Strata

016

DNA Analysis Sheds New Light on Oldest Profession at Ashkelon

The latest scientific techniques using DNA analysis have enabled us to conclude that the fourth- to sixth-century A.D. building at Ashkelon we confidently identified as a bathhouse also served as a brothel.¹

Its identity as a bathhouse of the late Roman period was never in doubt. Its architecture included a hypocaust^a and a tub. The real question was, Did it also serve as a brothel? During this period there is ample textual evidence to indicate that “mixed bathing” led to more than just cleanliness. One author, writing in the time of Nero, describes a father who went to the baths, leaving one child at home, only to return from the baths as the prospective father of two more. The poet Martial wrote that the “bathman lets you in among the tomb-haunting whores only after putting out his lantern.”²

Our suspicions that the Ashkelon bathhouse might also have been a brothel were aroused by the Israeli archaeologist and epigraphist Vasilios Tsaferis, who read a tantalizingly incomplete Greek inscription scrawled on the side of the tub as “Enter, enjoy and …” But the epigraph was too short to be decisive.

The sewer system we found beneath the bathhouse was more suggestive. The sewer was high enough for an adult to stand up inside it. The whole system had been clogged and had gone out of use by the sixth century A.D. The sewer was filled with rubbish of all kinds, including potsherds, coins and animal bones.

In addition, the shallow gutter that ran below and along the line of the sewer was filled with the skeletons of about a hundred babies. Analysis of these remains by physical anthropologists Patricia Smith and Gila Kahila indicated that the infants were newborns, discarded within a day of birth. Analysis of teeth that had not yet erupted revealed bloodstains, indicating that the infants were either strangled or drowned. Because the infant remains were found in the gutter of the sewer, it seems likely that they were intentionally drowned.

For centuries, infanticide was an accepted practice for disposing of unwanted female babies—and, less often, male babies. This was especially true in ancient Roman society. In a letter (dated to June 17 of the year 1 B.C. by our calendar), a certain Hilarion writes to his wife Alis: “I ask and beg you to take good care of our baby son … If you are delivered of child [before I get home,] if it is a boy keep it; if a girl, discard it.”³

Knowing that the Ashkelon bathhouse was an unlikely institution for either the city’s Jews or Christians, both of whom were overwhelmingly “pro-natal,” we assumed the bathhouse/bordello made sense in a Roman context. There should, according to conventional wisdom and calculations, be more female than male babies discarded in the sewers of Ashkelon. This determination could not be made by the analysis usually used by physical anthropologists. It is impossible to determine the sex of prepubescent humans from skeletal observations alone: Such diagnostic features as the pelvis have not yet reached a significant developmental stage.

Our only hope of determining the gender of the Roman infants from Ashkelon was DNA analysis. If the relevant ancient DNA could be isolated and successfully extracted, the X and Y chromosomes could be distinguished.

Drs. Ariella Oppenheim and Marina Faerman, of the hematology and anatomy departments at Hebrew University, determined that the sewer sample contained both sexes. They restricted the ancient DNA samples to left femurs so that they would not duplicate bones from the same infant. They tested 43 exemplars found in the gutter. The femurs were examined using three different tests, from which they could be confident in determining the sex of 19 individuals, based on DNA analyses. Of these, 14 were male and 5 female.

The high proportion of males supports the intriguing possibility that the infants discarded in the sewer were the unwanted offspring of bathhouse courtesans. The prostitutes of the establishment may have preferred to preserve a higher proportion of illegitimate female offspring to meet the future needs of the largely heterosexual institution.

017

Legged Snakes Identified

But Could They Ride Bicycles?

“Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust shall you eat all the days of your life,” declares God in Genesis 3:14, punishing the snake for tempting Adam and Eve with the fruit. But the “upon your belly” part has always been a bit of a puzzle: Of course that’s how snakes travel—they have no legs!

Maybe they don’t now, but it seems that once they did. Two paleontologists have presented the first evidence that the earliest snakes, like other reptiles, had hind limbs. Michael W. Caldwell, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, and Michael S.Y. Lee, of the University of Sydney, Australia, base their claim on two fossils from a limestone quarry in Israel. The fossils preserve snakes with two hind legs, each an inch long. When first discovered 20 years ago at a quarry 12 miles north of Jerusalem, the fossil remains were identified as those of lizards, so the hind legs seemed unremarkable. To make their case for reclassifying the remains, Caldwell and Lee pointed to similarities between the skull, braincase and vertebrae preserved in the fossils and those found in snakes. Their article appeared in the April 17, 1997, issue of Nature, the British science journal.

Caldwell and Lee make a second important claim. Because the fossils they examined were encrusted within marine sediments, they argue that snakes descended from a now-extinct group of marine lizards called mosasauroids. Until now, the common view has been that snakes evolved from burrowing lizards. While the identification of the fossils as legged snakes seems to have gained acceptance among scientists, the second claim is much more controversial. In an accompanying article in Nature, entitled “Genesis of Snakes in Exodus from the Sea,” Nicholas C. Fraser, of the Virginia Museum of Natural History, writes that “the prospect of a snake with legs is not as improbable as it might have at first appeared.” Regarding the marine origins of snakes, however, Fraser concludes, “It will take more discoveries before the dust finally settles on the debate.”

Weighty Matters

You probably know how important weaving cloth was in ancient times, when it was usually done in the home. But did you know you can date loom weights by their shape and weight? Thousands of these weights have been excavated by archaeologists. In the period of the Israelite monarchy (1000–586 B.C.), loom weights were usually doughnut shaped and weighed several hundred grams (upper left). In the Persian period (539–332 B.C.), when the Israelites were permitted to return from the Babylonian Exile, loom weights were generally smaller (less than a hundred grams) and symmetrically elongated (scholars call them biconical; lower right). In the Hellenistic period (332–141 B.C.), the dominant type was pyramidal (right).⁴

020

It Takes a Lickin’ and Keeps on Tickin’

Sundial from Qumran Identified

After four decades of not seeing the light of day, a third-century B.C. sundial used by the community at Qumran to tell time has resurfaced. Qumran is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947.

“It is a unique sundial,” said Adolfo Roitman, curator of the Shrine of the Book, the department at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem that houses the larger Dead Sea Scrolls. The limestone sundial measures about 8 inches in diameter and boasts a unique pattern of circles representing the seasons. In the center is an opening for a pole, and notches indicate each hour.

“Such a sundial has never been found before,” Roitman told BAR. Roitman said the system of three circles—the inner circle for winter, the middle for both spring and fall, and the outer circle for summer—is etched deeply into the limestone, unlike other sundials, which are less deeply engraved. The Qumran community ordered its life according to the hours of the day; because days are shorter during the winter, the length of each hour varied according to the season—a fact reflected in the triple-circle arrangement.

The object, uncovered at the Qumran ruins in the 1950s by excavator Roland de Vaux, was not originally identified as a sundial and was shipped to a storeroom in Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum, where it has since languished.

“De Vaux described it as a stone disk,” said Irene Lewitt, an assistant to Roitman. “At one point when they were making a list or doing inventory, someone decided to have a closer look at it,” she said.

The sundial is now on display at an Israel Museum exhibit, “A Day in Qumran,” timed to coincide with an international conference marking the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Missing Link?

Rare Tombs Could Provide Evidence of Jerusalem Essenes

Fifty tombs discovered recently at Beit Safafa, in southwestern Jerusalem, may provide evidence of an Essene connection between Jerusalem and Qumran. “Our 50 [tombs] are just like what was found at Qumran,” said Boaz Zissu, one of the Beit Safafa archaeologists.

Discovered during a salvage excavation, the Beit Safafa tombs are of a type rarely found in Jerusalem. Almost all Jerusalem tombs are in caves and are big enough for family burials. They have horizontal passages leading to central courtyards with kokhim, or niches, cut into the walls where bodies and, then, ossuaries, or bone containers, were placed. By contrast, most Beit Safafa tombs are L-shaped in section, about 2 feet wide, with a vertical shaft about 7 feet deep and a horizontal shaft about 7 feet long; a small cavity or shelf at the end of the horizontal shaft held a single body in a supine position. Only two other shaft tombs like this have ever been found in Jerusalem. Over a thousand similar tombs, however, have been located at Qumran, which most scholars believe was an Essene settlement.

Like the Qumran tombs, the Beit Safafa tombs are laid out parallel to each other and contain virtually no grave goods, not even pottery or glass, which are usually abundant in Jerusalem tombs but are absent from the typically austere Qumran burials. This austerity is in keeping with the accounts of the first-century A.D. historian Josephus, who said the Essenes renounced personal property.

Perhaps most telling, of the 50 Beit Safafa tombs, only one contained an ossuary, although all of the nearly one thousand family tombs discovered in Jerusalem to date 021contained ossuaries. “It is a strange and difficult phenomenon to explain,” Zissu says. “In Qumran, we also did not find ossuaries. Today it is too early to explain why. We are in the process of researching this.”

Though the research is not complete, Israel Antiquities Authority anthropologists Yosef Nagar and Vered Eshed—who compared the Beit Safafa tombs to Byzantine Christian, Roman-era pagan and Jewish burials—have concluded that the Beit Safafa tombs probably date to the Second Temple period (first century B.C.—first century A.D.), which is also the date of the Qumran graves.

If the Beit Safafa discovery ends up providing a link between Jerusalem and Qumran, it may also be additional evidence of an Essene presence in Jerusalem, a subject discussed by Bargil Pixner in our May/June issue.

Go Figure

How many little figurines do you think have been found in the City of David, where the original Jerusalem was located? The site is a mere 10-plus-acre ridge south of the Temple Mount. And only about 10 percent of it has been excavated, so we’re not talking about a very big area.

What’s your guess? Perhaps 10 or 20? Maybe 50—or a 100? Answer: almost 2,000.⁵ Over 1,300 were found in the most recent excavation of the site, directed by the late Yigal Shiloh from 1978 to 1985. What is going to be done with all these figurines? Where will they be stored? For how long? Forever? Who will pay for long-term storage? How will they be made accessible to future researchers? Will they simply get lost in 10 or 20 years, as so often happens? What should be done? Is there a better way? It is time we begin asking these rarely asked questions.

Most of these figurines (from the Shiloh excavation) date from the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C. Some go back as far as the tenth century B.C. About 20 percent are of humans (mostly women), the rest of animals (mostly horses). The figurines were originally covered with a white slip and then decoratively painted.

These figurines are generally thought to reflect popular religion. It is difficult to be more specific, however. The women may have been fertility figurines or the goddess Asherah. Sometimes the horses have male riders.

We learn from the Bible of two great religious reforms in Judah, one by King Hezekiah in the late eighth century B.C. and another by King Josiah in the late seventh century B.C. Each Judahite king tried to suppress shrines outside Jerusalem and purify Israelite religion. The enormous number of figurines found in Jerusalem is some indication of the task before them. That the number of figurines did not decrease, even in the sixth century B.C., indicates that these religious reforms may have been less successful than the Bible suggests.⁶

022

Gridlock

Ancient Jerusalem Street Found—And Lost

A Byzantine era road adjacent to the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem’s Old City will not be excavated, for reasons ranging from religious opposition to lack of funds.

In March, Jerusalem municipal workers discovered huge, fourth-century Roman-style paving stones as they were laying a new sewage line in the Old City. Excavation of the street—which runs a mere 75 yards from the Western Wall of the destroyed Jewish Temple and borders the Biblical Temple Mount, now home to the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam—could have been a potentially explosive move. The opening last September of a new exit to an archaeological tunnel alongside the Western Wall ignited deadly riots by Palestinians, who claimed—incorrectly—that the tunnel threatened the al-Aqsa Mosque.

In addition to concern over Muslim sensibilities, Jewish and Christian religious figures also expressed their opposition to excavating the pavement, on the grounds that it might harm their holy sites. Yated Ne’eman, an Orthodox Jewish newspaper, claimed that a tourist site so near the holy Western Wall would attract people not dressed with the modesty appropriate to the holy site.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, however, had wanted to proceed with the excavation. But the IAA was hard pressed to raise the steep $10 million it would have cost to unearth the causeway.

Jerusalem’s water company solved the dilemma by sealing the sewage line in mid-April and announcing that it would either find a new sewage route or make do with existing sewage capabilities in the Old City.

A Break in the Bottleneck

Publication Grants Announced

The Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications has awarded 13 grants for the completion of long-unpublished reports.

Recipients include David Ussishkin, for the study of osteological remains from Lachish; Aaron Brody, who will publish the Bronze and Iron Age materials excavated at Tel Akko; Piotr Bienkowski, for a final report on Buseirah, in southern Jordan; Andrea Berlin, for the Hellenistic and early Roman ceramics from Gamla, in the Golan Heights; Larry Herr and Gloria London, to analyze the pottery from Tell Hesban, Jordan; Ze’ev Herzog, Itzhaq Beit Arieh and Anson Rainey, for the final report on Tel Beersheba; Timothy Harrison, for the re-examination of recently rediscovered field records from Megiddo; and Edward Campbell, L.E. Toombs and E. Rachman, for the Late Bronze Age pottery at Shechem, in the West Bank. The other five grants went to projects in Greece and the Aegean.

Applications for next year’s awards are due by February 14, 1998. The program can be contacted through the Semitic Museum, Harvard University, 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Ark Enemies

“Second Scopes Trial” Pits Geologist Against Creationist

Is it faith versus science or simply consumer fraud versus truth in advertising? A court case in Australia has both elements. Ian Plimer, head of earth science at the University of Melbourne, has sued Allen Roberts, a proponent of creationism, over what he describes as false claims regarding Noah’s Ark.

Roberts has given lectures and has sold videotapes in which he claims that a structure in Akyayla, Turkey, 12 miles southeast of Mt. Ararat, is Noah’s Ark. Plimer wants the court to restrain Roberts from making his claims and to order a halt in the sale of the tapes. Plimer bases his suit on a trader’s responsibility not to make false or unprovable claims. Roberts’s supporters counter that Plimer is attacking their religious beliefs and their right to freedom of speech.

Roberts says the boat-shaped structure in Turkey has the dimensions of Noah’s Ark as recorded in Genesis and that it contains the ribs of a boat, iron rivets, deer antlers, fossilized animal dung and stone anchors. Plimer visited the site in 1994 and describes it as an ordinary ophiolite formation, about 110 to 120 million years old.

In a cyber twist to the case, the proceedings were being followed daily on the Web site of the Australian Skeptics, a group of “debunkers” clearly in Plimer’s corner. As we went to press, testimony had concluded in the trial; the judge was expected to announce his verdict in two to three weeks. Our “wired” readers can check the Skeptics home page http://www.skeptics.com.au.

Plimer says he was motivated to bring his suit by a survey that showed one in five Australian science majors holds creationist views. He says the case has already cost him $400,000, forcing him to sell his house. Roberts’s support group, Ark Search Associates Incorporated, for its part, went into liquidation just days before the start of the trial.

And, oh yes—Roberts is suing Plimer for defamation.

020

Mark Your Calendar

Exhibitions

God Knows Their Names: Recent Rare Findings of Early Christianity in Jerusalem

Through July 31, 1997

When the Sassanid Persians conquered Jerusalem in 614 A.D., they massacred thousands of Christians near the Mamilla Pool. The jumbled bones of hundreds of people believed to have been among the victims were discovered during the recent excavation of a Late Byzantine tomb west of Jaffa Gate. On exhibit now are a small collection of rare artifacts unearthed during this excavation—including little bronze crosses (among them the wooden and bronze cross featured in last issue’s Strata), pottery lamps, a gold coin stamped with a portrait of the Byzantine emperor Phocas (602–610 A.D.), and a mosaic inscribed in Greek with an epitaph for the unknown dead, “For the redemption and salvation of those, God knows their names.”

The Story of Masada: Discoveries of the Excavation

Through September 18, 1997

Gold-leafed capitals, sandals, armor, weaponry, ostraca and scrolls are among the 700 artifacts used to illustrate the Herodian and Roman history of Masada. A related exhibition displays Dead Sea Scrolls and at least one Qumran artifact, a small bronze four-horned incense altar (in private hands), never exhibited before.

021

BAS Seminars

Call our travel/study department at (800) 221-4644 for more information on the listings below.

Minnesota Study Seminar

July 27 to August 2, 1997

Learn how archaeology illuminates the Bible as George L. Kelm and Dan Schowalter lecture at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, 35 miles south of Minneapolis.

Alaska Seminar Cruise

August 10 to August 20, 1997

Cruise from Vancouver to Anchorage aboard the luxurious MS Noordam, taking in the Inside Passage, the Hubbard Glacier and the Harrisman fjords, while studying “The Dead Sea Scrolls’ Impact on Understanding the Bible and Christian Origins” with James Sanders.

Oxford University Study Seminar

August 10 to August 22, 1997

William Dever and Ronald Hendel will explore the relationship between archaeology and the Bible. Their discussion, entitled “Toward a New Biblical Archaeology: The Social World of Ancient Israel, Judaism and Christianity,” will later be published as a book. An optional extension to Edinburgh, August 22–27, focuses on “Qumran and Its Community.”

Turkey Tour

September 5 to September 23, 1997

Archaeologist Avner Goren takes you to Hattusas, the ancient capital of the Hittites; the Anatolian ruins of Kultepe; the rock-hewn dwellings of Cappadocia; and the famous sites of Sardis, Ephesus, Troy and Istanbul.

An optional extension, September 23–28, includes Bodrum, the birthplace of Herodotus (484 B.C.); the island of Rhodes; and the Dorian ruins of Phaselis.

Island Tour: Cyprus, Crete and Santorini

October 15 to October 31, 1997

Go island-hopping through Mycenaean and Minoan history with archaeologist Avner Goren. Visit, on Cyprus, the Kykka Monastery high in the Troodos Mountains, and Paphos, the legendary birthplace of Aphrodite; on Santorini, the excavation site of Akrotiri and the capital Thera; and on Crete, the cities of Irakalion, Hania and the reconstructed site of Knossos, the ancient Minoan capital.

017

What Is It?

A. Chariot hitch

B. Golf tee

C. Game piece

D. Foundation peg

E. Toothpick

022

What It Is, Is …

B. Foundation peg.

In ancient Mesopotamia, pegs or coins were placed in the foundations of buildings as part of religious or magical ceremonies that dedicated the buildings or protected them and their owners from demons.

The figure holding this 11.5-inch-high copper peg is probably a deity. Discovered in Sumerian Girsu (modern Telloh, Iraq), the peg dates to about 2130 B.C., the Neo-Sumerian Period, and the reign of Gudea, a religious and peace-loving prince who built many of Girsu’s temples.

DNA Analysis Sheds New Light on Oldest Profession at Ashkelon