Balm of Gilead juglet found by archaeologist Vendyl Jones
Archaeologist Vendyl Jones found many artifacts throughout his long career of digs, but this Balm of Gilead juglet was one of his most prized possessions!
Your writer today spent 12 years as a newspaper feature writer. Meeting the late Vendyl Jones through the newspaper became a gift to me in later years writing for Young Living Essential Oils.
I was a digger on his 1998 excavation at Qumran at the “Cave of the Column,” a cave that may be identified in the Copper Scroll, the only Dead Sea Scroll made of metal. Alas, we did not discover anything except lots of rocks and some scorpions. I was on spent hours interviewing this most interesting former preacher turned archaeologist.
Caption: Vendyl Jones directs his crew in moving a huge boulder on the 1998 dig at a Qumran cave in Israel. Vendy has his back to the camera in a black hat and khaki shirt and pants.
While digging at a smaller Qumran cave in 1988, Vendyl’s team of diggers made a major find. From his book, “A Door of Hope,” Vendyl reflected on their discovery. “On the northern end of the chamber we found two pits. In the narrow pit closest to the entrance [of the cave], about three feet down, we unearthed an object small in size but enormous in worth. It was a diminutive clay pitcher about five inches in height. The little vial held around three ounces of thick, reddish oil. The find was still wrapped in date palm fibers to protect it. In the hours after its discovery, the juglet sat out in the one hundred degree heat and its contents, according to some, gave off a sweet smell.”
The small clay juglet was found in a small cave near Qumran in 1988 by a team from the Institute of Judaic-Christian Research under the direction of Israeli archaeologist Joseph Patrich. Photo courtesy of the late Vendyl Jones who sponsored the dig.
Vendyl wrote that when out in the sun, a thick black syrupy substance began to leak from a crack in the juglet.
Archaeologists Joseph Patrich and Benny Arubas wrote a study on the find titling it “A Juglet Containing Balsam Oil (?) From a Cave Near Qumran.” They wrote, “Chemical analysis has shown that the liquid is a viscous plant oil, only very slightly oxidized. It was possible to determine that it was not olive oil, but it has proved difficult to identify the plant precisely.”
The two archaeologists in their 1989 report wrote “since the balsam plant has probably been extinct for the last 1,500 years, we have no recent sample for comparison.” We will have to get the word to them that Gary Young and Guy Erlich may be bringing them a sample soon!
The archaeologists did perform a very fascinating experiment. Pliny the Elder who lived in the first century knew a test to perform for purity in balsam: a drop of pure balsam would sink to the bottom of a vessel filled with warm water. Well, you know from photos of Gary’s distillation that oil rises and floats on water! Patrich and Arubus write: “In a laboratory experiment we performed, a tiny drop of the substance [from the juglet] did indeed sink to the bottom of a vessel of warm water.”
What do you think about the experiment? Is it really balsam? Botanists have identified the ancient Balm of Gilead as Commiphora gileadensis. Is it not wonderful that we could head to Israel near Jericho and see the Gileadensis trees thriving once again?
Source: Karen Boren, May 11, 2015