In an interesting article, Brian Schultz, "The Qumran Cemetery: 150 Years of Research," DSD 13 (2006) 194-228, here 200-201:
"...Yitzhak Magen apparently excavated an additional nine tombs, as is discernable from before and after pictures of the graves in question. All of them are located in the two southernmost extensions of the main cemetery. Unfortunately, no information whatsoever, even just mentioning that the expedition took place, has been published. This is all the more regrettable, as this is the largest sampling of tombs excavated in the cemetery in the last 30 years, and / could potentially yield important data for a more accurate understanding of the cemetery. [note 34: "The excavated tombs are numbers 813, 823-7, 843, 934 and 946. Since they are totally unpublished, they are not included in any of the totals in this study"]." [These 9 may have been mentioned online, by Joe Zias and me. Schultz evidently wrote before seeing the below publication. But it should be mentioned that the below in insufficient; we await a proper scientific report by physical anthropologist Yossi Naggar.) Yizhak Magen and Yuval Peleg, "Back to Qumran: Ten Years of Excavation and Research, 1993-2004," 55-113 here 98 in [Qumran] The Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpetations and Debates [2002 Brown U. Conf.] ed. K. Galor et al. STDJ 57 Leiden: Brill, 2006: "....We have no intention of becoming involved in the sterile debate concerning the women buried here. [note 151....] If our hypothesis as to the site's nature during the Second Temple period is correct--that it was a fortress and then a pottery factory--the number of women would have been small in any case, with no need to assume that the inhabitants were members of the Essene sect who may have lived a celibate life. [note 152 paraphrase: Josephus notes married and non-married Essenes] During the renewed excavations at the site, nine graves were examined on the cemetery's southern end. All nine were covered with a mound of soil and rocks. Four contained no bones, another four contained the bones of adults ranging in age from twenty-five to sixty, and one contained a wooden coffin, perhaps an indication that it had been brought from outside the site. In two of the graves without bones, there were fourteen jars with lids (fig. 3.17). These contained residue of an organic material, probably date honey [note 153....] The jars date from the end of the second or the beginning of the first century BCE." [Henry Poole in 1855 excavated a burial and found no bones. See Joan Taylor PEQ 2002, 150] Stephen Goranson http://www.duke.edu/~goranson/jannaeus.pdf "Jannaeus, His Brother Absalom, and Judah the Essene" _______________________________________________ g-Megillot mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.McMaster.CA/mailman/listinfo/g-megillot
