Searching for Essenes at Ein Gedi, Not Qumran

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Most Dead Sea Scroll scholars agree that Qumran, the settlement near the caves where the scrolls were found, was inhabited by Essenes, an anti-Temple Jewish sect in the years before the Roman destruction of 70 C.E. A stalwart minority of scholars maintains, though, that the evidence is insufficient—that in fact Qumran was not an Essene settlement. Among them is Israeli archaeologist Yizhar Hirschfeld.

Most scholars agree that the word “Essene” does not appear in the scrolls.¹ 020Nor does any inscription from the site say that it is an Essene settlement.^a The Essenes are known chiefly from the writings of two first-century C.E. Jewish writers, the historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Neither indicates that the Essenes have a home in the desert, however; on the contrary, the Essenes are described as living in many villages and towns of Judea. The only reference to Essenes living in the desert comes from the first-century C.E. Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder:

On the west side of the Dead Sea, but out of range of the noxious exhalations of the coast, is the solitary tribe of the Essenes, which is remarkable beyond all the other tribes in the whole world, as it has not women and has renounced all sexual desire, has not money, and has only palm-trees for company. Day by day the throng of refugees is recruited to an equal number by numerous accessions of persons tired of life and driven thither by the waves of fortune to adopt their manners. Thus through thousands of ages (incredible to relate) a race in which no one is born lives on forever: so prolific for their advantage is other men’s weariness of life!

Pliny actually tells us where we can find these desert hermits: “Then below this [tribe] is Ein Gedi” (infra hos Engada).^b Is Pliny locating the Essenes at Qumran, north of Ein Gedi? Many scholars think he is, but it all depends on the meaning of a single Latin word, infra. Those who believe Pliny was referring to Qumran argue that infra hos means “south of this”—surely, Ein Gedi, a Jewish settlement in the valley by the Dead Sea, is south of Qumran.

Other scholars, however, emphasize that maps in the ancient world did not have north at the top, as our maps do. They had east at the top. The famous Madaba map, with its well-known map of Jerusalem, is an example.^c Hirschfeld agrees that if Ein Gedi is “below” the Essene community, north (Qumran) is not the direction to look. In fact, says Hirschfeld, when Pliny says “below this,” that’s exactly what he means—at a lower level. The site Pliny is 021referring to, argues Hirschfeld, would be found up the slope, above Ein Gedi.²

But, according to Hirschfeld, there’s another, even more fundamental reason why Qumran can’t be Pliny’s Essene community. The site was not a community of desert ascetics at all, he argues, but the manor house of a large agricultural estate. As such, “Qumran is not a unique site,” says Hirschfeld (emphasis in original). “It is part of a pattern of settlement characteristic of Judea from the first century B.C.E. through the first century C.E. … It was part of a kingdom-wide phenomenon.”³

Hirschfeld has intensively studied nearly 20 manor houses throughout Judea in his effort to understand the ruins of Qumran. When these manor houses were inhabited, Judea was ruled ultimately by Rome, but members of the local ruling class nevertheless enjoyed the fruits of Roman rule. Many of them were well-to-do landlords with country estates largely devoted to agriculture. At the core of each estate was the manor house.

These manor houses are usually well placed for protection and each has a conspicuous fortified tower. As literary sources amply illustrate, brigandry and robbery were endemic in Judea at this time. In case of attack, the family and 022household (as well as the armed defenders) could take refuge in the tower. At other times, the tower was probably used for agricultural storage. But it had a third function as well: It was an architectural expression of the owner’s command over his land.

Qumran fits this mold, says Hirschfeld. It is located on a raised plateau, first of all. From its commanding position, you can see the entire northern half of the Dead Sea. Two ancient roads pass nearby, one connecting Qumran with Jericho to the north and Ein Gedi to the south, another connecting Qumran to Jerusalem, barely a day’s walk away to the west. These two roads actually meet at Qumran.

Manor houses are also similar in plan. A central feature of Qumran is the square building that Qumran excavator Roland de Vaux called the “main building.” The similar square layout of other manor houses—for example, Qasr e-Leja, Aroer and Khirbet el-Muraq is easily seen in drawings. There is also the the squarish fortified tower already mentioned. At Qumran as at other sites, there is an inclined stone glacis at the tower’s base, giving it additional strength and protecting against tunneling.

Manor houses are also characterized by their size. Again, Qumran fits: It stretches over an area of about 51,700 square feet, comparable in size to the others (albeit slightly larger).

The main building at Qumran has thick straight walls, with the tower in one corner and a square courtyard in the center. The living quarters of the manor house, says Hirschfeld, were doubtless on the second floor, which no longer exists. We know it was there, however, from the remains of a staircase. The ground floor was reserved largely for storage—household goods, food and other provisions.

Surrounding the main building were customary industrial areas. For example, east of the main building a large kiln was recovered. South of the main building was a wine press. West of the main building were workshops mostly related to agricultural processing—baking ovens, plastered vats, shallow pools, kilns, silos for grain storage, grinding stones and the like. Further south are the remains of a long, narrow building that was probably a stable. For Hirschfeld, all this spells the central manor house of an agricultural estate, not a community of scribes.

What about the unique cemetery at Qumran, containing more than a thousand graves? Not so unique, says Hirschfeld. It’s just that it is so well preserved because of the isolation of the site and the dry climate.

What about the relation of the site to the Dead Sea Scrolls found in caves nearby? Since not a single scroll fragment was found at the site (although several rare inkwells were found there), Hirschfeld thinks that the scrolls came from a library in Jerusalem. He recognizes that Essenes lived along the western shore of the Dead Sea, probably as farm laborers. They may have lived on the fringes of the estate whose center was the manor house at Qumran. Perhaps they arranged for the scrolls to be brought from Jerusalem.

So if Qumran is not the Essene colony described by Pliny, where is that colony? It so happens that Hirschfeld is excavating a site that, he says, does fit the bill. It’s just up the hill from Ein Gedi and, unlike Qumran, bears the marks of a place where Essenes might have lived.⁴

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The site Hirschfeld is excavating has no name of its own. It is almost within the oasis of Ein Gedi. Ein Gedi itself was located during the Roman period at a site called Tel Goren; Hirschfeld’s site is about 2,500 feet up the hill from Tel Goren to the west. Since it does not now have a name of its own, I will call it Upper Ein Gedi.

The site covers a narrow area about 80 feet wide and 1,000 feet long.⁵ Its central feature is 28 small cells without courtyards. The cells are not connected with one another and each has a separate entrance. They are irregularly shaped and scattered unevenly over the site. On average, each is only about 60 square feet, a clear indication that each cell was inhabited by only one person. The walls of the cells are generally preserved to a height of 3 feet and sometimes as high as 6 feet. The walls are up to 3 feet thick, and the floor is yellowish beaten earth. No signs of roofing have survived. An ancient path connects Upper Ein Gedi with the village of Ein Gedi below; the structures are on either side of this path.

Three structures in the middle of the site break this pattern. They are larger, and one of them contains two rooms. Unlike the other structures, which are built entirely of fieldstones, the corners and doorposts of the three larger structures include dressed stones. They are also rectangular instead of irregularly shaped.

On the other side of the ancient path, opposite the three larger structures, are two pools. The upper pool is served even today by a spring in its floor. It is irregularly shaped, adapting to the rock formation in which it is situated, and is lined by several layers of hydraulic plaster. A natural ramp divides most of the pool in two; apparently this rock was deliberately left uncut in order to provide access into the pool in place of steps. The second pool is square and otherwise unremarkable, and probably dates from the Byzantine period. A clay pipe connects the two pools. Hirschfeld suggests that at least the upper pool may be a Jewish ritual bath, a mikveh.^d

Hirschfeld interprets the cells of Upper Ein Gedi as those of hermits—possibly Essenes. First of all, the cells are too small for more than one person. Second, it is clear that they were occupied by poor people—the finds establish this, he says. Not a single stone vessel, which would have been considered especially valuable, has been found. The plentiful pottery sherds consist of plain, unpainted vessels. The glass sherds are from simple bowls and small bottles. There is not one imported vessel—either of pottery or glass—in the lot. Only four coins have been found, all of low value. As Hirschfeld puts it, the 30 or so 024inhabitants had a lifestyle that “was a simple one lacking luxuries.”

On this basis, Hirschfeld reasons that the site could be either that of hermits or of temporary or seasonal laborers from Ein Gedi. In the end it is Pliny who leads Hirschfeld to think that it was a community of hermits. Not only is Ein Gedi unmistakably “below” this site, but “the simple and economical construction of the cells, the scant finds and the absence of luxuries, all correspond to the ascetic lifestyle of the Essenes.”

One other fact, relating to what Hirschfeld’s excavation team did not find, leads him to the same conclusion: Not a single animal bone has been found, despite careful excavation including sieving with a screen for small, easily missed fragments. It is a “most surprising” absence, Hirschfeld says: “Meat was an important 025dietary item in antiquity, as can be learned from the wealth of animal bones found at other sites. This is particularly true for desert sites, at which animal bones generally occur in great quantities. Thus, for example, the three seasons of excavations at the village of Ein Gedi have turned up more than three thousand animal bones of various kinds … The conclusion that [Upper Ein Gedi’s] inhabitants deliberately refrained from eating meat seems unavoidable.” The Essenes, he says, followed the same restriction; he deduces this from a statement made by Josephus, who says that the Essenes lived by the doctrines of Pythagoras, “one of the most important of which,” Hirschfeld says, “was vegetarianism.”

Hirschfeld finds further support that Upper Ein Gedi may be the site Pliny refers to in the fact that up and down the western shore of the Dead Sea are other sites containing cells that appear to be religious hideaways. He lists 16 different sites from a 1968 archaeological survey that have similar cells. If these were the huts of seasonal or temporary workers, we would expect them to be located in cultivated areas (as at Ein Gedi). But they are not. They are often located in distant, isolated spots. Hence, he concludes that they are all the cells of hermits.

The late Second Temple period, Hirschfeld tells us, saw “a widespread movement of withdrawal into the desert … Social stresses, messianic zeal and a desire for redemption apparently led many people to leave their homes and settle … in the Judean Desert … Among those who retired to the desert were John the Baptist and his followers, as described in Matthew 3:1–13. Josephus relates several episodes of people from Judea who were persuaded to withdraw to the desert in the first half of the 1st century C.E.” Josephus himself spent three years in the desert in the company of a hermit.⁶ His mentor there, a certain Bannus, is described as an ascetic who ate wild plants, dressed in tree bark and immersed himself frequently in cold water. Despite his similarity to the Essenes, however, we cannot include Bannus among them, as Josephus relates that he joined Bannus after he had studied the way of life of the Essenes, implying a distinction between them.

According to Hirschfeld, the variety of cell settlements on the western shore of the Dead Sea is a reflection of the “widespread messianic movement of people who withdrew to the Judean Desert during [this] period … [It] was a spontaneous movement of people of different persuasions, lacking central direction. This may explain the differences between the various sites, such as the number of cells they contain and their length of occupation.” Hirschfeld argues that the inhabitants of Upper Ein Gedi were part of an overall settlement pattern that included both cell-dwellers practicing an ascetic lifestyle as well as inhabitants of the large agricultural centers, such as Qumran, that were the estates of wealthy landowners.⁷ “Employment by the estates that cultivated the famous dates and balsam of the Dead Sea region would have enabled the inhabitants of the cells to survive in the desert,” Hirschfeld writes. “From the landowners’ point of view, the cell-dwellers would have provided a convenient and cheap source of agricultural labour.”

The main problem Hirschfeld sees with his theory that Upper Ein Gedi’s residents were Essenes is that he has found no central building at the site where the community could have gathered to eat, pray or study. The three larger cells were simply not large enough for these activities, although they may have had a communal function of some kind. Our sources about the Essenes tell us they ate a communal meal; if Upper Ein Gedi were the Essene settlement mentioned by Pliny, it must have had a dining room. Their cells, it will be remembered, did not even have the customary courtyard in front, where a considerable part of the ancient family’s daily activities took place. However, the proximity of the cells to one another indicates that the inhabitants had a strong communal identity. Hirschfeld’s answer to the apparent absence of a communal dining room is that the communal meal and other gatherings took place in an open space at the center of the site, under shelter provided by perishable materials that have not survived.

Convinced? Well, at least listen to the opposing arguments.

David Amit, long time archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, and American archaeologist Jodi Magness responded to Hirschfeld, accusing him of “ignor[ing] basic evidence,” of reaching conclusions for which there is “no evidence” and of engaging in a discussion that “is marred by technical and substantial errors.” In short, they charge, Hirschfeld’s interpretation of his own site is “untenable.”⁸

Perhaps the most basic challenge Amit and Magness pose relates to the very function of the “cells.” Were they places of habitation? Or were they intended only for storage? Amit and Magness argue that the cells held storage jars containing agricultural produce from the adjacent fields, which were irrigated by the nearby 026spring. In support of this conclusion, they argue that “the thick stone walls of the cells, the lack of windows, and narrow openings would have created insufferably hot and suffocating conditions for anyone sleeping or living inside. Why would a farmer from the nearby village of Ein Gedi choose to sleep in such a cell instead of at home or in the open air? This simply does not make sense.” Besides, the storage jars would have occupied most of the space inside the cells, leaving little if any space for human habitation. Moreover, Amit and Magness point out that no binding material, like lime or mud, was used to strengthen the walls of the cells; although lime was available at the site, it was used only to seal the pools. The cells did not even have real floors, nor courtyards outside. (Note that each side cites the lack of courtyards as evidence in its favor.) Perhaps farm laborers occasionally slept in the cells, admit Amit and Magness, but this would have turned the cells into temporary quarters at best.

Amit and Magness attempt to turn Hirschfeld’s pottery evidence against him. “Virtually all of the pottery,” they write, “represents types used for the storage of agricultural produce.” There are no ceramic cooking pots or dining dishes, not even a fragment of a stone vessel used for grinding grain. For Amit and Magness, that the farm laborers rarely ate at the site—if they occasionally did, they would have brought their food with them from the nearby village of Ein Gedi—explains the complete absence of animal bones.

Also missing from the finds at Upper Ein Gedi are sherds from oil lamps—not a single fragment was found. If this were an Essene community, Amit and Magness argue, we would expect a large number of such lamps because they conducted many of their activities before sunrise and after dark.

Amit and Magness contend that the site could not have housed a communitarian settlement. There is simply no place where the supposed community members could gather for meals, Torah study or prayer. There is no archaeological support for Hirschfeld’s suggestion that these activities were undertaken in some outdoor structure built of perishable materials. There is no “central space where such a shelter could have stood … It is difficult to imagine how the members of a sect defined largely by their communal lifestyle and the surrendering of personal possessions to the group would build individual stone cells as living quarters, while conducting their communal activities—meals, study, prayer, and Torah reading—in an improvised shelter with no real floor, and with no evidence for benches or other essential furniture and installations.”

Hirschfeld also fudges the date of the occupation of Upper Ein Gedi, according to Amit 027and Magness. For them, the pottery evidence shows that the site was occupied only after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Pliny based his account on information provided by a visitor who had been to the site in 15 B.C.E. Hirschfeld misuses the pottery, they argue, by saying that it shows occupation of the site in the second half of the first century C.E. and the first half of the second century C.E. He wants to get the site into the last years of the Second Temple period before 70 C.E.

What Hirschfeld is really trying to do, say Amit and Magness, is find a substitute for Qumran as the Essene site mentioned by Pliny. In another article, Magness also firmly disagrees with Hirshfeld’s interpretation of Qumran. Although she admits it has similarities to the other manor houses Hirschfeld cites, she sees distinctions that demolish the argument. Pottery, her specialty, is a decisive one: The pottery at Qumran is plain and basic, apparently made at the site. No imported fineware. Not more than a sherd or two of the famous Jerusalem painted ware. No Roman mold-made clay oil lamps. No Roman-style amphorae (storage jars). In sum, she says, “The repertoire of types represented at Qumran is limited, repetitive and plain.”⁹

Also compelling for Magness is the almost complete lack of interior decoration at Qumran—no frescoes, no stucco molding, no mosaics. No manor house would be without them. Whatever similarity there may be in plan, she says, is simply due to the fact that the Qumranites expressed themselves in the architectural vocabulary of their environment.

Hirschfeld was not long in replying to his critics. He charges Amit and Magness, first of all, with bias in the opposite direction, in their defense of Qumran: They “are zealous in their defence of Khirbet Qumran. They fervently oppose any theory or finds that might contradict or weaken the accepted interpretation of Qumran as the communal center of the Essenes.”¹⁰

Hirschfeld’s critics, he says, “misrepresent the evidence.” At the same time he feels insulted at “the tone of the[ir] article. Amit and Magness write in a style that is personal, combative and discourteous. Though criticism is an essential part of scholarly life, I believe that the academic dialogue must be conducted in a mannerly and restrained style and in accordance with the rules of common courtesy.”

While Hirschfeld concedes that the cells at Upper Ein Gedi “may have served for storage as well, there is no reason to suppose that they were not used as accommodation.” He also says that there were installations in the cells for heating and cooking, even though he does not contest the absence of cooking pottery. And against Amit and Magness, Hirschfeld contends there is space for a structure of perishable materials at the center of the site.

As for dating the pottery at the site, Hirschfeld replies that that cannot be done so precisely. Moreover, since the site was voluntarily abandoned, the pottery evidence on the floors of the cells is from the final use of the site: “The settlers presumably arrived at the site in the early 1st century C.E. or even the late 1st century B.C.E.”

As for Qumran, the pottery has not yet been published.¹¹ So it is difficult to make an argument based on the pottery—or lack thereof. Even so, Hirschfeld notes that some imported wares have been found at the site that “show the high economic status of the owners.” The large number of coins (more than 1,200), including hoards, found at Qumran reinforce this conclusion. Beautiful stone vessels also reflect a “degree of luxury.”

Hirschfeld admits that the construction of Qumran is not “magnificent,” but it is “high.” For example, several impressive column drums and capitals of high quality local limestone have been excavated at Qumran that reflect “a degree of grandeur.” The level of construction at Qumran is the same as of other manor houses. They are mostly built of fieldstones or roughly dressed stones.

So is Qumran Essene? Is Upper Ein Gedi? I have tried to outline as fairly as I can the arguments on both sides. Readers are left to make up their own minds.

Most Dead Sea Scroll scholars agree that Qumran, the settlement near the caves where the scrolls were found, was inhabited by Essenes, an anti-Temple Jewish sect in the years before the Roman destruction of 70 C.E. A stalwart minority of scholars maintains, though, that the evidence is insufficient—that in fact Qumran was not an Essene settlement. Among them is Israeli archaeologist Yizhar Hirschfeld. Most scholars agree that the word “Essene” does not appear in the scrolls.1 020Nor does any inscription from the site say that it is an Essene settlement.a The Essenes are known chiefly from the writings of […]