Queries & Comments

022

Archaeological Coverage of the War in Lebanon

To the Editor:

I was fascinated by the article on St. Peter’s house in Capernaum (“Has the House Where Jesus Stayed in Capernaum Been Found?” BAR 08:06).

I was also fascinated, and greatly relieved, by your article on Tyre in the same issue (“Antiquities of Tyre Spared Despite PLO Occupation and War in Lebanon,” BAR 08:06) and the minimal damage done to ancient remains in that city by the recent war in Lebanon. As a Latin teacher, in the spring of 1982 when the war broke out, I interrupted my assignment schedule to devote a week to a quick survey of Roman archaeological sites in the path of the war and the possible damage that might result to them. Yours is the first article I have seen devoted to this side-effect of the war. Could you possibly devote another article in the future to the extent of damage to archaeological sites and museums elsewhere in the Lebanon, especially Beirut?

BAR’s Interview with Yadin

To the Editor:

I’d like to thank you for the fine article in the January/February issue, “BAR Interviews Yigael Yadin,” BAR 09:01. I find it very encouraging to see there are people in positions of influence who have the mental capacity to put all dimensions of a problem into proper balance instead of focusing on one dimension to the exclusion of others. His discussion of the seeming conflicts between the Biblical record and archaeological finds is a fine example of this. Many other leaders could profit by this example.

To the Editor:

Of all the super-helpful articles and information I have found in Biblical Archaeology Review, I think your interview with Yigael Yadin is tops.

To the Editor:

Professor Yadin comments that he follows a definition of archaeology “written by someone a hundred years ago,” but does not recall the name. The definition was cited as “the science that examines the mind of man to the extent it is reflected in material or has been expressed in material.”

The sentiment is very close to a favorite quote of mine, that is, that the aim of archaeology is “through the dead-and-gone things to get at the history and the minds of dead-and-gone men.” The quote is from Leonard Woolley, Spadework in Archaeology (Lutterworth Press London, 1953), p. 12, and, in that form, of considerably more recent vintage than 100 years. I suspect, however, that one would kind similar sentiments expressed in the earlier works of Mortimer Wheeler, and even earlier in the works of General Pitt-Rivers. In any case, as fine-sounding as the concept is, the absence of a mention of context for those material remains weakens the definition, though I am sure that all the scholars cited would share my concern for archaeological context. I cannot agree that archaeology is a science, either, but that is another debate.

Yigael Yadin replies:

That the scientific study of the remains (in fact, the study of every subject in any discipline, or debate), should be done in their proper context is commonplace. The discussion of it would have been out of context in the general interview in BAR referred to by Professor Wiseman.

As for science (again, in the context of the discussion), every reader, I am convinced, understood the term in its simple (let alone Latin) meaning: “systematized knowledge in general; knowledge as of facts or principles; knowledge gained by systematic study” (Random House Dictionary of the English Language).

By the way, I hope that even Professor Wiseman would agree that archaeology is nearer to the (natural) sciences than, say, political science. If not, I am ready to supply him with some bitter, but relevant facts to that effect, gained alas, through personal experience. But I agree that this is another debate.

023

To the Editor:

Your interview with Yigael Yadin was most interesting; however, there are a few things that I believe must be said.

Your comment, “Archaeology is not supposed to prove the truth of the Bible,” is indeed correct, for the Bible does not need anyone or anything to prove it. It stands alone. The prophet Isaiah says it better, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8, NAS). The Bible has withstood centuries of so-called “scholarly” attacks and will outlive the “seeming” contradictions from archaeology.

Again your statements, “We know very little of the archaeological picture, and most of that picture still lies underground,” are true. But, unfortunately, many scholars are too quick to find a contradiction and in so doing mislead many others.

Finally, I was saddened by Professor Yadin saying that he was not affected at all about God from his work. If Professor Yadin cannot see God in Biblical archaeology, then he has my deepest sympathy. Whether it be biology, physics, music or archaeology, God can be seen; we just have to look.

Thank you for letting me share my thoughts.

The Other Side of the Dig

To the Editor:

No doubt a number of BAR readers are excitedly preparing to participate in digs this summer. Last summer was my first experience in excavation and I only wish I could return again this year. However, as exciting as archaeology is, I think it would be helpful for BAR readers to understand the full realities of the dig so that they will not be overly surprised once on the site.

The volunteer should, of course, be prepared for hard physical labor six to eight hours a day. This includes picking, shoveling, carrying buckets of dirt and pushing wheelbarrows, all under a very hot sun. Some days may be spent only picking, shoveling and hauling dirt, while other days may be spent squatting all day brushing and hand picking. It is dirty and sweaty work, and rather taxing on the back muscles.

In addition to this, the volunteer should be prepared for the “dynamics” of camp life. This may include cold water showers, dirt floor tents, spartan kitchen facilities, as well as weekly kitchen duty. There is, of course, the matter of washing your clothes weekly, if not more frequently, in the outdoor wash-trough or bathroom sink.

Further, the volunteer must realize that excavating may not be a highly spiritual experience. Indeed, the Bible becomes more alive once one has dug in the dust of the Holy Land and touched the remains of ancient men. However, connections between what one digs up and a specific Bible passage can seldom be made. It is more a matter of gaining an understanding of the general life and culture in Biblical times than elucidating particular scriptures, although the latter certainly does occur.

Finally, the volunteer should be prepared to experience some stages of culture shock. Because most digs require a stay of four to eight weeks, in the latter stages, discontent and depression may set in. The physical strain of the dig has a tendency to weaken one’s emotional constitution and produce greater levels of anxiety. The fascination with the foreign culture may eventually turn to contempt for it, as homesickness sets in.

These are some of the realities of the dig. However, I hope they will not deter the would-be volunteer, only help prepare him or her. Indeed, there is nothing quite like the excitement of unearthing some artifact that some human of antiquity held in hand. A sense of historical realism is gained in that moment in a way that cannot be duplicated. So, to those who will head to the fields this summer, my best wishes for an enjoyable experience.

Blacksmiths Comment on BAR’s Blacksmith Cover

To the Editor:

I am a blacksmith of long standing and would like to point out that a great error was made in the description of the cover picture of the November/December 1982 BAR. The article is entitled “How Iron Technology Changed the Ancient World,” BAR 08:06.

You refer to the muscular man with the sledge hammer over his head in the center of the amphora on the cover as the blacksmith. This man is the striker or blacksmith’s helper. The striker was usually a person with little knowledge of smithing and was often a laborer or slave.

The blacksmith is on the left side with tongs in his left hand; he is reaching for his hand hammer with his right hand. In forging a piece of metal the blacksmith strikes a blow 024with his hand hammer, then the striker hits a blow with his sledge hammer. The age old saying of the blacksmith to his helper is “When I nod my head, you hit it.”

Thank you for James D. Muhly’s otherwise splendid article.

I have spent a lifetime at blacksmithing and am a third generation of metalworkers in this country. Whenever you are in northwestern Pennsylvania stop in and see me and my shop. I am seven miles north of Titusville, Pennsylvania, and forty miles south of Erie, Pennsylvania.

To the Editor:

As an amateur blacksmith, I found James Muhly’s article on early iron technology a rich deposit of information, especially his detailed explanation of the tricky process of forging iron ore into steel with a usable degree of hardness. In conclusion, he noted how carbonized iron (steel) must be tempered to reduce its martensite content by reheating it to above 150 degrees C. I wish he had gone on to mention the tempering colors used by blacksmiths today, and in the early Iron Age, I imagine, to tell them when, as the final step, to stop the softening process by quenching.

What puzzles me is the reason for that emerging rainbow of colors, each color coincident with a particular degree of heat and hardness. Do the changing colors signify the changing martensite content of the outer layers of steel, or (as I have heard it explained) the light reflected by the thickening surface scale as the steel oxidizes? If the martensite content is not related to the colors, how is its content controlled? In other words, do metallurgical archaeologists know how a consistent quality of steel was produced, as it must have been, by Iron Age blacksmiths? And who did it, where, and when?

Besides asking for answers, maybe I can provide one. In Dr. Muhly’s explanation of the scene depicted on the sixth-century B.C. Athenian amphora reproduced on the cover, I believe he is mistaken as to who is the blacksmith and who is the helper. Anyone who has seen practicing smiths either in this country, Japan, or Europe knows that by long tradition born of the need for speed and for master smiths who do not become arthritic too soon, the master wields a light, short-handled hammer to point with light blows to where he wants the “striker” to hit with his heavy, longer-handled hammer. The blacksmith stands where he has quick access to the fire, the anvil, and the slack tub, deftly manipulating one of a variety of tongs to hold and control the piece of iron, which is repeatedly heated and hammered.

The master’s assistants provide the brute strength for pumping the bellows, lifting heavy pieces, and doing heavy hammering. As befits his rank, the Athenian smith is shown wearing clothes, though perhaps for reasons of comfort and social station not as many as the seated onlookers. The striker (a slave?) wears no clothes. The same clothing scheme seems at work in the scene from the fifth-century Attic vase shown, where the smith has reserved for himself the skilled task of joining the various pieces of the bronze statue.

James D. Muhly replies:

As to metalworking scenes on Greek vases I am sure that Mr. Brady and Mr. Scarlett are correct and I welcome their useful comments. These scenes have been discussed on many occasions, but we still lack a good technical study written by someone who can combine a Classical, art historical background with the practical expertise of people such as Mr. Brady and Mr. Scarlett.

The first part of Mr. Scarlett’s letter, dealing with the color of the iron as an indication of hardness, is more difficult for me to answer. Being a poor philologist and archaeologist, I have no practical experience in such matters. I am sure the ancient blacksmiths used color as an indication of temperature, as is still done today. In all the early literature on ironworking one comes across phrases such as “heat the steel until it is cherry red and plunge it in water” (quoted from Mathurin Jousse, The Selection of Iron and Steel, and the Manner of Hardening it by Quenching, 1627).

The most complete such description, and one that at least begins to answer Mr. Scarlett’s question, is found in the 1786 treatise, On the Different Metallic States of Iron, by C.A. Berthollet and G. Monge, probably the most famous work in the history of iron metallurgy where, for the first time, the role of carbon in the production of steel was correctly understood. On hardening steel the authors state:

“It is not necessary for hardened steel to have the same degree of hardness for the different uses that are made of it. The custom in this regard is to quench it very hard at first, then to soften it afterward to the degree that is desired, by tempering. To do that it is heated on coals or on a mass of red-hot iron. In passing through different temperatures, steel assumes successively the following colors pale yellow, golden yellow, purple, violet, light blue, and the color of water. Heating is stopped at whatever color is known from experience to mark the acquisition by the steel of hardness suitable to the object, and the steel is then plunged into cold water. These colors that hardened steel takes on its surface by tempering are the effect of a beginning of calcination. Because they appear on steel in a manner not only more marked but also at much lower temperatures than on iron, it follows that steel is, like cast iron, much more combustible than iron.”

(The translations given here are all taken from Sources for the History of the Science of Steel 1532–1786, edited by Cyril Stanley Smith, MIT Press, 1968), a wonderful collection of material relating to the early history of iron and steel working).

I am sure that time and color were that important factors in ancient efforts to achieve what we would call quality control. I can think of no other methods available to an ancient smith who certainly was not able to measure either carbon diffusion or temperature. I am not able to explain what produces the change in color; such explanations can only be provided by a metallurgist. As to the question “ … do metallurgical archaeologists know how a consistent quality of steel was produced?,” the answer has to be NO. I wish we did, but modern research into such problems is still in its infancy.

Only within the past few years have archaeologists taken an interest in such problems. The question of the Philistine iron monopoly was discussed by scholars for about 100 years without anyone ever thinking of studying the Iron artifacts themselves. When Biblical scholars finally did move from texts to artifacts, those artifacts were studied from the point of view of archaeology or art history: they were catalogued, dated and arranged in a typological sequence. It simply never occurred to past generations of scholars to ask how the objects were made and why they were made in a certain way. We have a lot of work to do in the years ahead before we can answer the questions raised in Mr. Scarlett’s letter.

The Dirty Picture on BAR’s Cover

To the Editor:

I had ordered BAR with some reservation as to its usefulness for our school. The first issue featuring an article on iron technology and picturing an ancient smithy on the cover (November/December 1982) was questionable; the objects which you chose to picture, like the genitalia on the cover, although not striking, are there for the careful viewer like the impressionable students.

The article which finally set me to determine to cancel the subscription was the piece 026of subjective hypothesis without formation or basis in scripture, the article on “Woman, A Power Equal to Man,” BAR 09:01. It sounds like someone into modern research, stretching points to support their feeble conclusion.

Please cancel the subscription immediately, and refund the price of the subscription.

Woman, a Power Equal to Man

To the Editor:

I would like to take issue with the conclusion of Professor Freedman’s article “Woman, A Power Equal to Man,” BAR 09:01. In particular, I am troubled by his last footnote (No. 7).

The concluding paragraph of his article is, as follows:

So it is that God made up for the inadequacy of His original creation of man—an inadequacy that He admits to by saying “It is not good for the man to be alone”—by creating the female of the species, who is intended to be ^cezer kenegdo, “a power equal to him.”

The footnote reads, as follows:

My interpretation has been anticipated by medieval Jewish Midrashim, especially the Alfabeta d’Rabbi Akiva and Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer.

I am troubled by the ambiguity of the words “My interpretation” as they appear in the footnote. If Professor Freedman is referring to his rendering of ^cezer kenegdo as “a power equal to him,” then his statement is correct—there is support for such a notion among the traditional Jewish commentaries—but it should have been made the first time this phrase was used. No less a scholar than Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch concurs with this thinking:

… And^cezer kenegdo certainly expresses no idea of subordination, but rather complete equality, and on a footing of equal independence. Woman stands to Man kenegdo, parallel, on one line, at his side. (The Pentateuch, Translated and Explained by Samson Raphael Hirsch, rendered into English by Isaac Levy, London: Hachinuch, 1959.)

If, as I suspect, however, the words “My interpretation” refer to the concluding paragraph in its entirety, then I must take strong exception to this statement. No classical Jewish thinker would lend credence to the notion that God’s original creation of man was “inadequate” or that God “admitted” such an inadequacy. God does not change His mind! He doesn’t vacillate! He doesn’t create by trial and error!

This misguided thinking was, indeed, “anticipated” by the classical Jewish commentators, and I would like to share with Professor Freedman and your readers two distinct approaches which were presented in the hope of pre-empting such statements.

1. “ … the Torah earlier described how man was created in a very concise manner. This is not very different from the description of the creation of the heaven, earth and trees, which was also very concise. The Torah then backtracks and describes how the world was before it was created. The same is true of the creation of man. The statement ‘It is not good for man to be alone,” was therefore made before man was created. Thus, it was all part of God’s plan.” (Tshuvoth Rashba 60, as quoted in The Torah Anthology by Rabbi Yaacov Culi, translated into English by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, New York: Maznaim 1977.)

2. “This does not imply that God changed His mind but rather to draw our attention to the precious nature of this partnership and to teach us that it is not good for man to be alone. For this reason, the Holy One Blessed be He willed it that man should be without woman for a brief period and then afterwards introduced her so that she would be dear to him after he had felt something was lacking without her.” (Shemuel David Luzzato, as quoted in Studies in Bereshit (Genesis) by Professor Nehama Leibowitz, translated into English by Rabbi Aryeh Newman, Jerusalem: WZO, 1976.)

R. David Freedman replies:

Mr. Meskin can rest easy: footnote 7 refers to my rendering of ^cezer kenegdo. I save it for the end because I tend to prefer to hold trump cards for the end of the game. Mr. Meskin is welcome to move it, if he wishes, to where he feels it is more appropriate. Mr. Meskin is also cordially invited to add the word kivyakol (Hebrew for “so to speak”) where he wants in order to bring the article up to the level of his philosophical understanding.

To the Editor:

I am a new subscriber to this excellent publication and I enjoy each issue. As a small country church pastor on a small salary I will probably never be able to travel to the Holy Land, or to any of the Bible lands, to witness first-hand what archaeology is uncovering. The interesting and thought provoking articles, the artistry, and the photography of BAR make me feel like I’ve been there.

I would like to address the issue in the article written by Professor R. David Freedman entitled, “Woman, A Power Equal to Man,” BAR 09:01. Let me say first that I enjoyed the insights of the etymology of the Hebrew words. If one were to translate and interpret on the basis of this argument I might find myself in complete agreement with this viewpoint.

However, I believe that when one interprets Scripture, one of the most basic rules for interpretation is that any interpretation should follow in agreement with the rest of Scripture. When I read the article in question I was immediately drawn to three New Testament writings on the subject. Those New Testament references are: 1 Corinthians 11:3–16; Ephesians 5:22–33; and 1 Peter 3:1–7, especially verse 7.

In light of these passages I believe that the traditional view holds the greatest credibility. Also, in light of the fact that an etymological study traces a word through history, I am convinced that Professor Freedman made the 027error of taking a later meaning for the original. I am sure that in time the word came to mean exactly what Professor Freedman suggests. That does not necessarily suggest that it was understood as such at the earlier usage.

R. David Freedman replies:

Since the New Testament is not scripture for me, I am not faced with Pastor Bennett’s problem. More to the point, however, the New Testament is at least 500 years later than the Genesis passage (even by the reckoning of the critics), and must therefore take second place to philology as a way of arriving at the intent of the words in question.

Finally, if part of the punishment of Eve was that Adam was to rule over her, it is obvious that such was not the status quo beforehand.

Incidentally, I do not claim that ^cezer kenegdo “came to mean” “a power equal to man” but that it “came to mean” something like “a helpmate fit for him” by way of backreading a later social situation into an earlier text.

The Gate Below the Golden Gate

To the Editor:

I enjoyed the article on the gate beneath the Golden Gate (“The Undiscovered Gate Beneath Jerusalem’s Golden Gate,” BAR 09:01). The photographs and drawings were very instructive as was the discussion of dating the gate. But periodically BAR castigates archaeologists for not publishing results in a timely manner. Why then does BAR wait a decade to publish the discovery of the gate when that discovery was known to a BAR editorial advisor? The gate was first published by Dr. Fleming in February 1971 in the Alumni News of the Institute of Holy Land Studies, Mt. Zion, Jerusalem, and in 1974 in the Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin by Dr. George Giacumakis of your Editorial Advisory Board.

BAR readers may be interested to know that the two accounts by Dr. Fleming differ in details. In 1971 he wrote that he was able to “squeeze” into the subsidence hole on his own initiative. That is not the same as falling into the hole in an earthslide as reported in the article.

This article was the result of a five-year correspondence between Jerusalem and Washington, and an editorial process that trimmed a 30-page manuscript to 15. In the end, confusion in the mails resulted in some small errors introduced into the article and drawings by the BAR editorial staff. Once we thought we had a final manuscript, we waited to publish Dr. Fleming’s article in sequence with Asher Kaufman’s article on the location of the Temple on the Temple Mount (“Where the Ancient Temple of Jerusalem Stood,” BAR 09:02), which, in part, built on Dr. Fleming’s discussion of the gate below the Golden Gate.

This is, we realize, an explanation, not an excuse. If it sounds a bit defensive, it is; we should have published the story earlier.

We also apologize for the errors mentioned below.—Ed.

James Fleming replies:

The reference in the one-paragraph summary account in the 1971 Alumni News of the Institute of Holy Land Studies to “squeezing into” the tomb refers to a second visit to the tomb for further pictures. Third and fourth entrances into the tomb at later dates were also mentioned in the BAR article.

To the Editor:

Dr. Fleming gets a bit reckless with his speculations on the origins of the Lower Gate: “If Laperrousaz is right, then the Lower Gate may be Solomonic!”

I don’t know of any usage of the Roman arch in the Middle East in 1000 B.C. either among the Jews or the Phoenicians.

On the other hand, the so-called Roman Arch was definitely in use in Babylon in at least the sixth century B.C. The famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon actually had Roman vaulting in the cellars beneath.

This implies that some of the Jews who returned to Jerusalem after the Captivity could well have been acquainted with the arch. Later, of course, during the Hellenistic period, the arch was fairly widely used.

I was also a bit shocked to note that in Fleming’s discussion of the religious aspects of the Golden Gate he neglects to mention one of the most famous of all Christian legends, the meeting of Hannah and Joachim, the parents of the Virgin, at the Golden Gate. This theme is depicted in countless art works of the medieval and Renaissance periods. The theme is apocryphal of course, but loomed large in western history for a number of centuries.

Nevertheless I enjoyed the article, and think Fleming did a superb job in his description of the Gate and its environs both above and below ground.

In conclusion, and as a sort of postscript, I would like to ask your readership a question. John Charles Fremont, famous American explorer, general and politician, named the inlet to San Francisco Bay “The Golden Gate” sometime around 1846–7. Fremont was a very 028highly educated man whose father was a French aristocrat. It seems very possible to me that he named this inlet on the basis of the Golden Gate of Jerusalem. The question of course is, do any of your readership know of any evidence that this might be so?

James Fleming replies:

Though the sentence you quote (“If Laperrousaz is right, then the Lower Gate may be Solomonic”) does not indicate whether I agree with Laperrousaz or not, as a point of fact, I do not happen to believe he is right. I hope you will therefore forgive me of “reckless speculation.”

However, it is not impossible that an arch could have been used in 1000 B.C. The predecessor of the arch is the domed roof which uses a similar engineering technology. These can be found in the Sinai desert at many locations known as “Nawamis,” and date to 3000 B.C.! Kathleen Kenyon’s Jericho excavation may have found even earlier domed mudbrick structures. There is a cover story in the September/October 1981 BAR that describes an 18th-century B.C. gate with an intact arch at Tel Dan. Gus Van Beek found Iron Age arches at Tell Jemmeh (see “The Remarkable Discoveries at Tel Dan,” BAR 07:05). So if the arch below the Golden Gate is not Solomonic, it must be for another reason than that the technology was unknown at that period.

Let me explain why I do not believe the Lower Gate is Solomonic, despite the final paragraph of the article, which was added by the BAR stages a kind of editorial summary and which leaves open the possibility that the Lower Gate is Solomonic.

A gate built by King Solomon is probably referred to in the Old Testament as the East Gate of the Temple. Solomon’s gate (probably described in Ezekiel 40) was certainly destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., if not before. Nehemiah 3:29 states that the East Gate had to be repaired (along with Jerusalem’s other gates) in the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls in the fifth century B.C. My best guess as to the date of the gate below the Golden Gate is that it was constructed during the time of the Hasmonean High Priest, Simon the Just, who built a high, double wall around the Temple (219–196 B.C.). This guess is based upon the similarities in the masonry to the right of the straight joint, Warren’s underground “double” wall, and the exposed stones at ground level on either side of the Golden Gate.

Later gates often have good memories of the location of earlier gates. I would agree with the possibility that this Lower Gate might preserve the memory, deeper in its foundations, of the location of the destroyed Old Testament East Gate to the Temple.

I regret that you were “shocked” that I did not mention the Crusader tradition that Mary’s parents met at the Golden Gate. Because the present gate dates to the seventh century A.D., I felt that traditions later than that would have no bearing on the date of the arch below (and therefore earlier than) that gate. A partial listing of the many Jewish, Christian, and Moslem legends associated with the Golden Gate may be found in Zev Vilnay’s Legends of Jerusalem (Philadelphia The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), pp. 54–62.

To the Editor:

I have taught an undergraduate course for several years on Jerusalem as a Holy City and regularly advise students to consult BAR for lively and informative materials for their research papers. You will be pleased to learn that they have made good use of your articles on the archaeology of the Holy City. Your recent article by James Fleming on the Golden Gate continues in this lively, informative, and helpful tradition. But for the sake of accuracy, I wish to point out two cases in which the article needs to be corrected.

The first is in ascribing the confusion between the Greek word for “beautiful” (oraia) and the Latin word for “golden” (aurea) to Jerome and the Latin Vulgate translation of Acts 3:2, 10. The Vulgate does not read aurea (“golden”) but rather speciosa (“beautiful”). If this confusion was indeed the source of the Christian nomenclature for the gate, it was not the fault of Jerome. According to John Wilkinson (Jerusalem Pilgrims before the 029Crusades [Jerusalem: Ariel, 1977], p. 161), the earliest Latin text to refer to the gate as “golden” dates from the seventh century; the next, from the early 12th century.

The second case is more serious because it affects both the pictorial representation and dimensions in the drawing of “Warren’s tunnel.” The drawing follows Fleming’s summary of Charles Warren’s excavation (or tunneling), as reported in The Recovery of Jerusalem (London: Richard Bentley, 1871), pp. 153–159. Unfortunately, the summary fails to take note of the fact that Warren did not begin his tunneling to the north along the outer wall at the point at which he first struck the wall (as shown in the drawing), but rather at a point 14 feet to the north of this. Specifically, Warren retreated 29 feet back from the wall (to a point where he had encountered a portion of a column), then tunneled north from that point for 14 feet, and then turned the gallery to the west, where the massive wall was picked up “34 feet from the turn” (the difference of 5 feet being due to the northwest curve of the wall). He then followed the wall northwest until the gallery collapsed from loose earth at a point “55 feet from the turn.” Although Warren’s use of the phrase “from the turn” for measurements is less than clear, the context suggests that the last “turn” referred to is the point at which the tunnel turned to follow the wall along its northwest course. The drawing would then need to be corrected to indicate a longer wall than is shown: i.e., one would need to add 14 feet to the 55 feet, because the measurement of 55 feet begins 14 feet further to the north than the drawing indicates. One would also need to correct the drawing to indicate that the stretch of 14 feet to the north of the point where the wall was first struck was not tunneled through, and that the wall was picked up again from another point to the north. Although Warren does not indicate the degree of the northwest curvature of the wall, some indication is given by the difference of 5 feet east-west in 14 feet south-north. He also tells us that the point at which he first tunneled west towards the Golden Gate was “perpendicular to the front” at the south end of the gate.

I wish to add in conclusion that these remarks are passed along as supplements to what I regard as an excellent article. Dr. Fleming is to be congratulated in placing this information before the reader and in sharing his own experience with us. The photography is superb.

James Fleming replies:

You are correct that the Latin Vulgate reads “Beautiful” and not “Golden.” Evidently, the Greek word “beautiful” suggested the Latin word aurea, and gave rise to the name Porta Aurea or “Golden Gate.”

I find it remarkable that you found the tunnel mistake in the drawing. I wish everyone interested in the archaeology of Jerusalem read Warren’s underground explorations as carefully as you have! My original drawing accompanying the article showed arrows and distances along the face of the wall. The unshaded tunnel and little man digging were an attempt by the art department of the magazine to clarify the drawing. Unfortunately, it does not show the two approaches to the wall that Warren describes. My original article simply stated: “A branch tunnel was begun to the south for 14 feet and then another to the north for 55 feet.” The only change that needs to be made to the drawing is that in the first three-quarters of an inch to the right of the 5.5-foot chiseled hole there should be no removal of the brown shading indicating solid earth.

Your concern about whether the 14-foot distance between the two tunnels might mean the drawing of Warren’s wall would need to be altered is unfounded. When one considers that the drawing is in perspective (getting smaller as it goes away from the viewer) the 55-foot mark includes the additional 14 feet. As you undoubtedly know, Warren published a set of plans to go along with the description you quoted in your letter. The BAR plan begins the turn opposite the southeast corner of the Golden Gate and angles the turn towards the northeast corner as drawn in his plan published by the Palestine Exploration Fund, Plate VI.

BAR’s Popularity

To the Editor:

BAR is the most popular periodical we use in our Anthropology-Archaeology tape.

Archaeological Coverage of the War in Lebanon

To the Editor:

I was fascinated by the article on St. Peter’s house in Capernaum (“Has the House Where Jesus Stayed in Capernaum Been Found?” BAR 08:06).