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Re: women at Qumran
On Fri, 3 May 1996, Paul V. M. Flesher wrote:
> A brief glance at the photographs of the graves shows all the bones intered
> in dirt (at least so far as I can tell from the xeroxes I am looking at).
> The photographs are ##442-477 in _Fouilles de khirbet Qumran et de Ain
> Feshkha_ vol. 1, J-B Humbert, 1994, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Gottingen. I
> haven't had time to study the field notes for the tombs on pp. 346-352.
Thanks, Paul. It seems to me that this whole discussion could use a
check of the evidence, since it seems to have continued oblivious to the
points I made based on de Vaux's report in _Archaeology and the Dead Sea
Scrolls_. I would conclude from this source that there is *no* connection
between gender and the use of coffins. In addition, as your observation
would probably support, the use of a coffin is probably the exception
rather than the rule, and there is no mention of nails. The evidence of
re-internment seems to be that the bones were found all jumbled up, with
or without a coffin (de Vaux mentions one grave, apparently with male
bones in the "ordered" part of the cemetery, in which the bones of two
individuals were placed, apparently without a coffin, in the loculus of a
standard grave). It seems to me that no pattern exists in the evidence
that de Vaux cites for reburial, and that the reasons we have been given
so far are simply speculation.
A final question: I seem to remember an archaeologist specializing in
human remains in a TV report on the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried
Pompeii commenting that the gender of a human skeleton could not be
determined with absolute certainty. Does anyone know with what certainty
we should be taking the reports of male and female remains in the graves
at Qumran?
David Suter
Saint Martin's College