Rare Incense Altar Raises Burning Questions

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Khalil Iskander Shahin, whom everyone called “Kando” even then, slowly pushed the little bronze incense altar across the glass case in his Bethlehem antiquities shop. The year was 1953. He had not yet moved to Jerusalem, where to this day his sons continue to run his antiquities business near the École Biblique et Archéologique Française. Indeed, in 1953, Kando, a cobbler, had only just begun selling antiquities in his shop.

The altar’s prospective buyer was none other than John Marc Allegro. Allegro had just come to Jerusalem as part of an eight-man international team to edit and publish the thousands of scroll fragments that were already coming out of Qumran’s Cave 4, near the Dead Sea, and that Kando was selling to the scholarly community on behalf of the Bedouin who were unearthing them. Allegro would later turn out to be the most controversial member of the scholarly team. For one thing, he was the 036only atheist among them—most were Roman Catholic priests. John Strugnell of Harvard, a convert to Roman Catholicism, called Allegro the “stone in the soup.” To the dismay of his colleagues, Allegro soon concluded that the Dead Sea Scrolls anticipated much of the history and many doctrines of early Christianity—a view that he popularized both on the radio and in London newspapers.

But in 1953, when he visited Kando’s shop, Allegro was only a customer.

Kando claimed that Bedouin had found the little altar at Qumran before excavations had begun there. Père Roland de Vaux of the École Biblique and G. Lankester Harding, director of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, began their preliminary excavations of Qumran in November 1951.

The incense altar was not the only item that tantalized Allegro. Kando also showed him a bronze inkwell that, the dealer said, had been found along with the altar.^a Perhaps it had even once held ink with which Dead Sea Scrolls were written!

The two men quickly struck a deal. Allegro walked out with both pieces.

Allegro sold them to an anonymous private collector in 1988, before he died. They later passed through a number of hands¹—until 1994, when they were acquired by the Norwegian collector of (mostly) ancient manuscripts, Martin Schøyen. (Schøyen recently also acquired a “twin” of the inkwell—reportedly found 038northeast of the Dead Sea, opposite Qumran—on the antiquities market.)

The incense altar and the inkwell are both beautiful pieces of cast bronze with a green patina. They were chemically tested in November 1996, and the bronze in both items was found to be nearly identical.² Some traces of ink in the inkwell were also tested. Although the amount was too meager for a full analysis, there was enough to confirm that the ink was black and made from lamp soot, as was the ink used on the scrolls.

The bronze altar is square with four horns, one on each corner. Four small stepped ornamental features jut up between the horns. The whole altar is a little over 2.5 inches tall—slightly shorter than the 3-inch-tall inkwell.

Nine grooves encircle the trunk of the altar, six of them forming three bands. A rather thick (.04–1.2 inches) layer of burned incense residue is preserved on the upper surface.

The first question to ask is whether the altar was really found at Qumran. Could Kando have been lying about where it came from, just to up the price? Could the Bedouin have lied to Kando, for the same reason? Magen Broshi, former director of Jerusalem’s Shrine of the Book, where the intact Dead Sea Scrolls are housed, has expressed doubt about the reliability of Kando’s information. He says the items are too beautiful in style to come from the “simplistic” site of Qumran—and that, therefore, they probably come from a larger Hellenistic site on the east bank of the Jordan, such as Jerash.³

Even if the incense altar does come from Qumran, one must ask whether it is in fact a Jewish artifact. If the altar and inkwell were indeed 039found by the Bedouin, the items were probably on or near the surface. As such, they likely derived from the last period of occupation at Qumran—period III, using excavator de Vaux’s designation.⁴ This is the period after the Romans destroyed the site in about 68 C.E. Those who resettled the site may have been Nabateans or Jews; a case can be made for either.

When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E., trade from the Judean desert and Dead Sea region would have shifted eastward, toward the Nabatean areas (the Nabatean kingdom dominated the regions south and east of the land of Israel until the second to third century C.E.).⁵ The new inhabitants of Qumran may have been Jewish refugees from the ravaged Jerusalem region or from nearby Jericho (which was also laid waste in 68 C.E.). Or, they could have been Nabateans from east of the Jordan River.

The Schøyen altar is one of six remarkably similar miniature bronze incense altars that have so far been found in the Levant. It and one other come from the antiquities market—thus their provenance is uncertain. Three others were found in excavations: One was found near Nahariya on the Mediterranean coast, at a site with graves from the Roman and Byzantine periods;⁶ another comes from an Arab Iturean temple at Mount Hermon, northeast of the Sea of Galilee;⁷ and another was found close to a hoard of iron tools in a third- to fifth-century C.E. dwelling unit near the synagogue of a Jewish village named Sumaqa, by Mount Carmel. The other altar was found in the Mediterranean Sea, near Carmel.

Shimon Dar of Bar Ilan University, who excavated the Mount Hermon and Sumaqa parallels, dates the three excavated altars to the first or second century C.E. This date is supported by a ceramic altar of similar style from Jerash that dates to the early second century C.E.⁸ and by a limestone altar from Carmel dated to the second to third century C.E.⁹ Based on these parallels, our incense altar could be Roman, Iturean or Jewish—or Nabatean. A large Nabatean cemetery with graves like those at Qumran was found at the southern end of the Dead Sea.^b

The Schøyen altar is the most beautiful of the six; it is carefully made and well preserved, and it is the only one with a “crowstep” (stepped pyramid) ornament on each side between the corner horns. The crowstep design is seen in Assyrian and Achaemenid architecture from the eighth to the fifth century B.C.E., and was subsequently adopted by the Nabateans. It is an ornamental feature particularly common in the tomb facades of the first century C.E. at the Nabatean city of Petra.¹⁰

Their small size indicates that these incense altars were made either for domestic use or as votive gifts to be brought to a temple (as was probably the case with the altar found at the Iturean temple at Mount Hermon). One might ordinarily ascribe such customs to a non-Jewish setting (such as the Iturean temple), although one of these altars was found in a Jewish village (of course that does not necessarily mean it was made to be used by Jews).

Scholars agree that Qumran was reoccupied after the Roman destruction of about 68 C.E. But by whom? De Vaux hypothesized that the only occupation of the site between 68 and 132 C.E. (that is, between the First and Second Jewish Revolts against Rome) was a Roman military post the Romans disbanded after the fall of Masada in 73 or 74 C.E.¹¹ I think this view needs to be revised. If there was indeed a Roman military garrison there, it was soon followed by civil occupation. I suggest that Qumran was used as a farmstead for a substantial period of time following the fall of Masada. But who were the new occupants? Decorated strainer jugs from Qumran period III reflect the Nabatean style.¹² My colleague Stephen J. Pfann recently examined the layout of Qumran and noted the locations at the site where elegant glassware and pottery were found. He discovered a striking correlation: These finds came only from those parts of the site that were occupied during period III. It can thus be concluded that the residents during that period (surely not Roman soldiers) brought with them a higher standard of housewares than their purity-oriented predecessors did.

I suggest that the new occupants were Jewish; this may be confirmed by five coins from the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 C.E.) that were found at the site.

So, looking at their style and where they were found, I tentatively ascribe the incense altar and the inkwell to period III at Qumran. But the possibility of a connection with period II (from about 9 B.C.E. to 70 C.E., the “Essene period”) cannot be ruled out. The Bedouin could have found these items close to the surface in a part of the site that was not occupied after 70 C.E. Or, the objects could have surfaced from a deeper, earlier stratum.

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Did the Jews who reoccupied Qumran in period III burn incense on this altar? The use of incense altars by Israelites outside the Jerusalem Temple during the Biblical period has long been a matter of intense debate, with great scholars arrayed on either side. Menahem Haran^c says no;¹³ Seymour Gitin and Jacob Milgrom say yes. I think the latter have the stronger case. According to Gitin, 45 horned limestone altars from the tenth to the seventh century B.C.E. have been found in the land of ancient Israel, half of them at Israelite sites. Incense altars from both the eighth and the sixth century B.C.E. have also been found at Beersheba.¹⁴ In the Israelite sanctuary at Arad, the incense altar was used until the seventh century B.C.E., when the temple service there was discontinued.

According to Milgrom, there was a continuous tradition of burning incense throughout the Second Temple period in Israel.¹⁵ This custom continued after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E. and went on at least until the ninth century C.E. References in the apocryphal Testament of Levi 3:5 and Revelation 5:8 to the burning of incense in the heavenly temple probably reflect an earthly reality. Rabbinic sources indicate that in Talmudic times (third–sixth centuries C.E.) the burning of incense was an accepted custom that the sages dared not forbid.¹⁶ In addition to the Talmudic evidence, mosaics from early synagogues¹⁷ show incense shovels.^d

All this evidence suggests that Jewish inhabitants at Qumran, before or after 68 C.E., could have followed a widespread Jewish custom of accompanying their prayers with incense.

Khalil Iskander Shahin, whom everyone called “Kando” even then, slowly pushed the little bronze incense altar across the glass case in his Bethlehem antiquities shop. The year was 1953. He had not yet moved to Jerusalem, where to this day his sons continue to run his antiquities business near the École Biblique et Archéologique Française. Indeed, in 1953, Kando, a cobbler, had only just begun selling antiquities in his shop. The altar’s prospective buyer was none other than John Marc Allegro. Allegro had just come to Jerusalem as part of an eight-man international team to edit and publish the […]