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Who Lies Here?

Jordan tombs match those at Qumran

By Hershel Shanks

Not whodunit but whoisit? The mystery deepens. I mean the mystery of the cemetery at Qumran with its 1,200 graves. Who was buried there? The conventional wisdom is that it was the Essenes. The reasoning goes like this: Sectarian manuscripts among the Dead Sea Scrolls sound like they were written around the turn of the era by the obscure Jewish sect known as the Essenes. The settlement at Qumran is close to the caves where the scrolls were found; indeed, the cave with the largest number of texts (Cave 4, which contained more than 500) is practically part of […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Boaz Zissu, “Odd Tomb Out: Has Jerusalem’s Essene Cemetery Been Found?” BAR, 2502, which also contains an excellent description of standard Jerusalem tombs of the period.

2.

A nomadic people of Arab descent, the Nabateans first settled the area south and east of the Dead Sea in about the sixth century B.C.E. The Nabateans eventually built cities throughout the desert, including their capital Petra.

Endnotes

1.

Similar tombs have also been found at Ein el-Ghuweir, 17 of which have been excavated. These held the remains of 13 men and 6 women. See Pesach Bar Adon, “Another Settlement of the Judean Desert Sect at ‘Ein el-Ghuweir on the Shores of the Dead Sea,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 225 (1977), p. 2. At Hiam El-Sagha, in the Judean Desert, some 20 shaft tombs were surveyed, 2 of which were excavated. See Hanan Eshel and Zvi Greenhut, “Hiam El-Sagha: A Cemetery of the Qumran Type, Judean Desert,” Revue biblique 100–102 (1993), p. 252.

2.

Konstantinos D. Politis, “Excavations at the Nabataean Cemetery at Khirbat Qazone, 1996–1997,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 42 (1998), p. 611.

3.

See Anthony J. Saldarini, “Babatha’s Story,” BAR 24:02.