Glossary: Ossuary
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A Box for Bones
Ossuary (plural, ossuaries) refers to a special container for the collection of human bones, usually connected with highly formalized burial rites. In contrast to simple coffins or the more elaborate stone sarcophagi in which the body of the deceased was placed soon after death, ossuaries commonly served as a final depository for human bones only after an initial period of burial or exposure, during which the flesh of the body decayed. Although the term is sometimes applied by archaeologists in the Americas to mounds or chambers used for communal burials, “ossuary” in the archaeology of Israel refers to specific types of enclosed bone containers used during two widely separated archaeological periods: the Chalcolithic (c. 4500–3200 B.C.) and the Herodian (c. 30 B.C.–70 A.D.).
Among the most enigmatic finds of the Chalcolithic period—a time of agricultural, social and artistic innovation—are hand-made clay ossuaries. The majority of these containers have been discovered in burial caves along the Mediterranean coastal plain from Hadera southward to Azor (that is, from halfway between modern Haifa and Tel Aviv to just south of Tel Aviv). Their forms vary—house-shaped, animal-shaped and jar-shaped—but all have an opening large enough to permit the deposit of a human skull. The great architectural detail of some of the house-shaped ossuaries has led some scholars to suggest that they are modeled after the domestic dwellings of the Chalcolithic period. The bones preserved in these ossuaries are usually jumbled and often come from several individuals.
Little is known for certain about the religious or social meaning of this mode of burial in the Chalcolithic period. Since no important Chalcolithic settlements have been located along the coastal plain, where the finds of Chalcolithic ossuaries have been the richest, scholars initially proposed that the ossuary burials were deposited by a pastoral people who moved seasonally to the coast from the large settlements of the period in the Beer-Sheva Valley in the Negev. However, the recent discovery of a clay ossuary in the cemetery complex at the Chalcolithic site of Shiqmim in the Beer-Sheva Valley has brought this “migration” theory into question. It now seems that the use of ossuaries in the Chalcolithic period was a widespread cultural phenomenon closely connected to formalized rites of exposure of the body and to the preservation of the remains of select individuals in an emerging social hierarchy.
About 3,000 years after the Chalcolithic burial practices ended we find ossuaries used again. The use of small chest-shaped stone ossuaries became a characteristic mode of burial in Jerusalem during the Herodian period—the century before the destruction of the Temple. The ossuaries of this period, carved from soft local limestone with detachable lids, have been discovered in dozens of the ancient family tombs that surround the city of Jerusalem. These ossuaries were sometimes decorated with compass-drawn rosette patterns or architectural motifs and often bore the name of the deceased in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. While the religious meaning of the earlier Chalcolithic ossuaries remains uncertain, abundant references in rabbinic literature to the practice of bone gathering in the Herodian period have aided scholars in the interpretation of this burial practice.
According to the later rabbinic legal codes, particularly the euphemistically titled talmudic tractate Semah
In the opinion of Dr. L. Y. Rahmani, former chief curator of the Israel Antiquities Authority, who has specialized in the study of Jewish burial customs in the Second Temple period, this practice reflected a greater recognition of the individual and of individual resurrection (compared to the earlier practice of family burials), which was accepted among the middle classes of Jerusalem during the reign of Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.) and remained common until the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (also known as the Bar-Kokhba Revolt; 132–135 A.D.). By the end of this period, the custom had apparently spread from Jerusalem to other Jewish communities in Judea and the Galilee. By the third century A.D., however, with less emphasis in rabbinic Judaism on the connection between the decay of the body and the cleansing of sin, the custom was gradually abandoned and more simple burials came to be preferred.
As a class of archaeological artifacts, the ossuaries of Jerusalem in the Herodian period provide a wealth of data on the contemporary population and culture. Among the inscriptions are many personal names, family relationships and occasionally even brief descriptions of the professions of the deceased. One of the most intriguing finds among the skeletal material deposited in the ossuaries of this period is the heel bone of an adult male named Yehohanan ben Hazkul, who apparently met his death through crucifixion—the gruesomely common method of execution favored by the Roman authorities in first-century Jerusalem.a
A Box for Bones Ossuary (plural, ossuaries) refers to a special container for the collection of human bones, usually connected with highly formalized burial rites. In contrast to simple coffins or the more elaborate stone sarcophagi in which the body of the deceased was placed soon after death, ossuaries commonly served as a final depository for human bones only after an initial period of burial or exposure, during which the flesh of the body decayed. Although the term is sometimes applied by archaeologists in the Americas to mounds or chambers used for communal burials, “ossuary” in the archaeology of […]
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Footnotes
See Frederick T. Zugibe, “Two Questions About Crucifixion Does the Victim Die of Asphyxiation? Would Nails in the Hands Hold the Weight of the Body?” BR 05:02.