Photos Bethar (last stand of Bar Kochba)

[Jona Lendering]

I am looking for a good photo of Bethar, the last stand of Bar Kochba, the messianic rebel who took up arms against Hadrian in 132-136 (more...). I want to use the photo on my website, and perhaps in a book; which means that I will pay a reasonable and even a less reasonable price, and will of course credit the photographer + send him/her a copy of the book.

[D B Campbell]

As far as I am aware, Jona, the site is fairly unphotogenic.
I have only ever seen a vertical air photograph, which I think was reproduced in Kennedy & Riley.

The site has never been excavated, but (as far as I remember) Dan Ussishkin field-walked the area in the 1990s. He kindly supplied a photo of sling bullets from the site for my Siege Warfare in the Roman World (Osprey, 2005), p. 46.

You could probably obtain a photo of the site from one of our Israeli colleagues, but it wouldn't show up any archaeology. (And, if I remember correctly, it has been under pressure from neighbouring developments, so it may well be built over. This is from memory, only -- I hope I am wrong!)

[Narukami]

Greetings.

Just curious...

Is there any reason, other than the press of the modern world, why this site has not been excavated and studied in detail?
:?


Jona, read your article -- very interesting. Thanks for the link.



Narukami

[Jona Lendering]

why this site has not been excavated and studied in detail?

As far as I know, Yigal Yadin has done some research. Why it had no follow-up, I don't know, but why should they excacate it? As long as things are in the soil, they won't get destroyed; one must postpone an excavation as long as possible, I'd say.

[D B Campbell]

As far as I know, Yigal Yadin has done some research.

I'm not sure if Yadin actually investigated the site.
Apparently, an Israeli scholar called Yeivin surveyed the remains in the early/mid 1940s -- if you can find his book, The War of Bar-Kochba (Jerusalem, 1952; in Hebrew), you might get some useable images.

I confess that my interest is limited to the Roman siege wall.
The well-known siegecraft expert Adolf Schulten visited Bettir in the 1930s when he was studying Masada, and made several useful observations along the "circumvallation". In particular, he noted that the building of a railway had already disturbed the area to the north.

Since then, there have been various "disturbances" across the entire site, beginning in 1948 (predictably) when the hill (Kh. el-Yahud) was used as a border look-out post, so any archaeology would have been extensively disturbed by the Jordanian army.
Then, following 1967, the modern village of Bettir sprang up, with associated forestry and olive cultivation across the entire site.
In addition, when the ancient association with Betar (or Beth-Ter) became widely known, the site apparently suffered badly from treasure hunting.

In the 1980s, Ussishkin did limited excavations {edit: in my previous post, I mistakenly said he had fieldwalked} on the hilltop, where he found evidence of a well-built fortification wall. (Plan and photos in Tel Aviv vol. 20, 1993.)
He was less interested in the Roman remains, so we are still reliant on the reports from the 1920s and 1930s for these.

[Jona Lendering]

I start to realize that the photos in Yadin's book on Bar Kokhba are not his.

Thanks for the reference; I think Yeivin book will be available in the Jewish department of the library of the University of Amsterdam, the so-called Rosenthaliana. I love those names. :wink: