Crosses and Crucifixions, Misunderstood and Misinterpreted -a guide for/to the perplexed

By Joe Zias

Crucifixion and the cross continue to fascinate religious believers and non-believers alike. But the history of both remains poorly understood.

Archaeologists, biblical scholars, and others have long pointed to the “crucified man from Giv‘at Ha-Mivtar” as the earliest, indeed only, evidence of crucifixion. But they have consistently failed to point out that what appears to be the only direct evidence of crucifixion in the ancient world is, in fact, a fragmentary and heavily restored calcaneum, or heel.

Right calcaneum, after reconstruction. Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society.

Right calcaneum, proximal view (from above), before reconstruction. Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society.

Discovered in 1968, first published in 1970 and cited countless times since, the “crucified man from Giv‘at Ha-Mivtar” is the end result of a problematic reconstruction of the anterior or front portion of a heel. This has lead to the erroneous conclusion that nails were used to crucify the body. But forensically it is not that simple: while traumatic injuries such as beheading, hanging, cuts, and blunt injuries are easily interpreted skeletally, validating nailing in crucifixion is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Despite the countless victims spanning thousands of years, only one case has appeared in the archaeological record.

One must also understand the ‘anatomy’ of the heel (calcaneum). The largest of the 26 bones in the foot, its physiological function is not only weight-bearing but withstanding the pressure of the heel strike, since it the first part of the foot to absorb impact when running, walking, or striding. Thus, unlike long bones such as the tibia and fibula, the cortex of the heel is very thin, encasing spongy cancellous bone tissue that absorbs the impact of the foot strike. Consequently, any traumatic event in which the heel is broken, crushed, or penetrated, as in nailing, would fracture the bone, rendering it forensically near impossible to determine the cause of the trauma.

CT scan of a calcaneus fracture. (http://www.footeducation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Calcaneus-CT-Scan_thumb.png)

Following the discovery of the bone, an experiment was carried out on a dried calcaneum to recreate the nailing effect. The heel was wrapped in duct tape to prevent possible fragmentation, but the thin cortical bone was shattered by the high speed drill.

Right calcaneum penetrated by a nail. Note the thinness of the cortical bone. Thanks to Dr. P. Mitchell for providing me with this radiograph.

A leading medical school also performed an experiment by driving a large spike into the calcaneum of a cadaver in order to corroborate what has long been believed, that the heel would fracture. When examining the before and after x-rays it became apparent to me why, aside from the Jerusalem discovery, there is no tangible evidence for crucifixion in the archaeological record.

Notwithstanding these findings, scholars lacking practical experience have attempted to present what they believed to be possible evidence for crucifixion in the ancient world. Recently two Egyptian burials were suggested to show possible evidence of crucifixion. But it became immediately apparent that these were post-mortem taphonomic changes: tree roots that had penetrated the burial, a regular occurrence that often escapes mention.

A second example was an adult male skeleton discovered in Italy, dated to 50 BCE and believed to have been crucified based on skeletal evidence. The right calcaneum, unlike the left, was reportedly missing, which the authors correctly explained as evidence of “rooting” that had penetrated the burial, thus leaving unmistakable changes in the bone.

Internal surface of the left parietal bone exhibiting a hollowed-out lesion along the posterior branch of the meningeal artery. Note the numerous circular defects surrounding the tumor, resulting from the penetration of plant roots into the calvarium. Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Like the Egyptian find, the skeleton from Italy is another case where changes have been misinterpreted as evidence for pre-mortem trauma in the form of crucifixion.

Another common misunderstanding is the shape of the Roman crucifix. Many, myself included, have incorrectly portrayed the “crucified man from Giv‘at Ha-Mivtar” suspended on a t-shaped Latin cross, giving the erroneous impression that this device was the common form used by the Roman authorities. But if victims were nailed to a cross, as commonly believed, it should have been a Tau cross, in the shape of the Greek letter T.

Proposed reconstruction of a Roman Tau cross crucifixion. Drawn by Eytan Zias.

After seeing so many crosses in churches, museums, and throughout art history, we have all been conditioned to believe that it was the Latin cross that was employed by pre-Constantine Romans and others. It was not.

The Tau cross seldom appears in any unmistakable archaeological context, particularly in the Holy Land. But while researching the so called “Tomb of Absalom” in Jerusalem, where several Greek letters of a once prominent fourth-century Greek inscription above the entrance appeared (“This is the tomb of Zachariah, the martyr, the holy priest, the father of John”), I noticed that on the bedrock several meters to the west were additional incised crosses, including one very prominent Tau cross that had escaped the eye of countless travelers and academicians.

Northern face of the southern bedrock near the Tomb of Absalom. Note the two engraved Tau crosses and the three disc-/nail-like, carvings that appear on the lower right of the cross. Similar discs/nails are engraved in several places in this locus. Copyright Joe Zias.

When I had initially noticed and photographed the Tau cross in 1999, I was unaware of its paucity in the archaeological and historical records of the Holy Land and failed to bring it to the public’s attention. There are several reasons why the prominent Tau cross had gone unnoticed in an area long visited, photographed, and studied. One was the height of the cross (approximately 8–9 meters above ground level) and, like the Greek inscriptions discovered in 1999, the angle of the sun moving across the western sky had to be at a certain point in order for the cross to be clearly noticeable. One can also see circular indentations on the same outcropping that I believe could have represented crucifixion nails, an important symbol for the early Christians.

In a recent article on a late Roman-Byzantine village (Ḥorvat Sa‘adon) in the northwestern Negev, excavators Tali Erickson-Gini and others describe an impressive late Roman, 2nd- to mid-3rd-century family tomb where “Carved in relief [was] an enigmatic ‘T’ symbol on the wall between the burial niches.” I would argue this is an additional pre-Byzantine Tau cross.

Tau cross in engraved in relief on the limestone wall of the tomb at Ḥorvat Sa‘adon (estimated size: 18 x 18 cm). Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Like many sites in the Negev lying on an ancient trade route, this village eventually became Christian in the following centuries and boasted churches and monasteries.

If I’m correct, the Tau cross engraved in the bedrock in the courtyard of the so called Tomb of Absalom and the ‘enigmatic “T” symbol from the Negev could represent two of the earliest Tau crosses found in an archaeological context, in the history of early Christianity.