When I was writing God’s Library, I did a good bit of reading on the Shroud of Turin. I used it as an example for which radiocarbon dating was ideally suited, namely a situation in which the date of an object is disputed by a matter of centuries. In the case of the Shroud, samples analyzed at three different labs agreed in determining that the Shroud was a product of the thirteenth or fourteenth century and not the first century.1
But I had to wade through quite a few publications of widely varying quality to find reliable information about the Shroud. Toward the end of my research I was lucky to be directed to Andrea Nicolotti’s Sindone: Storia e leggende di una reliquia controversa (Turin, 2015). This book is the most comprehensive overview of the historical sources and scientific work on the Shroud of Turin, and it has since been translated into English as The Shroud of Turin: The History and Legends of the World’s Most Famous Relic (Baylor University Press, 2020). I highly recommend it as a starting point for people interested in the Shroud.
A more recent book that takes a deeper dive into what we might call the early reception history of the Shroud is Andrew R. Casper, An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy (Penn State University Press, 2021).
Casper’s book focuses on the way in which people understood the Shroud in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (chiefly as “as an artful relic crafted by God…a divine painting attributed to God’s artistry”).
These two books provide rich and helpful discussions of the Shroud.
See P.E. Damon, D.J. Donahue, B.H. Gore et al., “Radiocarbon Dating of the Shroud of Turin,” Nature 337 (1989) 611–615 and H.E. Gove, “Dating the Turin Shroud—An Assessment,” Radiocarbon 32 (1990) 87–92. ↩︎
In an earlier post, I mentioned that the museum at Ostia Antica has recently reopened after a long period of closure (I can’t recall now how many years it has been closed). I had a chance to visit last week, and the renovations are very impressive.
The first upgrade, which was especially noticeable on a hot August day, is air conditioning. So the museum is a nice break from the heat if you are visiting Ostia in the summer.
Many of the pieces on display are the same ones that were present before the renovations, but the presentation and the didactics are much improved.
The view from the entrance is dominated by a bold presentation of the remains of the inscription from the city gate (the Porta Romana).
As the image shows, the inscription is highly fragmentary. The supplied text into which the fragments are fitted is based on the reconstruction of Fausto Zevi, who supplies the name “Cicero” as the authority behind the construction of the city walls of Ostia. The use of Zevi’s reconstruction in the display is somewhat unfortunate because its speculative elements are impossible to verify, as Mary Jane Cuyler has argued.
This room (Civic Spaces) contains some of Ostia’s “greatest hits,” including the Winged Victory from the city gate, the statue dedicated by Gaius Cartilius Poplicola at the temple of Hercules (off to the right, out of the picture, neatly placed in front of a wall with an image of Poplicola’s funerary monument), and the remains of the Fasti Ostienses (also not in the picture), which provide lists of local magistrates and important events from 49 BCE to 175 CE.
The rooms are arranged in different ways. Some are chronological (The Republican Age), but most are thematic (e.g., Imperial Power, Religions and Cults, Funerary Contexts, etc.). The pieces selected for exhibition are on the whole excellent, although I did not see anything from the synagogue at Ostia, which was a little disappointing, since the building has yielded some fascinating finds.
One thing that stood out across several rooms was the quantity and quality of wall paintings. I tend to associate well preserved frescos with sites other than Ostia, but there are some fine examples on display at the museum with lots of detail and vibrant color preserved (although I don’t know how much conservation/restoration has taken place). A couple examples are below.
The label in the museum display describes this figure as Thanatos, but given the pretty obviously sleepy facial expression, I might opt for Hypnos. But who knows? Homer said they were twins (Iliad 16.672, διδυμάοσιν).
Another striking example is a fresco showing a man who appears to be sprinkling incense on a fire in front of a larger-than-life Hercules:
Fresco depicting an offering to Hercules, Via Laurentina Necropolis, tomb 27 (Museo Ostiense, inv. 155); image: Brent Nongbri 2024
I was probably most impressed with the material from Isola Sacra. The exhibits show many interesting pieces, including the terracotta plaques that displayed various professions and were posted on the outsides of tombs:
Terracotta relief showing a midwife at work, Isola Sacra Necropolis, tomb 100 (Museo Ostiense, inv. 5203); image: Brent Nongbri 2024
There is also a very nice display of the material from the tomb of Julia Procula, who seems to have come from a family of physicians. The tomb contained a large statue of Julia Procula, as well as inscriptions and other sculpture. The image below shows a bust of Hippocrates atop an inscribed pillar (notice the last line of the inscription in the background: ἀρχιατρός).
Bust of Hippocrates on a pillar inscribed in Greek, Isola Sacra Necropolis, tomb 106 (Museo Ostiense, inv. 98); image: Brent Nongbri 2024
“Life is short, but we mortals lie dead underground for a long time. It’s the fate of all to endure god’s dispensation whenever it overtakes us.”
The opening words recall the first of the aphorisms attributed to Hippocrates: Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή… (“Life is short, the craft is long…”).
Also in the Isola Sacra room is the so-called Sarcophagus of the Muses, which will get its own post in due course.
I could go on; there are many fascinating artifacts on display. It’s always worthwhile to visit Ostia if you’re in Rome, and the new museum is just one more thing to look forward to when you come.
There is also a newly produced guide to the museum for sale in the bookstore. It’s quite small, but it has color photos and reproduces a good portion of the didactic materials in the museum (in Italian and English).
Following up on my post about a relief showing writers at desks at Ostia, I should also mention a second artifact found in the same region. It is a relief uncovered in the nineteenth century at Portus (just north of Ostia) and now in the Torlonia Collection.
Relief from Portus showing the offloading of a ship at port (Torlonia Collection inv. 428); image source: ostia-antica.org
The relief shows two people unloading cargo from a ship, while workers at the dock or warehouse keep records. One worker is seated on a chair at a desk with either tablets or a codex, apparently writing with the right hand.1
This relief is, to the best of my knowledge, not securely dated. The catalog of the Torlonia collection describes the date in very loose terms: “The present sculpture seems to date back to the 3rd century CE.”2
I don’t know the exact circumstances of its discovery, and I haven’t had the chance to see the relief in person. It would be nice to be able to establish a more precise date for this piece. If it is in fact from the third century, it would constitute quite early visual evidence for the use of desks for writing.
This is the description of Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), plate XXVI: “Relief in Greek marble (m. 0.43 x 0.33), found at Porto, now in the Torlonia Museum. Visconti, Catalogo, n. 338. Wine is being unloaded from a merchantman. The three seated figures may be a tabularius with two adiutores, recording the cargo on wax tablets in the form of a book. The leading porter receives a ? tally as he passes. Perhaps a customs scene.” Meiggs uses the catalog number from Visconti’s catalog of 1880. The relief is number 336 in Pietro Ercole Visconti, Catalogo del Museo Torlonia di scuture antiche (Rome, 1876), p. 170. ↩︎
Carlo Lodovico Visconti, I monumenti del Museo Torlonia (Rome: 1885), p. 304: “Sembra doversi riferire la presente scultura al III. secolo dell’era volgare.” ↩︎
The museum at the archaeological park at Ostia Antica has reopened after many years of closure for renovations. The results are quite impressive, and I hope to have a chance to post some reflections about the museum itself soon, but I thought I would highlight a piece that has interested me for some time and which I was quite excited to see in person. It is a relatively small marble relief that is roughly square (51 cm wide, 49 cm high):
The relief was reportedly found at the Aula della Are in 1938. Its date of production is not clear. It is typically assigned to the late fourth century (as it is described in the current museum didactic material). Eric Turner, however, described it in the following way: “The date is not earlier than late ii A.D., and may be iv-v A.D.”1
What is being depicted in the relief is also open to debate. There have been a number of different suggestions: A lecture at a philosophical school, a Christian speaker whose words are being recorded by scribes, a courtroom or other scene with stenographers (shorthand writers), or an auction. The function of the relief is also unknown. Guido Calza suggested that it was the shop sign of a professional copyist. No interpretation commands wide assent.
Among all these unknowns, one thing that is clear is that the two figures in the lower left and the lower right corners are seated at tables or desks, and they are writing in what look like large sets of bound wooden tablets (although parchment or papyrus codices are also possible interpretations).
Ostia Antiquarium, inv. 130, detail showing a writer at work while seated at a table or desk; image source: Brent Nongbri, 2024
This piece is thus generally acknowledged as one of the earliest depictions of writers at work at desks. It is commonly believed that writers did not regularly use desks, tables, or stands before this period. Theodor Birt’s statement is typical: “In antiquity, people did not write on desks.”2 I am skeptical of this view for a variety of reasons, but it is the consensus.
The classic treatment of the question is Bruce Metzger, “When Did Scribes Begin to Use Desks?”3 At the time Metzger raised the issue (the late 1950s), the common knolwedge was that writers did not use desks until rather late in the medieval period. Metzger gathered data (including this relief) to show that the use of desks by writers in the premodern Mediterranean went back as least as early as the fourth century, and his broader conclusion is surely correct: “In seeking to discover when it was that scribes began to use a writing desk, one must not imagine that the habits of all scribes changed suddenly. The transition from the custom of writing on one’s lap to the custom of using a desk or table must have taken place gradually.”
It is good to be able to have a close look at this interesting relief, which is an important piece of evidence in connection to this question.
Eric G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987), p. 6, note 17. The exact archaeological context in which the relief was found does not appear to have been discussed in print in any detail. ↩︎
Theodor Birt, Die Buchrolle in der Kunst (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907), p. 209: “Im Altertum schrieb man nicht auf Pulten.” ↩︎
I cite from the chapter published in Bruce M. Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 123-137, but Metzger notes that the chapter is drawn from material originally published in different outlets in the late 1950s. ↩︎
I’ve had occasion recently to do a bit of work on a couple of Cicero’s letters to Atticus. Both the old text of Tyrrell and Purser and the more recent text of Shackleton Bailey are wonderful resources, but there are a couple of places where I wanted to check the manuscripts. About half of the most important manuscripts are available online. A set of links seems like it would be useful. Among the primary witnesses, there are:
W= a set of dispersed folia from an 11th century codex as follows:
Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek M.p.misc.f.21, not online
Würzburg, Diözesanarchiv, Fragm. Würzburg, St. Ulrich, not online
Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 29220(20, not online
Among the witnesses usually considered less important for establishing the critical text:
b = Berlin, Staatsbibliothek 168 (15th century) not online d = Florence, BML Edili 217 (15th century) not online m = Berlin Staatsbibliothk Ham. 166 (1408, copied by Poggio) s = Vatican, Urb. Lat. 322 (15th century)
If I’ve missed the proper links for any of the pieces that I’ve marked as “not online,” I would be grateful for the right links.
I’m not sure when this happened, but the surviving folia of Codex Bobiensis (or Bobbiensis, CLA 4 465) have been photographed and the images made available online here. Codex Bobiensis is a copy of the Gospel According to Mark and the Gospel According to Matthew in Latin, probably produced in North Africa at some point in the late fourth or early fifth century.
The surviving leaves of this codex present a fascinating set of early variant readings in Mark and Matthew that formed the topic of a 2021 article by Matthew Larsen.
I think a copy of Gerald Lankester Harding’s photographs of the Cave 1Q manuscripts as they were being excavated in 1949 may be at the École biblique in Jerusalem.
The back story: When I was writing an article on the Cave 1Q scrolls a few years ago, I ran into a problem that I just could not solve. Nearly all the evidence I surveyed suggested that there was no sure connection between any of the rolls that Muhammad ed Dhib is said to have found and the cave now known as 1Q. Nearly all the evidence. The one indicator that pointed in another direction was a claim from John Trever. Here is how I put it in the article:
“Trever makes a curiously specific claim regarding one fragment of this text: ‘A small piece of 1QSb (Col. II) also was sifted from the debris’ during the excavation of Cave 1. I can find no corroboration of Trever’s statement, but if it were correct, this fragment would constitute a material connection between Cave 1 and the three scrolls associated with Muhammad ed-Dhib. Thus, it would be very useful to see if Trever’s statement can be somehow confirmed or disconfirmed.”
I added the following long footnote that invoked Harding’s photos as a possible path forward:
“In theory, Trever’s claim could be either confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to photographs taken by Harding at the time of the excavation itself in 1949. As Harding wrote in DJD I: ‘Inscribed fragments were mounted between glass each day as they were found, and photographed on the spot for safe record’ (Gerald Lankester Harding, ‘Introductory: The Discovery, the Excavation, Minor Finds,’ in Barthélemy and Milik, Qumran Cave I, 3–7, at 7). While a very small group of these photographs seems to have been published (see the bibliography in Barthélemy and Milik, Qumran Cave I, 43), I have been unable to locate the original copies of this set of excavation photographs. The Jordanian Department of Antiquities did not respond to my queries concerning these photographs. Stephen Reed reports that the John C. Trever Collection of photographs includes some of Harding’s images (see Stephen A. Reed, Marilyn J. Lundberg, and Michael B. Phelps, The Dead Sea ScrollsCatalogue: Documents, Photographs, and Museum Inventory Numbers [RBS 32; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994] 451–52). According to the descriptions Reed provides, the Harding photos in the Trever collection seem to contain a mix of excavated and purchased materials, so these may not be the excavation photos that Harding mentioned. I contacted James Trever, the son of John Trever, in July 2020 to try to obtain copies of this material, but he was unable to locate these photographs or negatives. Among the PAM photographs, at least one sequence seems to derive from Harding (PAM 40.433–40.552). Although the date given for the photographs is April 1953, these images appear to be photographs of earlier photographs by Harding (PAM 40.508 is actually labeled “MR LANCASTER HARDINGS (sic) PHOTOGRAPH A1”). Again, these contain a mix of excavated and purchased materials, and none of them seems to match the published photographs mentioned in DJD I, 43. The recovery of Harding’s excavation photographs is a desideratum.”
The early photos of the Dead Sea Scrolls present a number of challenges. Even guides by good scholars can be misleading or just wrong (here’s a case from Tov and Pfann, Companion Volume to the Dead Sea Scrolls Microfiche Edition, 2nd rev. ed; Leiden: Brill, 1995).
The Harding photos said to be a part of Trever’s collection continue to escape me. Trevor’s photos are now at the University of Chicago, and I have been assured that copies of Harding’s photos are not among them.
But, while digging around for photographs of Muhammed ed Dhib over the last couple weeks, I came across a piece of evidence that I somehow missed while conducting my search for copies of Harding’s Cave 1Q excavation photos: It may be the case that the École biblique in Jerusalem holds copies of these pictures. In the first volume of the Qumran excavation report, the following note accompanies one of the photographic sources (Lot 8, on p. 404):
“Date et circonstances. M. Lankester Harding, alors directeur des Antiquités de Jordanie, a représenté pendant les campagnes de fouilles à Qumrân, le service des Antiquités qui patronnait les travaux. Bon photographe, il a pris une centaine de clichés de synthèse, en général de bonne qualité. Dépôt. Les archives photographiques de Lankester Harding ont été déposées aux archives photographiques du service des Antiquités de Jordanie. Les négatifs ont été rangés dans des classeurs à couverture grise et les contacts dans des classeurs à couverture rouge. Une copie de toute la série avait été donnée par l’auteur à l’École biblique, où les clichés ont été intégrés aux albums de la photothèque. Toute une série de documents concernant les manuscrits et les circonstances de leur découverte a été réalisée par Lankester Harding. Les documents ont été déposés aux archives photographiques du service des Antiquités de Jordanie où leur numéro d’inventaire est précédé dans les registres de la lettre A. Puisqu’ils ne concernent pas les travaux de chantier, nous ne les avons pas intégrés à notre liste; cependant, nous en donnons ici la liste, à titre indicatif A 1 393-1 492 (objets trouvés avec les manuscrits), A 1 493-1 500 et 1 536-1537 (manuscrits enveloppés dans des toiles de lin), A 1 538-1 539, A 1 652-1 672, A 2 069-2 077, A 2 341-2 353 (objets trouvés avec les manuscrits).”1
The 95 photos from the Harding collection that are individually described in this volume are almost all from the 1950s excavation, with just 12 from the 1949 campaign. But it sounds like there is a reasonably good chance that copies of the daily manuscript photos from the 1949 excavations might be found at the École biblique photo archive. Let us hope so.
Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Alain Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumrân et de Aïn Feshkha I: Album de photographies (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 404. ↩︎
Thanks to Asaf Gayer for pointing out that there is another excellent photo of Muhammad ed-Dhib to add to the small group of photos of the alleged finders of the first scrolls that I discussed in an earlier post. This picture was probably taken in 1963 and appears in the Wadi ed-Daliyeh excavation volume (Muhammad ed Dhib is identified as the man on the left; the fellow on the right holding the bat is not identified by name):
Paul W. Lapp and Nancy L. Lapp (eds.), Discoveries in the Wâdī ed-Dâliyeh (American Schools of Oriental Research, 1974), plate 102
Muhammad ed-Dhib was among the Bedouin who worked for the excavators, as Lapp describes in the summary of work undertaken in the caves at Wadi ed-Daliyeh in 1963:
“A word must be said about the unbelievable Ta‘amireh who worked for us. Their strength was amazing. They worked at least twice as hard as any workmen I have ever seen on any previous dig. From the first day we could see that their working code disgraced any slacker, and the lack of a foreman to curb their fiercely independent spirits was a distinct advantage. They scrambled up rocky slopes in less than two minutes like goats, when it took the best of us fifteen minutes of cautious climbing to do the same. There were no misgivings on the part of our best men when faced with the task of carrying out heavy pots a meter high and nearly as wide to the car five kilometers away. One of these was the famous Muhammed edh-Dhib Hassan, who began the search for manuscripts by throwing a stone into Qumran Cave I in 1947 (and thus contributed indirectly to the discovery of the Samaria Papyri).”
It is interesting that the finder of the first scrolls is identified as “Muhammed edh-Dhib Hassan.” This is also how Frank Cross identified him in his report, “The Discovery of the Samaria Papyri,” Biblical Archaeologist 26.4 (1963) 109-121, at 114, note 4. In The Untold Story of Qumran, Trever gave his name as “Muhammed Ahmed el-Hamed, whose nickname is ‘Edh-Dhib’.” Trever also followed up on Cross’s version version of the name: “As a result of the addition of ‘Hassan’ to Edh-Dhib’s name in reports from Jerusalem during 1963 (e.g., BA XXVl:4 [December, 1963], p. 114, n. 4), I asked Mr. Kiraz to check Muhammed’s identity card. On July 21, 1964, Kiraz visited him at his camp near el-‘Azariyeh (Bethany) and examined the card, which is numbered 5941/218342 and dated in Bethlehem on October 23, 1956. There his name is clearly given as transliterated here” (Trever, The Untold Story, p. 195, note 9).
If others are aware of additional photographs of Muhammad ed Dhib, I would be happy to learn about them!
Thanks to Alexander Schick for pointing out the digitization of photos in the Duke University Archives related to the exhibition at Duke of the Dead Sea Scrolls that were in the possession of Mar Samuel in 1950. There are some excellent photos in this collection:
I’m also reminded of the film footage of William Brownlee and John Trever with the scrolls in Jerusalem in the very early days after the discovery of the first scrolls. Again, thanks to Alexander Schick for pointing out this footage in a YouTube talk by Orit Rosengarten. The archival footage begins at 14:31:
In my last post I unpacked the story of what seems to be the earliest published photograph of the alleged finders of the first Dead Sea Scrolls:
“The Bible’s Oldest Texts,” Picture Post, vol. 60, no. 6, 8 August 1953 (p. 32)
This picture was taken in 1951 by Richmond Brown, and published (I think) for the first time in this 1953 Picture Post article. This picture is part of the photo archive of the École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem. The Picture Post simply calls the men in the picture “two shepherds.” In the photographic catalog of the École biblique, one of the men is identified as the person who is said to have first discovered the cave, Muhammad ed Dhib:
J.-B. Humbert and A. Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumrân et de Aïn Feshkha I (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), p. 204
But from this caption, it’s not clear which person is Muhammed ed Dhib. Another version of this image appears in an exhibition catalog produced by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It offers a more detailed caption:
Gary & Stephanie Loveless Present Dead Sea Scrolls & the Bible: Ancient Artifacts, Timeless Treasures (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2012), p. 70
Alongside the photo is the description, “Featured here are two of the men responsible for this great discovery, Muhammed ‘ed-Dib (the wolf)’ Ahmad el-Hamid and Jum’a Muhammed Khalil.” Another name is added, but it’s not clear which person is which. I do not know where the anonymous author found this extra information, and I cannot confirm or disconfirm its accuracy.
But we can compare this image to other images. A second photo was published a couple years after the Picture Post article. This picture is in Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York Viking Press, 1955):
Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Viking Press, 1955), Plate I
Permission to reproduce the photo is credited to William L. Reed, director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. As far as I can see, there is no information about the date when this picture was taken. Reed was a participant in the expedition to locate manuscript caves in 1952, so that is a likely timeframe for this photograph. The man on the right in this image is identified as Muhammad ed Dhib, and he appears to be the same man as the man on the right in the École biblique image (based on the clothing), but the man on the left seems to me to be a different person from the one on the left in the École biblique image.
Perhaps the most frequently reproduced photo of the alleged discoverer(s) is the one below, here as it appears in Weston Fields, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Full History (2009):
Weston Fields, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Full History Volume 1, 1947-1960 (Brill, 2009), p. 25.
The date given in Fields (“about 1950”), seems to be incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, the earliest form of the photo was published by John Trever in The Untold Story of Qumran (1965):
John C. Trever, The Untold Story of Qumran (Revell, 1965), p. 104
So, the caption dates the photograph not to 1950 but to 1962. And in this cropping, we see that the picture also included the two men who had conducted an interview with these Bedouin. Trever credits the photo as “courtesy Anton Kiraz.” This makes me wonder if this date is also not quite right. For Trever seems to have received this photograph in a letter from Kiraz that was sent 10 December 1961. The letter contains what seems to be a description of this picture:
“Enclosed you will find a photo of the Bedouins Muhammad ed Deeb and Jum’a when they came to my home for the tape recording. The man beside me is Jum’a Muham[m]ad and the other one standing near Mr. Docmac is Muham[m]ad ed Deeb. The photo was taken on the roof of my home after lunch. You also find enclosed an approximate bill of the expenses.”1
I’m fairly sure I recognize Anton Kiraz on the far left. So, the figures in the picture are identified as (left to right): Anton Kiraz, Jum’a Muhammad, Muhammad ed Dhib, and Judeh Docmac (the headmaster of the Lutheran School in Bethlehem, who helped with the interview).
The results of this interview and other interviews with these men form the backbone of Trever’s account of the discovery of the first scrolls. Yet, as Trever notes, the stories they told in 1961 and 1962 “seemed irreconcilable at several points with the first accounts given in 1949 and 1952. The earlier accounts had also been based on direct contacts with the same Bedouins and had the advantage of being nearer the actual events.”2
But comparing the École biblique photo and the Reed photo on the one hand with Trever’s photo on the other, I’m not sure it’s absolutely clear that these are in fact “the same Bedouins.”
I’m not aware of other early photos of the people said to be involved in the discovery of the Cave 1Q scrolls, but I would be happy to be informed if anyone knows of any.
George A. Kiraz (ed.), Anton Kiraz’s Dead Sea Scroll Archive (Gorgias Press, 2005), 88-90, quotation at 90. ↩︎
John C. Trever, The Untold Story of Qumran (Revell, 1965), 171. ↩︎
Variant Readings 