Wednesday, December 17, 2003

MORE ON THE INSCRIPTIONS AT "ABSALOM'S TOMB" from the Jerusalem Post. Not much in the article is new, but here are some things I don't remember being mentioned before:

[Emile] Puech adds that Absalom's Tomb is also mentioned in the Copper Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as in a 10th-century guidebook found in the 18th century in a Cairo synagogue storeroom.

[Shimon] Gibson says it was common practice for Byzantine monks to take over plundered tombs and retreat into them for solitude.

[...]

When Gibson finally entered the tomb, whose entrance is also nine meters up the wall, he made an additional discovery: a medieval inscription by a Jewish pilgrim.

Although the Jewish inscription is mentioned in an early 20th-century history of the site, Gibson says he was able to make a more accurate survey using 21st-century technology: a tracing made using a plastic sheet and a felt-tip pen.

The inscription, on an inside wall, mentions the name of the pilgrim, who Gibson speculates may have come from Spain.

"[It was] a sort of 'I was here' kind of thing," he says.

Although he believes there is nothing more to be found on the inside of the tomb, Puech suggests that the entire outside of the site should now be surveyed for further inscriptions.


UPDATE (18 December): Some errors in the article are caught here.

UPDATE (19 December): More here.

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