Cave Cache

From the rim of a valley near the biblical city of Sodom on Israel's Dead Sea, the cave of Nahal Hemar (Hebrew for Asphalt River) is clearly visible in the face of the opposing limestone cliff, 9 ft. above the valley floor. Over the centuries, hyenas and nomadic shepherds have used the cave for shelter, and since the 1940s discovery of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls in another cave 40 miles to the north, Bedouin shepherds have scoured through Nahal Hemar vainly seeking similar treasures. Had the Bedouins probed deeper into the cave floor, their search might have been rewarded. In 1983 Archaeologists David Alon of the Israeli Department of Antiquities and Museums and Ofer Bar-Yosef of Hebrew University, digging 3 ft. down, unearthed a cache of spectacular Neolithic (late Stone Age) artifacts about 9,000 years old.

Discovery of the finely wrought objects was kept under wraps, awaiting the beginning of the 20th anniversary celebration of Jerusalem's Israel Museum, which last week placed them on display. They include the oldest cloth fragments and painted mask ever found: a life-size limestone human face decorated with bands of red and green. Also dug from the cave: basket and box fragments made of woven rushes waterproofed with asphalt, delicate thumbnail- size human heads and a rodent figurine, carved wood and bone tools, clay, stone and wooden beads and a human skull adorned with asphalt. Perhaps most remarkable are the fabrics, which are woven in eleven intricate designs, some resembling knotted macrame, others fine mesh.

Concerned that their Neolithic treasures would quickly disintegrate if exposed to humidity and sunlight, museum officials placed them in a darkened room, under glass and resting on a bed of blue and white silica gel that absorbs moisture. To view the objects, visitors press a button, which turns on display lights (filtered to block any destructive ultraviolet light) for only 90 seconds.

The Nahal Hemar discovery should banish forever any popular notions that Neolithic man was brutish and dull. "He fashioned jewelry and elaborate textiles and traded to the north and south," declares Tamar Noy, a curator of prehistory at the museum. "These objects are so exquisite that they give us a new view of what our ancestors were like."