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Re: Ioudaios postings on Qumran
-> From: "Dale M. Cannon" <dcannon1@mail.nightowl.net>
-> To: orion@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il
-> Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 08:36:53 -0600 (CST)
-> Subject: Re: Ioudaios postings on Qumran
->
-> I remember readin this in BAR -- I was wondring -- exactly (?) how
-> high WAS the water level at that time -- can this be discerned --
-> and was the water high enough that a "port facility" could be easily
-> accessible from Qumran?
->
-> On Sat, 30 Mar 1996, David Jay Kaufman wrote:
->
-> > It is also important to remember that the water level was significa
-> > higher 2000 years ago.
-> >
-> > -David.
-> >
Just south of Qumran, in the area of Ein Fascha, at an abrupt turning in
the roadway, there is a black mark on the cliffside (about an armslength
down from the top of the cliff). This is called the PEF rock. The
Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) from England sent various persons to
Turkish Palestine to do surveys and explorations. Warren and Wilson were
two of the most famous of these persons. Someone, I do not know who, in
1913 I think, made a mark on the cliffside to show the water level.
Today, that mark is a good, I would say, 30 feet above the present
roadway. So it is conceivable that the water level during the Qumran
occupation was quite higher than today, and much closer to the site.
--Jonah Wahrman
P.S. As one travels southward towards Masada,one can easily see the
striations on the terrain to the left of the roadway, visually
indicating the levels of the water of the Dead Sea at various "modern"
periods of time.