Inside BAR

Cover Story: Gamla—The Masada of the North

Shmaryahu Guttman is a maverick, a self-made archaeologist without a university degree or a consortium of supporters; a 69-year-old kibbutznik with ten grandchildren whose faith in the accuracy of Josephus led him to discover “Gamla, the Masada of the North.”

Guttman came to Palestine with his parents in 1912 from England. They were part of the wave of immigration, called the second aliyah, which brought idealistic, Zionist Jews to Palestine to help rebuild their neglected land. Life was harsh and by the time he was 12 both of Guttman’s parents had died. In 1933 he joined kibbutz Na’an on the Sharon Plain, where he lives today. Guttman is no newcomer to archaeology. He studied with the greats of Israeli archaeology—Sukenik, Stekelis, Avigad and Mazar—and he worked with Yigael Yadin at Masada. In Yadin’s popular account, Masada, about the great excavation at that site, he wrote the following tribute to Guttman: