Diggers

In Jerusalem last week, Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion, temporarily ignoring the Eichmann trial, ordered out his scientific troops for a major assault on Biblical history. Find Israel's first army for me, he told an assembly of his country's leading archaeologists. Dig up the remains of Abraham's band of 318 men who pulled off a nighttime pincer attack at Dan and freed Abraham's nephew Lot from Chedorlaomer, King of the Elamites (Genesis 14:15).

Not a man present thought the request unreasonable. They had already dug farther into Israel's past. On display while Ben-Gurion spoke were more than 400 recently found, perfectly preserved, precisely carved artifacts--remnants of a little-known chalcolithic people who predated Abraham by almost 1,500 years. A second expedition of diggers had brought back fresh finds from the reign of Shimon Bar Kochba, self-styled first President of Israel, who led an unsuccessful revolt against Emperor Hadrian's Roman legions in A.D. 132.

Bridal Rights. The Bar Kochba explorers--160 soldiers, students and kibbutz volunteers--had been led to the desert badlands just west of the Dead Sea by Archaeologist and former General Yigael Yadin. They found a treasure their first day at the diggings. In the same bat-infested, three-chambered Cave of Letters where he had discovered the rebel chieftain's papyri orders just a year ago. Archaeologist Yadin found some 60 more documents in a goatskin and a leather bag.

Written in elegant Mishnaic Hebrew, the letters had an oddly contemporary ring. As in present-day Israel, all land belonged to the state, and one set of scrolls disclosed an intricate real estate deal in which a government administrator leased several plots to a four-man syndicate which, in turn, subleased the plots among themselves--probably to dodge taxes. A second lease involved a date grove controlled by a rich woman named Babata. When her daughter Shlomzion was married, Babata paid a dowry of 200 dinars. According to the marriage contract, signed in A.D. 133, the bride was guarded against fortune hunters because if her husband divorced her, he was required to pay 300 dinars.

On the Eighth Day. Eight miles from Dr. Yadin's Cave of Letters in the Wilderness of Judah, the second archaeological team, headed by grey-haired Polish Emigre Pessah Bar-Adon, 53, dug through six feet of debris in another cave. On the eighth day, behind a smooth stone that blocked a wall niche, it discovered a collection of artifacts that Bar-Adon quietly described as "probably archaeologically sensational": 432 copper, bronze, ivory and stone decorated objects that seem to be mace heads, scepters, crowns, powder horns, tools and weapons. Ranging in size from 3 in. to 15 in., the collection is ornamented with geometric patterns, herringbone and rope designs, beautifully sculpted ibex and deer. The age of the treasure (about 3300 B.C.) and the mystery surrounding the chalcolithic people who carved it have whetted Bar-Adon's appetite for further exploration.

Trying hard to conceal his enthusiasm at the find of a lifetime, Bar-Adon takes pleasure in his ignorance. "I don't even have names for these things, let alone know what they were used for," he confesses. "For many of the objects there is no parallel anywhere. We may be at the beginning of a new culture--for Palestine anyway."

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