Thieves Busted for Stealing 2,000-Year-Old Coffins
Israeli police arrested four men for stealing and attempting to sell ancient burial boxes.
The men were caught Friday night with 11 2,000-year-old decorated stone ossuaries, ancient coffins used to bury the dead in the Second Temple period.
Some of the recovered ossuaries contained skeletal remains and shards of pottery. Some also were engraved with names.
The alleged thieves, from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and the Arab village of Abadiyah near Bethlehem, were caught while selling the artifacts to Jewish merchants at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority. They could face up to five years in prison if found guilty of antiquities robbery, or up to three years for unlicensed trafficking in antiquities.
It is suspected the ossuaries were recently looted from an ancient burial cave in the Jerusalem region, according to the authority.
“These are singular finds,” said Eitan Klein, deputy director of the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, who examined the ossuaries. “The inscriptions on the ossuaries provide us with additional characters and names from amongst the Jewish population in the Second Temple period, and the motifs adorning the ossuaries will supplement our knowledge with new information about the world of Jewish art in this period.”
The bones found inside the ossuaries will be turned over to the Ministry of Religious Affairs for burial, according to the authority.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.