The Mystery of the Roman Sword in the Mikveh

In the latest edition of Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology Volume 12 2025, there's an article describing the results of new efforts to investigate "A Roman Spatha Sword and Scabbard From Excavations on Mount Zion in Jerusalem" found over 50 years ago.

The authors are Shimon Gibson University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Rafael Y. Lewis Bar-Ilan University; Yarden Pagelson Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Dudi Mevorah Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Hadas Seri Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The spatha was found south of the Zion Gate:

Here it is in situ:

And its appearance in 1971:

By all means, read it even it it can be very technical. It is dated to late Second Temple Period and its following century.

What excited my imagination, however, is its exact location when found. It "was uncovered on 3 October 1971 in earthen sediments and fills within a plastered stepped ritual bath (miqweh) inside one of the rooms of a very large Early Roman mansion exposed in Area I (Square 6, Locus 12, Basket (B) 1254). This was the first area to be excavated on the eastern side of the Armenian courtyard of the St. Saviour property, due south of the Zion Gate (Fig. 1)."

A mikveh?

We have a novel waiting to be written.

What was a Roman sword doing in a mikveh?

Was it stolen from a soldier or his corpse and stored there?

Did a Roman soldier attempt an assault there?

Did a Jewish woman belong to a Jewish fighting force and had hidden it there?

If you have any other suggestions, comment below.

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There Was a "Third Palestine"?

One could think that one 'Palestine' in more than enough.

A new book has been published. 

Written by scholar Walter D.Ward, it is not at all political but a study on the economics of a region. It "provides a comprehensive examination of the evidence for the economy of the later Roman province of Third Palestine, which roughly corresponds to southern Jordan, the Negev desert in Israel, and the Sinai Peninsula."

Where was that province?

In other words, there were two other "Palestines", all three really weren't one country and it was all Roman.

Some geography from the book:

So, they assertion that "Palestine" derived from the Roman Empire and that "Palestine" of the Arabs was never really a singly unit country is not some 'hasbara' claim but well-grounded in academic research.

As is well-known:

"in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt the province [of Judea] was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina. In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established."

Filastin is not an Arabic term but the transliteration from the Latin, just a Nablus is actually Nea Polis. Palestine is not Arab not original.

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UPDATE

The Arabs referred to as "Palestinians" claim descent from the Phoenicians.

But there's a catch:

"The Phoenicians...crisscrossed the sea connecting a vast geographic area...with an extensive network of settlements...and settled as immigrants"

Settlements?

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