Destinations: In Pursuit of the Elusive Bird Mosaic

My mother loves archaeology. If you want to know how much, walk into the Israel Museum’s archaeology galleries, where the “Treasure of the Judean Desert” is on display, and look at a picture of her as a kerchief-clad 19-year-old, smiling alongside the legendary archaeologist Pesach Bar-Adon as they admire a spectacular find. She looks happy, and a little astonished.

My mother first came to Israel in 1960, when Bar-Adon was seeking volunteers to help test his theory that ancient civilizations had, indeed, survived in the desert by living in caves. Having organized a crew, he set off for Qumran (on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, near the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found) and assigned one volunteer and one soldier to each of the cliff caves he had chosen.

The way my mother tells the story, she was digging around without especially high hopes when all of a sudden she found her hand wrapped around a skull. Even then, she didn’t think much of it. The soldier guarding her reacted first, calling for Bar-Adon and the cameras. In my parents’ living room, you can see more pictures like the ones on display at the Israel Museum. You can see Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and my mother walking on a rocky desert surface. He is leading her towards his helicopter. Ben-Gurion flew in expressly to see this discovery with his own eyes; then he took my mother home for lunch with his wife Paula.