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Re: orion Celibacy, Cemetery, update
According to S. Pfann;
>
> To any who are interested,
>
> Perhaps more clearly stated one should say:
>
> "There were no spindle whorls or loom weights found during the
> excavations of Kh. Qumran, during the period in question."
>
> According to DeVaux's notes and object catalogues, there are actually
> two spindle whorls found at Qumran. However, neither were found in
> contexts from the periods in question. One of them (KhQ 401) appeared
> ^Óon the floor^Ô of locus 20 which sits high above the destruction layer
Made of alabaster. Your second example, below, is also numbered KhQ401.
As I recall, there are two <Fr.>fuseaux</>, or spindles, elsewhere, but
the notebook in which it's all recorded is proving elusive. Thanks for the
information.
[. . .]
>
> Without reading any more than necessary into the early, and admitted,
> rather unclear assessments of the cemetery (specific details of the
> first 11 graves) the excavator's last assessment of the main cemetery
> should stand.
Actually, there's a case to be made for the earliest assessments of the
cemetery as the most reliable. By the 1954 RB report, de Vaux was strongly
invested in the cemetery = community. He later portrays the monastery
model as doctrine. The notes and early reports are less likely to be so
suffused with the monastery presupposition.
>
> "Apart from some instances which are uncertain due to the bad state of
> the preservation of the bones, all the skeleton's in that part of the
> cemetery which is carefully planned are male." - DeVaux ARCHAEOLOGY AND
> THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. (English Edition, p.47)
>
We can't know what "all the skeletons" are; see de Vaux in RB 1953, for
the caution about not making statistical conclusions.
> Peace.
>
> S. Pfann
>
Thanks,
Sigrid Peterson