By Dennis Mizzi

 

For a small site, Qumran has generated big debates. For one thing, despite the general scholarly consensus that ties the settlement with the group(s) behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essenes, there remain a number of dissenting voices. But here I want to underscore the benefits of studying Qumran in the wider context of the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean, leaving behind the idyllic, romantic notion of a site thriving in splendid isolation.

Map of the Mediterranean, showing the location of Qumran. © Google

 

 The site of Qumran. © The Allegro Estate, courtesy of the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester

 

 Cave 4Q, one of the scroll caves. © Dennis Mizzi

 

What does Qumran have to do with the Mediterranean? The site lay many kilometres from the shores of the Great Sea, but the boundaries of the Mediterranean have always been fluid. In fact, the Mediterranean is best demarcated not by geographical or political borders but by the limits of connectivity—the ability of people and ideas to move and interact—which reached their widest extent in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Qumran was connected to this far-reaching socio-political, cultural, and economic network that encompassed both landscape and seascape—in fact, it could not afford not to engage.

Qumran was located in a marginal zone, but this does not imply isolation or unproductiveness. Quite the contrary. As Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell stress in their magisterial work The Corrupting Sea (2000), the Mediterranean was essentially made up of a series of interconnected microregions, all of which were marked by constant risk, whether caused by climate adversity, difficult soils and terrains, or natural disasters. This turned all microregions into “marginal zones,” and the strategy to mitigate risk was to diversify, store, and redistribute. Marginal zones were productive regions, but their inhabitants depended on connectivity for survival.

Despite its seeming marginality and inhospitableness, the potential of the Dead Sea region should not be underestimated. Indeed, the region was home to a wide range of important (and lucrative) resources, including the balsam plant, date palms, various medicinal shrubs, bitumen, sulphur, and salt, among others. As far as Qumran is concerned, the local ecology was especially well-suited for the cultivation of date palms—which could grow in the strip of land between Qumran and ʿEin Feshkha—and evidence for this industry is in fact attested for the entirety of the site’s occupation in the first centuries BCE and CE.

Judean dates were highly prized in antiquity, and thus their cultivation cannot be considered a mere local industry but one tied with a Mediterranean-wide network. The site’s inhabitants diversified their output through a number of secondary or subsidiary industries, including pottery production, animal husbandry, and perhaps the harvesting and processing of bitumen, sulphur, and salt. The exploitation of these resources would have generated the required revenue to import basic foodstuffs that could not be grown at Qumran and to invest further into the local economy, thus mitigating risk and ensuring survival. The Qumranites may have been insular, but they could not afford to be isolated.

The question of connectivity in a Greco-Roman world inevitably raises the issue of “Hellenization” or “Romanization.” Did the Qumranites embrace or did they shun, or else try to limit, Greco-Roman influences and incursions? The question is fraught with problems. Rather than focusing on evidence for or against “Hellenization” or “Romanization” at Qumran—how can we even measure this?—a better alternative may be to explore the nuances that emerge out of the cultural encounters propagated by an interconnected world. From this perspective, the question should not be whether or not the Qumranites were Hellenized or Romanized, but to describe and analyse the nature of interaction with non-indigenous traditions. This allows us to move away from dichotomies and to embrace complex scenarios, which are a more realistic reflection of daily life in the ancient Mediterranean.

For example, does the presence of a few imported table vessels signify the “acculturation” and “assimilation” of the Qumranites to Greek or Roman culture? Does this necessarily imply that the Qumranites desired to emulate Greco-Roman practices, or that they sought to appropriate or construct Greco-Roman identities? Leaving aside the question of archaeological context—the few imported pottery and glass objects have largely been found in refuse dumps or mixed contexts—the problem is such notions deprive the Qumranites of their capacity to act thoughtfully, while suggesting a simplistic equation between artefacts and specific human practices. How can we determine that the values the Qumranites applied to such wares were the same as in other parts of the Graeco-Roman world?

In this regard, scholarship on Qumran (and, sometimes, on Hellenistic and Roman Palestine in general) lags significantly behind the theoretical advances made in sister disciplines. There is plenty of evidence from around the Mediterranean and beyond which highlights that the consumption of imported wares did not result in consumption patterns identical to their place of origins. The analysis of artefacts has to be contextualized within the overall material culture from the site under study. Objects need to be understood in relation to other objects; artefacts needs to be analysed holistically as part of a bigger assemblage comprising pottery, glass and stone vessels, stone and metal implements, small finds, and coins, and also in relation to architecture.

In the case of Qumran, it is noteworthy that the small number of imports is eclipsed by the preponderance of common wares. This is not a question of whether or not the Qumranites could have afforded fine imports, since there are indications that the Qumranites were rather affluent, including the probability that they owned many scrolls, costly artefacts in the ancient world. If they wanted to, the Qumranites could have afforded imported, fine wares, but instead opted to invest elsewhere, including in the ‘knowledge economy.’ This is highly significant: it shows that the Qumranites could and did choose the type of culture to consume or invest in, and this gives them back their autonomy and capacity to be selective.

Of course, we can only speculate regarding the presence of imports at Qumran. Perhaps such wares were used only on special occasions, but the use of imported, fine wares for special meals does not turn these into Greco-Roman banquets. Indeed, the site lacks a lavish dining hall in which the Qumranites could have entertained and impressed their guests, unlike the luxurious houses in Jerusalem or the royal palaces in Jericho and Masada. One possibility is that fine wares were used for Jewish festive meals for the Sabbath or holidays. Alternatively, these were possessions brought over by wealthy individuals who came to reside at Qumran. Other explanations are possible. The point is that we need to go beyond simple explanations that equate imported fine wares with a desire to be “Greek” or “Roman.”

At the same time, situating Qumran in its Mediterranean context encourages us to shed the notion of Qumran as a one-of-a-kind site and to look at the broader Mediterranean world for parallels. I have suggested that locus 4—a rectangular room with a plaster floor, plastered walls, and a 10–20-cm high plaster bench built against all four of the room’s walls—was the site’s dining room.

Qumran, locus 4: looking south to southwest. © The Allegro Estate, courtesy of the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester

 

Qumran, locus 4: looking northeast. © The Allegro Estate, courtesy of the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester

 

Terra Sigillata vessels from Jerusalem. Nachman Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem

 

The low plaster bench was a base for wooden seats and a plastered basin in the north wall of the room was likely a firebox or a brazier. These are features attested in Hellenistic and Roman dining settings in other parts of the Mediterranean, which underpins the strength of this interpretation over others that have been proposed, including that locus 4 was a storage room or a “library.” Together with a number of other considerations, including finds retrieved from this room, locus 4 is a better candidate than locus 77. Locus 4 is the only room at Qumran with clear evidence for a sitting arrangement.

Identifying locus 4 as a dining room does not exclude other functions. In antiquity, as today, spaces were multifunctional. Locus 4 could have been used for meetings, prayer, study, reading, and dining, activities that were intricately intertwined in the ancient world. For example, several classical and Jewish sources demonstrate that eating, drinking, and learned conversation (in lieu of music and entertainment) were two sides of the same coin.

The benefits of broadening horizons and seeking analogies beyond the immediate context of Judaea and the Dead Sea are indisputable. But any parallels provide us with nothing more than analogies to interpretations of site-specific data. In other words, the analogies cannot replace a detailed archaeological analysis and cannot override local historical and cultural considerations. In the case of locus 4, we can borrow the archaeological data garnered from Hellenistic and Roman dining rooms without taking along associated cultural baggage.

Qumran may have been in the middle of the desert, but in the end it was both part of a larger ecological system and integrated within the “globalized” world of classical antiquity. Its interpretation should be contextualized accordingly. I have purposely steered clear of the debate about the identity of the Qumranites, but I join the majority of scholars in seeing Qumran as inhabited by one of the groups behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were deposited in caves adjacent to or accessible only through the settlement. The case for a connection between the settlement and the scrolls is strong, but this tells us little about the site itself or the people who thrived there. Indeed, more than anything else, this scholarly debate has stifled progress in the field, resulting in an endless loop of arguments and counterarguments the likes of which are rarely seen in the interpretation of other archaeological sites.

Critically, the scholarly discussion is based on a number of false premises, especially the notion that there is such a thing as ‘an archaeology of sectarianism’ through which one can prove or disprove the “sectarian” character of Qumran. We should strive to move beyond short-sighted endeavours that merely seek to identify the site’s inhabitants or to come up with radical, but underdeveloped, new theories about the site in general. What we need are questions that aim to enrich our understanding of the inner workings of the site, its inhabitants, and their daily life. Answering these should be an end in itself and not merely the means to solving the big picture. If Qumran was inhabited by a group related to the scrolls, or a branch of Essenes, as is likely, then the archaeological portrait we obtain would serve as an independent source of information about one such group rather than as a mere tool to prove or disprove a hypothesis. In this way, the data could be imbued with more nuance.

Placing Qumran in a Mediterranean context is one way to achieve this. A corollary of this integrative approach is that any conclusions about the site become pertinent for the study of ancient Mediterranean communities in general, and late Hellenistic and early Roman Judaea in particular. In other words, this also helps us burst the Qumran scholarly bubble, making the site relevant beyond the field of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

 

Dennis Mizzi is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Oriental Studies and Associate Member of the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta.

For Further Reading:

Dennis Mizzi, “From the Judaean Desert to the Great Sea: Qumran in a Mediterranean Context,” Dead Sea Discoveries 24 (2017): 378–406. doi 10.1163/15685179-12341444