I Was There!

Eyewitness account of the discovery of Babatha’s archive

Terrified, dangling in the air between the sky and the earth on a rope ladder that swung crazily in all directions, I couldn’t believe that I, a city mouse and family man with three children, was clinging to a cliff wall in the Nahal Hever canyon in the middle of the Judean desert. I was climbing to the Cave of Horrors—so named because of the many skeletons found there on my first day as the official photographer for an archaeological expedition.

I had been working as a press photographer when, in March 1962, Yigael Yadin asked me to join an expedition to the caves where letters of Bar Kosiba, leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome (132–135 C.E.), and other important finds had been discovered. The expedition was headed by four well-known archaeologists who would each lead a search team: Yadin in the Cave of Letters in Nahal Hever about 3 miles southwest of En-Gedi, Yohanan Aharoni in the Cave of Horrors across the valley from Yadin’s cave, Nahman Avigad in Nahal David about 2 miles northwest of En-Gedi, and Pesach Bar-Adon in Nahal Mishmar about 5 miles southwest of En-Gedi.