Dear Joe,
In your response to Russell you wrote: >The site [of Qumran] is one of the most inhospital places in the >region for a manor, This is only true without the aqueduct which supplied the settlement with the water which filled its tanks -- and remember that there was more rain water then than now. (There was a BA article which analysed the wood found in the Roman ramp from Masada which indicated 50% more rain. The Dead Sea was higher than it is today, as indicated by, amongst other things, the Madaba Map not representing the Lisan Peninsula.) Once the aqueduct was built the possibilities for the use of the site increased dramatically. But what needs to be clarified is, who built the aqueduct and why? One doesn't use large quantities of life maintaining resources just to build a small religious refuge. And there is no reason to build a manor from scratch if there is no sign of economic potential. The most likely constructors of the aqueduct would seem to me to have been the Hasmonean state itself. Who else could have provided the resources necessary to maintain a crew of workers to excavate the tunnel and sink the filtering storage tank in such an inhospitable place? It is obvious that the location was chosen for some reason worth constructing the aqueduct. Why at Qumran and not some more hospitable place? It didn't offer any natural resources that we know of, either for a religious retreat of a manor. This leaves the most likely reason to have been strategic. As I suggested in my previous post, the site was directly on the coast from Hyrcania, with visual contact with both Jericho and Machaerus and a view of the north end of the sea and its traffic, so it was in a good position as a military observation point. If it was one of those places which Salome Alexandra gave to the high-standing enemies of the Pharisees -- probably, and principally, the Sadducees --, it's not strange that temple related texts could end up at Qumran in a time of crisis, such as the arrival of Pompey threatening the end of the kingdom of God on earth. Once the aqueduct was built, the site's military value lost and the site abandoned, it was available for other uses, given the good supply of fresh water. Hirschfeld points out in his article on Roman Manor Houses that "Herod settled groups of his former military troops or people from elsewhere skilled in warfare" in places near his frontiers. Bar-Adon writes of Ein el-Ghuweir that people "were able to make a living from livestock breeding and the cultivation of medicinal and perfumery herbs and orchards. Also important was the sale of salt and other minerals which were extracted from the Dead Sea at processing plants like those at En-Gedi, `En Feshkha, and Qumran." Ein Feshka and Qumran processing salt and other minerals supplies a commercial reason for the existence of a manor house at Qumran. Perfume and medicine preparation would have been more viable at Qumran than at Ein el-Ghuweir. Further, you ask: >why would >one need so many miqvot and what are all those males doing there? Hirschfeld writes: "The number of ritual baths is not exceptional in comparison with other sites in Judea" to which he supplies to articles in a footnote (#36 p.180): Ronny Reich's Ph.D thesis on mikva'ot, and Amit, "Ritual Baths from the Second Temple Period in the Hebron Mountains". As to all those males, your conclusions as to the demographics of the cemetery are yet to be substantiated. The sexing of the remains from Steckoll's work in the cemetery, performed by Haas and Nathan, needs to be faulted and not pushed aside by attacking Steckoll, along with the analyses by Roehrer-Ertl and Zangenberg's critique of your article dealing with Roehrer-Ertl's conclusions. (Incidentally, Bar-Adon had no problems with Steckoll's results, nor of using Haas to analyse the remains from Ein el-Ghuweir, so I see no reason to dismiss Haas's analysis for Steckoll, with its three women.) >If .. spindle whorls attest to the presence of women then, where are all >the rest of the 'womans artifacts'? The ankle beads, which you exclude (but see Zangenberg QC 9,1 [2000] pp.70-72), are further evidence. >Equating the site with all three major sects, seems implausable, purely on >demographic factors in the cemetery as one knows that the other two sects >were not celibate. Again this leaves us with few choices. Firstly, most cemeteries have an imbalance between male and female graves. And there haven't been enough graves opened to make a general statement about the cemetery's overall demographics. As things stand, your analysis of the celibacy of the "residents" of the cemetery has as yet not been justified and your exclusion of women from the cemetery reads as a priori. The most closely related cemetery, which you see as Ein el-Ghuweir, contained six women. One would expect, because of the similarity, that there would be women at Qumran. I don't think you have made a strong case for exclusion because of beads, nor have you made one for exclusion by non north-south orientation, as one of the graves, #15, in the *middle* of the Ein el-Ghuweir cemetery was east- west with ample space at each end suggesting that it was not intrusive and nothing else indicates that it was extraneous. (It gave Bar-Adon some doubts because of its orientation, but apparently resembled the rest of the graves in other respects. He also mentions another, #17, which is oriented nw-se and graves #8, #9 & #14 have similar orientations.) Ian For private reply, e-mail to "Ian Hutchesson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: "unsubscribe Orion." 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