Cave of Horror () is the nickname given to a refuge cave that archaeologists have catalogued as Nahal Hever Cave 8 (8Hev) of the

Judaean Desert The Judaean Desert or Judean Desert (, ) is a desert in the West Bank and Israel that stretches east of the ridge of the Judaean Mountains and in their rain shadow, so east of Jerusalem, and descends to the Dead Sea. Under the name El-Bariyah, ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, where the remains of

Jewish refugees This article lists expulsions, refugee crises and other forms of displacement that have affected Jews. Timeline The following is a list of Jewish expulsions and events that prompted significant streams of Jewish refugees. Assyrian captivity ...

from the

Bar Kokhba revolt The Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 AD) was a major uprising by the Jews of Judaea (Roman province), Judaea against the Roman Empire, marking the final and most devastating of the Jewish–Roman wars. Led by Simon bar Kokhba, the rebels succeeded ...

(c. 132–136 AD) were found.

Location

The cave lies in the cliffs towering from the south over the

wadi Wadi ( ; ) is a river valley or a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) Stream bed, riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portion ...

known in Hebrew as Nahal Hever. Nearby, in the cliffs on the opposite side of the stream, is the Cave of Letters, where many documents from the Bar Kokhba revolt were uncovered.

Discoveries

Bar Kokhba revolt

At the top of the cliff above the Cave of Horror were the ruins of a Roman camp, similar to the one found above the Cave of Letters. The skeletons of 40 men, women and children were discovered inside. Of the 40 dead the names of three are known, since inscribed potsherds (

ostraca An ostracon (Greek language, Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeology, archaeological or epigraphy, epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer ...

) bearing their names were found placed on their remains. In investigations following the first one by Yadin, a number of fragments of letters and writings were discovered in the cave, among them a number of Bar Kokhba coins and a Greek copy of the

biblical The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) biblical languages ...

Book of the Twelve, an already old scroll by the time it was brought into the cave since it was dated to 50-1 BC. Some 60 years later, in March 2021, archaeologists discovered new fragments belonging to the same scroll, a Greek translation of the Book of the Twelve, different from the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

and with the name of

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

Yahweh Yahweh was an Ancient Semitic religion, ancient Semitic deity of Weather god, weather and List of war deities, war in the History of the ancient Levant, ancient Levant, the national god of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Judah, Judah and Kingdom ...

, written in Old Hebrew script among the otherwise Greek text. The newly discovered fragments, which belong to the Books of Zechariah and Nahum, contain surprising variations compared to the

Masoretic text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

commonly used today. No scroll fragments had been discovered by archaeologists in the previous approximately 60 years.

Chalcolithic child burial

The partially mummified 6000-year-old remains of a child, probably a girl aged between 6 and 12, were found in March 2021 under two flat stones in a shallow pit grave with the help of CT (CAT) scan. The burial dates to the

Chalcolithic The Chalcolithic ( ) (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) was an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It followed the Neolithic and preceded the Bronze Age. It occurred at different periods in di ...

period. The child had been buried in a fetal position and covered with a cloth resembling a small blanket, wrapped around its head and chest, but not its feet. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority the burial was found along with 2,000-year-old

Dead Sea scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of List of Hebrew Bible manuscripts, ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE). They were discovered over a period of ten years, between ...

. Fragments were Greek translations of the books of Nahum and Zechariah from the Book of the 12 Minor Prophets. The only text written in

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

was the name of God.

Location

Discoveries

Bar Kokhba revolt

Chalcolithic child burial

See also

References

Further reading