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Researchers believe: "We discovered the earliest evidence of blood feud"

In a cave in the Jerusalem mountains, a skull cut with a sword was discovered with hand bones from about 1000 years ago

From left to right: Prof. Boaz Zissou, Dr. Yossi Nagar and Dr. Haim Cohen with the skull. Photo: Chen Galili, Tel Aviv University
From left to right: Prof. Boaz Zissou, Dr. Yossi Nagar and Dr. Haim Cohen with the skull. Photo: Chen Galili, Tel Aviv University

The earliest evidence of blood feud in antiquity was discovered in a cave in the Jerusalem mountains. This is what a joint study by the Antiquities Authority, Bar Ilan University and Tel Aviv University claims. The research will be presented for the first time tomorrow (Thursday) at the 44th Archaeological Congress to be held at Ben Gurion University in Be'er Sheva, in collaboration with the Antiquities Authority and the Society for the Investigation of the Land of Israel and its Antiquities.

In an excavation carried out in a cave in the Jerusalem mountains, Prof. Boaz Zissou from the Department of Jewish Studies and Archeology at Bar Ilan University discovered a human skull and hand bones dating to the 10th-11th centuries AD.

The bones were identified by Dr. Yossi Nagar, an anthropologist at the Antiquities Authority, and Dr. Haim Cohen from the National Center for Forensic Medicine and Tel Aviv University, as belonging to a man aged 25-40 years.

The fractures in the dome of the skull. Photo: Clara Amit, Antiquities Authority
The fractures in the dome of the skull. Photo: Clara Amit, Antiquities Authority

According to the researchers, "in the dome of the skull it is possible to distinguish two traumatic injuries that have healed - evidence of previous violent events in which the murdered was a participant, as well as a cut caused near the time of death, and a fatal sword blow that caused his certain and immediate death.

A morphological examination of the skull shows a strong resemblance to the local Bedouin population, who apparently practiced a tradition of blood revenge since before the establishment of Islam. This is consistent with historical knowledge, according to which in the period in question - about 1000 years ago, the area of ​​the Jerusalem mountains was inhabited by a Bedouin population that came here from Jordan and northern Arabia.

A text from the beginning of the 20th century tells of a case of revenge, during which the murderer presented to his family the skull and right palm of the murdered to prove that he had fulfilled the commandment. These are exactly the parts of the body that were discovered in the current case, and since it is a person who was involved in violence in the past until he was killed by a fatal sword blow, it can be concluded that the earliest evidence of blood revenge has been found.

 

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5 תגובות

  1. David, I knew people like you would come. The huge difference is that Judaism does not maintain this barbarism today compared to Islam in Western countries as well

  2. The conclusion is ridiculously far from the facts, and a more reasonable hypothesis would be that the publication is satire on the part of anti-scientific circles.

  3. A. The conclusion is far-reaching. It is not necessarily related to the text from the twentieth century that these organs were found.
    B. The Torah talks a lot about blood redemption as well as in the Mishnah. Texts that predated the date of the skull by thousands of years. So what's new? And because we didn't know that among us and among the Bedouins blood redemption was customary?

  4. The Arabs were and remain primitive barbarians. Now tell me that Jews also kill, that is true, but there is no whole culture and tradition of murder for the honor of the family and blood revenge and road robbery and lying that is carried out to this day

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