The Jewish Catacomb at Vigna Randanini in Rome. A New Architectural and Archaeological Study. With an Appendix on Tomb Statistics (original) (raw)
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Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, 2022
In this article, we present a fresh and comprehensive study of the Jewish catacomb at Vigna Randanini based on a thorough investigation of the architecture of this underground cemetery and of the archaeological materials it still contains. Having conducted a complete 3D-documentation of the monument with a Laserscanner, we first present a new and reliable plan for the site. We then use this as point of departure for a detailed architectural study in the course of which we identify four major consecutive building phases. Moving on to the wall paintings, we offer a full description and documentation, which we then contextualize by discussing the issue of possible Jewish ownership. Reviewing the funerary inscriptions from Vigna Randanini, we highlight the importance of studying these in their original topographical context, offering new insights into chronology and the importance of family burial. This is followed by a presentation of radiocarbon data that indicate that burial started somewhat earlier and continued longer than previously thought. In a final concluding section, we put all the data together and discuss how our findings impinge on our understanding of the topography, the chronology and the question of the religious affiliation of the monument. In an appendix we present a preliminary study of the tombs in Vigna Randanini, which we investigate from the perspective of historical demography.
The Jewish Catacomb at the Vigna Randanini in Rome. A New Architectural and Archaeological Study
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung = Bullettino dell'Istituto Archeologico Germanico, Sezione Romana, 2022
Alle für die Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, eingereichten Beiträge werden einem doppelblinden Peer-Review-Verfahren durch internationale Fachgutachterinnen und-gutachter unterzogen. / All articles submitted to the Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung, are reviewed by international experts in a double-blind peer review process.
2011
At the meeting of the Papal Commission for Sacred Archaeology (CDAS) on July 21,1859, Giovanni Battista de Rossi was of strong opinion that a newly discovered catacomb in Rome not be placed under the Commission's care. 1 Equally surprising was the reason. The "Founder of Christian Archaeology" was, in fact, quite sure that the catacomb had belonged to Rome's ancient Jews. His conclusions were drawn from the very earliest stages of the excavation, within sight of the catacombs he himself was researching on the Appian Way southeast of Rome. They would nonetheless determine much of the final outcome of the dig. The CDAS had been established just a few years before in 1852 "to administer and conserve all the catacombs on Roman soil." In reality, it was the new custodian of Rome's early Christian sites. 2 This left little room for continued generalizations about the catacombs. They were now subject to close study by de Rossi for their excavation and content and what such data could reveal about the early Church. Following years of practice, de Rossi was unable to verify "signs of Christianity" in a site nearly identical in form and function to the Christian catacombs in Rome. He chose to define the catacomb he had seen on the Appia as exclusively Jewish rather than endorse the suggestion by other Antiquities officials that further excavation would evidence the cemetery's transition from Jewish into Christian hands. 3 None of these considerations detracted from what de Rossi considered a significant find, and his constant attentions led many to hope that he himself would make something of the Randanini site in continuing research on Subterranean Rome. De Rossi was one of the first to visit the new "Jewish" hypogeum in 1859, and inspected it on numerous occasions thereafter in his official capacity as Counselor to the Antiquities Commission and member of the CDAS. 4 The Jewish catacomb in the "famous" Vigna Randanini is one of the first things mentioned in de Rossi's Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, launched in January of 1863. 5 His notes today are the
2021
Elsa Laurenzi's presentation of the Jewish catacombs of the Vigna Randanini in Rome for the Gangemi Series on "Roma Ebraica" is the first detailed archaeological monograph on the site in many generations, a fact most surprising given the catacomb's significance as one of the few monumental testimonies to Ancient Jews in Rome thus far revealed. That the book itself is jointly sponsored by Italy's Cultural Ministry and the Jewish Community of Rome (with funding provided by the Elio Toaff Foundation for Jewish Culture) is a sign of a new season of collaboration between "Synagogue and State" on the conservation of Jewish cemeteries in Italy, a legal obligation for the country's government and long an issue of concern to Jews. Laurenzi's detailed and informative overview will serve as a guide for future investigations. Many pieces of the puzzle exist, but need reassembling. It is exciting to take stock of the work in the Vigna Randanini catacomb up...
City of David, Studies of Ancient Jerusalem (Eng.), 2024
The Jewish exile communities in Rome embraced a unique burial practice, utilizing an underground tunnel system known as catacombs. This distinctive burial system was employed by the Jewish population in Rome between the third and fifth centuries CE. Currently, six Jewish catacombs have been identified, with the most extensive complex situated beneath the gardens of Villa Torlonia, adjacent to Via Nomentana. This catacomb, one of the two accessible Jewish catacombs, exhibits a labyrinthine configuration of rock-hewn corridors (tupah) spanning approximately 900 meters and approximately 4000 burial niches. In years 2018-2019, a conservation project unfolded as part of a collaboration between Israeli conservator teams and Italian archaeologists. This project, executed with scrupulous adherence to Jewish law, aimed to collect bones from the catacomb floor and return them to the original burial niches. Simultaneously, an extensive documentation and study project was initiated. The outcome of this comprehensive effort yielded significant archaeological and artistic insights, constituting a pivotal contribution to existing knowledge. The study focuses on the Catacomb of Villa Torlonia, analyzing its intricate architectural plan. Additionally, meticulous documentation and cataloging efforts extend to various extant objects on the site, including inscriptions on building materials such as bricks and tiles, some featuring imprints and inscriptions. Furthermore, a thorough examination of the catacomb's decorations revealed a rich array of distinctive Jewish symbols, with some being documented for the first time by our team. This paper aims to provide a detailed exploration of the architectural details of the underground system, offering a new perspective on questions related to its dating.
Marginal or Monumental? "Kokhim" in the Catacombs of Rome (Association of Jewish Studies)
2015
Session One (Sunday): Communities and Contexts Marginal or Monumental? “Kokhim” in the Catacombs of Rome Is there a distinctly “Jewish” type of funerary architecture employed in the catacombs of Rome? This contribution examines the arrangements of the tomb form known as the “kokh” (pl. “kokhim”) within certain areas of the catacomb of the Vigna Randanini in Rome, drawing attention to their characteristics and organization in light of the kokh’s limited presence in the other catacombs of Rome in the third and fourth centuries CE. The majority of Jews in this site – as elsewhere in Rome – buried their dead in a typically Roman fashion, using the most simple and common methods available to create a tomb. The evidence of kokhim is concentrated in three small underground complexes or hypogaea that were excavated independently, and with very different points of origin, before being integrated into a larger, communal cemetery also used by Jews. This situation is consistent with the development of distinctly “Jewish” and “Christian” underground cemeteries in the suburbs of Rome beginning in the third century CE, as the communal necropoleis appear to have been de-emphasized for largely homogeneous sites. The Vigna Randanini catacomb thus exhibits signs of Jewish burial activity coupled with innovations in local cemetery design to create a uniquely Jewish cemetery on a scale not previously seen for this community in Rome. Our topographical analysis of the site, including a complete inventory of the seventy or so kokhim revealed thus far and a new map of their situation, illustrates the distinct ways in which the “Randanini kokhim” are distributed and designed. Some kokhim are strikingly uniform in their shape and dimensions; others have their inner shafts enlarged in an idiosyncratic fashion to accommodate additional tombs. They can be one of many forms of burial in a “hybrid” setting, or be featured prominently in an environment that seems to have been created with exactly this form of tomb in mind. With nearly every kokhim now violated and reduced to a simple cavity in the tuff, it is this data that must be collected and studied to help us to broaden our understanding of the appearance of this tomb in the Vigna Randanini catacomb and better define its structural relationship to variations on the kokh or tomb “a forno” in other subterranean funerary spaces in Rome. This is a particularly critical process, because the design is quite rare in Rome, and outside of the Vigna Randanini catacomb is most often found in what have been termed “private” catacombs, in which a certain manner of coexistence between pagan and non-pagan patrons or clientele is preserved. Almost none of the cemeteries in question have been adequately documented or restored, let alone definitively labeled as “pagan”, “Jewish” or “Christian”. We explore, then, the possible motives for the inclusion of this distinctive tomb design in the development of these sites, and whether or not it can connect to certain religious beliefs or other expressions of identity in late ancient Rome. Session One (Monday): Practice and Politics Chair: Ruth Langer “Teach Your Daughters Wailing”: mMo’ed Qatan 3:8-9 and the Gendering of Tannaitic Funeral Practice" Gail Labovitz (American Jewish University) This paper will explore particularly the activities which the tannaitic authors imagine women to undertake as part of the funeral process, using mMo’ed Qatan 3:8-9 as a point of entry. Integrating biblical, rabbinic, Greco-Roman, and Christian materials, questions to considered here include: was public mourning a professional role for rabbinic women, what was the nature of women’s activities and laments at funerals, did the forms of lament and praise for the deceased offered at the funeral differ (materially and/or in terms of their social valuation) if offered by men or by women, why might these roles have been assigned especially to women? “Staging Jewish death at the turn of the Medieval Era” Sylvie Anne Goldberg (EHESS) The Treatise Semahot (3rd century) shows that during the Antiquity, death and all that surrounds it were subjected to special ceremonials: professional mourners, weeping, elegies, first burial and second-burial are displaying a spectacular image of death. However, this staging of death has undergone many changes over time. As it is well known that many rituals, customs, and prayers were introduced during the Middle-Ages, this paper will therefore seek to focus on some of them selected on the basis of their material aspects, containing concrete representation of the approaches of death in the Jewish world at that time. “From matsevah to Grabmal -- Central European gravestones as markers of Jewish cultural evolution” Jess Olson (Yeshiva University) The most ubiquitous -- and historically useful -- pieces of material culture surrounding death in Jewish cultural history is the matsevah, the tombstone. For the most part, historians have approached these often complex works of sculpture in the modern period primarily as conveyances of demographic information, but the design of Jewish matsevot in the 19th and 20th centuries provides valuable, and unique insight into the evolving tastes and cultural identities of central European Jews. This paper will examine and interpret the evolution of these monuments in the context of evolving Jewish identity in Germany and Austria-Hungary between 1848 and 1914. "In-between Graves: Space and Class in Cemetery Conflicts among the Jews of Interwar Poland" Daniel Rosenthal (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Toronto) The growth of the urban Jewish population of Poland after the First World War strained existing cemetery infrastructure to such an extent that communities were forced to reorganize how burial space was allocated and defined. These changes to the use of space in sanctified burials grounds indicate how Jewish officials navigated their dual responsibilities to their poor constituency and to the new governmental bodies of the Second Polish Republic. “History, science and religious politics: The archaeology of medieval Jewish cemeteries” Samuel D. Gruber (Syracuse University) The 19th-century rediscovery and excavation of the Rue de la Harpe Jewish cemetery in Paris and the Jewish catacombs in Rome alerted and excited historians about the potential rewards of the archeology of European Jewish sites, including cemeteries, but for the most part little conscious effort was made to identify the locations or to methodically examine the remains of Jewish cemeteries until the 1980s, when again, like in 19th-century Paris, new urban development encroached on previously undisturbed burial grounds. This paper and discussion will examine recent methods of and finds from Jewish cemetery excavations in England, Spain, the Czech Republic and elsewhere, and how new discoveries have been greeted with enthusiasm and opposition by different quarters of the academic and religious Jewish communities. Session Two (Tuesday): Archaeology and Imagined Communities Chair: Eric Meyers "City and Periphery - Jerusalem and Judean Burials during the Late Second Temple Period - An Archaeological Overview" - Boaz Zissu (Bar Ilan) While the urban necropolis of Jerusalem during the late Second Temple period (2nd c. BCE-1st c. CE) has been thoroughly studied, the more distant Jewish rural areas have been mostly neglected. The proposed paper attempts to present an overview of the tombs' architecture, burial customs and chronology of Jewish burial in the Judean countryside vs. those of the urban center of Jerusalem during the 2nd c. BCE - 2nd c. CE.Fine "Jewish Others: Visual Culture and Ethnic Identification at Beit Shearim" - Sean Burrus (Duke, Ph.D. Candidate) The catacombs at Beit Shearim (ca. 200-400 CE) offer a chance to explore how disparate communities, the local Galilean and the diasporic, come together in the same funerary sphere. This paper will examine the role of visual culture in the Beit Shearim catacombs as a point of demarcation between communities. “Between Beit She’arim and Eden: Rabbinic reflection on the Tomb of Makhpelah” Steven Fine (Yeshiva University) This paper explores the ways that ancient rabbis constructed their own vision of the biblical Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It suggests that the rabbis imagined the tomb complex in ways that reflect monumental communal burial complexes of late antiquity, most notably those at Beit She'arim in the lower Galilee. It further argues that the rabbis project burial practices and attitudes toward the dead of their own time onto the Tomb of Machpelah. "Marginal or Monumental? Kokhim in the Catacombs of Rome” - Jessica Dello Russo (Northeastern University) This contribution to the AJS seminar on "The Materiality of Jewish Death" examines the arrangement of multiple examples of the distinctive tomb type known as the "kokh" (pl. "kokhim") within certain areas of the catacomb of the Vigna Randanini in Rome, drawing attention to their unusual characteristics and organization in this particular site in light of their limited presence in the other catacombs in Rome and most other cemeteries outside of Palestine in the period of Late Antiquity. Concluding Discussion"
Roma Subterranea Judaica 6, Publications of the International Catacomb Society, 2012
This advance copy of an article in press discusses the archaeological evidence of an ancient Roman necropolis below the Villa Torlonia in Rome. The Jewish catacombs should not be seen as “isolated” from this greater context, and both material and literary evidence suggest that, in all probability, the underground cemeteries remained at least partially accessible in medieval times. The article contains previously unpublished illustrations of Jewish artifacts from Rome and documentation of other catacombs known to have existed in the site.