Inscription Found In Judean Desert: ‘Abba Of Naburya Has Perished’

 In a remarkable discovery in a Judean desert cave, researchers found a four-line ancient Aramaic inscription, possibly written by Jewish rebels from the Bar Kochba Revolt against the Romans in the 2nd century CE. The discovery was revealed Monday by two Israeli scholars at a prominent academic conference in Jerusalem on Monday, according to a Times of Israel report

“Abba of Naburya has perished,” the first line reads. Only isolated words or letters in the additional three lines have been deciphered, including the words “on us,” “he took,” and “the.”

The inscription was discovered in a cave near the Ein Gedi National Park in the Dead Sea region. The cave was already known to archaeologists as it contains a stalactite with a fragmentary ink inscription written in ancient Hebrew script characteristic of the First Temple period.

In spring 2023, Dr. Asaf Gayer (Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Ariel University), geologist Boaz Langford (Institute of Earth Sciences and the Israeli Cave Research Center, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Israel Antiquities Authority photographer Shai Halevi visited the cave to photograph the stalactite with multispectral photography, hoping it would help decipher additional parts of the inscription not visible to the naked eye. The research team also included Prof. Jonathan Ben-Dov (Department of Biblical Studies, Tel Aviv University).

What they found was beyond their wildest dreams. Not only did they identify the additional Aramaic inscription in the lower part of the stalactite, but they also stumbled upon four Roman swords in an exceptional state of preservation.

“The First Temple period inscription had been photographed in the 1970s, and we believed that with more advanced technology, we could get better results,” Gayer said. “By chance, we discovered the second inscription. It was a great surprise for all of us.”

“This inscription is extremely rare,” Gayer told the Times of Israel. “Written material from this period is, in general, very rare. Of course, there are the Dead Sea Scrolls, but other than that, most of the inscriptions we have amount to a single name or word. We have only one additional site in the Judean Desert with some graffiti where we can actually read some content. An inscription of four lines with content is almost unheard of.”

While no scrolls were found in the specific cave where the inscriptions and swords were discovered, some of the scroll fragments unearthed in the surrounding area — including pieces identified during a recent large-scale rescue operation — are believed to have been hidden in nearby crevices during the Jewish revolt against Roman rule led by Shimon Bar Kochba between 132 and 135 CE, likely by rebels or refugees. The swords were also likely deposited there in the same period.

The inscription covers an area of about 8 by 3.5 centimeters on the lower part of the stalactite.

The text is written in square Hebrew script — the same script used in modern Hebrew.

“It appears the writer aimed for a high-quality inscription but did not succeed,” Gayer said. “This may have been due to the difficulty of writing on the stalactite’s surface in such small letters, or because they lacked formal training. The result is a mixture of semi-formal script and cursive characters.”

“The use of square script began during the Persian period [6th-3rd centuries BCE],” Gayer explains. “By the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, Judeans were gradually abandoning the ancient Hebrew script in favor of the square script — at the time, the Aramaic script — because Aramaic had become the spoken and written lingua franca that everyone was using. That same square script is the one we still use for Hebrew today.”

Gayer explained that both Aramaic as a language and the writing style evolved over the centuries, allowing experts to distinguish between writings from different eras.

“Paleographers can recognize the script typical of the 3rd century CE or the 1st century CE,” he said.

“In our case, the language and style point to the 1st or 2nd century CE,” he added. “However, because the inscription is so small and not well preserved, we can’t tell whether it dates to the First Jewish Revolt in 70 CE, the period between the two uprisings, or the Bar Kochba Revolt.”

Since the inscription was found only inches away from the swords and a Bar Kochba coin, according to Gayer, the archaeological context suggests the inscription also dates back to the same period.

“However, we cannot be certain,” Gayer said.

Asked if the Aramaic and Hebrew inscriptions might be related, Gayer said he doubted it.

“We believe the Hebrew inscription dates to the 7th century BCE, so the time gap is simply too great,” he said.

Gayer, Langford, and Halevi found the swords accidentally as they went to photograph the First Temple inscription, after Gayer spotted an extremely well-preserved Roman pilum — a shafted weapon — in a deep, narrow crack in the rock. The researchers reported the find to the Israel Antiquities Authority and returned to the site with the Judean Desert Archaeological Survey Team.

Experts believe the swords likely belonged to Roman soldiers and were stolen by Judean rebels who hid them in a cave either for later use or to avoid being caught with them. Three of them still had their blades inside their scabbards.

“[Jewish] villagers from the area were not allowed to carry weapons,” Gayer said. “This is why we think they hid them. The cave is too small to have been inhabited; we believe Jewish rebels used it as an outpost to launch raids against the Romans.”

More details about who Abba of Naburya was or how he died are unlikely to be found, as researchers doubt that they will be able to decipher more of the Aramaic words.

Abba was a common Jewish name in the first centuries CE. Many individuals named Abba appeared in the Mishna, which was redacted in the late 2nd/early 3rd century CE. Naburya was a Jewish village in the Galilee adjacent to Tzfat. A “Jacob from Naburya village” is mentioned in Jerusalem Talmud’s tractate of Yevamot (2:6).

Gayer and his colleagues are currently working on publishing the inscription in a peer-reviewed academic article. At the same time, the find has inspired the team to look for more inscriptions in the area.

“After we found this new inscription almost by accident, we told ourselves that if no one had spotted this one, there might be others to discover,” Gayer said. “Since then, we’ve been visiting other caves known to have sheltered Jewish refugees, focusing on those with flat enough walls for inscriptions, and examining them with multispectral photography and other advanced techniques.”

So far, the team has identified a one-word inscription in a water system and has been able to read additional parts of another previously known inscription.

“Every new letter found matters,” Gayer noted. “There is great potential for new discoveries.”