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Andrea Berlin and Sharon Herbert

An infant burial was found just off the back wall of the archive room. The child was laid out carefully within the small, semi-circular grave, but—mysteriously—was missing its hands and feet. The room with the burial, as well as the archive room (which contained hundreds of clay sealings), had been destroyed in a great fire. Authors Berlin and Herbert suggest the fire was set in 142 B.C.E. by Phoenicians who—like, their contemporaries in Judea, the Hasmoneans—were in revolt against their Seleucid overlords.