Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 136, 1 (2004), 35–44
    
    DATE PALMS AND OPOBALSAM IN THE MADABA MOSAIC MAP
    F. Nigel Hepper and Joan E. Taylor
    abstract The Madaba mosaic map shows two main vegetal motifs: the date palm and a mysterious bush. The inclusion of the date palm testifies to its economic importance in the region, and it would follow that the bush should also have a similar importance. This bush is best identified as the Judaean balsam or opobalsam, which we know from literary sources to have been grown in the lower Jordan Valley, and elsewhere, in the Roman period. This was a lucrative product. In the Madaba mosaic map, the bush is situated on both sides of the Jordan, which gives us an indication of the extent of its cultivation in the sixth century c.e. The sixth-century mosaic map of the Holy Land created on the nave floor of the church in Madaba, Jordan (for which see Germer-Durand 1897; Jacoby 1905; Avi-Yonah 1954; Donner and Cuppers 1977; Donner 1992; Piccirillo and Alliata 1999), discovered in 1884 ¨ during the construction of a modern church and restored in 1965, is not only a remarkable example of the excellence of Byzantine mosaic art, but is also a valuable historical resource for understanding the towns and Christian holy places of the region. The mosaic artist had a very fine eye for detail and is noted for the ‘realistic bird’s-eye view of the cities’ (Wilkinson 2002, 13). This attention to detail applies not only to buildings and towns, but also to features of the landscape close to where Madaba is located. The mosaic artist did not like too much empty space or repetitive patterning, and filled these with motifs representing features of the environment. The fish in the Jordan River turn back when they meet the salty water of the Dead Sea. A lion chases a deer east of the Jordan River (cf. Jer. 49.19; 50.44). The recording of ships carrying different colours of salt on the Dead Sea indicates the interest of the mosaic artist in the economic activity of the lake (see Bloch 1962; Rosenson 1986). To our knowledge, however, no one has looked specifically at the plants shown in the map as indicating the economic value placed on certain crops in the region near Madaba, though ´ ´ ´ Jose Maria Blazquez has helpfully pointed out the presence of nature in the map (Piccirillo and Alliata 1999, 250–51). The artist has made a point of being extremely precise about recording important trees. Date palms (Phoenix dactylifera) are shown on the Madaba mosaic map as being grown around Scythopolis (barely shown on far left), Phasaelis, Jericho, Bethagla, Bethnambris, Livias, Callirhoe, and Zoara (see Fig. 1). The artist has not only shown the palm leaves, schematically, but also sometimes the flower head and the orange-brown date fruit. Unfortunately, the western shore of the Dead Sea is largely missing and there are two other holes over the eastern coastline, but it is likely that there were other date palms indicated in the area, most especially at Engaddi. Diodorus Siculus (Bibl. Hist. 2.48,9) wrote that in the area of the Dead Sea ‘the land is good for growing palms, wherever it happens to be crossed by rivers with usable water, or to be endowed with springs that can irrigate it’ (cf. Theophrastus, Pot. Hist. 2.5; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 5. 9,17; Tacitus, Hist. 5.6). This was true especially around Jericho (Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. Hist. 2.48; Strabo, Geogr. 16.2,41; Jos.War 4. 469–71; Piacenza Pilgrim, Itin. 165/9; 169/14, who also mentions olive groves, citrons, and grape vines; Adomnan, Loc. Sanct. 264/ 13,5; Bede, Loc. Sanct. 314/ 9,3) and Engaddi (Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. Hist. 2.28,9; Eusebius, Onom. 86.18). Jericho is called the ‘city of palm-trees’ (Deut. 34.3; Judg. 1.16; 3.13; 2 Chron. 28.15). In Jericho there was a date palm
    © Palestine Exploration Fund 2004 DOI: 10.1179/003103204225014193
    
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    Fig. 1. Section of the Madaba Mosaic Map, photographed soon after its discovery and published in Germer-Durand (1897). © Palestine Exploration Fund, London.
    
    unique to the place, ‘Palma caryota’, valued for its walnut-like fruit (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 13.36; Theophrastus, Pot. Hist. 4.4, 2–4), and carbonized date pits have been found in many parts of the Herodian palace complex in Jericho (Gleason 1987–88, 31). Livias was famous for the Nicolaitan date-palm (Theodosius, Topografia 145/19). The dates of this general region were renowned for being good for keeping (Theophrastus, Pot. Hist. 2.6,8). Palm tree cultivations also feature as an economic resource in the Nahal Hever archives at an unidentified site . . named Mahoza, which we know from these archives was situated close to the Dead Sea in the administrative region of Zoara (P. Yadin 3, 5, 7, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24; X. Hev. 1 and see Broshi, 1992). At the present time, extensive palm groves are cultivated south of the Dead Sea. The other plant type shown in the region is not so easily identified. Commentators on the Madaba mosaic have thought of it either as a thorn bush (Avi Yonah 1954, 25, 35) or as a kind of generic plant, indicating the thick vegetation immediately around the Jordan River itself. However, these bushes have leaves rather than thorns. Had the mosaic artist wished to depict thorns he could have done so, and in fact he shows the thin leaves of the terebinth in Mamre by dark green sharp triangular tesserae. The plant in the Jordan Valley is clearly a
    
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    bush rather than a tree, since when wishing to show a tree the artist is careful to depict a trunk (as with the palms and the terebinth). The bushes are unlikely to be the vegetation around the river, as they not depicted as lying immediately against the river, but are shown very boldly four times in the lower Jordan Valley. These instances are: i. north-west of Bethnambris, ii. north of Aenon-Sapsaphas, iii. south of Aenon-Sapsaphas, and iv. north of Galgala/the Twelve Stones, east of Archelais, yet south of Koreae. Unfortunately, the Madaba mosaic map is not at all to scale, and only approximate positions for the bushes can be given, but the impression is that they may have grown over a fairly large area in the lower Jordan Valley (see Fig. 2). The two boat-bridges shown might appear to provide some help with the siting of these plants, but this is not so. These would most likely correspond to the crossing areas in association with Roman roads linking Philadelphia with Neapolis (lower crossing) and Gerasa with Scythopolis (upper crossing). The road from Philadelphia and Esbus to Jericho and Jerusalem is not indicated by a boat bridge because here there seems to have been a ford. There is a strikingly accurate representation of the boat bridges. These are shown as being constructed with poles at each end, with a pole in the middle going down into the river bed. Each has a small boat without oars, which would have been attached to the poles at either end by ropes. The boatman would have pulled the boat along by the ropes and by the beam across the river in order to transport goods and people. One of the boats contains a product that looks like planks of wood. However, in terms of the positioning of the boat bridges, the mosaic artist was clearly presenting these without great regard to their proper geographical placement, and one may then question whether the bushes are positioned with much accuracy also. Like the boat bridges, they may be seen as a feature of the lower Jordan Valley. Given the positioning of the bushes in relation to the towns, the rough placement of the bushes may be transposed to a map of the region drawn to scale in Fig. 2, but in fact we may do better to shade a swathe of the region from the Philadelphia to Neapolis road in the north to the Wadi el-Kafrein in the south and consider this the extent of the growth of the bushes. The only curious positioning on the Madaba map occurs with bush iii, which is placed in such a way as to make it look as if it were growing beside the Dead Sea. The bush must represent growth some distance away from the Dead Sea, no further south than the southern bank of the Wadi el-Kafrein and perhaps actually associated with Aenon-Sapsaphas, since little can grow in the extremely salty conditions beside the Dead Sea. This area is watered by the perennial stream of the Wadi el-Kharrar and is prime arable land, which is now developed into the archaeological park of ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’. The mosaic artist has taken special care to depict this bush in terms of its leaf and overall shape. It is a rather angular, low-growing shrub with deep green trifoliate leaves. Like the date palms, this plant must have been an important feature of the landscape, and significant economically, for it to warrant depiction by the mosaic artist. It seems, therefore, that is should be positively identified as the tree variously known as the balm of Gilead, balm of Mecca, Mecca balsam, Judaean balsam or opobalsam, Commiphora gileadensis ([Linnaeus 1764, 14] Christensen 1922, 18; Zohary 1982, 198–99; Collenette 1985, 89; Hepper 1987, 110–11, Fig. 5; Hepper 1990, 24; Wood 1997, 197; Miller and Morris 1998, 84; Collenette 1999, 98; Serpico 2000, 442;). It is Balsamodendrum or Amyris opobalsamum or gileadensis, an aromatic, medium-sized evergreen tree or shrub 2–5 m. high, with contorted, stiff branches and numerous slender, non-spiny drooping branchlets. Its leaves are trifoliate (sometimes with five leaflets) and are present for a short time during the rainy season. The leaves are strongly fragrant when crushed. It has small white or red flowers 3 mm. across, and round fruits 3 mm. in diameter with a pointed apex. This plant has been succinctly described by Kathryn Gleason (1987–88, 31) as having branches that are ‘angular and straggling, with
    
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    Fig. 2. Sketch plan of sites shown in the Madaba Mosaic Map in the lower Jordan Valley, and position of bushes, according to scale. © Joan Taylor.
    
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    Fig. 3. Commiphora gileadensis (Linnaeus) C. Christensen. © Nigel Hepper .
    
    small trifoliate leaves spaced widely over the paper-like, peeling bark of the stems’ (see Fig. 3). The characteristics of opobalsam conform exactly to the representation of bushes in the Madaba mosaic map. This plant is no longer found in the region of the lower Jordan, but may be seen in North-East Africa, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. It grows naturally among dry rocks up to c. 1200 m. on the lower slopes of the Arabian and Yemen mountains parallel to the Red Sea, Oman (Dhofar) and in the Horn of Africa. It was introduced into the lower Jordan Valley in ancient times, where the hot, dry conditions replicate its natural habitat. From the Middle Ages to modern times it was also grown in Egypt, for example in an opobalsam garden watered by a Christian holy well in Matariya, north of Cairo, and nearer to Cairo under the Ottoman Turks, who destroyed most of the Matariya plantation (Mitchell 1964, 149; Amico 1953, 66–69). People believed that the plants were transferred to Matariya from Engaddi (Hoade 1970, 30). In An Essay on the Balm of Gilead, John Cartwright (1760, 15, 21) notes that balsam plants originally grew only in the Valley of Jericho ‘but since that part of the world has been subject to the Turks, they have transplanted them into various places’, for example to the balsam garden of Mecca, guarded by high walls and soldiers and in the gardens of
    
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    Fig. 4. ‘A Janissary guarding the Balsam Tree’ from Cartwright (1760), B verso. Note the vessels attached to the tree for the gathering of sap.
    
    Grand Cairo, where the plants were also guarded by janissaries (see his illustration, reprinted in Fig. 4). In Genesis 37.25, the sons of the patriarch Israel, who have just thrown their brother Joseph down a pit, are approached by ‘a caravan of Ishmaelites . . . coming from Gilead, with their camels bearing neko’t, tsori and lot, going towards Egypt’. All of these words indicate some types of resins, gums, or saps. The tsori is usually identified as the Commiphora gileadensis. When Israel asks his sons to go to Egypt for food, once Joseph has risen to a great and powerful position, he tells them to take the ‘best produce of the land’, the very products the merchants that took Joseph to Egypt were trading, including the resins: neko’t, tsori, and lot. The ‘balm in Gilead’ mentioned in Jer. 8.22, tsori . . . begil‘ad, is clearly indicated as having healing and pain-killing properties (cf. Jer. 51.5) and is prized by the Egyptians ( Jer. 46.11). As in Genesis, it is an important trade item in Ezekiel 27.17. Under today’s conditions, this bush could not have flourished on the cooler, higher hills of Gilead, and could only have been grown on the flatter land and low hills adjacent to the Jordan River. The fourth century b.c.e. writer Theophrastus states that the ( Judaean) opobalsam did not grow wild (Pot. Hist. 9.6, 4). Writing c. 75 c.e., Pliny writes that there were three varieties ˙ ´ of opobalsam: i. eutheriston (euheriston), ‘easy-to-gather’, with thin hairy foliage; ii. trachy ´ (traxu), ‘rough’, with a rugged, curving, bushy appearance and a stronger scent and iii. ˙ ´ ´ eumeces (eumekgz), ‘tall’, with a smooth bark. In order of quality, the traxu was considered the ˙ ´ ˙ ´ best, then eumekgz, and, finally, euheriston (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 12.53, 115). The exact conditions in which these different types thrived are unknown, but the present-day opobalsam of Arabia likes dry, poor soil and a hot climate with some summer rainfall. The lower Jordan Valley and Dead Sea region provide high temperatures, but the moisture — in an area of low rainfall — would have had to have been supplied by artificial means. It is for this reason that
    
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    it would have required tending in irrigated gardens and when the gardens were no longer tended it could not survive. The opobalsam bushes could grow in date palm plantations: according to Josephus, Cleopatra of Egypt appropriated from Herod the Great ‘the palm grove of Jericho where the balsam grows’ (War 1.361; Ant. 15.96). Strabo (Geogr. 16.2, 41) notes of the palm plantation in Jericho that it ‘is mixed also with other kinds of cultivated and fruitful trees’, and that here also is the ‘opobalsam garden’. In regard to the extent of its cultivation, there seems to have been an expansion of opobalsam-growing between the fourth century b.c.e. and first century c.e. Theophrastus (c. 320 b.c.e.), wrote that ‘there are only two gardens where it [opobalsam] grows [in the valley of Syria]: one of about 20 plethra and the other much smaller’. In the first century c.e. Pliny echoes Theophrastus in stating that it once (quondam) grew in only two places ‘one of 20 iugera and the other less’, in only the royal plantations of opobalsam in Jericho and Engaddi (Nat. Hist. 12.54, 111–13, cf. Jos. War 1.361; 4.469; Ant. 15.96; 9.7), but now this was not the case, for ‘recently’ (nuper) it had been taught to grow on trellises like vines, ‘covers whole hillsides’ and has ‘never been more plentiful’ (Nat. Hist. 12.112–14). This wider extent of cultivation is clear also from the evidence of other writers. Diodorus Siculus, for example, assigns opobalsam groves to the Aulon, i.e. Jordan Valley, but does not link the growing of opobalsam to Jericho alone, associating its cultivation with the Nabataeans and Dead Sea (Bibl. 2.28; 19.98). Rabbi Jose, in the second century, refers to opobalsam growing ‘from Engaddi to Livias’ (b. Shabb. 26a). Eusebius, at the beginning of the fourth century, writes of opobalsam and date-palms growing in Zoara, at the southernmost point of the Dead Sea (Onom. 42) as well as in Engaddi (Onom. 86). Christian pilgrims confirm the existence of opobalsam in Engaddi ( Jerome, Letter 108, to Eustochium, 11.5, here ‘vines’)1 and Jericho (Bede, Loc. Sanct. 313/ 9: 3) into the Byzantine period. A juglet possibly containing this valuable resin was found in a refugee cave 2 km. away from Qumran (Patrich and Arubas 1989). There has been a proposal that the site of Qumran (Ib and II; 100 b.c.e. to 68 c.e.) may have been used for processing balsam, and that balsam may have grown here (cf. DonceelVoute 1998), though more possibly in the fertile region between Ein Feshkha and the Wadi Qumran, if De Vaux is correct in proposing that there was less salinity in this region in antiquity than today with the ancient springs located higher and further inland (De Vaux 1973, 78). The Dead Sea region can have well-defined pockets of lower salinity around the fresh water springs, which flush out the salt content of the soil, such as around Engaddi and Zoara. As we identified above, the opobalsam of the Madaba mosaic map is shown as growing in the lower Jordan Valley, south of the Iabok through to Wadi el-Kafrein, over a wide area on both sides of the Jordan River, which — along with wadis and in areas of water management — would most likely have provided the irrigation required for the growth of the crop. The artist would have been familiar with this region, close to Madaba, and therefore the mosaic map seems reliable as a historical source for the location of plantations of balsam in the sixth century c.e., when the map was created. The map confirms what we know from the literary sources that this plant was still cultivated in the region at this time. The opobalsam was particularly prized medicinally for the oleo-resin it produced, a kind of turpentine, that is obtained from incisions in the trunk. Ancient sources stress its value as a cure for headache, cataracts, and dimness of sight, as well as for perfume (Strabo, Geogr. 16.2,41, cf. Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. Hist. 2.48,9; Tacitus, Hist. 5.6; Theophrastus, Pot. Hist. 9.7,3). The sap was collected by cutting the bark with sharp stones (Strabo, Geogr. 16.2,41; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 12.54,115), apparently in mid-summer (Theophrastus, Pot. Hist. 9.1,6). Lower grades of the sap could be produced from the branches, fruit, or seeds of the
    
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    Fig. 5. Moringa peregrina (Forsskal) Fiori. © Nigel Hepper.
    
    Fig. 6. Balanites aegyptiaca (Linnaeus) Delile. © Nigel Hepper.
    
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    plant, for example by boiling the twigs in water and by various mixings with other substances (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 12.54,118–23). Theophrastus indicates that (in the fourth century b.c.e.) the pure sap was worth twice its weight in silver (Pot. Hist. 9.6,1). Pliny emphasizes that the capturing of the economic resource of opobalsam was especially significant to the Romans during the First Revolt. Opobalsam plants formed part of the victory procession in Rome: ‘This type of tree was exhibited to this city [Rome] by the emperors Vespasian and Titus . . .’ states Pliny, and ‘the balsam tree now serves [Rome] and pays tribute here together with its [Judaean] race’ (Hist. Nat. 12.54,111–12). When the Romans swept into this region in 68 c.e., the Jews tried to destroy the balsam plants. Pliny writes:
    The Jews raged against it [the opobalsam] just as they did also upon their own lives, but the Romans protected it against them, and struggled in defence of the shrub.’ (ibid. 114).
    
    According to Pliny, five years after the Roman conquest of Judaea, the sale of Judaean balsam trimmings alone — regardless of the actual sap — apparently brought in 800,000 sesterces to the Roman treasury (Nat. Hist. 12.54,118). It should be noted that while Commiphora gileadensis is the only species likely to have yielded true resin in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea area, there are two other plants that produced medicinal oils from their seeds which could come under the general category of ‘balm’ or ‘balsam’ (see Figs. 5 and 6). Moringa, Moringa peregrina ([Forsskal] Fiori 1911, 59; Hepper 1990, 25–26; Serpico 2000, 394–95, Fig. 17.4; Zohary 1966, 340, Pl. 495) and balanos, Egyptian plum or desert date, Balanites aegyptiaca ([Linnaeus] Delile 1813, 221; Hepper 1990, 23; Serpico 2000, 392–93, Fig. 17.2; Sands 2001, 51–74). In 1697, the pilgrim Henry Maundrell noted the balanos as a remarkable fruit called ‘zachone’ by the Arabs: a ‘thorny bush, with small leaves’ with a fruit that ‘both in shape and colour resembles a small unripe walnut’. The kernel of the fruit was brayed in a mortar, the pulp was then put in boiling water and an oil was skimmed off which the locals used medicinally for bruises, green wounds ‘preferring it before balm of Gilead’ (Maundrell 1963, 115–16). Both of these balsams grow wild in the region, but neither of them match the depiction of the plant in the Madaba mosaic map; the Balanites aegyptiaca has paired leaflets, and the Moringa peregrina has pinnate leaves with numerous leaflets. In conclusion, the mysterious bushes of the lower Jordan Valley shown in the Madaba mosaic map can now with some certainty be defined as Commiphora gileadensis on the basis of their clearly portrayed characteristics and what we know from textual sources about the extent of opobalsam cultivation in this region in antiquity. The presence of these bushes in a Byzantine map indicates that cultivation of this precious resource continued through to the sixth century c.e..
    note 1 Additionally, in the Byzantine period, there is a curse understood to mean the revealing of information about in the floor of the synagogue (6th–7th cents.) on anyone balsam propagation and processing (Donceel-Voute who reveals ‘the secrets of the town’, sometimes 1998: 97).
    
    bibliography Amico, Bernadino, 1953. Plans of the Sacred Edifices of the Holy Land, with preface and notes by Bellarmino Bagatti ( Jerusalem: 1953, transl. of Trattato delle piante et imagini de i sacri edificii di Terra Santa, desiegnate in Gierusalemme secondo le regole della prospettiva, & vera misura della lor grandezza . . . [Rome: Typographia Linguarum Externarum, 1609]). Avi-Yonah, M., 1954. The Madaba Mosaic Map ( Jerusalem). Bloch, R. M., 1962. ‘Red salt and grey salt’, Mad‘a, 6, 3–8. Broshi, M., 1992. ‘Agriculture and economy in Roman Palestine: Seven notes on the Babatha archive’, IEJ, 42, 230–40. Cartwright, John, 1760. An Essay upon the Virtues of the Balm of Gilead (London).
    
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    Christiansen C., 1922. ‘Index to Pehr Forsskal, Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica 1775’, in Dansk Botanisk Arkiv, 4 (3), 18. Collenette, S., 1985. lllustrated Guide to the Flowers of Saudi Arabia (London). Collenette, S., 1999. Wildflowers of Saudi Arabia (Riyadh). Conder, C. R., and Kitchener, H. H., 1877. The Survey of Western Palestine. Memoirs III Judaea (London). De Vaux, R., 1973. Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford). Delile, A. R., 1813. Description d’Egypte, Histoire naturelle, 221, t. 28 (Paris) Donceel-Voute, P., 1998. ‘Traces of fragrance along the Dead Sea’, Res Orientales, 11, 93–124. Donner, H., 1992. The Mosaic Map of Madaba: An Introductory Guide (Kampen). Donner, H., and Cuppers, H., 1977. Die Mosaikkarte von Madeba (Wiesbaden). Engler, A., 1883. ‘Commiphora opobalsamum’, in De Candolle, Monographiae Phanerogamarum, 4, 15 (Paris). Fiori, A., 1911. ‘Moringa peregrina’ in Agricoltura Coloniale, 5, 59. Germer, R., 1985. Flora des Pharaonischen Aegypten (Mainz). Germer, R.,1988. Katalog der Altegyptischen Pflanzenreste der Berliner Museen (Berlin). Germer-Durand, J., (1897). La carte mosaıque de Madaba (Paris). ¨ Gleason, K. L., 1987–88. ‘Garden excavations at the Herodian Winter Palace in Jericho, 1985–6’, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, 7, 31–39. Hepper, F. N., 1987. Planting a Bible Garden (London). Hepper, F. N., 1990. Pharaoh’s Flowers (London). Hepper, F. N., and Friis, I., 1994. The Plants of Pehr Forsskal ˝s Flora Aegyptiaca Arabica (Kew/Copenhagen). ˚ Jacoby, A., 1905. Das geographische Mosaik von Madaba, die alteste Karte des Heiligen Landes; ein Beitrag zu ihrer Erklarung ¨ ¨ (Leipzig). Konig, P., 1987. ‘Vegetation und Flora im sudwestlichen Saudi-Arabien (Asir, Tihama’, Dissertationes Botanicae, 101, 82 (Berlin). Linnaeus, C., 1764. Dissert. Opobalsamum declaratum (Uppsala). Maundrell, H., 1963. A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem in 1697, with a new introduction by David Howell (Khayats Oriental Reprints 3; Beirut). Miller, A. G., and Morris, M., 1998. Plants of Dhofar (Oman). Mitchell, R. J., 1964. The Spring Voyage: The Jerusalem Pilgrimage in 1458 (London). Moldenke, H. N., 1954. ‘The economic plants of the Bible’, Economic Botany, 8, 152–63. Patrich, J., and Arubas, B., 1989. ‘A juglet containing balsam oil (?) from a cave near Qumran’, IEJ, 39, 43–59. Piccirillo, M., and Alliata, E., 1999. The Madaba Mosaic Map Centenary 1897–1997: Travelling through the ByzantineUmayyad Period ( Jerusalem). Rosenson, J., 1986. ‘What were the ships sailing on the Dead Sea in the map of Madaba carrying?’ Halamish, 3, 16–20. Sands, M. J., 2001. ‘The desert date and its relatives: a revision of the genus Balanites’, Kew Bulletin, 56, 51–74. Serpico, M., 2000. ? in P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw (eds.), Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology (Cambridge). Wood, J. I. R., 1997. Handbook of the Yemen Flora (Kew). Wilkinson, J., 2002. Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster). Zangenberg, J., 2000. ‘Wildnis unter Palmen? Khirbet Qumran im regionalen Kontext’, in Bernard Mayer (ed.), Jericho und Qumran: Neues zum Umfeld der Bibel, (Regensburg), 129–63. Zohary, M., 1966. Flora Palaestina 1 ( Jerusalem). Zohary, M., 1982. Plants of the Bible (Cambridge).

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