On toilets at Qumran

LATRINE LECTURE: Dead Sea Scrolls scholar flushes out mystery. How did Jews in the land of Israel use the toilet some 2,000 years ago? The legendary Dead Sea Scrolls offer some answers (Rossella Tercatin, Jerusalem Post).

How did Jews in the land of Israel use the toilet some 2,000 years ago? What kind of facilities did they build, and which social habits did they develop?

Some answers are offered by the legendary Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeological remains in ancient Qumran, Prof. Jodi Magness, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, revealed in an online lecture on Monday.

[...]

This lecture was on a latrine discovered at the site of Qumran. Another was discovered nearby in 2006. See the links collected here. For other posts on ancient latrines, see here and links.

UPDATE (10 June): Note Joe Lauer's (JoeL) comment to the article:

Although the article states that there was a “lack of a toilet seat at the site” in Qumran, during her very interesting lecture Dr. Magness showed a picture of a toilet seat near the locus of the toilet discovered in the excavation at Qumran led by Roland de Vaux. Dr. Magness found the photo of the toilet seat in the recently published volume on de Vaux’s excavation.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.