last year, the American Friends of the Antiquities Authority attempted to raise $500,000 to be used in preserving the scrolls. More than half of this sum has been raised so far. Authority officials express confidence that the remainder will be raised before the exhibition concludes this May in San Francisco. Other fund-raising projects include a series of popular booklets and a book of aerial photographs of archaeological sites, archaeological replicas and a CD-I (interactive CD) program in which various archaeological subjects will be presented on compact discs providing pictures and sound. In addition, tiny pottery sherds that are normally thrown away are to be placed in transparent plastic pouches and sold to tourists as souvenirs. They will be accompanied by a certificate noting their authenticity and the archaeological site where they were found.

Exhibitions—In addition to the scrolls exhibition, the Authority is planning a series of other traveling shows and long-term loans to create broader awareness of Israel’s archaeological treasures. Later this year, 34 selected items will be sent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York on long-term loan. “The museum gets eight million visitors a year and it has exhibits from Egypt, Syria and other parts of the region but nothing from the Holy Land,” says Drori. The Authority is planning to hold an exhibition in 1996 in Jerusalem’s Citadel with archaeological items lent by foreign museums—items that have been removed from Jerusalem over the past century by foreign expeditions. The exhibition will mark the 3,000th anniversary of David’s establishment in Jerusalem of the Israelite capital.

045

Publish or Stay Home—Archaeologists generally prefer to do it than to write about it. All excavators in Israel are required by law to issue a first report of their finds within a year and a final, scientific report within five to ten years. Many local as well as foreign archaeologists fail to abide by that rule, and Drori has informed the archaeological community that he is taking the requirement seriously and that they had better do so, too. A number of archaeologists, including some prominent ones, have been refused excavation licenses by the Authority because of their backlog of unpublished material. There is a disinclination to name names so as not to embarrass the people involved. Drori has met with many of the archaeologists on an individual basis and has worked out agreements whereby they can dig if they undertake to clear up their publication backlog within a specific time frame.

Planning Control—Surveys have identified no fewer than 15,000 unexplored archaeological sites in Israel. The Authority reviews every real estate development plan to ensure that no construction is undertaken on these sites before they have been excavated by archaeologists. Archaeological remains in such salvage digs are generally removed or reburied after being examined in order to allow construction to continue. Sometimes, building plans are changed to leave important finds exposed.

In the center of all this activity is the taciturn figure of Amir Drori. His thriftiness with words reportedly earned him the title “The Sphinx” during his army days, and some Authority employees at first found his silence intimidating. It soon became apparent, however, that he had a clear direction that he was able to communicate.

“He’s an excellent listener,” says Magen Broshi, curator of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum, where some of the major Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. “He can listen for hours and remember what was said. He doesn’t just issue commands that people have to follow, like in the military. He asks for advice. And he’s extremely efficient.”

Born in Tel Aviv in 1937, Drori spent two years in a military boarding school before his mobilization. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War he commanded the Golani Brigade on the Golan Heights, which fought a grueling battle to regain Mt. Hermon after its capture by the Syrians. He was commander of Israel’s northern front when the 1982 Lebanese War broke out and was thus overall field commander of the armies driving on Beirut. He was a major contender for the position of army chief of staff, but when he failed to get the job, he retired from the army after 33 years of service.

Among those who found his appointment to the country’s top archaeological post unseemly was Professor Dan Barag of Hebrew University. “Why should a person who obtained [only] a B.A. in archaeology and never pursued the career be appointed to this post 25 years later?” asked Barag, a noted numismatist. “He has very tense relations with the academic institutions. Until he took over, the archaeological community in Israel was one community. It isn’t anymore. The Authority will not accept that anyone else has a say about antiquities.”

Professor Aharon Kempinski, head of the Israel Archaeological Association, believes that Drori’s military background has given him certain advantages. “He’s got clear leadership ability. No doubt. It took him a while to learn to deal with a civilian system, but I’ve seen a change.”

Even his critics would not accuse Drori of being a man who is all talk and no action. With a pipe in his mouth, he looks like an academic as he sits writing at his desk in a high-ceilinged office in the Rockefeller Museum. The working fireplace left over from the British mandate adds to the cloistered atmosphere. His taciturnity seemed to be intact when broad questions floated at him at the start of his interivew with BAR drew no response. As soon as the questions were focused, however, he began speaking at a rapid pace and went on without tiring for two hours. As an aide commented afterwards: “He’s learned to talk.”

General Amir Drori, who led an army to the gates of Beirut in the Lebanese War, lost the last battle he ever waged in uniform when he was edged out for the post of chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces seven years ago. He was soon, however, laying siege to cities the length and breadth of the Holy Land—dead cities—and outflanking powerfully entrenched bureaucracies. As first director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Drori has staged a dazzling administrative coup that has brought archaeology in Israel to the fore as a large-scale enterprise uncovering more of the country’s […]