In order to facilitate our discussion on the so-called "writing tables" and "benches" from loc. 30 I thought it might be helpful to quote de Vaux's description of these items in _Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls_ pp.29-30:
"We have already spoken several times of the long room which extends southwards from the tower, loc. 30, and which, being at ground level, could have served as an assembly room. During Period II the north bay had been blocked up and the final two metres at the southern end of the floor had been covered by a think mat, the burnt remains of which have been recovered. The room was filled with the debris from the upper floor, which had the same plan, and which had fallen in at the end of Period II. In this debris were found fragments of structures made of mud-brick covered with carefully smoothed plaster. These mysterious fragments were collected and taken to Jerusalem where they were painstakingly re-assembled. In this way it was found possible to reconstruct a table from them (Pl. XXIa) a little more than 5 m. in length, 40 cm. in breadth, and only 50 cm. in height. There were also further fragments from two smaller tables. These tables had certainly fallen from the upper floor where the long table had been set up parallel to the eastern wall; they had been used there in association with a low bench fixed to this wall. This might have suggested the furniture of a dining room except for the fact that we had already identified this in another part of the building which did not contain a table. In any case it would have been most surprising for the refectory to be situated on an upper story. Furthermore, two inkwells were found among the debris, one bronze and the other earthenware, of a type known, from the discoveries made in Egypt and Italy, the belong to the Roman period. One of these inkwells still contained some dried ink. Is it not reasonable to regard these tables and inkwells as the furniture of a room where writing was carried on, a scriptorium in the sense in which this term later came to be applied to similar rooms in monasteries of the Middle Ages?" The pictures of the so-called "tables" and "benches" in de Vaux's text appear to have been taken in the North Cloister of the Rockefeller Museum's main courtyard, but the photographs in Magness' book, _The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls_, appear to have been taken somewhere else. I can only assume that this is what Ed Cook was referring to when he said: >"Aren't these things on display in the Amman Museum? If they've been out >in the open, on display, for 50 years or so, wouldn't this prolonged >exposure confound any forensic examination of their surface?" I too had this thought but one would hope that some of the compounds from the ink or the tanning process would be still be present in the plaster if these items had actually been used as writing tables. If de Vaux had not found two inkwells in or near loc. 30 he probably would not have been so quick to describe loc. 30 as a scriptorium, but as Magness has noted: "the only way to determine what its use was, at lest in its last phase of occupation, is on the basis of the artifacts found inside it" (BAR 24/1, pp.36). For a rather interesting discussion on the various interpretations of loc. 30 and its plaster structures see "The Enigma of Qumran: Four Archaeologists Assess the Site." BAR 24/1 (1998):24-37,78-84. Best, Ian -- Ian Werrett PhD Candidate St Mary's College University of St Andrews ----------------------------------------------------------------- University of St Andrews Webmail: http://webmail.st-andrews.ac.uk _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
