Inside BAR
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Over 40 years ago, Bedouin shepherds prowling a Judean wilderness cave came upon some of the famous documents now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although several archaeologists following in the Bedouins’ footsteps have made spectacular finds in other caves near the Dead Sea, no one until recently had excavated these caves systematically. In “Hideouts in the Judean Wilderness,” Joseph Patrich describes his six-year exploration of more than 40 cliffside caves. Demonstrating that these caves harbored political and religious refugees for hundreds of years, beginning in the first century A.D., Patrich displays a wealth of evidence—including dramatic new inscriptions and human remains; expertly carved doors, cisterns and entrance shafts; and a juglet containing 2,000-year-old oil.
A lecturer in archaeology at Haifa University, in Israel, Patrich has excavated at Rehovot-in-the-Negev, Hammat Gader and Beth-Shean. Patrich’s “Reconstructing the Magnificent Temple Herod Built,” in the October 1988 issue of BAR’s companion magazine, Bible Review, marshaled all the available literary evidence to present a new vision of what King Herod’s Temple probably looked like.
While excavating with American Qumran scholar/archaeologist Robert Eisenman, Patrich made another impressive discovery: a 30-inch-long shaft of an arrow made from a reed, reported in the sidebar “2,000-Year-Old Arrow Discovered in Dead Sea Cave.” Chairperson of the Religious Studies Department and professor of Middle East religions at California State University, Long Beach, Eisenman recently wrote Maccabees, Zadokites, Christians and Qumran: A New Hypothesis of Qumran Origins (1983) and James the Just in the Habakkuk Pesher (1986), both published by Brill. Eisenman’s frustration with lack of access to unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls earns him a role in the still unfolding drama described in “What Should Be Done About the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls?”
A young archaeologist, Hanan Eshel has hit an archaeological home run his first time at bat. In “How I Found a Fourth-Century B.C. Papyrus Scroll on My First Time Out!” Eshel tells an enthusiastic, personal story of how he chose a likely site to excavate and of how he conducted the dig, which culminated in his spectacular discovery of one of the oldest papyrus documents ever found in the Holy Land. Compounding his success, Eshel also presents a new conclusion about a story in the Talmud as the result of another discovery from the site: the first nail-studded sandal remains ever found in the Judean Desert.
A graduate of Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, Eshel teaches in the university’s department of Jewish history. He has excavated at a number of sites, including Iron Age Shiloh, Tel Batash (Timnah) and an Iron Age fortress near Michmash. He also discovered an Iron Age cemetery at Givon, which he has recently published. The dig at Ketef Jericho is his first independent excavation.
Few serious articles can trace their origins to so humble a beginning as an advertisement for a doll. Yet when a BAR reader wrote a letter (Queries & Comments, BAR 15:03) to protest an advertisement for a white-skinned doll that portrays the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, and asserted “The Egyptians are a black race of people,” the issue provoked such a response from other readers that an authoritative article seemed necessary. To answer the question “Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?” Frank J. Yurco examines the physical evidence offered by mummies; the artistic evidence found in paintings, statues and reliefs; and the historical evidence of ancient population movements. More important than the answer, however, is the search, which reveals that the ancient Egyptians themselves would not have comprehended the question.
Yurco lectures on a wide variety of Egyptological topics at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. He also teaches at the University of Chicago and in the Oriental Institute’s Membership Program. A Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, Yurco is writing his dissertation on “The Late Nineteenth Dynasty, After Ramesses II.” Several of his publications deal with the Egyptian king Merenptah (yes, that’s the correct spelling, according to Yurco), a subject on which he is preparing a future BAR article.
Like summer adventure movies that keep spawning sequels, the Dead Sea Scrolls imbroglio—chronicled in the past two issues of BAR—draws larger and larger audiences. BAR editor Hershel Shanks’s call to allow all qualified scholars who so wish to study still-unpublished Scrolls (“Dead Sea Scrolls Scandal—Israel’s Department of Antiquities Joins Conspiracy to Keep Scrolls Secret,” BAR 15:04) led to unprecedented media coverage on the debate, ranging from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, to local newspapers all over the country. In this issue, Shanks makes some practical proposals to deal with the situation in “What Should Be Done About the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls?”
Our recently inaugurated Museum Guide offers a double treat this month. In addition to our regular listing of current exhibits, we survey North American museums with permanent collections on the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The wealth of information was so great, however, that we don’t have room for it all. This issue includes museums in the East and the South. Those who live in, or plan to travel to, the Midwest and West need not worry, though—those regions will be covered in our next issue.
Over 40 years ago, Bedouin shepherds prowling a Judean wilderness cave came upon some of the famous documents now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although several archaeologists following in the Bedouins’ footsteps have made spectacular finds in other caves near the Dead Sea, no one until recently had excavated these caves systematically. In “Hideouts in the Judean Wilderness,” Joseph Patrich describes his six-year exploration of more than 40 cliffside caves. Demonstrating that these caves harbored political and religious refugees for hundreds of years, beginning in the first century A.D., Patrich displays a wealth of evidence—including dramatic new inscriptions […]
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