Dr. Gibson inside Tomb |
In the spring of 2000, Archaeologist Shimon Gibson happened upon a recently-robbed tomb in the Hinom Valley of Jerusalem. The ancient valley of Hinnom (known to Christians as Gehenna or Biblical Hell) has been a Jewish burial ground for almost 3,000 years. Dr. Gibson was accompanied by a group of student volunteers led by Professor James D. Tabor from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Upon discovery of the open tomb, Gibson recognized a rare opportunity and took advantage of the occasion to salvage what might be left of the artifacts inside. Due to religious sensitivities, tombs in Jerusalem are never opened—except by robbers. Gibson immediately notified Boas Zissu of the Israel Antiquities Authority who responded to the scene with the necessary equipment. As the combined team began a salvage operation that would last well into the night, this small group of students from UNC-Charlotte found themselves on the adventure of a lifetime.
Ossuary Fragments for Reconstruction |
The first century CE tomb had contained at least 20 ossuaries (stone bone boxes), many of which had been stolen or broken by the robbers. With the use of lanterns, the team collected and catalogued fragments of funerary materials—pottery, glass, and stone. Large fragments of the stone ossuaries (broken for their decorations or inscriptions) were gathered for later reconstruction.
The tomb’s most important find, however, remained in one locus, apparently over-looked by the looters. While measuring and drawing the plan of the tomb, Gibson examined this singular locus and discovered the skeletal remains, along with carbonized textiles and human hair—finds totally unique among the more than one thousand tombs known to the archaeological community in Jerusalem.
TFBA Director, Sheila Bishop, applied for an export license with the Israel Antiquities Authority and transported small samples of the textiles to the United States for Carbon 14 Dating at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. This lab is one of the three labs that dated the Shroud of Turin, showing it to be of medieval manufacture— a fact that scholars and scientists have argued for years. Results of tests on the Jerusalem shroud showed it to be from the mid-first century CE.
Meanwhile, Dr. Gibson assembled a team of forensic scientists from The Science and Antiquities Group at The Hebrew University and several other institutions in order to examine the textiles and the anthropological remains. The team also hoped to determine why organic materials were recoverable in this specific locus when no organic remains were found in the adjoining loci. According to the scientists, a naturally occurring fissure in the soft limestone allowed ground water to penetrate beneath the sealed locus, thus creating a microclimate conducive to preserving the human hair and textiles.
Orit Shamir of the Israel Antiquities Authority analyzed the shroud textile, which was carbonized and fragmentary. Preliminary examination showed that is was made from wool rather than linen, as might have been expected. The weave of the fabric was a simple one-on-one loop but atypical, which suggests that it may have been imported and may be indicative of an individual of wealth or high social status. Scientists have yet to determined whether there were dyes used in the manufacture of this fabric. Though non-Jewish, Nabatean burials from the same period have yielded burial cloths made from not only linen and wool but also leather, providing evidence that burial in shrouds was a custom widespread among Semitic peoples in the region during that time.
Forensic scientist Azriel Gorski of the Hebrew University Science and Antiquity Group examined several strands of the hair. Gorski concluded that the individual had been someone of good standing who could afford good grooming. The hair was clean, well kept, and free of lice, which was a problem for many at that time.
Physical anthropologist Debbie Sklar analyzed small samples of bone. While the samples were too small to determine age and sex, she detected signs of “pathology” on some of the bones. Carney Matheson, an Australian expert in DNA analysis of archaeological remains, conducted DNA tests and was able to determine that the body was that of an adult male. Further tests indicated that though the individual was clean and well kept, he suffered from tuberculosis and Hansen’s disease at time of death, both of which were rare diseases among Jews of the period.
It is not known why the individual was not reburied in one of the 20 ossuaries. While the practice of secondary burial in ossuaries was widespread at the time, the relatively large number of individuals found lying outside ossuaries in other extended-family tombs from this period implies that reburial was not practiced by all but was rather an individual decision. Ossuaries from the tomb were reconstructed by JAFU staff members and student volunteers under the direction of Noel Siever and are now housed at the offices of the Israel
Antiquities Authority.
Ossuary Restoration at the offices of JAFU |
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Seiver and students restoring ossuary |
Detail of Ossuary Design |
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Due to the importance of the find, its discovery was not immediately announced to the public pending official publication of scientific material. The Jerusalem Shroud is the subject of a documentary produced by Raymond Bruce of CTVC in the UK, which will air on the Discovery Channel in the spring of 2003.
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Shimon Gibson with students from University of North Carolina-Charlotte:
Top (L-R): Dr. Shimon Gibson, Dr. James Tabor, Vickie Powell, and the late Joe Peeples of the Jerusalem Historical Society,
Bottom (L-R): Mark Williams, Jeff Poplin, Kaitlyn Cotanch, Lee Hutchinson |
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Science and Antiquities Group: http://kuvin.huji.ac.il/sci_ant/
University of North Carolina-Charlotte: http://www.uncc.edu/jdtabor/
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