Nahman Avigad

Avigad was born in Zawalow in 1905 and originally bore the surname Reiss.[1] He studied architecture at the University of Brno in Czechoslovakia before immigrating to Palestine in 1925.[1] His architectural education later contributed to his work as a draftsman and graphic artist, and many excavation drawings published during the 1930s and 1940s were his work.[1]

He joined the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1928 and participated in excavations at the Ophel, Beth Alpha, Hammath Gader, Samaria, Tel Jerishe, and Afulah.[1] In the late 1930s, he assisted Eleazar Lipa Sukenik with preparations to establish an archaeological museum at the university; he was among the Jewish Antiquities Museum team photographed at its building in April 1941.[3]

Avigad began formal archaeological studies in 1941 and completed his doctorate in 1952.[1] His dissertation, Ancient Monuments in the Kidron Valley, appeared in 1954, when he was appointed lecturer in the Hebrew University’s Department of Archaeology, later its Institute of Archaeology.[1] His first English-language article, concerning a seal of a slave-girl, had appeared in the Palestine Exploration Quarterly in 1946.[1]

His research encompassed archaeology and Hebrew and Aramaic epigraphy.[1] Among the inscriptions he deciphered were the “Epitaph of a Royal Steward” at Silwan in the Kidron Valley, inscriptions on the synagogue lintel at Kefar Neburaya, and inscriptions in Jason’s tomb in Jerusalem.[1] In 1956, he and Yigael Yadin published A Genesis Apocryphon: A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judea.[1]

On June 15, 1967, Yadin contacted Avigad and Department of Antiquities director Biran to go to the Rockefeller Museum and secure scrolls in safes amid continued mortar fire.[4] Avigad and Biran became the first Israeli scholars to gain access to the Cave 4 material since its discovery fifteen years earlier.[4]

Between 1953 and 1958, Avigad directed excavations at Bet She’arim, uncovering a subterranean necropolis dating to the second and third centuries C.E.[1] He also participated in the 1955 survey of Masada and in the Judean Desert cave expeditions of 1960–1961.[1]

The desert campaigns comprised four expedition groups exploring caves in the valleys between Masada and En-Gedi, extending as far as the Jordanian border.[5] Avigad directed Expedition A near En-Gedi, where his team cleared Second Temple-period burial caves.[5] One contained a wooden sarcophagus inlaid with bone ornaments.[5] The team also explored the “Cave of the Pool,” where refugees had constructed a reservoir to secure their water supply and apparently survived to leave after the danger had passed.[5]

A burial cave in the cliff of Naḥal David at En-Gedi, excavated by Avigad, became the subject of renewed study in 2022.[6] A bronze finger ring recovered from the cave by a teenager had not been included in Avigad’s excavation report.[6] The later study examined the ring’s symbol and proposed a connection between the burials and the conflict between Herod and Mattathias Antigonus in 40–37 B.C.E.[6]

Avigad directed the Jewish Quarter excavations from 1969 to 1982 while the quarter was being rebuilt.[1][7] The project followed Jerusalem’s reunification in 1967, when Israel captured the area from Jordanian forces.[2][8] The expedition was supported by the Hebrew University Archaeological Institute, the government’s Antiquities Department, and the Israel Exploration Society.[2]

The quarter had been badly damaged during the fighting in the War of Independence and subsequently under Jordanian rule.[7] A decision to demolish and rebuild its remains preceded the archaeological project, and the extent and character of the buried remains were unknown when excavation began.[7] The excavators encountered an unexpectedly abundant succession of structures and remains extending from the Iron Age through the Crusader period.[7]

On December 3, 1969, Avigad announced results following three months of work in an area about 400 yards across the Old City.[2] He said that the discoveries could make it possible to reconstruct 900 years of settlement in the Jewish Quarter; the work illuminated nine stages of Jerusalem’s history, from the Israelites to the Crusaders.[2] Over the longer course of the project, the excavations exposed continuous settlement traces from the end of the First Temple period, in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.E., to modern times.[9]

The excavation program also affected reconstruction above ground.[10] At Batei Mahaseh, Avigad excavated the large square after the Six-Day War.[10] Architect Saadia Mandel’s design work began in 1968, but construction waited until the excavations were complete; his eventual design used two levels to accommodate public ceremonies and events.[10]

Among Avigad’s principal Jerusalem discoveries was the Israelite Broad Wall, a stretch of fortification approximately eight meters thick running northeast–southwest across the Western Hill.[1][11] His early-1970s mission uncovered a portion of the wall dating to the time of King Hezekiah, at the end of the eighth century B.C.E.[12] Houses along the planned route had been demolished and their stones reused to strengthen the defenses, construction associated with Jerusalem’s expansion and the approach of the Assyrian army.[12]

The excavations also yielded fragmentary Iron Age houses, pottery, stamped handles, and figurines.[11] Another discovery, the Israelite Tower, bore signs of the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E.[2] Together, these remains supplied material evidence of Jerusalem’s settlement and defenses during the First Temple period.[2][11]

The Herodian Quarter was the main excavation site within the Jewish Quarter project.[9] Excavators uncovered parts of six or seven houses occupying approximately 2,700 square meters on terraces facing the Tyropoeon Valley and the Temple Mount.[9] The dwellings had remained buried for almost 1,900 years, with houses and artifacts preserved almost in their entirety, revealing a way of life that ended with Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 C.E.[9]

The Palatial Mansion was the largest, most complete, and most elaborate Second Temple-period dwelling uncovered in the Jewish Quarter.[9] Built during Herod’s reign, it extended across three terraces and approximately 600 square meters.[9] Its remains included courtyards, water installations, storage areas, mosaics, frescoes, and ritual baths.[9] Other finds in the residential complex included elaborate bathing installations, mosaic floors, a colonnaded courtyard, and vessels bearing the inscription “Yehud,” the name of Judea in the Hasmonean period.[13]

Archaeologists have suggested that the neighborhood’s proximity to the Temple Mount, together with its ritual baths and stone vessels, points to wealthy priestly residents.[8] Ritual baths found during Avigad’s excavations remained points of comparison for later discoveries of Second Temple-period bathing installations in the Jewish Quarter.[14]

The Burnt House, discovered by Avigad during his work in the Jewish Quarter, preserved the fire-blackened remains of a building destroyed during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.[1] Buried beneath a thick destruction layer, its excavated rooms contained fragments of stone tables and numerous ceramic, stone, and metal vessels.[9] Finds also included an iron spear, coins minted during the revolt against Rome in 66–70 C.E., and the arm bones of a young woman at the entrance to a side room.[9] The revolt coins provided evidence for the date of the house’s destruction.[9]

A round stone weight from one room bore a Hebrew inscription in square Aramaic script, read as “(of) Bar Kathros.”[9] The inscription has been interpreted as a possible connection with the priestly House of Kathros.[9] The excavation thus brought together domestic objects, an inscribed artifact, and physical traces of the destruction of Jerusalem.[9]

Two fragments of light-colored plaster found in the Jewish Quarter carried an image of a seven-branched menorah, apparently the earliest detailed drawing of the menorah that stood in the Jerusalem Temple.[9] The roughly 2,200-year-old engraving depicted the Temple menorah, which was taken to Rome after the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 C.E.[2] The excavators also recovered more than 600 coins, the earliest dating to 80 B.C.E.[2]

Avigad’s finds included fragments of a compartmented object that he jokingly called a “קערת פיצוחים,” or “snack bowl.”[15] The nickname persisted and continued to be used by some researchers decades later.[15]

Avigad’s excavations uncovered the Byzantine city’s main street, the Cardo, as well as remains of the Nea Church.[1][2] Byzantine-period discoveries also included a road linking the Nea Church with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.[2]

His Hebrew book The Upper City of Jerusalem presented the archaeological excavations in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter.[16] Its 1981 edition comprised 265 pages and included a bibliography, illustrations, maps, and facsimiles.[16] His popular account Discovering Jerusalem appeared in 1983.[1]

The Jewish Quarter excavations were also documented in multivolume final reports covering architecture and stratigraphy, finds, the Burnt House, the Cardo, and the Nea Church, among other subjects.[16] These reports recorded the work conducted under Avigad from 1969 to 1982.[16]

Avigad received the Israel Prize in 1977, listed in the field of Land of Israel studies.[17] His work joined the study of Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions with excavations of burial complexes, desert caves, and Jerusalem’s successive urban layers.[1] The Jewish Quarter discoveries documented Jewish life in Jerusalem through fortifications, residences, ritual installations, inscriptions, and objects associated with the Temple.[2][13]

Avigad’s association with Eleazar Sukenik also placed him within a tradition of scholarship focused on Jewish antiquities.[18] In an essay discussing Sukenik’s Zionism and archaeological outlook, Yitz Landes quotes Avigad’s recollection that “Jewish archaeology was sacrosanct for Sukenik, with ancient synagogues as its main focus.”[18] Avigad died in 1992.[1]

The extent of Iron Age Jerusalem was a significant scholarly issue affected by Avigad’s discoveries.[11] His wall discovery, together with subsequently discovered Iron Age fortifications, supported the conclusion that the city occupied a large part of the Western Hill.[11] This contradicted Kathleen Kenyon’s interpretation that the Iron Age city did not extend west of the Tyropoeon Valley.[11]