Yes, They Are

By Eric M. Meyers

046

Hanan Eshel attempts to discredit the identification of

mikva’ot at Sepphoris,1 but he also suggests that first-
century C.E. Sepphoris, in the time of Jesus, was both a
pagan and a Jewish city. This has been the subject of
much discussion and debate among the excavators as the
article “How Jewish Was Sepphoris in Jesus’ Time?” of
this issue shows. I believe that at the beginning of the first century C.E., and even after the
First Jewish Revolt (66–70 C.E.), Sepphoris was overwhelmingly Jewish.2 Since this larger
issue provides a context for the mikva’ot question, I will first review some key findings.

As we stated in the other article, Billy J. Grantham, our staff anthropologist who specializes in
faunal remains, has studied more than 10,000 animal bones recovered at the site in their
stratigraphic contexts.3 Grantham’s study of the faunal remains on the western summit
reveals that there were so few pig bones found in Roman period contexts that they were
statistically equivalent to zero. From the beginning of the Byzantine period (middle of the
fourth century C.E.), pig bones, presumably attributable to Christian newcomers, do appear.
Several ostraca with Christian names and prayers and terra sigillata bowls with crosses on
them confirm a demographic shift at this time. Grantham’s study also shows that the cuisine of
Roman period pagans would have included game meats and a regular supply of pig, neither
of which we have evidence for in the domestic areas of the acropolis.

In light of these data, I think that, in regard to demonstrating a significant pagan presence in
Sepphoris during the time of Jesus, the burden of proof lies with Eshel.

But our excavation uncovered much more evidence. The support for a Jewish presence on
the western summit is overwhelming. Many stepped pools have been uncovered there in
layers dating to the late Hellenistic through the Roman period (second century B.C.E. to
fourth century C.E.).4 We have found several ostraca in Hebrew and oil lamps with Jewish
symbols, such as Torah shrines and menorahs, on them. Even the early numismatic data
may be understood in a Jewish setting. As mentioned in my earlier article, the discovery of
the ’epimeles ostracon clearly indicates that there was a Jewish population at Sepphoris in
the time of Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 B.C.E.), when we begin to have a regular supply of
Hasmonean coins.5 Sepphoris first began to mint its own coins in 68 C.E., during the First
Jewish Revolt. Its first known coin has Eirenopolis (City of Peace) inscribed on it, no doubt a
reflection of the pro-Roman, pacifistic stance of 047Sepphoris’s citizens during the revolt, as
described by Josephus in The Jewish War. An inscribed lead weight uncovered at Sepphoris
also points to a clear Jewish presence. The weight, dated to the third century C.E., refers to
two market inspectors—“Simon son of Aianos and Justus son of … ” The name Simon is
clearly Jewish.
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All this archaeological evidence should be viewed in the context of the numerous references
to Sepphoris in rabbinic literature (even though it is difficult to relate these references to
specific places at the site).6

Eshel claims that the stepped pools at Sepphoris were used simply for washing, not for ritual
cleansing. He has four reasons for disqualifying them as mikva’ot.

(1) The stepped pools at Sepphoris, he says, are smaller

than mikva’ot found at other sites, especially in Jerusalem.
This is irrelevant. All of these pools easily contain 40 seahs
of “living” water, as required by Jewish law. Although there
are disagreements over how many gallons there are in a
seah,7 these disagreements have no bearing on the
question. Whether 40 seahs equal 60 gallons (the lowest
estimate) or 250 gallons (the highest), all of the pools under discussion here can easily
accommodate the required amount.

(2) Eshel next claims that the stepped pools at Sepphoris do not have a separating line on
the steps to indicate where one descends ritually unclean and ascends purified. This, too, is
irrelevant. Most mikva’ot do not have them. Certainly such a separation, as Eshel
acknowledges, is not required by Jewish law. It is the water that purifies; once an individual is
cleansed, he or she cannot impart impurity to the water or to the stairs.

(3) Another objection Eshel offers is that in the houses in which the stepped pools were
found, no “normal” bathing facilities were uncovered. To this there are several answers. For
one, he is wrong on the facts: Many of these houses do have both washing facilities and a
ritual bath, most notably the Dionysos Mansion.8 Other houses have ample space for
washing, near a cistern or in a plastered depression on a floor; or residents may have
washed with a pouring vessel in a corner of a room. Some of the smaller plastered pools may
have been used 048for purifying vessels, although these could also be purified in the stepped
pools.9

Moreover, two beautiful public baths have been found by the Hebrew University excavations
at Sepphoris in the civic center along the cardo.10 In addition, the University of South Florida
expedition to Sepphoris has identified what may be public baths on the western summit.11

Finally, all of the stepped pools we have identified as ritual baths are convenient for a single
individual to fully immerse in but are rather inconvenient for hygienic washing. If they were
used for cleansing, they would have required frequent, awkward cleaning and emptying by
hand, unless they had out-drains. No drains have yet been found, however. As ritual baths,
they would have needed partial emptying by hand from time to time, but far less frequently
than for a cleansing bath.

(4) Eshel also relies on the fact that our stepped pools do not have an otzer, that is, a
reservoir of living water adjoining the immersion pool. On this issue Eshel may have been
overly influenced by the evidence from Jerusalem. The building traditions regarding the
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construction of mikva’ot are not necessarily the same in the Galilee as they are in Judea
generally or in Jerusalem in particular. Moreover, at Sepphoris one or two ritual baths (in area
84.1 and to the west of the summit domestic areas) do have an otzer. One even has a lead
connecting pipe in situ.

We should keep in mind the domestic nature of these stepped pools. An otzer is at the same
level as the ritual bath it adjoins. It takes up space. In a domestic context, there was a natural
concern to use all internal space efficiently. Efficient and economic use of space led the
Sepphoris builders to 049use roof space for all sorts of activities.12 Such space was certainly
used for storage of rainwater, which was a major source of living water. While the great water
reservoir at Sepphoris easily provided living springwater to the lower city, we still don’t
understand how water was transported up to the summit reservoirs, though bits and pieces of
lead pipe and ceramic channels suggest that it was. Rabbinic literature mentions the
presence of a water wheel that brought springwater to the upper city, so it is likely that living
springwater was available for ritual purposes on the summit also.13 Even more probable,
however, is that rooftop catchments served as reservoirs for ritual baths. Rainwater was
secured and released by a system of ceramic pipes, many pieces of which survive in all
domestic areas of the site. The presence of so many ceramic pipes suggests their extensive
use in houses, especially on roofs, though those have not survived.

The use of rooftop rain collectors is common even today.

Ritual baths supplied with water this way are sometimes
called “rainwater mikva’ot” (Regenwasser mikve in
German).14 Eshel’s failure to consider the likelihood of
rooftop collectors is a telling weakness in his argument.

Nearly 25 years ago, when I was excavating the ancient

synagogue at Khirbet Shema‘, we found an elaborate rock-cut pool that had no obvious otzer
but whose function was clearly to allow immersion in water. We asked Rabbi Muntzberg, one
of the mikveh experts who judged the pools at Masada, to look at the pool at Khirbet Shema‘.
Our architect showed the rabbi how the superstructure might have looked and how rainwater
might have been collected above the superstructure or transported from a nearby cistern that
lay close by and higher in elevation. Rabbi Muntzberg cogitated, then looked up and
declared, “Kosher.” Even without an otzer, the pool met all the requirements of Jewish law.

We do not seek anyone’s blessing or heksher (ritual stamp of

approval); we ask only that all possibilities be considered. We
have never contended that the inhabitants of the western summit
of Sepphoris were Jews solely because of the mikva’ot. The
extensive faunal evidence, the epigraphic remains, the Jewish
symbols on lamps, the numismatic data and the rabbinic literature
all lead to the ineluctable conclusion that most, if not all, of these
stepped pools were used by Jews and served ritual rather than
hygienic purposes.

Endnotes:
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 1. This is actually Hanan Eshel’s second attempt. His first article on this subject is “A
Note on ‘Miqvaot’ at Sepphoris,” in Douglas R. Edwards and C. Thomas McCollough,
eds., Archaeology and the Galilee (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), p. 131.
2. Among my numerous publications on Sepphoris, a good place to look is at my article
“Jesus and His Galilean Context,” in Edwards and McCollough, Archaeology and the
Galilee, pp. 57–66, and the references in note 34. See also Sepphoris in Galilee:
Crosscurrents of Culture (catalog), ed. Rebecca M. Nagy et al. (Raleigh: North Carolina
Museum of Art, 1996), pp. 15–80, 149–153; and Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers,
“Sepphoris,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East(New York
and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), vol. 4, pp. 527–536.
3. His 1996 unpublished Ph.D. dissertation at Northwestern University is entitled “A
Zoological Model for the Study of Ethnic Complexity at Sepphoris.” Dr. Grantham is
presently associate professor of anthropology at Troy State University in Alabama. He
and I coauthored a paper on this subject, which I read at the 1997 Annual Meeting of
the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion.
4. This is the point of view adopted by most of the authors in Nagy et al., Sepphoris in
Galilee, and in Zeev Weiss and Ehud Netzer, “Architectural Development of Sepphoris
During the Roman and Byzantine Periods,” in Edwards and McCollough, Archaeology
and the Galilee, p. 128 and passim.
5. The evidence from lamps is summarized by Eric C. Lapp in Sepphoris in Galilee, pp.
221–222, and “The Archaeology of Light: The Cultural Significance of the Oil Lamp
from Roman Palestine” (Ph.D. diss., Duke Univ., 1997), esp. pp. 80–113. The relevant
numismatic data is conveniently summarized by Ya’akov Meshorer in Sepphoris in
Galilee, pp. 195–198.
6. This evidence is conveniently summarized by Stuart Miller and Isaiah Gafni in their
articles in Sepphoris in Galilee, pp. 21–28, 51–58, and 59–66.
7. Estimates for how many gallons equal 40 seahs vary from 60 gallons, according to
Eshel, to 125 to 250 gallons, according to Rabbi Meir Posen of London, a specialist in
ritual baths (see “Die Mikwe als Grundlage jüdischen Lebens,” in Georg Hensberger,
ed. Mikwe: Geschichte und Architektur jüdischer Ritualbäder in Deutschland [Frankfurt
am Main: Jüdisches Museum der Stadt Frankfurt am Main, 1992], pp. 1–9). Rabbi
Posen states that 1,000 liters equals 40 seahs, or 250 gallons (p. 4). E.P. Sanders
(Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah [Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990],
pp. 214–231; equivalencies for the seah are discussed on p. 215) reports that the
modern equivalent of 40 seahs ranges from 250 to 1,000 liters of water, which is based
on the ancient dispute over the volume in 1 square cubit by 3 cubits (Sanders, Jewish
Law, pp. 215–220, n. 31, 36 and 47 on pp. 355–56).
8. See the plan of the Dionysos house in Nagy et al., Sepphoris in Galilee, p. 112, fig. 46
(note the latrine and washbasin at the upper left [NW] and the mikveh at the right [E]).
9. See the picture of women immersing glass and possibly metal vessels in a mikveh in
Hensberger, Mikwe, p. 19. The image is reproduced from a 14th-century Spanish
haggadah.
10. These excavations are now directed by Zeev Weiss. There are actually three
simultaneous excavations at the site. The third is directed by James F. Strange of the
University of South Florida. Weiss and Netzer note the presence of two bathhouses in
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 the lower city along the cardo, where they also located two or three mikva’ot (mentioned
in the Sepphoris article, in “Architectural Development of Sepphoris,” p. 12, n. 4.
11. James F. Strange, “Six Campaigns at Sepphoris: The University of South Florida
Excavations, 1983–1989,” in Lee I. Levine, ed. The Galilee in Late Antiquity (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992), pp. 345–349. Strange is quite explicit
in referring to one area as a “small private bath or a large private bath”—his neutral
designation being “pooled building” (p. 348). He also notes the presence of numerous
mikva’ot in the surrounding areas (p. 345). In addition, he notes the presence of a tub in
the fourth-century C.E. debris of the “pooled building” (p. 349).
12. See Yizhar Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman and Byzantine Period
(Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1995), pp. 237–248 and passim. Hirschfeld
provides an excellent photo from Shivta in the Negev of a stone drainpipe system that
conducted water from the rooftop of a house to a cistern, which could as well have been
a mikveh (p. 279, fig. 200). Hirschfeld also points out that rainwater was collected on
rooftops in Byzantine Jerusalem and the water transported to courtyard systems with
clay pipes (p. 278). He also points out that in the traditional Palestinian home today
various foods and liquids are stored in a clay vessel known as a hawabi. He goes on to
say that in antiquity such a vessel could have stored rainwater in the courtyard of a
Jewish household (p. 278); this rainwater could have been used for laundry or, I might
add, a mikveh. Such rainwater transport systems were also used for privies, which are
known from Byzantine houses (fig. 199 and p. 278). To the best of my knowledge, only
one privy has been found at Sepphoris, in the Dionysos Mansion, but some of the
downspouts could have been used for them also. No doubt chamber pots were in
common use as well.
13. While the technological means of transporting water from the lower city to the western
summit remain a mystery, Tsvika Tsuk has dealt extensively with the water systems at
Sepphoris. See his article elsewhere in this issue, as well as in Nagy et al., Sepphoris
in Galilee, pp. 45–50; “The Aqueducts of Sepphoris,” in The Aqueducts of Ancient
Palestine, ed. D. Amit, Hirschfeld and Joseph Patrich (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi,
1989), pp. 101–108 (in Hebrew); The Ancient Reservoir of Sepphoris: Excavations,
1993–1994, Tsuk, E. Rosenberger and M. Peilstocker (Tel Aviv: National Parks,
Hydrology Society and Ministry of Tourism, 1996) (in Hebrew); and “The Aqueducts to
Sepphoris,” in Galilee Through the Centuries: Confluence of Cultures, ed., E.M. Meyers,
(Eisenbrauns, 1999) pp. 161–176.
14. Posen, “Die Mikwe,” p. 4. The recently opened Freeman Center for Jewish Life at Duke
University has considered several proposals for installing a mikvehin its basement. As
a member of both the Board of Trustees and a supervisory committee on this project, I
can report that we have been in contact with several Orthodox rabbis and architects
specializing in systems that depend on rainwater for a supply of pure water. Such
rooftop collecting systems for mikva’ot today are somewhat complex but nonetheless
predominate in the industry, as they have since late antiquity. So long as no vessel
interrupts the flow of water from its point of origin to the mikveh, it is acceptable. As we
have noted above, however, a reservoir or storage tank for rainwater would be the
preferred way living water is stored. From there to the mikveh its flow may not be
interrupted. The transport system in such an instance is called a hamshakah. At the end
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 of a ceramic pipe there would be a small trough or hole to connect the reservoir to the
mikveh. Springwater and melted ice or snow could also be used in such a system.

Eric M. Meyers

Ritual bath or bathing tub? Excavator Eric Meyers believes that this Roman period water
installation at Sepphoris is a mikveh, or ritual bath. He explains that the reservoir pool (on the
lower left) provided ritually pure water to the stepped pool at right. Meyers, countering the
claims of Hanan Eshel, suggests that the other stepped pools at Sepphoris, including those
without a reservoir pool, were also mikva’ot and that they provide strong evidence that
Sepphoris was a Jewish city in the first century C.E.

Gabi Laron

In the preceding article, Eshel claims that at Sepphoris regular bathing facilities were not
found in houses with stepped pools, leading him to conclude that the stepped pools were
ordinary baths. But Meyers counters that Sepphoris’s public bathhouses, such as the one in
the photo (excavated by the Hebrew University team), provided ordinary bathing facilities for
cleansing. The short columns at right are hypocausts; they supported a floor and allowed
steam from an adjoining furnace room to circulate between the columns and heat the public
bath.

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Eric M. Meyers

“Living” water, water never transferred by a vessel and thus fit for ritual bathing, poured into
this Sepphoris mikveh from a shaft that brought rainwater from the roof. Several of the
stepped pools found in Sepphoris, Meyers writes, were in houses where ceramic pipes for
channeling rainwater have been found. Even today, rooftop water collectors are common in
religiously observant Jewish areas; ritual baths using this technique are called in German
Regenwasser mikve, or rainwater mikva’ot. The presence of rainwater shafts in Sepphoris
indicates to Meyers that the stepped pools found in domestic areas were indeed mikva’ot.

Eric M. Meyers

A beam of sunlight illuminates the steps of another Sepphoris pool. Cut into the bedrock, this
first-century C.E. bath is an early type of immersion pool discovered in the city. For Meyers,
the archaeological evidence taken together—the stone vessels that accord with Jewish purity
laws, the absence of pig bones and the presence of many mikva’ot—points to Sepphoris as
having been a predominantly Jewish city in the first century C.E.
Magazine: Biblical Archaeology Review, July/August 2000
Volume: 26
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Issue: 4
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