Academia.eduAcademia.edu
100 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE Vol. 23, No. 1-2 ISSN 0867-8715 November 2015 The Enigma Press, ul. Podedworze 5, 32-031 Mogilany, Poland; E-mail: enigma@post.pl JEFFREY P. EMANUEL Harvard University GIVE THEM A ‘HAND’: THE L51 FIXTURE AT KHIRBET QUMRAN AND ITS ARCHAEO–LITERARY CONTEXT The association of the Essenes with the site of Qumran, and the speciic instructions regarding latrine placement and etiquette in the Temple and War Scrolls, combine to make the toilet practices of the Qumran community an issue with a direct relation to the study of the site and of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The texts most often associated with toilet practices at Qumran present accounts and instructions which are incompatible with each other, while the presence of a cesspit toilet in Locus 51 of Qumran contradicts each of these texts. Further, the diiculties presented by this toilet’s presence are increased by its being taken out of use at the end of Period Ib of the site (31 BC), after which it appears not to have been replaced – a development which suggests either a signiicant change in Qumranites’ beliefs after 31 BC, or a change in the makeup of the community’s inhabitants themselves. 1. INTRODUCTION While the toilet practices of a small Jewish sect living in a remote area of the Judean desert may seem an obscure topic to many audiences, the subject has a direct bearing on the modern study of Khirbet Qumran and of the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS). Discussions of the material and theological culture at Qumran invariably incorporate at least some discussion of the Essenes,1 and toilet practices are an important compo1 * I would like to thank Shaye Cohen (Harvard University) for his conversation about this topic and insightful comments on an earlier draft of this article. All errors and omissions are, as always, solely my own. The term “Essenes” is used within this paper speciically to refer to those Jews to 103 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 nent of any discussion of the Qumran–Essene connection because this unique group, which the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus listed as one of the “three diferent sects among the Jews” in the late Second Temple period (Antiq., 13.5.9:171),2 is deined in part by its members’ unusual relief regimen, which Josephus described in some detail in his Wars of the Jews (2.8.9:147–149). When considering the literary evidence for toilet practices at Qumran, portions of four texts are of primary value. Two of these, the Temple and War Scrolls, come from the DSS corpus, while a third, Deuteronomy 23:13–15, appears to be the scriptural source which the author(s) of the former texts used as their jumping–of point. The fourth is neither biblical nor a potential product of this Dead Sea community, but the aforementioned work of history by Josephus, which provides (among other things) a description of some of the Essenes’ unusual practices. The material evidence most relevant to this subject is an installation uncovered in Locus 51 of Khirbet Qumran, which the excavator, Fr. Roland de Vaux, identiied as a toilet and cesspit dating to the pre–31 BC ‘Period Ib’ of the site’s occupation (Figure 1; see also below, §3.1). De Vaux’s identiication of the facility as a cesspit has been accepted by some scholars,3 though certainly not by all.4 The identiication of this installation is im- portant to the study of Qumran and the Scrolls because, if de Vaux and those who follow him are correct and the installation is in fact a toilet, then one of the longest–held scholarly beliefs about the Qumran community – that it was made up of people who lived their lives in the way Josephus described the Essenes – would have to be reassessed, as the presence of a toilet facility within a community of such people would seem to be untenable. It is important at this point to note that the purpose of this paper is to examine the available material evidence for latrine facilities and toilet practices at Khirbet Qumran in the light of relevant texts. Though it will by necessity touch on the subject multiple times during the course of the study, it is likewise important to note that this purpose does not include making a deinitive evaluation or statement on the Essene nature of the settlement at Qumran. That debate is still ongoing among numerous scholars of the site and of the Scrolls, and it is one which will neither be solved overnight, nor through the investigation of a single aspect of life during its periods of habitation. Within this study, though, it will be demonstrated that an inspection of the available literary evidence reveals what appear to be irreconcilable diferences. Further, a review of the material evidence from Qumran and its environs will show that those physical remains from the site about which objectively credible conclusions can be drawn appear tell an altogether diferent story from those literary accounts which have to date been considered relevant. 102 whom Josephus referred by that term, and who ostensibly lived according to the description he presented (particularly JW 2.8.9 §147–149). 2 All quotations from Josephus reference William Whiston (Trans.), Josephus: The Complete Works (Nashville: Thomas Nelson), 1998. 3 Inter alia, Charles T. Fritsch, “Herod the Great and the Qumran Community,” JBL 74:3 (1955), 175; The Qumran Community: Its History and Scrolls (New York: Biblio & Tannen, 1972), 5; Jodi Magness, “Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran,” Review of Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran et de Aïn Feshkha I, by J.–B. Humbert and A. Chambon, DSD 3:3 (1996), 343; The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 105f; “Two Notes on the Archaeology of Qumran,” BASOR 312 (1998), 38–9; James G. Charlesworth, The Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos or Consensus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 58; Kenneth Atkinson, Review of The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, by J. Magness, and The Pesharim and Qumran History: Chaos or Consensus?, by J.H. Charlesworth, JBL 123:2 (2004), 365; Hannah K. Harrington, “Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls – Current Issues,” CBR 4:3, 405–6; Jonathan Klawans, “Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. T. H. Lim and J. J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 393–4. 4 E.g., A. Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll, Toilet Practices, and the Essenes,” JH 10:1, 9–20; “Josephus on Ancient Jewish Groups from a Social Scientiic Perspective,” pp. 1-13 in Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism: Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume, ed. S. J. D. Cohen and J. J. Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Yizhar Hirschfeld, Qumran in Context: Reassessing the Archaeological Evidence (Peabody: 2. THE LITERARY EVIDENCE From the outset, it should be noted that each of the four texts which are most relevant to this study – Josephus’ JW, Deut. 23:13–15, and the Temple and War Scrolls – contains a diferent description of, or set of requirements for, the toilet practices of its subjects. A prime example of this is the set of requirements regarding the placement of latrines (literally “the hand” in the biblical text and the DSS)5 and excrement disposal Hendrickson, 2004), 100; Magen and Peleg, “Back to Qumran,” 65 (see also below, §3.1.1 and §3.3). 5 De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 73 n.3 suggests this “euphemism” for a place where people relieved themselves originated from the placement of “a sign… at the place of easement (perhaps originally in the form of a hand),” which eventually became the name for the place itself. As Ian Werrett, Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 158 n.121 notes, the phrase ‘a place of the hand’ is “unattested in the Bible; however, the area set aside for relieving oneself outside of the war 105 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 methods, which vary greatly from text to text when they are prescribed at all. As will be seen below, some of the diferences are slight (such as between Deuteronomy and the War Scroll), while some are signiicant (e.g., between Josephus and the two Qumran texts). However, despite their diferences, one theme is constant in these literary sources: the status of excrement as impure, which requires that defecation be conducted at a signiicant distance from an individual’s place of habitation or from the nearest settlement. the divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit, 149after which they put the earth that was dug out again into the pit; and even this they do only in the more lonely places, which they choose out for this purpose; and although this easement of the body be natural, yet it is a rule with them to wash themselves after it, as if it were a deilement to them.” (2.8.9:147–149)7 There are many interesting and unique aspects of the practices described here, the most obvious of which is the regimen of refraining from defecation on the Sabbath. Of this particularly unique practice, which does not appear to have been undertaken by any other Jewish groups of this time, more will be said below (§4). Also of note is the Essenes’ use of a “paddle” or “hatchet” to bury their excrement, which calls to mind the directive in Deuteronomy 23:14 requiring the use of a “spike” for the same purpose (see below, §2.2). In 1959, de Vaux hypothesized that an adze–axe blade found in Cave 11 at Qumran may have been just such a “hatchet” as that which is mentioned in War and in Deuteronomy, and which Josephus says was presented to each Essene upon admission to the sect.8 However, despite his belief in a Qumran–Essene connection, de Vaux was careful to note that the purpose of this adze–axe blade cannot be established with any certainty, noting that it may just as easily have been used to cut wood as to dig makeshift Essene latrines: Tout cela étant dit sur l’αξινιδιον des Esséniens, on ne peut pas démontrer que la hachette–piochette retrouvée dans la grotte 11 de Qumran est un outil essénien: elle a pu servir, entre n’importe quelles mains, au travail du bois pour lequel elle est premièrement faite. On ne peut pas davantage démontrer qu’elle n’est pas un outil 104 2.1 Josephus In The Wars of the Jews, Josephus ofers a brief but fairly thorough description of Essene toilet practices as he understands them, a fact which suggests that they deviated enough from the cultural norm of the day to be worth noting in some detail.6 Given the identiication of the Qumran sect as Essene by a majority of scholars, the following description of Essene toilet practices contained in JW is the baseline against which all evidence from Qumran (and its interpretation) must be judged: “147…[The Essenes] are stricter than any other of the Jews in resting from their labors on the seventh day; for they not only get their food ready the day before, that they may not be obliged to kindle a ire on that day, but they will not remove any vessel out of its place, nor go to stool thereon. 148Nay, on the other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they are irst admitted among them); and covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not afront camp in Deut. 23:12 is described as the [yd ‘hand’].” Further, Charlesworth, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, Vol. 1: Rule of the Community and Related Documents (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 33 and Martin Wise et al., The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation 2 ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 127 (hereafter WAC) apply this euphemistic use of ‘hand’ to 1QS 7:13–4, which the latter renders as “Anyone who brings out his penis from beneath his clothing – that is, his clothing is so full of holes that his nakedness is exposed – is to be punished by thirty days’ reduced rations.” Others (e.g., Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, 7 ed. [London: Penguin, 1997], 108) do not follow Charlesworth and WAC, instead maintaining the literal meaning of yd ‘hand’. However, Charlesworth, Rule of the Community, 33 n.188, maintains that the equation of yd ‘hand’ with “penis” is not only correct in the Qumran texts – a hypothesis he supports by diferentiating between the use of yd in line 13 and the speciic reference to “Whoever stretches out his left hand…” in line 15, a distinction he suggests is drawn precisely to diferentiate between the euphemistic and literal meanings of ‘hand.’ 6 Cf. A. Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll,” 12; Magness, “Two Notes,” 39. 7 The polluted status of defecation (or, more correctly, of feces) is alluded to in the Bible at Ezekiel 4:12–15, Proverbs 30:12, and in the aforementioned Deut. 23:13–15. A. Baumgarten, “Who Cares and Why Does It Matter?,” 186 sees the unique defecatory practice described by Josephus as the diagnostic characteristic of the Essenes and of Essenism, even writing that the suggestion that some Essenes may have relieved themselves in some other way, or in a permanent facility, “empties the term ‘Essene’ of all meaning… It is as if one said that some Christians believed that Jesus was the messiah, while other Christians believed that the messiah had not yet come.” Cf. also A. Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll,” 12, and “Josephus on Ancient Jewish Groups,” 11 n.26. 8 De Vaux, “Une Hatchette,” 399 n.3; on adze–axe typology, cf. W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tools and Weapons: Illustrated by the Egyptian Collection in University College, London and 2,000 Outlines from Other Sources (London: British School of Archaeology in Egypt, 1917), §4:5. 107 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 essénien: elle correspond à ce que Joséphe dit de l’αξινιδιον qui est comme une σχαλις et elle a pu servir au même usage particulier.9 Finally, Essene practice of defecating only in “the more lonely places,” and covering themselves while they undertake this natural activity, is also noteworthy, and will also be discussed in greater detail below (see particularly §2.3 and §4). which provides direction on Temple practices, purity, and sacriice. Included in these instructions is a brief but detailed description of both the placement and the construction of latrine facilities for the use of all who inhabit this ideal city: “You are to build them a precinct for latrines outside the city. They shall go out there, on the northwest of the city: roofed outhouses with pits inside, into which the excrement will descend so as not to be visible. The outhouses must be three thousand cubits12 from any part of the city.” (11Q19, 46:13–16) The similarity to Josephus and to Deuteronomy is most evident in the requirement that defecation take place at a signiicant distance from the settlement, though the Temple Scroll adds the 3,000 cubit distance requirement and replaces the manual burial of excrement with speciically–constructed cesspit outhouses. As Werrett notes, forcing “residents of Jerusalem13 to…walk 3,000 cubits in order to relieve themselves in the city’s only latrine” would be a “highly impractical” undertaking. Baruch Levine, on the other hand, suggested that “All that the Scroll requires is that everyone exit the large temple complex projected in the Scroll, to use toilet facilities outside its walls,” a reading which gives “much less warrant for seeing in the Scroll’s provisions...sectarian asceticism or extreme rigidity.”14 Though the world of the Temple Scroll appears to be, as Werrett puts it, “totally at odds with the practicalities of everyday life,”15 Joseph Baumgarten has argued that its author(s) sought to apply its tenets “to the existing Temple in Jerusalem,” rather than simply to a future ideal sanctuary.16 This assertion raises several questions, most of which are 106 2.2 Deuteronomy 23:13–15 A brief passage in Deuteronomy 23 (vv. 10–15) describes physical purity rules which are speciically applicable to the Hebrew military camp, with a special focus on personal hygiene and physical cleanliness (Bokser 1985: 280; Levinson 2004: 419). Verses 13 through 15 of this passage deal with practices regarding “the hand.” These verses read: “13Further, there shall be an area for you outside the camp, where you may relieve yourself. 14With your gear you shall have a spike, and when you have squatted you shall dig a hole with it and cover up your excrement. 15Since the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you, let your camp be holy; let Him not ind anything unseemly among you and turn away from you.” (Deut. 23:13–15)10 This biblical passage contains two obvious similarities to Josephus’ description of Essene toilet practices: the requirement that individuals relieve themselves outside of the camp or city, and the requirement that they bury their excrement. While the reason for the former is not explicitly given, the latter is commanded for the purpose of maintaining physical purity in the presence of the Lord, who is regarded as being present in the war camp – a common feature of this biblical text and two Scrolls which are based in part upon it. However, Josephus’ description of the Essenes’ modesty and burial of excrement appears to be unique to this Jewish sect, whereas the regulation in Deuteronomy applies to the entire population of the war camp. 2.3 The Temple Scroll The Temple Scroll (11QT) is a “re–presentation of biblical law”11 which describes the construction and layout of the ideal holy city, and 9 De Vaux, “Une Hatchette,” 406. Biblical passages reference Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael Fishbane, eds., The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 11 James C. VanderKam and Peter W. Flint, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 212 10 One Roman Cubit (Cubitus romanus) = 444.4 mm., or 17.5 in.; Dieter Lelgemann, Recovery of the Ancient System of Foot/Cubit/Stadion–Length Units. FIG Working Week 2004 Athens, Greece, May 22–27, 2004, accessed March 24, 2012, http:// www.ig.net/pub/athens/papers/wshs2/WSHS2_1_Lelgemann.pdf. Using Roman cubits as the measuring standard for latrine placement, the Temple Scroll is calling for facilities to be placed a minimum of three quarters of a mile from any part of the ideal city described in its text. 13 Though the Temple Scroll is often assumed to refer to an ideal Jerusalem, the city in which it is set is never actually named within the text. 14 Werrett, Ritual Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 173; Baruch A. Levine, “The Temple Scroll: Aspects of Its Historical Provenance and Literary Character,” BASOR 232 (1978), 17. 15 Werrett, Ritual Purity, 173 16 Joseph M. Baumgarten, Review of Megillat ha–Miqda, The Temple Scroll, by 12 109 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 outside the scope of this article. However, it is clearly relevant to note that, if the Temple Scroll was seen to be applicable to the Temple at that time, and if the Qumran sect saw itself as a replacement (in absentia) for the corrupt Jerusalem Temple (cf. 1QS 8:4–8),17 then the nearest evidence of a latrine dating to the period of Qumran’s inhabitation should be at least 3,000 cubits from the settlement (and deinitely not within the site itself) – a requirement which the geography of Qumran made impossible to comply with.18 “There shall be a distance between all their camps and the latrine of about two thousand cubits, and no shameful nakedness shall be seen in the environs of all their camps.” (1QM, 7:6–7)19 Purity is stressed in Col. 7 of 1QM because, as with Deut. 23, there is to be a divine presence in the camp which cannot abide impurity or imperfection (7:6). As Jonathan Klawans notes, the combination of the distance restrictions placed on the location of latrines in the Temple and War Scrolls, and Josephus’ dual descriptions of the Essenes as refusing to relieve themselves on the Sabbath and as viewing defecation as a deilement suggests “that the sectarians – unlike the later rabbis – viewed excrement as a source of ritual deilement.”20 Interestingly, though the distance requirement contained in 1QM is a clear augmentation of Deut. 23:13–15’s directive to inhabitants to relieve themselves outside of the war camp, the method of disposing of the resulting waste, which is included in the biblical passage, is noticeably absent from the War Scroll. 108 2.4 The War Scroll The War Scroll (1QM) is an eschatological text which describes the inal war between the Sons of Light, accompanied by divine angels, and the Sons of Darkness, who are made up of “Belial and the forces of his dominion” (18:1). This opponent includes the traditional enemies of Israel as well as those Jews who have chosen by default to align themselves with darkness rather than with the side representing goodness and purity. Column 7 of the War Scroll addresses the age requirements for membership in the army of the Sons of Light (7:1–3a), as well as the purity–related grounds for exclusion (3b–6). Largely patterned after Leviticus 21 and Deut. 23:10–15, this brief catalog is followed by guidelines for the placement of latrine facilities in relation to the war camp itself. Though it difers the Temple Scroll in distance and latrine construction, the directive is similar to 11QT in that it too contains a departure from the Deuteronomic prescription (and Josephan description) of simply burying excrement out of sight of the city or camp. The author writes: Yigael Yadin, JBL 97 (1978), 588. Baumgarten leans on the Damascus Document to support his argument, an act of “read[ing] one text from Qumran in light of another,” which Werrett, Ritual Purity, 175 warns is “problematic” – and one for which Baumgarten notably chides Yadin in the same article. Regarding J. Baumgarten’s reading of the Temple Scroll “in light of” the Damascus Document, Werrett, Ibid, 176 notes that, “in contrast to the Damascus Document’s description of a tainted yet very real Temple [which], though deiled by the actions of the current priesthood, was adequate for the purposes of the cult…, the Temple Scroll describes a non–existent utopian complex that never saw the light of day”; cf. also Ibid. 112 n.5. 17 A. Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll,” 12; Colleen M. Conway, “Toward a Well– Formed Subject: The Function of Purity Language in the Serek Ha–Yahad,” JSP 11:21 (2000), 103–4; Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran, 113; Jürgen Zangenberg, Review of The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Jodi Magness, DSD 11:3 (2004), 369. 18 Zias et al., “Toilets at Qumran,” 634 n.11; Werrett, “A Scroll in One Hand and a Mattock in the Other: Latrines, Essenes, and Khirbet Qumran,” RQ 23:4 (2008), 477. 2.5 4Q472a One additional Scroll which should be mentioned in conjunction with Qumran toilet practices is 4Q472a (formerly 4QHalakha C). Originally published by Torleif Elgvin in DJD 35,21 this fragment has been thought to refer to the treatment of excrement. As initially published, it read: “…to cover excrements. If he does not[…] a vessel according to […] regarding a dee[d…].” (4Q472a: 1–5) This brief text was signiicant within the Dead Sea corpus because it was thought to contain the only reference to the active toilet practices of the Qumran sect, and because of that reference’s similarity to Josephus’ description of the Essenes’ policy of burying their excrement.22 However, this text has since been further studied using infrared photographic technology, and a new reading proposed.23 This new reading is: “…and hasten, awake(?) [He ]will gather (the) tribes of (his) de- 19 Manuscript B (4Q491) reads, “And there shall be two thousand cubits between the [camps and the latrine, so] no nakedness might be seen in their surroundings” (7–8). 20 Klawans, “Purity in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 393 21 J. Baumgarten et al., ed., Qumran Cave 4 XXV Halakhic Texts, Discoveries in the Judean Desert 35 (Oxford: Clarendon), 155–6. 22 Harrington, The Purity Texts, Companion to the Qumran Scrolls 5 (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 106; Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran, 110; but see Werrett, “A Scroll in One Hand,” 484 n.29 for a revision of Magness’s position 23 Elgvin and Werrett, “4Q472a in Infrared Light: Latrine Manual Down the Drain,” RQ 23:2 (2007), 261f. 111 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 light, to pla[nt them in ]all his kneaded dough will be ea[ten(?)]… therefore his peo[ple]…”24 As a result of this signiicant revision, Elgvin and Werrett have recommended that 4Q472a “be removed from the category of halakhic texts and reassigned to the parabiblical material,” and “renamed ‘4QEschatological Work C” (2007: 268). The proposed repurposing of this fragment accompanies the removal of any content relating to “excrement or ritual purity,” a dramatic shift for a fragment once thought to refer to the rules regarding toilet practices at Qumran.25 Qumranites did indeed view themselves as representatives of the Temple priesthood in exile, as some of the Scrolls appear to suggest, this may further support the interpretation of the L51 installation as a toilet. Magness has also suggested that the miqveh located at the northwest entrance was used by residents or members of the sect who had left the settlement to relieve themselves.30 110 3. THE MATERIAL EVIDENCE 3.1 Locus 51 In his 1953 survey of the southeastern portion of the Qumran complex, de Vaux found an installation in Locus 51 consisting of a ceramic pipe approximately 11 cm in diameter protruding from an approximately 60 cm. deep rounded container or “conical bell” of unbaked clay with a capacity of approximately 30 gallons, or just over 113 liters (Figures 2–4).26 This clay container, which lacked a constructed bottom, was illed with “a ine succession of stratiied layers of dirty earth.”27 In his ield notes, de Vaux wrote of the installation, which appears to date to Period Ib of the site (pre–31 BC), “Aucun doute, c’est une fosse d’aisance en puits perdu,” and within the catalog of L51 inds he listed the pipe as “oriice de la fosse d’aisance.”28 Loci 48–49, into which the doorway from L51 opened, appear to have contained one of Qumran’s many miqva’ot, or pools used for ritual puriication. As Albert Baumgarten notes, priests in the Temple were expected to take an immersion bath after defecating;29 therefore, if the 24 Werrett, “A Scroll in One Hand,” 484. Ibid. 26 Measurements were not included in de Vaux’s ield notes as published by Jean-Baptiste Humbert and Alain Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran et de Aïn Feshkha, vol. 1, Novum Testamentum et Orbis Antiquus: Series Archaeologica 1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994), 307; The Excavation of Khirbet Qumran and Ain Feshkha, trans. S. J. Pfann (Fribourg, Switzerland: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2003), 30–1. The dimensions given here are calculated by the author from the published photographs of this installation, and thus should be considered approximate. 27 Humbert and Chambon, The Excavation of Kirbet Qumran, 30. 28 Humbert and Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran, 309. 29 “The Temple Scroll,” 12; cf. also Magness, The Archaeology of Qumran, 112 and Zangenberg, “Review,” 369. 25 3.1.1 Ancient Toilet Facilities in Context Attempts to compare the L51 installation to other latrine facilities of this time period in order to determine its function are problematic for three main reasons. First, despite some examples from the eighth-seventh centuries BC in Jordan and the seventh-sixth centuries in Jerusalem (see §3.1.2), the best examples of ancient toilets postdate the settlement at Qumran, and nearly all come from Roman cities, a fact which at least somewhat limits their potential to serve as analogs for study of the Qumran facility. Second, the latrines for which the best knowledge exists are either public installations, or private facilities constructed for simultaneous use by multiple individuals, such as that at Caesarea Maritima.31 The Roman toilet facilities best known to us were located in public bathhouses, where they generally lined three walls of a room and featured either wooden or stone seats, under which lowed water from the baths.32 Few private latrines have been excavated or published, with Pompeii currently standing as the chief exception.33 30 Magness, “Integrating Archaeology and Texts: The Example of the Qumran Toilet,” in T. E. Levy (ed.), Historical Biblical Archaeology and the Future: The New Pragmatism (London: Routledge, 2016), 288–9. 31 Fred L. Horton, Jr., “A Sixth–Century Bath in Caesarea’s Suburbs and the Transformation of Bathing Culture in Late Antiquity,” in Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective after Two Millennia, ed. A. Raban and K. G. Holum (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 177, 181 n.15, 183–4. 32 Richard Neudecker, Die Pracht der Latrine, Zum Wandel Öfentlicher Bedürfnisanstalten in der Kaisezeitlichen Stadt: Studien zur Antiken Stadt 1 (Munich: Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil, 1994), 39; Horton, “A Sixth-Century Bath,” 183; Magness, “Two Notes,” 37. Alexander Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World,” Klio 68:2 (1986), 401, 408 notes that “literary evidence concerning sewers and latrines in the Roman world is extremely meager…there is nowhere extant a description of either a public or private Roman latrine, and no account of their administration,” a fact which he suggests is “due to the fact that the presumed knowledge of normal practice made such a discussion unnecessary.” 33 G. C. M. Jansen, “Water Systems and Sanitation in the Houses of Herculaneum,” MededRom 50 (1991), 145; “Private Toilets at Pompeii: Appearance and Operation,” pp. 121-134 in Sequence and Space in Pompeii, ed. S. E. Bon and R. Jones (Oxford: 113 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 Third, as G. C. M. Jansen notes, “comparatively little research had been done on…drainage systems and sanitation [including latrine facilities] in Roman houses [because] there are only a few sites that are suited for this kind of research.”34 Individual latrines did exist in some private homes in the periods surrounding Qumran’s inhabitation, though relatively little is known about them at this time. H. Keith Beebe reports that toilets from the Hellenistic period “have been found in good condition in houses at Umm [el]–Djimal in southern Syria,”35 though the only facility he speciically references is that previously published by Howard Crosby Butler in the early 20th century A.D.36 Ancient toilets are diicult to identify even when numerous analogs are present – a fact which makes the efort to identify the cryptic L51 installation at Qumran that much more challenging. Jansen’s criteria for the identiication of private Roman toilets, for example, “a small room or part of a room with the visible remains of a seat and/or a tiled, sloping loor,” are not relected at Qumran, save possibly for the required indoor space (on toilet seats, see also below, §3.1.2).37 Further, Yizhar Hirschfeld calls the proposition that the L51 installation is a toilet “intrinsically implausible” because of a lack of water channels which would be required for lushing. He declares that it “seems unlikely that the occupants of the main building would have tolerated the nuisance caused by the location of such a toilet within the structure.”38 While the odors associated with an unlushable indoor toilet may indeed have posed a “nuisance” to those who lived in, or utilized, the main building at Qumran, such an arrangement is not without precedent in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds near the turn of the era. In fact, many toilets – particularly in domestic buildings – were constructed over cesspits which lacked any piping whatsoever, or which contained “drains” which evidently served only to carry the excrement deeper into the pit.39 As with modern Porta–Potties, which are ubiquitous at construction sites and outdoor events today, excrement was allowed to pile up within these ancient cesspits until they became full, at which point they were manually emptied.40 However, even those houses with latrines appear to have been only rarely, if ever, attached to this drainage system; instead, waste was usually collected in cesspits that required periodic emptying.41 Likewise, the installation in L51 at Qumran, whether a toilet or not, does not appear to have been connected in any way to the impressive water system at that site, meaning that if it was a latrine, it was almost certainly of the cesspit variety.42 Further, just how severe a “nuisance” a toilet would have been to those using the building in which it resided is a matter of perspective. Consider, for example, the widespread association of bathroom and kitchen in Roman architecture, as exempliied by houses at Pompeii which feature cesspit toilets either in kitchens or in doorless, unventilated adjoining rooms.43 Though the isolated settlement at Qumran and the urban environs of Rome and her provincial centers featured diferent populations and cultures, it seems unlikely that an indoor latrine with no true lushing capacity (which was the type most often employed in private Roman buildings at this time) would have been categorically untenable to Qumran’s inhabitants.44 112 Oxbow, 1997). 34 “Water Systems and Sanitation,” 145. 35 “Domestic Architecture and the New Testament,” BA 38:3–4 (1975), 95. 36 Syria: Division II: Architecture, Section A: Southern Syria (Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904–1905 and 1909) (Leiden: Brill, 1919), 182, 204. Beebe, “Domestic Architecture,” 95 declares that “the convenience of indoor latrines could not be denied families once they were introduced by Hellenistic home builders.” 37 “Private Toilets at Pompeii,” 122. 38 Qumran in Context, 100. 39 Jansen, “Private Toilets at Pompeii,” 127. 40 A. Trevor Hodge, Roman Aqueducts and Water Supply (London: Duckworth, 1992), 336. In Roman cities, manure merchants made a portion of their living hauling away built–up excrement from such cesspits; Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality,” 407; Jansen, “Water Systems and Sanitation,” 156; Hodge, Roman Aqueducts, 336, 476 n.14. 41 Rodolfo A. Lanciani, The Ruins and Excavations of Ancient Rome (1897; reprint, New York: Blom, 1967), 31; Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality,” 409; see also below. 42 Humbert and Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran, 74, 309. 43 Scobie, “Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality,” 409; Hodge, Roman Aqueducts, 336. See, for one example out of many, the kitchen–and–lavatory complex constructed at Pompeii’s Casa Dei Capitelli Colorati between 62 and 79 A.D.; Frank Sear, “Cisterns, Drainage and Lavatories in Pompeian Houses, Casa Dei Capitelli Colorati (VII.4.51), Casa della Caccia Antica (VII.4.48) and Casa dei Capitelli Figurati (VII.4.57),” PBSR 74 (2006), 181–4. 44 Regarding the drainage system that Hirschfeld appears to consider a requirement for the presence of an indoor toilet, Jerome Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 52 writes, “The drainage system of the Roman house is merely a myth begotten of the complacent imagination of modern times. Of all the hardships endured by the inhabitants of ancient Rome, the lack of domestic drainage is the one which would be 114 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 3.1.2 The City of David and the L44 ‘Cheminée’ The ind most relevant to identifying the Qumran facility may not be the latrines built into Roman luxury baths or present in Roman or Hellenistic households, but two seventh-sixth century BC cesspit toilets with limestone seats found in the City of David, which are only briely described by Jane Cahill et al. in Biblical Archaeology Review.45 The lack of information on piping or lushing provided by Cahill suggests that these toilets, like the domestic Roman latrines mentioned above, were composed only of simple, static cesspits in which excrement was collected until emptying was required. Also like their later Roman counterparts, and contra Hirschfeld’s protest, these toilets were located within larger structures, suggesting that even at this time such a “nuisance” as lushless indoor latrines was “tolerated” by those who made use of the buildings which housed these facilities.46 No remains of a toilet seat have been found in the vicinity of the Qumran installation. Jodi Magness proposed two solutions to this: irst, that the seat had originally been made of no-longer-preserved wood, and second, that a pierced stone block found in Locus 44, which is adjacent to the L48–53 complex, is actually the displaced seat.47 In his ield notes, de Vaux described the block as “une pierre rectangulaire, percée” and he asked if it might have been “l’élément d’un canal ou d’une cheminée?”48 While the description of the block as rectangular and pierced does resemble the description of a variety of ancient toilet most severely resented by the Romans of today.” Cf. also Hodge, Roman Aqueducts, 477 n.16. 45 Jane Cahill et al., “It Had to Happen: Scientists Examine Remains of Ancient Bathroom,” BAR 17:3 (1991), 64–69. These installations, found with limestone toilet seats intact covering the cesspits, represent the only discovery of toilet seats in situ in the City of David. Cahill, Ibid., 65 has identiied a square block resting under rubble at the bottom of a photograph published by Kathleen M. Kenyon, “Excavations in Jerusalem 1966,” PEQ 99 (1967), Pl. XIII B, which appears identical to these seats, as an out–of–context toilet seat. Additionally, the early 20th c. ‘Parker Expedition’ to Jerusalem may have found another stone toilet seat. According to Hugues Vincent, Underground Jerusalem: Discoveries on the Hill of Ophel (1909–11) (London: Horace Cox, 1911), 29, “The strangest specimen we found here, beneath the debris…and close to the bedrock itself, was a magniicent chair of ‘royal’ stone, which was at once saluted by our workmen as ‘the throne of Solomon.’ I fear its actual destination was at once more private and more naturally necessary.” 46 Qumran in Context, 100. 47 “Two Notes,” 38. 48 Humbert and Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran, 307. THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 115 seat, such as those found at the City of David, such a brief description – and a complete lack of accompanying measurements, sketches, or photographs49 – makes it diicult to determine the function of this object and its relationship to an installation in a separate locus. 3.1.3 Out of Service According to the published plans of the site, Loci 48 through 53 – which, according to de Vaux, also included “a washing–place with a stone basin and a large sump” as well as “a store–room where a quantity of iron tools was found”50 – went out of use after the earthquake of 31 BC.51 This appears to contradict Charlesworth’s contention that this installation (which he agrees was a latrine) was added by the Romans during their brief Period III occupation of the site, as well as Magness’s suggestion that fecal matter found in soil samples from the L51 installation could have come from the post–68 AD Roman occupation.52 It is noteworthy that no evidence whatsoever exists for a latrine at Qumran after Period Ib. If the installation in L51 was a toilet, and if it was not replaced for the duration of the site’s inhabitation – as seems to be the case – then this could be physical evidence of a signiicant shift in the attitudes of Qumran’s inhabitants toward defecation and excrement, if not a change in the inhabitants themselves – though this should not be ruled out in light of the available evidence.53 49 Magness herself “ha[s] not seen this stone block, and do[es] not know whether it still exists or whether there are any photographs of it”; “Two Notes,” 42 n.2. 50 Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 7. 51 Ibid., 21; Humbert and Chambon, Fouilles de Khirbet Qumran, 72–74; Magness, “Two Notes,” 38. 52 Charlesworth, The Pesharim and Qumran History, 58; Magness, “Toilet Practices at Qumran: A Response,” RQ 22:2 (2005), 278; Stephanie Harter, Françoise Bouchet, Kosta Mumcuoglu and Joe Zias, “Toilet Practices Among Members of the Dead Sea Scrolls Sect at Qumran (100 BC–68 AD),” RQ 21:4 (2004), 579–584; see also below, §3.2.1 53 De Vaux, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 24 believed that the same group that had inhabited Qumran before the destruction of 31 BC reoccupied it in Period II, after what he called an abandonment period “of short duration,” though a mere ten pages later he presents numismatic evidence to demonstrate that this abandonment lasted until 9/8 BC at earliest, and 1 BC/1 AD at latest; Ibid., 35: “The community which came to re–settle Khirbet Qumran,” he writes, “was the same as that which had left it. The general plan remained…the same, and the principal elements were put to use once more for the purposes for which they had originally been intended. The necessary clearance and repairs were made, but only secondary modiications were introduced to the buildings.” 116 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 3.2 Soil Samples and Parasitology In an efort to further study the toilet practices of Khirbet Qumran’s inhabitants, and to conirm the existence and placement of ancient latrines there, soil samples were taken from the vicinity of the settlement on two occasions and analyzed for evidence of human excrement in the form of human–borne fecal parasites. Speciically, tests were run for “helminth eggs, which are excreted from the human body during defecation.”54 The irst of these studies, published in 2004 by Stephanie Harter, Françoise Bouchet, Kosta Mumcuoglu, and Joe Zias, was an analysis of soil taken from within the “cesspit” in L51 at Qumran.55 The second, published in 2006 by Zias, Harter, and James Tabor, consisted of an analysis of soil samples taken from an area to the northwest of the settlement (the direction prescribed by the Temple Scroll for the placement of latrines).56 3.2.1 The Locus 51 ‘Cesspit’ According to Harter, tests of soil taken from the L51 “cesspit” revealed eggs and embryophores of three human–borne helminthes: roundworm, whipworm, and tapeworm.57 As both Harter and Cahill note, evidence of these parasites strongly suggests the presence of human excrement, which in turn suggests that the L51 installation was used at some point as a latrine. Lime, an agent often used “to sanitize the contents of… latrines by reducing bacterial and fungal activity,” was also found in the L51 sample.58 Soil samples from the aforementioned latrine in Area G of the City of David also revealed whipworm and tapeworm, as well as signiicant quantities of liming agent in the form of calcareous ash – so much lime, in fact, that “organic fecal residue comprised only 10 percent of the soil tested.”59 Cahill further noted that the presence of whipworm eggs in fecal samples suggests poor hygiene and sanitation, as they generally “indicate an infection arising either from the ingestion of fecally contaminated foods or from unsanitary living arrangements in which people came into contact with human excrement.”60 Harter suggested that the bath which Josephus says Essenes were required to take after defecating (and which the L48–49 miqveh may have been used for) could explain this infection, as the standing water within these pools, which were also used for puriicatory baths before meals, would have supported these parasites and allowed for their transfer among members of the community.61 The results of this soil testing are intriguing, though they are also accompanied by clear methodological issues. Chief among these is the ive–decade period which elapsed between de Vaux’s uncovering of the Period Ib occupation of L51 and Harter’s soil testing, though Zias defends the team’s methodology by noting that the samples tested were retrieved from 50 to 70 cm below the surface to ensure that they had not sufered contamination.62 Magness has suggested that the excrement found in the samples could even have come from a period of Roman occupation after 68 AD, though we should also recall her contention that L51 went out of use after Period Ib ended in 31 BC.63 3.2.2 “To the Northwest” As seen above, the Temple Scroll speciically states that the latrines used by the community it describes are to be “to the northwest of the city” (11Q19, 46:13). Though this text describes built facilities in some detail, Zias sought to synthesize this instruction with Josephus’ description of Essene toilet practices, which refers to the use of “lonely places” for defecation but provides no information about the distance or direction of the chosen locations from a given settlement. The team took soil samples up to 30 cm below the surface in areas which it three criteria: (1) they were to the northwest of the Khirbet Qumran; (2) they were not visible to people at the settlement; and (3) the ground soil in these areas had diferent coloration as seen from aerial photographs, suggesting signiicant foot traic had passed over them.64 Evidence of the same three parasites found in the L51 soil samples was found in Zias’s Area A, the farthest northwest sample source.65 This conirmation that excrement had at some point been deposited there by Ibid. “Toilet Practices,” 582. 62 “Toilets at Qumran,” 480. 63 “Toilet Practices,” 278; 2002; The Archaeology of Qumran, 107; see also above, §3.1.3. 64 Zias et al., “Toilets at Qumran,” 634–6. 65 Ibid, 636. 60 54 Harter et al., “Toilet Practices,” 580. 55 Ibid. 56 Zias et al., “Toilets at Qumran,” 631–640. 57 Harter et al., “Toilet Practices,” 581. 58 Cahill et al., “It Had to Happen,” 67. 59 Ibid, 68. 117 61 119 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 humans led Zias to declare that the results of the team’s analysis “conirm the textual evidence in the Scrolls and Josephus for an Essene identiication” of the inhabitants of Qumran. “This evidence its…precisely the description of the Essenes found in Josephus,” they write, “and correlates…well with the practices (in terms of the northwest direction) speciied in the Scrolls.”66 A key issue with Zias’s analysis stems from the diiculty of translating textual requirement to geographic reality. First, while their report states that, “Following the description in Josephus, we sampled the soil to the northwest of the site,” Josephus’ JW provides no information about a speciic direction in which the Essenes regularly traveled to relieve themselves (see above, §2.1).67 Second, the directive to place latrines “on the northwest of the city” was used to guide the location from which the team took their soil samples, but the 3,000-cubit distance “from any part of the city” was found to be topographically infeasible, so the samples were instead taken “800–900 cubits from the settlement…at a higher elevation and hidden from public view”68 A second key problem is a methodological one. While evidence of human–borne fecal parasites in Zias’s Area A to the northwest of Qumran may conirm that human excrement has been deposited there, both the source and date of that deposit remains and open question (as Werrett notes, “although we concede that the parasitological evidence recovered by Zias would seem to conirm that the area in question was used as a latrine, the evidence that is currently at our disposal makes it impossible to determine whether the latrine is two years, two hundred years, or two thousand years old”).69 rate the Temple Scroll from the excrement–burying Essenes, and from Qumran, suggesting that the built latrines required by the former would create a chronological problem. Fixed latrines “were usually a later phenomenon, associated with a rise in economic standard,” he writes, “yet the supposedly earlier text [the Temple Scroll] adopted the more recent method of eliminating waste,” while Josephus’ Essenes employ the earlier method of defecating in unixed locations.71 As we have seen, though, regardless of the applicability of the Temple Scroll to the Essenes and to Qumran, evidence does exist in this region for built latrine facilities as early as the eighth-seventh centuries B.C.72 In the light of the available evidence, it appears the installation in L51 at Qumran was most likely a rudimentary cesspit toilet, though this interpretation may not be universally accepted absent the discovery of a toilet seat and a bowl for “lushing” the toilet with water and/or lime, as was found alongside the City of David toilets. The date also remains a question: while Harter’s tests may provide scientiic support for the use of this installation, the inability to conirm a pre–31 BC date or to disprove contamination limits their overall usefulness for limiting the installation’s use to a speciic phase of the site.73 While the results of Zias’s testing of soil samples from Area A to the northwest of Qumran, on the other hand, appear to demonstrate the presence of human fecal material beneath the surface of the soil, the inability to date that material greatly limits its usefulness. Though this does raise interesting possibilities with regard to the Qumran community – particularly in light of the apparent disappearance of any toilet facilities within the settlement after the 31 B.C. destruction – we cannot draw further conclusions without resorting to speculation. 118 3.3 The Material Synthesis As noted above (§3.1 and §3.1.1), the identiication of the pipe–and– bell installation in L51 at Qumran as a toilet has not received universal airmation. Magen and Peleg, for example, see the L48–53 complex as a “facility for the production of perfume,” while A. Baumgarten argues against the presence of a latrine at Qumran at all on the basis that, in his view, the presence of such a facility would render the preferred Yahad=Essene hypothesis null and void.70 Baumgarten prefers to sepaIbid, 639. “Toilets at Qumran,” 634. 68 Ibid, 634, n.11. 69 “A Scroll in One Hand,” 485; “Toilets at Qumran,” 636. 70 Magen and Peleg, “Back to Qumran,” 65; A. Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll,” 14. 66 67 4. DISCUSSION When the relevant Dead Sea Scrolls, Deut. 23:13–15, and the Josephan description of the Essenes’ unique toilet practices are taken as a whole, one fact becomes clear: they cannot be taken as a whole. In other words, these four texts present us with four pictures of latrine placement and toilet practices that are diferent enough from each other 71 A. Baumgarten, “The Temple Scroll,” 14. 72 Crystal-M. Bennett, “Excavations at Buseirah, Southern Jordan 1972: Preliminary Report,” Levant 6 (1974), 8–9; see also above, §3.1.2. 73 Cf. Magness, “Toilet Practices”; Zias, “Qumran Toilet Practices: A Response to a Response,” RQ 22:3 (2006), 479–482. 121 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 that they cannot be taken as descriptions of, or instructions to, the same group of people in the same place at the same time. This is self–evident from such contradictions as the instructions on latrine placement in 11QT (3,000 cubits) and 1QM (2,000 cubits), as well as the biblical commandment to bury excrement, which matches Josephus’ description but which contradicts 11QT’s instruction to utilize built latrines. Theories about the selective use of the toilet in L51 have consisted of “embracing the healing power of and,” as the saying goes, in a good faith attempt to reconcile the physical evidence with Josephus’ account and with the relevant Scrolls. For example, Magness approaches the documentary contradiction by suggesting that 11QT, 1QM, and War each cover a diferent aspect of the same people’s practices, with the former two describing those observed “in the ideal city of Jerusalem” and in “the war camps at the end of days,” respectively.74 On the other hand, Josephus’ description, while appropriate to the time in which it was set, applies only to those Essenes who “did not have access to built latrines in permanent settlements,” while those who did have access to facilities in their places of residence would ostensibly have been willing (and allowed) to use them.75 It is unlikely that either Josephus or the relevant DSS provide complete and current accounts of their subjects’ practices. However, it is noteworthy that Josephus’ acknowledgment that Essenes “dwell in every city” (2.8.4:124) is accompanied by a single description of their toilet practices, which is presented in such a way as to appear both applicable to, and as an identifying characteristic of, all members of this sect, regardless of whether or not they lived in cities where built latrines were available. One particularly interesting area of agreement between Josephus’ JW and the relevant Scrolls is the prohibition against defecating on the Sabbath. As we have seen, the Temple and War Scrolls’ restrictions on latrine placement with regard to the ideal city or war camp relects concern for purity in the presence of the Lord and His angels. When viewed in the light of restrictions on Sabbath day travel, though, the Temple and War Scrolls’ respective requirements for the location of the “place of the hand” had the secondary efect of making it unreachable on the Sabbath, a result which would appear to put the subjects of those texts in the same position as Josephus’ Essenes in terms of refraining (or being forced to refrain) from defecating on the Sabbath. A. Baumgarten notes that the Temple Scroll’s requirement to place latrines 3,000 cubits from the camp “efectively prohibited defecation on the Sabbath…when one may walk only 2,000 cubits outside camp.”76 However, the distance restrictions included in both the Temple and War Scrolls exceed the allowable walking distance on the Sabbath according to the Damascus Document, which was only one thousand cubits (4Q279, 10:21). The Damascus Document does allow for walking “up to two thousand cubits…behind an animal to graze it outside his city” (4Q279, 11: 5–6), which Yigael Yadin interpreted as meaning that “either going to relieve oneself was included in the boundary of 2,000 cubits, or if the hand was placed at a distance of 2,000 cubits, members of the sect were unable to go out and perform their needs on the Sabbath.” However, the speciic association of the 2,000–cubit limit with grazing animals appears to suggest that it is the only exception to the 1,000–cubit limit set in 10:21, meaning one of the few opportunities to get away with relieving oneself on the Sabbath would be to do so while grazing one’s lock or herd outside the 2,000 cu. radius (and therefore out of sight of the rest of the community). It is important to note that this reading of 11QT and 1QM in the light of CD should not be taken as an assumption that any of these documents were viewed by the Qumranites to be directly and literally applicable to their community (see below, §5).77 When it came to Josephus’ Essenes, distance may not have been the only (or even the key) factor. Yadin, for example, suggested that even if the Essenes had been allowed to travel the distance necessary to relieve themselves on the Sabbath, they would have refrained because doing so would have necessitated the digging of a hole in which to go.78 As James VanderKam notes, such a restriction would have required that people “plan carefully so as not to deile the seventh day.”79 Magness takes this one step further by suggesting that, if Josephus is correct about Essene practices regarding defecation on the Sabbath, and if the Qumranites of period Ib were, in fact, Essene, then “the inhabitants may have refrained from using the toilet in Locus 51” on the seventh day of each week, as well.80 While Zias agrees that Qumran was an Essene settlement, and 120 74 75 The Archaeology of Qumran, 109; “Integrating Archaeology and Texts,” 288. Ibid. 76 “Josephus on Ancient Jewish Groups,” 11 n.26; cf. also VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 113. 77 Yadin, The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness, trans. B. Rabin and C. Rabin, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), 74. 78 The Scroll of the War, 75. 79 The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 113. 80 “Two Notes,” 39. 123 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 that the L51 installation was a toilet, he contends that its purpose was not daily (non–Sabbath) use, but primarily “fæcal emergencies.”81 It is certainly unlikely that the cesspit could have served the entire community unless it was regularly emptied. Assuming negligible amounts of lime or dirt ill, and using the 157 g/cap/day median daily fecal mass of healthy modern adults as a baseline, the volume of the approximately 113–liter container would have supported 100 people for a little over six days, and thirty people for just over three weeks.82 Higher population estimates would, of course, further reduce the ixture’s duration of use prior to emptying. Thus, hypotheses like those proposed by Magness and by Zias reinforce the insuiciency of the available evidence, and the creativity that must be applied to reconcile the contradictory nature of what we do have. Klawans, for example, says of Magness’s theory that “these observations are not unreasonable…but it is valid to point out that this kind of logic could allow interpreters to accommodate almost any contradiction between the archaeological and literary evidence,” while A. Baumgarten writes that, “if there was a latrine at Qumran, its implications for the identity of the group should not be averted by intellectual acrobatics.”83 At the crux of this matter may be the reason for the supposed Essene resistance to defecation on the Sabbath. Did this relect an attempt to practice strict avoidance of labor, or an efort to remain pure on the seventh day? A reading of the Temple and War Scrolls, combined with 2.9.147 of Josephus’ JW, suggests that the Essenes’ unique Sabbath toilet practices were a side efect of their strict avoidance of work on the seventh day, while 148–149 of JW suggests that a key issue for the Essenes, if not the key issue, was purity. Given the fact that the toilet in L51 required neither travel nor hole–digging on the part of those living at Qumran, it seems that using the facility should have been as acceptable on the Sabbath as on any other day – unless purity, rather than work, was in fact the issue of primary concern to the Qumranites. Josephus’ Essenes regarded the act of defecation as a source of pollution, and therefore, this argument holds, they refrained from “go[ing] to stool” on the Sabbath so as not to deile themselves. However, Josephus’ description of the Essenes’ treatment of defecation “as if it were a deilement to them” is not incorporated into his explanation of their Sabbath observance, but of how they treat this activity on the other six days of the week. The context in which the Essenes’ refusal to “go to stool” on the Sabbath is mentioned, on the other hand, is that of their uncharacteristic strictness “in resting from their labors on the seventh day” (2.9.147). If purity was a signiicant enough issue for the Qumranites to avoid using the facility in L51 on the Sabbath – let alone the chief issue governing their overall toilet practices – then the obvious next question is why such a source of impurity as a toilet would have been tolerated in the settlement at all, and why it would have been acceptable to utilize this facility on any other day of the week. It is this apparent contradiction which has, at least in part, led A. Baumgarten both to conclude that the L51 facility is not a latrine, and to declare that, “if a latrine is ever deinitely found at Qumran, I would take that as conclusive evidence that Qumran was not Essene.”84 122 81 “Qumran Toilet Practices,” 482; cf. also Harter et al., “Toilet Practices,” 583, who notes that the illnesses associated with the parasites recovered from the L51 soil samples include dysentery and other digestive issues, which may, in turn, have made this toilet the cause of such “fæcal emergencies.” 82 C. Rose, A. Parker, B. Jeferson & E. Cartmell, “The Characterization of Feces and Urine: A Review of the Literature to Inform Advanced Treatment Technology,” CritRevEnvSciTec 45 (2015): 1827–1879. 83 Klawans, “Purity and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” 394; A. Baumgarten, “Who Cares and Why Does It Matter?,” 186. 5. CONCLUSIONS As we have seen, the literary sources often associated with toilet practices at Khirbet Qumran present irreconcilable pictures of proper latrine placement and toilet practices. Attempts to combine these texts in such a way as to support theories regarding the identiication of the group at Qumran (and the relationship of that group to the Dead Sea Scrolls) have largely consisted of the cherry–picking of lines and details from diferent texts, and of ignoring those portions which present obstacles to those theories. Further, the presence of a toilet in Locus 51 at Qumran poses a signiicant challenge to the long–lived (and ongoing) “attempt[s] to blend or superimpose the concepts of the ‘Qumran community’ and the ‘Essene community.’”85 Unfortunately, rather than contributing to consensus on the topic, the introduction of this material 84 “Josephus on Ancient Jewish Groups,” 11 n.26; cf. also “Who Cares and Why Does It Matter?,” 186. 85 Humbert, “Some Remarks on the Archaeology of Qumran,” in Qumran, the Site of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Archaeological Interpretations and Debates: Proceedings of a Conference Held at Brown University, November 17–19, 2002, ed. Katharina Galor, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, and Jürgen Zangenberg (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 20. 125 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 THE QUMRAN CHRONICLE 23, 2015 evidence into the discussion appears to increase this selective evaluation and positional polarization. When each evidentiary point is considered in isolation, the diferences become more apparent. Of our four relevant texts, we have two which refer to the burial of excrement; two which provide (contradictory) minimum distances from the camp or city for the placement of the “hand”; one which requires the construction of outhouses; and four which demand that defecation be carried out beyond the environs of the camp or city so as not to ofend the divine presence therein. Materially, we appear have a cesspit latrine within the main building of the Qumran settlement, which goes out of service at the end of Period Ib of the site’s occupation, as well as soil samples from a distance to the northwest of the settlement (in a direction speciied by one of the literary sources, but at a distance which matches none of them) which provide undated evidence of human excrement. The irst conclusion to be drawn from this evidence is that the relevant Dead Sea Scrolls were not considered by the Qumranites to be literally and directly applicable to their community. The most basic reason is one of simple geography, which prevents the placement of latrines 2,000 to 3,000 cubits from the settlement as prescribed in 1QM and 11QT respectively. The conclusion is further supported by the presence of a toilet within the site during Period Ib (pre–31 BC), which directly contradicts not only the DSS, but the Deuteronomic requirement, as well. This does not necessarily mean that 11QT, 1QM, and the rest of the Scrolls were not produced by, or related to, the people living at Qumran (cf. n.78 above), and it certainly does not mean that Deuteronomy was not considered an authoritative text by the Qumranites; however, it should go without saying that care must always be taken not to assume that the mere fact that something was written in a Dead Sea Scroll or a biblical text automatically means it was thought by the Qumranites to be directly applicable to their own community. The second conclusion is that, at least during the Period Ib phase of settlement, the inhabitants of Khirbet Qumran did not conduct themselves in the manner which Josephus associated with the Essenes. As we have seen, the evidence we possess for daily life at Qumran in general – and toilet practices in particular – is both incomplete and contradictory. Because of this, attempts to reconcile the physical and documentary evidence into a meaningful narrative regarding the Qumran–Essene connection in Period Ib have required both to be applied in a selective and creative manner. Noteworthy eforts in this vein have included the- ories about what we might consider abnormal usage of the L51 toilet, such as it being used on non–Sabbath days only,86 or for the express purpose of “fæcal emergencies.”87 The third and perhaps most signiicant conclusion, drawn solely from the material evidence, has to do with the L51 toilet and the timeline of inhabitation at Khirbet Qumran. As noted above (§3.1.3), de Vaux thought it likely that the same group re-inhabited Qumran after the 31 BC destruction, due in large part to the similar layout and use of the site’s buildings. However, such a fundamental change as the removal of a toilet from within the site demonstrates that more happened between 31 BC and the site’s reinhabitation than the simple passage of a few years. Though an absence of evidence should not be confused with evidence of absence, the apparent lack of latrine facilities within the settlement during the post–31 BC occupation suggests either a change in the core beliefs of the site’s inhabitants, or a change in those inhabitants themselves. These respective developments seem most likely to signify either the adoption of practices more in keeping with those Josephus associates with the Essenes by the inhabitants of Qumran, or the arrival of people who already observed such practices, either as new occupiers of the site or as augmentees of the original group. 124 FIGURE CAPTIONS Figure 1. Partial plan of Khirbet Qumran in Periods Ib and II. Locus 51, with its possible toilet, is at top (Humbert and Chambon 1994: 72–73). Figure 2. Qumran “toilet” in L51, captioned “la jarred receptacle” by de Vaux (Humbert and Chambon 1994: 75, Fig. 150). Figure 3. Qumran “toilet” in L51; captioned “les latrines (?) période Ib” by de Vaux (Humbert and Chambon 1994: 75, Fig. 149). Figure 4. Line drawing of ceramic pipe protruding from “cesspit,” as well as comparative diameters of pipe and clay receptacle. 86 87 Magness, “Two Notes,” 39. Harter et al., “Toilet Practices,” 583; Zias, “Qumran Toilet Practices,” 482.