Part 8 (1/2)
”You're kidding.” Jake sounded shocked.
”Of course.” I stood and gathered our mugs. ”Charlie gets quite maudlin when he drinks. More tea?”
Jake smiled and held out his mug. ”Please.”
When I returned, Jake was working a kink from his neck. I thought of a goose.
”Let me get this straight,” I said. ”Yadin talked freely about the palace skeletons, but never once discussed the cave bones publicly?”
”The only mention I've ever found of Cave 2001 is in coverage of Yadin's press conference following the second season's excavation. In the Jerusalem Post Jerusalem Post on March 28, 1965, Yadin is quoted as lamenting that only twenty-eight skeletons had been found at Masada.” on March 28, 1965, Yadin is quoted as lamenting that only twenty-eight skeletons had been found at Masada.”
”Twenty-five from the cave, and three from the northern palace.”
”If it was twenty-five.”
I rolled that around in my head.
”Who did Yadin think these cave burials were?”
”Jewish zealots.”
”Based on what?”
”Two things. a.s.sociated artifacts, and similarity of the skulls to a type unearthed in the Bar Kochba caves in Nahal Hever. At the time, those burials were thought to be Jews killed in the second Jewish revolt against Rome.”
”Were they?”
”Turned out the bones were Chalcolithic.”
Mental Rolodex. Chalcolithic. Stone and copper tools. Fourth millennium B.C.E. B.C.E., after the Neolithic, before the Bronze Age. Way too early for Masada.
”Physical anthropologists hold little confidence in skull typing,” I said.
”I know. But that was Haas's conclusion, and Yadin accepted it.”
There was a long, thoughtful silence. I broke it.
”Where are the bones now?”
”Allegedly, everyone's back in the ground at Masada.”
”Allegedly?”
Jake's mug clunked the tabletop.
”Let me fast-forward a bit. In his popular book, Yadin touched briefly on the human remains recovered in Cave 2001. Shlomo Lorinez, an ultra-Orthodox member of the Knesset, read the thing and went ballistic. He'd missed the one press report back in sixty-five in which the skeletons were mentioned. Lorinez mounted a protest in the Knesset, charging that cynical archaeologists and medical researchers were violating Jewish law. He demanded to know where the remains were, and insisted on proper burial for the defenders of Masada.
”Major public controversy. The religious affairs minister and the chief rabbis proposed placement of all Masada bones in a Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Yadin objected, and suggested interment of the three palace skeletons at Masada, but reburial of the Cave 2001 folks in the cave in which they'd been found. Yadin was trumped, and in July of sixty-nine, all remains went back into the ground near the tip of the Roman ramp.”
I was finding this very confusing. Why would Yadin have opposed reburial of the cave bones on the Mount of Olives? Why suggest reburial of the palace skeletons on Masada, but return of the cave bones to the cave? Was it a question of keeping the cave folks off holy ground? Or was he uncomfortable with the idea of the cave folks and the palace folks sharing the same grave?
Charlie broke my chain of thought with a line from ”Hey, Big Spender.”
”Did anything else turn up with the cave bones?” I asked.
”A lot of domestic utensils. Cooking pots, lamps, basketry.”
”Suggesting the caves had been lived in.”
Jake nodded.
”By whom?”
”It was wartime. Jerusalem was toast. All sorts of refugees might have fled to high ground. Some might have lived apart from the zealot community.”
Ah-hah. ”So those in the cave could have been non-Jews?”
Solemn nod.
”Not what Israel wanted to publicize.”
”Not at all. Masada had become its sacred emblem. Jews making their last stand, choosing suicide over surrender. The site was a metaphor for the new state. Until recently, the Israeli military held special ceremonies inducting troops into their elite units on top of Masada.”
”Ouch.”
”According to Tsafrir, the cave bones were in disarray, with clothing fragments intermingled among them, as though the bodies had been dumped,” Jake said. ”That's not a typical pattern for Jewish burial.”
Birdie chose that moment to hop onto my lap.
I made introductions. Jake scratched the cat's ear, then picked up his thread.
”To date, the Israel Exploration Society has published five volumes on the Masada excavation. Volume three notes that the caves were surveyed and excavated, but, aside from that, and a map with an outline drawing of Cave 2001, there's no mention anywhere of anything found at that locus, human or material.”
Jake leaned back and picked up his mug. Lowered it.
”Wait. Change that. There is an addendum at the back of volume four. A carbon-fourteen report on textiles found in the cave. That testing was done years later. But that's it.”
Displacing Birdie to the floor, I slid Kessler's photo from below Jake's Masada diagram.
”So where does this guy fit in?”
”That's where things get really weird. Cave 2001 contained the remains of one fully intact skeleton completely separate from the intermingled bones. The individual was supine, with hands crossed, head turned to the side.” Jake impaled me with a look. ”Not a single report mentions that articulated skeleton.”
”I a.s.sume you learned about the skeleton from this same volunteer who worked the cave back in the sixties.”
Jake nodded.