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Artifact Analysis
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- The Nefesh Stone
This carved stone was discovered in the debris of the Galilean village of Jotapata (modern Yodfat), destroyed by the Romans during the First Jewish Revolt. On the front side is a cone-tipped structure on a base. On the rear is a sketch of a crab, the astrological sign of the month of Tamuz. Jotapata fell on the first day of that month (July, when Cancer is in the ascendant), and so archaeologists have wondered if this is the carving of a defender who knows he will die soon, when the Roman siege engines finally break through the city's defenses. 
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- The argument is based on an analogy between the conical structure sketched on the stone and free-standing columns topped with a pyramid that appear in grave markers and ossuaries during the Second Temple period, such as this pyramid-topped column scratched into a Jerusalem ossuary. The image, and its association with death and the fate of the soul, possibly traces to Nabatean grave markers.
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- Bibliography
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- Aviam, Mordechai. "The Archaeological Illumination of Josephus' Narrative of the Battles at Yodefat and Gamla." In Making History: Josephus and Historical Method (ed. Zuleika Rodgers; Boston: Brill, 2007) 372-84.
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- Hachlili, Rachel. "The Nefeš: The Jericho Column-Pyramid." Palestine Exploration Quarterly 113 (1981) 33-8, + plates between pp. 32 and 33.
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- Meyers, Eric M. Jewish Ossuaries: Reburial and Rebirth, Biblica et Orientalia 24. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1971.
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- Rahmani, L. Y. "Jerusalem's Tomb Monuments on Jewish Ossuaries." Israel Exploration Journal 18:4 (1968) 220-225.
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- Strange, James. "Late Hellenistic and Herodian Ossuary Tombs at French Hill, Jerusalem." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 219 (1975) 39-67 (see esp. fig 11.1, p. 51).
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