Deir el-Balah sarcophagi
Bronze Age pottery coffins from Gaza
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Through Six-Day War and Pottery
Discovery
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israeli military took control of the Gaza Strip. General Moshe Dayan looted various archaeological sites in the aftermath of the war, including a Bronze Age cemetery at Deir el-Balah. The cemetery was found by a local farmer while clearing sand dunes. The farmer contacted Dayan due to his reputation for acquiring antiquities.
Dayan carried out illegal digging at 35 known locations and was most active in the 1960s and 1970s. Around 40 anthropoid coffins were illicitly removed from the cemetery at Deir el-Balah before the first scientific excavations by archaeologists were carried out in 1972. Many became part of Dayan's private collection. Staff from the Israel Museum restored some of the coffins and in exchange Dayan gave two to the museum. In the early 1970s the museum bought a further eight coffins from Dayan. The archaeologist Raz Kletter described Dayan as "a robber of antiquities, who had never acquired nor showed the slightest interest in acquiring scientific knowledge, such as methods of excavation, dating, stratigraphy, etc."
The 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict prohibits excavations in occupied territories except for salvage excavations. A salvage excavation jointly led by Trude Dothan and Itzhaq Beit-Arieh began at the cemetery in 1972.
Dayan died in 1981 and his widow sold his collection of antiquities to the Israel Museum the following year for US$1 million; Lawrence Tisch provided much of the money through a donation to the museum. This prompted debate about the ethics of purchasing illegally acquired antiquities. The collection included 23 of the sarcophagi from Deir el-Balah. Sarcophagi from Deir el-Balah are also in the collections of the Hecht Museum in Haifa, the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, and the Jordan Archaeological Museum in Amman. In 2003 an anthropoid coffin lid from Deir el-Balah was one of two items from Dayan's collection auctioned in Tel Aviv.
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Description
The cemetery may have been established in the 14th century BCE and was mainly used in the 13th century BCE. Its use may have continued into the 12th century BCE. During the period the cemetery was in use, the region was controlled by New Kingdom of Egypt. The sarcophagi were locally produced and influenced by Egyptian funerary art. There was a contemporary settlement nearby. Dothan hypothesised that this settlement may have been for the artisans who made the sarcophagi and the cemetery was used by multiple settlements spread over a large area. Though the cemetery's southern limit was established, the full extent of the cemetery is uncertain and it may cover an area between 3 and 4 hectares (7 and 10 acres). Some fifty burials have been identified at the cemetery.
The practice of using anthropoid sarcophagi for burials began in Egypt and was later adopted by the Philistines. The anthropoid sarcophagi found at Deir el-Balah are between 1.6 and 2.0 metres (5 ft 3 in and 6 ft 7 in) tall. The main parts of the sarcophagi were typically fired at lower temperatures than the lids, making the former more fragile. The main parts of the sarcophagi were formed by coiling clay. The lids were decorated with human faces in different styles, some in relief and some more pronounced. The most common design at Deir el-Balah includes the shoulders as well as the head, a design previously unknown in the region.