SUNRISE ON THE SHORES OF THE KINNERET: DIGGING THE FIRST-CENTURY JEWISH TOWN OF MAGDALA
Jordan J. Ryan, 2017 Meyers Fellowship Recipient
Excavating in a groundwater well. This well fed several nearby miqva’ot.
This summer, I had the opportunity to return to the excavation at Magdala. Magdala is located about five kilometers north of Tiberias on the west side of the Sea of Galilee. It was founded in the late Hellenistic period, and most of the finds in the area of the current excavations (under the leadership of the Universidad Anáhuac México Sur and the Israel Antiquities Authority) date to the time of the Herodians. Because of this, Magdala provides us with a window into early Jewish life and religion in the late Second Temple period. The Jewish character of the area currently under excavation has been especially illuminated by a pair of particularly spectacular finds: a well-preserved synagogue dating to the Herodian period, and a group of four Jewish ritual baths that are fed by groundwater. Magdala is not directly mentioned in the New Testament, although Mary Magdalene’s name indicates that she probably hailed from Magdala.
The Magdala excavation is remarkably international. This year, I dug alongside archaeologists, students, and volunteers from Canada, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Spain, and the United States. In the past, I have also dug alongside others from Argentina, Italy, Peru, and South Africa. Moreover, the Magdala excavation is directed by Dr. Marcela Zapata-Meza, who is the first Mexican woman to direct a dig outside of Mexico. These are just a few of the things that make the experience at Magdala so unique and fulfilling. It really is fantastic to work with people from so many different places and to be enriched by their different perspectives, ideas, experiences, and areas of expertise.
Sunrise on the Sea of Galilee.
A typical day onsite at Magdala goes something like this. We would wake up pretty early, usually around 5 AM, so that we could get to the site before 6. Tiberias, where we stayed, is also on the Sea of Galilee. The short drive north to Magdala was always picturesque, driving along the lake as it reflected the golden light of sunrise. After a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal, we would grab our picks, brushes, pans, and buckets, and get to digging. For anyone who hasn’t experienced a dig in the Middle East, even early in the morning, it is already quite hot when you are under the sun. One thing that always seems to surprise people about the lake region of Galilee is just how humid it is as well. Because of that, water and tarps are very important. We would stop around 10 AM for a fuller breakfast. One of the perks of our site is that our eating area has a panini press, so sandwiches were always a popular option. The break was always enjoyable, as we could take some time to chat about the dig, the morning’s finds, or whatever else might come to mind. We would then go back to digging until noon, when it starts to get too hot to continue digging, so we’d eat lunch and pack up.
Finding an ancient coin.
This season shed more light on the town’s religious character. We also learned a bit more about Magdala’s founding. One of the ongoing goals of the excavation is to understand the religious context of the town, especially by trying to better grasp the relationship of the synagogue and the complex containing the ritual baths (more on these later!) to the town around it. A specific goal of this season was to dig some probes further down past the early Roman period remains (roughly first century C.E.) in order to learn more about what Magdala was like in the late Hellenistic period (second to first centuries B.C.E.), when it was founded. Because almost all of our major finds have been from the early Roman period, it would be good to discover more about what Magdala was like in other periods.
One of the more interesting tasks that I was given was to dig in a groundwater well in order to find its foundations and to learn more about its date and how it worked. This particular well is of special interest, because it directly feeds Magdala’s miqva’ot. To our knowledge, no other groundwater-fed miqva’ot have been found, so this miqveh well is the only one of its type. However, this kind of digging is far from glamorous – there was no breeze in the well, and it got to be a bit like a sauna with two of us down there. Moreover, the well was home to many spiders and all sorts of insects. There was only room for two of us to work in the well, and I had the pleasure of digging alongside Dr. Pablo Ozcáriz of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid. We found lots of smashed early-Roman period pottery at the bottom of the well, as well as some coins, glass, and (surprisingly) animal bones. It may be that, once the well was no longer in use, it was filled with garbage. We kept digging down, further and further. Our pottery finds got more and more scarce, then disappeared altogether. With a little “clang,” our handpicks hit on a layer of larger rocks. After carefully taking levels and removing the rocks, we discovered another layer of smaller, round stones. Further down after that, we discovered a layer of small pebbles. The further down we got, it got wetter and wetter, as groundwater began seeping up from the water table – the same groundwater that once filled the miqva’ot so many years ago. We realized that we had found the foundation of the well, which also served as a filtration system for the water that would be used for the purposes of ritual purity in the adjacent miqveh.
Another exciting new endeavour that I was a part of also had to do with the miqva’ot. Originally, the miqva’ot were thought to have belonged to a house, which would have been the mansion of a wealthy citizen of Magdala. However, as the dig continues, it now seems more likely that the miqva’ot were contained within a large public building complex, featuring a number of rooms, one of which had a
A nice pottery handle.
beautiful mosaic floor. In order to better understand this complex, we opened up a new area that had never been dug before that our excavation director believed was part of the public complex containing the miqva’ot. It is always exciting to uncover new areas and to see things that have not been seen in centuries. Of course, the archaeological layer was buried under hard packed, dry soil, and so we had to use big pickaxes to get down through that initial layer of packed earth before we could get to a stratum containing archaeological material. Despite it being hard work, I really like the rhythm of swinging the pickaxe, especially with the promise of eventually being able to get down to an archaeological layer.
One of my own research concentrations is early synagogues (in fact, I’ve got a book coming out on synagogues this coming November). One of the most exciting opportunities that the Meyers Fellowship provided for me, beyond the pleasure of getting to dig, was simply being present on the site to continue to work alongside Dr. Marcela Zapata-Meza on better understanding the synagogue and its relationship to the areas of the town around it. This really is the sort of work that can only be done onsite, and due to the financial constraints of being a recent PhD graduate and (at the time of my trip) a temporary faculty member with family members to support, I would not have been able to be a part of this research without ASOR’s support and the generous donation of Eric and Carol Meyers.
Dr. Zapata-Meza and I have recently been reconsidering the architecture of the synagogue, especially in relationship to the streets and buildings around it. Part of this has included a reconsideration
Studying and discussing the area around the synagogue with Dr. Marcela Zapata-Meza.
of where the entrance of the synagogue should be located. It is import to recognize that the stones of the doorway were originally found out of context, a short distance away from the building. When the synagogue was reconstructed, the entrance ended up being placed on the western side of the building. However, for a number of reasons, we now believe that it was most likely located on the south side of the building, along a major east-west street. Coincidentally, some pools located across this street from the synagogue that were originally suggested to be pools for processing fish have recently been suggested by experts to be small ritual baths, as chemical analysis did not indicate any traces of fish in these pools. This led us to start thinking differently about the ritual character of the area around the synagogue and about religion in Magdala in general.
None of this would have been possible without the support of ASOR and the generosity shown to me through the Meyers Fellowship. It feels particularly special to me to have been a recipient of this particular fellowship, since the donors, Eric and Carol Meyers, have done some important archaeological work on synagogues themselves, and I am honored to have received a fellowship named after them. I am extremely grateful for the opportunities that came about as a result of being a recipient of the fellowship, and I highly encourage other students and early career scholars to think about applying and spending a summer digging. The experiences and skills learned by being in the field are absolutely invaluable. In the words of a certain Dr. Jones, “you gotta get out of the library!”
Jordan Ryan recently received his PhD from McMaster University in June of 2016. At the time of his trip, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of New Testament and Archaeology at Wheaton College in Illinois, but has since taken up a full time position as Assistant Professor of New Testament at the University of Dubuque. His first book, The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus will be published by Fortress Press in November of 2017.
