Archaeology team finds ancient scrolls in Israeli palace

Barbara Burrell has never met Forrest Gump, but her attitudes about archaeology parallel his philosophy of life. "Archaeology is a series of surprises -- no matter what you think you'll find, you always get something else," said Burrell, field director of a joint University/University of Cincinnati excavation team that made a serendipitous discovery at King Herod's Palace in Caesarea, Israel this summer. Burrell is currently an associate research professor in the Classics Department at the University of Cincinnati. Volunteers under her supervision and the guidance of overall project director Kathryn Gleason, an assistant professor of Landscape Architecture at the University, found a cache of more than 50 lead curse scrolls at the bottom of a well in the palace courtyard, Gleason said. Because lead is such a soft metal, sheets of it can be inscribed with letters or symbols and rolled up to conceal what has been written, she added. The lead scrolls are dense enough to sink easily, though. The scrolls were probably thrown into Herod's well by residents of Caesarea who wanted to get even with their enemies -- men trying to win the affection of the same woman, actors competing for roles in the town's theater or litigants who had received unfavorable rulings in court. This practice was a common way to express anger or resentment in ancient times. "We still have to date [the scrolls] to a particular century, but we know they're Roman, written in the Greek of this period," Gleason said. "The scrolls often tell us quite a bit about what's happening in the area." Burrell, who taught at the University from 1980 to 1984, is a specialist in ancient texts, so she was immediately aware of the significance of the team's find, Gleason added. "The excitement of knowing we [will] have written words from the past [is the best part]," Burrell said. "It's a form of direct communication with people who lived a long time ago." Although the scrolls will not provide the information Burrell had sought about changes associated with Judea's changeover from semi-independence to Roman governance, they are still a valuable resource, she added. But before they can be fully studied, the three-by-five inch, tubular scrolls need to be wedged open, brushed and lightly mechanically cleaned, a process that takes a minimum of three hours per scroll. The many fragments that were also uncovered will take even longer to restore because they are in worse condition. "We hope to have a few clean so that in January, when we go back for a conference, [Professor] Holt [Parker] can get a preliminary reading," Gleason said. Parker, Burrell's husband, is a specialist in manuscripts dealing with ancient medicine and magic. The scrolls will remain in Israel for now, but may eventually be exhibited here at the University. Work at the Caesarea site, which was started by personnel from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1976, was taken over by the University in 1992.