Strata

Cell-itary Confinement

Did the Essenes Live at Ein Gedi or at Qumran?

Israeli archaeologist Yizhar Hirschfeld thinks he’s solved the mystery of the cells. A site overlooking the oasis of Ein Gedi, along the western shore of the Dead Sea, contains about 30 small, crude stone huts made from boulders found scattered around the area (photo at right). Since their discovery by archaeologist Yohanan Aharoni in the 1950s, no one has been able to say for certain how these shelters were used. Now Hirschfeld, basing his conclusion on excavations he carried out in January and on his reading of the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, says that there was an Essene settlement near the oasis of Ein Gedi. His identification, however, has yet to convince his colleagues.