Whose Bones? - The BAS Library

Footnotes

1.

See the reviews by Kenneth G. Holum (Books in Brief, BAR 18:05) and by Hershel Shanks (ReViews, BAR 23:01) in BAR of Masada: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965, Final Reports, ed. Joseph Aviram.

2.

Archival photographs of the burial procession indicate there were only three coffins—draped in Israeli flags—supposedly holding the skeletons of 24 individuals from Locus 2001/2002, plus three additional skeletons from the northern palace. It would be impossible to put the skeletons of so many people in only three coffins.

Endnotes

1.

James D. Tabor, “Masada: Cave 2001/2002,” The Jewish Roman World of Jesus (posted on the World Wide Web at http://niner.uncc.edu/~jdtabor/masada. html), 1998. Tabor attributes this information about the date of the discovery to “confidential sources.”

2.

The western half of the cave was designated Locus 2001 and the eastern half Locus 2002.

3.

Yigael Yadin, Masada (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 193.

4.

Yadin, Masada, p. 197.

5.

See Shaye J.D. Cohen, “Masada: Literary Traditions, Archaeological Remains and the Credentials of Josephus,” Journal of Jewish Studies 33 (1982), pp. 385–405.

6.

Yigael Yadin, “The Excavation of Masada—1963/64, Preliminary Report,” Israel Exploration Journal 15 (1965), p. 1.

7.

There is a statement in the final report that the findings from the caves excavated in 1963–1965 are not included in these volumes but “will be published separately” (Masada: The Yigael Yadin Excavations 1963–1965, Final Reports, ed. Joseph Aviram, 5 vols. [Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society/Hebrew Univ., 1989–1995], vol. 3, p. 499). In an account posted on the Internet, Tabor (see Tabor, “Masada”) states: “In September 1994, I closely questioned Israel Exploration Society director Joseph Aviram regarding plans to publish a full report on the contents of this cave. He referred me to associate editor Alan Paris, who, following some preliminary inquiries, informed me that to his knowledge the IES had no information or data on this locus (photos, drawings, written reports, notes) and he was aware of no concrete plans to cover the subject in the Final Reports.”

8.

These consisted of one page of handwritten notes. See Tabor, “Masada.”

9.

Benny Morris, “Rabin and Goren,” Jerusalem Post, November 16, 1982.

10.

On November 27, 1964, in anticipation of his second season of excavation, Yadin published an article in the Jerusalem Post in which he described the most sensational finds of the first season. These included the mosaics of the northern palace, the synagogue, the scrolls found in the synagogue, the ritual baths (mikva’ot) and even the three skeletons found in the northern palace, but not the skeletal material from Locus 2001/2002. The Illustrated London News published an even more extensive report with photographs by Yadin on October 31, 1964 (pp. 693–697). Once again Cave 2001/2002 and its contents were not mentioned, while the three skeletons found in the northern palace were highlighted.

11.

Jerusalem Post, March 11, 1969.

12.

The Nahal Hever skeletons were reburied where they had been found on May 11, 1982. Although they were already recognized as Chalcolithic, they were given a state funeral officiated by Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren and attended by Prime Minister Menachem Begin. For the admission of error, see Nicu Haas and Hillel Natan, “Chalcolithic Burial in the Nahal Mishmar Cave,” in Excavations and Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor S. Yeivin, ed. Yohanan Aharoni (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 1973), pp. 145–153.

13.

In addition, the field diaries indicate that one or more burials were found outside the cave, thus further strengthening the view that this is simply a Roman burial ground. Along with these burials, caves were found that contained enormous amounts of animal feces, which in my opinion is evidence that animals had entered the area to scavenge the human remains.

14.

Liora Horowitz and Julian Kerbis, “Hyenas at Home,” Land and Nature 16:4 (1991), pp. 162–165.

15.

Israel Carmi, “Rehovot Carbon Measurements III,” Radiocarbon 29 (1987), pp. 100–114; also see Joe Zias, Dror Segal and Carmi, “The Human Skeletal Remains from Masada: A Second Look,” in Masada Excavation Reports 4 (1994), pp. 366–367.

16.

Erwin Rhode, Psyche, trans. W.B. Hillis (London, 1950), p. 167.

17.

Quoted in Jocelyn M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), p. 50.

18.

Horowitz and Patricia Smith, “The Effects of Striped Hyena Activity on Human Remains,” Journal of Archaeological Science 15 (1988), pp. 471–481.

19.

Israel Hershkovitz, “Cremation, Its Practice and Identification: A Case Study for the Roman Period,” Tel Aviv 15/16:1 (1988–1989), pp. 98–101.

20.

Yadin, Masada, p. 54.

21.

Yadin, Masada, p. 193.

22.

Neil Asher Silberman, A Prophet from Amongst You (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993), pp. 280–281.