The High Priest's Granddaughter
After all the fuss over the James Ossuary, you might think that the Israeli Antiquities Authority was chary of any new ossuaries, especially if they were unprovenanced. That, after all, was the chief complaint about the James Ossuary - that no one knew where it had come from or whether the inscription was on it when found.
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| The ossuary of Miriam, granddaughter of Caiaphas. The inscription is just below the lid. |
Now it appears that the IAA has another ossuary on its hands, confiscated from looters. It is believed that it was found somewhere in the Valley of Elah, site of David's conflict with the giant Goliath. It is decorated with two large sylised flowers or stars on its long sides as well as an intricate pattern around the edges. The really exciting news, however, is that it bears an inscription in a neat and careful formal Aramaic script, which Professor Yuval Goren describes as "extraordinary".
And well he might be taken aback. If his reading of the letters is confirmed, the inscription states, "Miriam daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priest of Ma'aziah from Beth Imri".
Caiaphas, of course, was the high priest in power at the time of Jesus' arrest and crucifixion, notorious for having botched the job of providing false testimony against the Prisoner. Although there are no historical records of his grand-daughter, it is not impossible that he should have a son called "Joshua" nor that that son should have a daughter called "Miriam". They are all good Jewish names.
Beth Imri is believed to be located somewhere near Hebron, and the "Ma'aziah" is believed to be one of the priestly courses mentioned in Chronicles, where it comes last in the list of twenty-four.
After its recovery by the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, the ossuary was given to Dr Boaz Zissu of the Department of the Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology of Bar Ilan University, and Professor Yuval Goren of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations of the Tel Aviv University for study and evaluation. Having learned valuable lessons from the James Ossuary debacle, they paid particular attention to the patina on the ossuary surface and in the grooves of the letters, using optical and scanning electron microscopes and an energy dispersive spectrometer. Their conclusion is that the inscription is genuine.
The ossuary gives us valuable information about the family of Caiaphas - though I am afraid that poor Miriam is hardly worth a mention. In the first place, we did not know until now that the Caiaphas family belonged to the Ma'aziah course. In the second place, the suggestion that they came from southern Judea - Beit Imri - is also interesting. The discovery of the ossuary of Caiaphas himself in a tomb in Jerusalem might have suggested that the family was based in that city.
One cannot help but be a trifle cynical over the fact that examination of this ossuary was able to prove to the Jewish authorities' satisfaction that it was genuine, yet somehow they failed to prove that the James Ossuary was genuine and had to be corrected by the world's foremost expert in patina in the course of their unsuccessful court case against Oded Golan. The difference, one suspects, lies not in the patinas but in the fact that this is an unquestionably Jewish artefact whereas the James Ossuary is more to do with Christianity.
priestly courses The priests of ancient Israel were divided into "courses" or groups, and served in the temple according to their courses. 1 Chronicles 24:7-18 gives the courses as they were in the temple of Solomon and a fragmentary inscription on a broken marble slab found at Caesarea in 1962 gives the courses as they were after the destruction of the temple in AD 70. (This inscription is also the earliest Jewish mention of Nazareth, where Jesus grew up.) There were 24 courses, and each served in the temple twice a year for a week at a time, offering the stipulated sacrifices, blessing the people and generally caring for the temple. Of course, at the great festivals, all 24 courses were expected to be present! Return
ossuary of Caiaphas This was discovered in 1990 in a tomb in the Valley of Hinnom, not far from its junction with the Kidron Valley. Twelve ossuaries were unearthed in the tomb, six of which contained bones and three bore inscriptions. The excavators numbered them 461, 462 and 463. They were inscribed as follows:
461: Joseph son of Caiaphas (repeated on a second line)
462: Caiaphas
463:Miriam daughter of Simon
Not only was this a fascinating find, but the spelling of the name was a surprise. The Greek of Josephus and the New Testament renders the name "Kaiaphas", which led some scholars to suggest that the family came from a ruin near Hebron now known as Khirbet Kufin. However the Aramaic of the ossuaries gives the name as "Qaiafas", which has led some to suggest that the high priest's family came from the newly discovered Khirbet Qeiyafa, where there are ruins from the first century AD. The fact that the new ossuary is thought to have come from the Valley of Elah, not far from Khirbet Qeiyafa, may be taken as evidence in favour of this idea. Return
© Kendall K. Down 2011
