In an unlikely turn of events, the ultra-Orthodox Zakaa organization, whose members gather the remains of victims after terrorist attacks and other disasters, and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), who are often at odds with each other over the excavation of ancient Jewish graves, found themselves cooperating this past spring when two looters approached Zaka representatives to sell them four ancient inscribed ossuaries, or burial boxes, with bones still inside.
The two thieves, who, it was later revealed, were residents of the east Jerusalem village of Issawyia, told Zaka director Yehuda Meshi-Zahav they were from the West Bank city of Nablus (ancient Shechem), where they claimed they had found the ossuaries. They wanted $1000 for each box, Meshi-Zahav said.
“We started negotiating with them and at the same time turned to the IAA and the Israeli Border Police for help, but they said they couldn’t help us because Nablus is under Palestinian control,” said Meshi-Zahav.
Zaka told the thieves it would need to see evidence of the burial boxes before it agreed to payment, so a meeting was arranged in Issiwyia, where Zaka representatives were shown one of the ossuaries.
Once shown the box, Zaka agreed to purchase the other three as well, and set up a time for the transfer of all four, also in the village. In the meantime, Zaka once again contacted the IAA and the Border Police since the boxes would now be in an Israeli-controlled area.
Then, in a sting operation, just as the transfer was being made, undercover members of the IAA anti-theft squad and Israeli border policemen arrested the thieves, who admitted under interrogation to attempting to sell the antiquities illegally. They were later released on bail and were to be charged with antiquities theft and attempting to sell stolen antiquities.
According to press reports there were other antiquities inside the burial boxes, but it is unclear whether the thieves managed to sell them before their arrest.
The IAA said the ossuaries were apparently stolen from a Second Temple-period (late first-millennium B.C. and first century A.D.) Jewish burial cave near Issawyia. It was also concluded that the inscriptions, which bore several common ancient Jewish names written in Aramaic, including Hananiya and Shalom, are authentic.
“It was very moving for us to be dealing with [these] bones,” Meshi-Zahav said. “It is not every day that we get to bury bones belonging to people who lived during the Second Temple period.”
The IAA said in a press release that it is the first time antiquities thieves have tried to sell remains of Jewish bones to ultra-Orthodox groups. The bones were turned over to Zaka for a proper Jewish burial, while the ossuaries are being held by the IAA as evidence in the trial against the two suspects.
IAA director Shuka Dorfman refused to give BAR permission to interview IAA archaeologists involved with the incident.
Zaka often leads protests against archaeological excavation when it thinks Jewish burials are being disturbed. “A few weeks before we had been in a face-off with the IAA, and now we were cooperating with them,” Meshi-Zahav said. “This time we had the same goals. Sometimes there are things to fight over; this was something for us to cooperate on.”
The battle against antiquities theft continued on another front. The IAA has arrested three thieves from Jericho and Bethlehem, whom they caught at a burial site near Modi’in, between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The trio had dug up and damaged an ossuary decorated with rosettes and other symbols common to the Second Temple period. Skeletal remains were inside the burial box, as were several clay oil lamps decorated with floral designs popular during the First and Second Revolts against the Romans (67–70 and 132–135 A.D.). Damaging archaeological sites is punishable by a jail sentence of up to five years.—Judith Sudilovsky, Jerusalem
In an unlikely turn of events, the ultra-Orthodox Zakaa organization, whose members gather the remains of victims after terrorist attacks and other disasters, and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), who are often at odds with each other over the excavation of ancient Jewish graves, found themselves cooperating this past spring when two looters approached Zaka representatives to sell them four ancient inscribed ossuaries, or burial boxes, with bones still inside. The two thieves, who, it was later revealed, were residents of the east Jerusalem village of Issawyia, told Zaka director Yehuda Meshi-Zahav they were from the West Bank city […]
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