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  • Hanan Eshel (1958–2010) In Memoriam
  • Esther G. Chazon (bio)

Professor Hanan Eshel, world-renowned archaeologist and scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, passed away in Jerusalem on April 8, 2010, after an eighteen-month battle with cancer. He was only fifty-one years old. At the time of his death, he was a full professor in Bar-Ilan University's Martin Szusz Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, head of the University's Jeselsohn Epigraphic Center of Jewish History (JECJH), and an editorial board member of such prestigious academic journals as Dead Sea Discoveries and Henoch.

His accomplishments during his mere half century were impressive. Soon after completing his B.A. in archaeology at the Hebrew University, he led his first archaeological dig (spring 1986) at Ketef Jericho, during which his important finds included a fourth-century B.C.E. economic document, and a Roman nailed sandal. He went on to complete his M.A. (1988) and Ph.D. (1994) at the Hebrew University; led archaeological digs at Jericho, Qumran, Yattir, and other sites; published nine books, and wrote more than 200 articles.

During the months of his illness alone, Hanan achieved more than many scholars achieve in a decade. In addition to carrying on with his regular teaching and National Library routine, he delivered more than a dozen academic papers in Israel and abroad; published more than a dozen scholarly articles; wrote three Carta Field Guides—for Qumran, Masada, and Ein Gedi—in which he made his encyclopedic knowledge readily accessible to the general public; and brought out the second volume of Refuge Caves of the Bar-Kochba Revolt (with Roi Porat; Jerusalem: IES and JECJH, 2009), nearly half of whose thirty-seven articles he personally authored or coauthored. (Hanan published the first volume with David Amit in 1998.) In the months since this last major work appeared, I often found myself wondering if Hanan's involvement with those brave ancient warriors who took on the Roman empire might have served as a source of strength in his own battle for life, throughout which he showed incredible courage, stamina, and grace. [End Page 698]

Hanan's last lecture, "New Data on the Refuge Caves in Nahal Seelim that Yohanan Aharoni Surveyed (60 years ago in Operation Judaean Desert)," which he delivered in person on March 23, 2010, at the 36th Annual Israel Archaeological Conference held at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and his subsequent article in Haaretz, published on the day after his death, epitomized both his scholarship and his life. In the article ("It is All the Vulture's Fault," Haaretz, April 9, 2010), Hanan described how on a trip to examine the private Schøyen antiquities collection in Oslo during the summer of 2009, he recognized that one of the fragments was similar palaeographically to a fragment found sixty years ago by Yohanan Aharoni beneath a vulture's nest in the "Cave of Scrolls" in Nahal Seelim (34SeNumbers, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert [DJD] 38:207–9). Upon further examination, he noticed that it also contained a biblical passage (Num 16.2–5) close to the one preserved in the Aharoni discovery (Num 18.21 and 19.11). Is it possible, Hanan asked, that both fragments were originally adjacent in the same scroll of the Book of Numbers and only later separated by the vulture's flight?

Putting more pieces of the puzzle together, Hanan suggested that the other two fragments from the vulture's nest, which he identified as portions of a head phylactery, were also taken by the vulture and perhaps belonged to the same set of phylacteries partially preserved in an "unknown cave (X)" in the same area (XHev/SePhylactery, DJD 38:134, 183–91; Hanan proposed that the "unknown cave," was the "Cave of Skulls," in which seven skeletons from the Bar Kochba period were found). Pushing the envelope even further, Hanan noted that the mere two sets of phylacteries from the Bar Kochba period found in the Judaean Desert sites (the one described above and one from Wadi Murabbaat) as well as the absence of phylacteries at Masada probably reflect the emergency conditions confronted by the rebels seeking...

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