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In the recently published DSD 14:2 (2007) I made some archaeological observations on the aqueducts of Qumran. A condition imposed by the editor was that Magness should be allowed to respond in the same volume. I agreed on condition that I could briefly respond to her response. I was not informed that Magness was then to be allowed to respond to my response, to have, as she chose to entitle it, a 'Final Response'. I would thus like here to respond, again briefly, to her 'Final Response'. In my article I noted that de Vaux had identified the 'main' aqueduct as being free-standing on an earlier floor. For a number of reasons this could not have been so and I will briefly summarise some of these. The aqueduct ran through, and took up the complete width of, the doorways between L114/L115 and L115/116. If the aqueduct had co-existed with the earlier floors steps would have been essential to gain access from L114 into L115 and from L115 into L116. Magness can offer no evidence for such steps because no such steps existed, or needed to exist. Magness quotes de Vaux about the raising of the walls of the round cistern but ignores his previous sentence the aqueduct "first filled the round cistern 110 and the two neighbouring cisterns 117, 118, which were already in existence during the preceding period" (De Vaux Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 9). Although he does not explicitly discuss the walls of the two pools 117 and 118 he clearly understood that their sidewalls also had to be raised when the main aqueduct was built. In his notes for L117, 20/2/55, he observed "On the east side, at a depth of around 1.5m a northsouth wall appears extending along the east side. This must be the original (my italics) wall of the cistern". (see Pl 237). As the original inlet for the cistern was considerably lower than that from the main aqueduct it is clear that the top five steps (those with a dividing baulk) were added when the sides of the pool were raised. The sides of L 118 were also raised with three additional steps built over the original sedimentation pool 119 (see Humbert and Chambon Fouilles Plan XVII), the filling in of which required its replacement with L119 (bis). The aqueduct could not technically have been built above the floor. Its side walls are only one stone wide and have no outer 'face' and could only have been built as retaining walls for a sub-floor channel as any one with long, hands on, archaeological familiarity of a site such as Hasmonean/Herodian Jericho would know. Magness continues to insist that "the walls of the main aqueduct apparently did rise above the floors of some of the rooms at Qumran" although she does not, as I challenged her to, produce any examples from Hasmonean of Herodian sites of free-standing aqueducts running through already built-up areas where they would have been a constant annoying impediment to movement around the site, even more so as the Qumran aqueduct would have had running water in it on only a very few days in the year. Magness suggests "that the tops of the walls of the aqueduct are the result of later additions". This is a desperate argument as it was the original aqueduct which completely blocked the passage through the doors, not any later additions. The main aqueduct must be dated by the pottery found in 114. It makes no difference whether the arrow showing the direction of Pls 222 and 223 is a mistake of Humbert and Chambon (as Magness argues) or the verbal statement of de Vaux that the pottery was in the 'northwest' is another example of his muddling of east and west (see L54, fn 46, or the description of L123 being to the east of L122, in Pfann's translation of de Vaux's field notes). The pottery predates the aqueduct. The logical time for the building of the main aqueduct would be following destruction caused by the earthquake of 31 BCE. If Magness does not like the presence of spatulate lamps that early (and I would draw attention to de Vaux's comment that "these lamps are rougher in design than true 'Herodian' lamps and are earlier than these") then the aqueduct, and all the pools that could only have been filled after its construction (Ls55-58, 93, 48-9, 71etc) are even later than 31 BCE. Magness, in her first response, accuses me of 'indiscriminately' lumping together Jericho and Qumran. I would point out that Qumran is only c. 14 km south of Jericho, exactly the same distance as Ein -el-Auja is to the north. When the royal estate was looking for additional water sources after the aqueduct from Ein Qelt had been fully exploited it would have surveyed all nearby possibilities north and south. Eventually it built a tortuous aqueduct along the cliff face from Ein Na'aran with an extension tapping Ein el-Auja. It would certainly have been aware that an iron age cistern existed (and probably still gathered some water) in Qumran. Many of the caves surveyed around the QUmran area, both by de Vaux and, more recently, by Patrich and Arubas, have contained scatters of potsherds indicative not of any permanent, or even semi-permanent, occupation but of the sort of temporary camp that shepherds seasonally wandering with their flocks would have left behind. That some of these shepherds supplied the Jericho market is certain; their presence in the area of Qumran was not 'indiscriminate but because of the presence of water for themselves and their animals. The two sites are irretrievably linked economically not indiscriminately lumped together. Magness also accuses me of disregarding or failing to account for a number of features. I would remind her that my article was entitled 'Some Archaeological Observations on the Aqueducts of Qumran'. It did not purport to look at all the features of the site. Some of these I had dealt with in a preliminary internet article from 2004 http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Stacey_Qumran_Light_of_Recent_Publications.htm (although I have since revised some of the ideas expressed there). But I will briefly cover some of the features she raises. She refers to 'the large number (and large sizes) of the miqva'ot relative to the size of the settlement'. She has clearly defined all the pools at Qumran as miqva'ot and then used her own definition as proof that they are an unusual sectarian feature. There is no certainty that all stepped pools were necessarily used as miqva'ot although they may have the characteristics of such. No one suggest that the large stepped cisterns quarried into the western side of Masada were used as mikva'ot even though they would have met the necessary requirements. Some of the stepped pools at Qumran may have been used some of the time as miqva'ot, others may not have been. What is true is that, following the construction of the 'main' aqueduct, considerable quantities of water could have been garnered and stored. However this water would quite rapidly have evaporated and stagnated. Magness can not 'prove' that all the pools were used as miqva'ot. I can not 'prove' that they had other uses but I would suggest that they could have and probably did ,and that many of these uses would have been seasonal when the water was at its freshest. The available perennial spring water in both Jericho and Ein Gedi was brought to the sites by expensive aqueducts and was used especially for irrigating the balsam and date trees whose products were so profitable (according to ancient sources balsam oil was worth twice its weight in silver) that they made the expense of the enterprise worthwhile. Any use of such expensive water for more mundane, far less profitable, but necessary purposes would have been discouraged and it would have been advantageous to make use of run-off and flood water gathered in Qumran for such purposes. Pottery was definitely made at Qumran and I suggest that the water may also have been used for inter alia 1. initial processing of some of the poorer grade balsam (that made by soaking leaves and prunings in water) that came from Ein Gedi (the final processing would have been carried out in Jericho where "it most probably was a royal (and later state) monopoly since the Hasmoneans and quite certainly under Herod and Roman Rule" (Broshi in DSD14/1 (2007) p.27), 2. watering flocks, 3. tanning (perhaps in the tanks in L 121?), 4. dyeing yarn/wool. All of these activities would have had unpleasant but unavoidable side effects such as smoke or smell, and would have been better conducted at a distance from the Royal palaces. Tanning, in particular, would have left any Jewish workers (not just 'Essenes') ritually impure and in need of a miqva at the end of a days work. Bar-Nathan has shown that the pottery repertoire of Qumran is in no way 'distinctive' from that found in Jericho. It is true that more cylindrical jars have been found in Qumran than have been found at Jericho, Masada and Ein Gedi (http://www.planetnana.co.il/ghadas/season4.htm ) but this provides no proof that Qumran was an esoteric, sectarian settlement. There is no evidence at all that the primary purpose of these jars was the storage of scrolls; they were more likely to have had a specific function in the manufacturing process of balsam oil or date wine, activities specific to the Dead Sea region where the jars have been found. Magness refers to "the large adjacent cemetery (with burials in individual trench graves, not burial caves as at Jericho)". Similar graves, cut into bedrock, have, of course been found in Jerusalem and, by Kenyon, in Jericho and may well represent a method of burying those who were too poor to afford an expensive rock-cut burial cave. Naturally burial caves are better known in the archaeological record because they are more likely to be stumbled upon. The location of second Temple burial caves in the cliffs of Jericho were noticeable before they were ever excavated. However some limited work that I carried out on the edge of a field near Tel es-Sammarat (Hasmonean and Herodian Palaces at Jericho Vol II 226-229) did uncover a late Hellenistic trench grave dug into the marl and there was a huge area in the vicinity in which others could have existed. The Qumran graves were dug into the same Lissan marl and could have been a day's work for two men with picks and shovels and were thus far cheaper to dig than a similar grave laboriously quarried out of the bedrock with a hammer and chisel (at least a week's work for two I would imagine). It would have been cheaper to hurriedly carry a pauper who died in the back-streets of e.g. Jerusalem for burial in Qumran than to find a place to bury him in Jerusalem. Moreover the cemetery, which would have given the occupants of Qumran an income, was ideally situated for any Jews who might have died in Callirhoe (a spa which would have attracted a number of seriously ill people besides Herod) or Machaerus or in Nabatea. Re the animal bone deposits. I have been informed that at least one similar deposit was discovered at Binyanei Hauma. Has this been published? I suggest that Qumran served a number of different purposes over time one of which was as an industrial suburb to the Royal Estate in Jericho. Much of the work carried out there (tanning, dyeing, pottery making, burying the dead etc) was essential but of an unpleasant or even ritually impure nature. It is possible that some, or even all, of the scrolls found in Qumran were geniza deposits. In later periods and upto the present day the depositing of material into a geniza was accompanied by a burial service (indeed today many communities would bury a geniza deposit in a cemetery) so that a degree of impurity is implicit. David A. Stacey
