In June 1968, in the course of some housing development at Giv’at ha-Mivtar, in north eastern Jerusalem, several early Jewish tombs were excavated, and numerous ossuaries and skeletons discovered. Among them was a single heel-bone (calcaneus), pierced transversely with an iron nail, almost certainly the result of a crucifixion. To date, this was the only archaeological remnant of a practice which was apparently widespread throughout the Roman empire for several centuries, and it posed a number of interesting questions. [1]
Before discussing this, and later discoveries, in detail, it is well to consider some of the mysteries surrounding what was apparently almost an everyday fact of life in the Roman world. Although estimates of the number of Roman crucifixions reach 200,000, not a single one had been archaeologically identified until the Giv’at ha-Mivtar tombs were excavated. Opinions included the idea that the vast majority of the victims had been thrown into common graves and disintegrated altogether, that nailing was unusual, and that victims who had been tied to their crosses would not be distinguishable as crucifixion victims, or that the nails had passed between the arm and leg bones, and left no evidence. The tonnes of nails had either been re-used, or turned into amulets, which is why none of them had been found either.
The Giv’at ha-Mivtar heel-bone apparently gave the lie to everything previously assumed. It was found in an ossuary, and therefore the body had not been thrown into a common grave; it was indisputably nailed, and nailed right through a bone, and what’s more, nailed across the foot rather than down through it, contrary to almost every single crucifixion ever previously depicted. However, a single instance of anything presents us with a bit of a historical conundrum, common enough throughout archaeology, and relevant to the fate of Jesus. To what extent does it represent what was typical?
From this single heel-bone, we cannot say whether this style of crucifixion was unique or common. One line of thought is that, if you reach blindfold into a box of a thousand coloured balls and pick out a red one, it would be most unlikely that only one ball of the thousand was red. You are more likely to have picked out a ‘typical’ ball. On the other hand, goes another line, if all the balls but one had crumbled to dust, then the unique one was self-selecting. Some commenters suggested that because the point of the nail had curved back on itself, it had been found impossible to pull it out of the foot, which may have been why, uniquely, it had been buried with the body.
In a similar way, these arguments can also be applied to Jesus. He was, the gospels tell us, “crowned with thorns,” and “pierced in the side,” but we have no way of knowing if this was common practice or unique to Jesus. Sure, Jesus’s crucifixion included these events, but as there are no other descriptions of crucifixions in any detail at all, we cannot tell if they were unique or not.
Back to Nico Haas and the Giv’at ha-Mivtar calcaneus. It was found in an ossuary inscribed ‘Jehohanan’ (the picture above) with other bones of a man aged about 25 and a child of three or four. Many of the bones were too soggy to recover, and many were missing altogether. The calcaneus, with the bone immediately above it (the talus) still attached had to be cleaned and ‘fixed’ before it could be measured, photographed and modelled, and only a few weeks were allowed to the archaeologists before it, and all the other human remains, had, by Jewish law, to be reburied. It is not altogether surprising that Haas’s initial conclusions have been re-evaluated.
Haas reported that the 17-18cm nail had passed through a small ‘plaque’ of acacia or pistachio, which acted as a kind of washer, then through both heel bones, right over left (although only a small fraction of the left remained) before embedding in olive wood, presumably the post of the cross, where it hit a knot and turned back on itself. Haas also thought that the three lower leg bones remaining (the right fibula was missing) had been deliberately broken before death, that the right talus showed that the feet had had to be amputated before the body could be removed from its cross, and that a scratch on the right radius represented the passage of a nail through the arm.
According to subsequent critics, Haas got several things wrong. Yigael Yadin, perhaps Israel’s most well-known archaeologist, thought that the nail had only been used to fasten the feet together, and its tip was bent over deliberately to stop them coming apart. He also surmised that Jehohanan had been fixed to his ‘cross’ upside down. [2]
Fifteen years later, Haas’s findings were ‘reappraised.’ Joe Zias and Eliezer Sekeles, also Israeli archaeologists, had studied the remains with Haas in 1968-9, and still had the photos and models, although by 1985 the original bones had long been reburied. They also studied X-rays taken at the time, which Haas didn’t mention. In their opinion Haas was wrong about almost all his conclusions, which may be why they didn’t publish their own for so long. [3]
The nail, they decided was 11.5cm, not 17-18cm, and had only pierced one calcaneus. The wooden plaque was made of olive, not acacia or pistacisa. The scratch on the radius and the breaking of the three leg bones had almost certainly happened after death, and there was no sign of the feet having been amputated. Their interpretation of the method of crucifixion was that the legs had been bent back on either side of the upright and nailed in, one on each side.
Twice is coincidence.
During “preventative excavations” in the Po Valley, prior to the laying of a methane pipeline between Venice and Bologna, near Gavello, about twenty miles south of Venice, a single burial was unearthed amid a layer of Roman archaeology, of a man of about 30, with “an intentional lesion in the right calcaneus,” described in detail as follows: “Right calcaneus: Only the posterior part up to the sustentaculum talii is preserved. We observed a lesion passing through the entire width of the calcaneus under the sustentaculum. The perforation (length 24 mm) shows a regular round hole passing from the medial side (diameter 9 mm) to the lateral one (diameter 6.5 mm). The pattern of the cross-sectional lesion is linear in the first part, turning slightly downward in the last part. The presence of an ellipsoidal depressed fracture on the medial side, but not on the lateral, suggests that the injury was inflicted peri-mortem and the blow was inflicted from medial to lateral, causing a breakthrough in the impact area (entry point).” The left calcaneus was missing. [4]
The medial side shows that the bone has chipped away from the edges of the hole, suggesting, to the archaeologists, that the nail penetrated from that side. However this suggests a less than obvious nailing pattern, namely that both feet were nailed individually to the front side of the cross, the knees twisted outwards. It has also been suggested that this hole is adventitious, and caused by roots or animals or chemical decay, but the authors note that some others bones in the skeleton, also pierced, could be used for comparison, indicating that this was more likely due to peri-mortem trauma than subsequent biological or chemical weathering. It is even possible that roots played a part in defining the hole, which perhaps was originally a lateral-to-medial piercing, but is now unrecognisable as such.
Third time….
During the excavation of some Roman graves at Fenstanton, about ten miles north west of Cambridge, in 2017, another heel-bone was found with a nail right through it. [5] Skeleton 4926, of a man about 30, was lying on his back, hands crossed over his pelvis, with evidence of various episodes of disease and trauma on his bones, and a pattern of nails around his body that may be the remains of a bier or shield of some kind.
“It was only while the skeleton was being washed back in the lab that a 13th nail was found, penetrating the right heel bone (calcaneum) horizontally, exiting below the protrusion called the sustentaculum tali. The entrance hole (lateral, nailhead side) is almost circular, and at its anterior edge is a small indentation which barely penetrates into the bone. The exit (medial, nail-point side) is also circular but smaller, fitting the size of the nail. The entrance is roughened and slightly crushed but, contrary to most penetrating wounds, is bevelled outwards, while the exit shows little damage other than a little crumbling of the edge. It is assumed that the entrance is larger than the exit because the head of the nail was driven into the bone, and that the smaller indentation is a “misfire”.”
The lateral-to-medial direction of the nail is the same as the one at Giv’at ha-Mivtar, and suggests that this man too was crucified with his legs either side of the upright of his cross.
“Once is happenstance,” quoted Auric Goldfinger in Ian Fleming’s book, “twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” Unearthing three instances of remarkably similar methods of crucifixion from the centre and two opposite extremes of the Roman Empire speaks volumes. Even if it was not universal, it was surely both common and widespread.
The two particular nails mentioned above were found in situ, and must reasonably be supposed to have been involved in impaling the heel-bones, quite probably to the crucifixion post. If nailing was common – and a comprehensive study by John C. Robison suggests that it was [6] – then other nails may well have been found but not identified as used in crucifixion. One possible identification was made by Patricia Smith, in 1977, who observed that a couple of iron nails found in the so-called “Abba” tomb were “found in association with the phalanges. One had the base of a proximal phalange adhering to it. The second, which was bent, had a proximal phalange adhering to one side and a medial phalange to the other side. In neither case had the nail perforated the bone. A third nail was also present but no bones were in contact with it.” [7] The identification of the bones in this cave has been much discussed, and it is quite likely that the nails are only incidentally associated with the bones they are attached to, but if they are evidence of crucifixion, then in this case they seem to be more closely associated with the fingers than the wrist. More recently the nails and bones have been analysed further by Israel Hershkovitz, but his findings do not seem to have been formally reported. According to James Tabor, “Hershkovitz has definitely clarified this issue. The nails are driven into the palm, then either angled or bent into a hook, not to hold up the body but to keep the hands and arms in place – thus “tacking” or pinning the hands to the wood behind.” [8] On the other hand, raptureonline, apparently quoting from a television programme called ‘The Riddle of the Crucifixion,’ (Directv), says, of Hershkovitz, that, “in his discovery of the hand bone, also discovered with a crucifixion nail embedded, it was learned that the hand was nailed with the nail entering from the back of the hand not through the palm.” [9] Which of these contradictory statements, if either, is what Hershkovitz actually thinks is unknown.
Even remoter evidence of crucifixion nails comes from Aryeh E. Shimron and others, in Archaeological Discovery in 2020, who reappraised a couple of Roman nails found in the so-called ‘Caiaphas’ tomb in 1990, [10]. Under an electron microscope, tiny fragments of bone were found adhering to them.
None of this evidence is conclusive, although certainly the method of nailing the feet described above is a clear challenge to the traditional western European image of the crucified Christ. The eastern tradition has been to have him standing, feet side-by-side, on a little platform, which is closer to the heels-either-side interpretation, and the famous graffito from Puteoli (now Pozzuoli, near Naples), is even closer. [11]
Another illustration from the same source, of which I have only just become aware, is of a criminal tied to a pole and being attacked by a wild beast. He is seen from the side, and his feet clearly straddle the upright, although in this case there is no sign of a nail.
Slowly, the archaeology of crucifixion is revealing itself, and so far, none of it supports the concept of a single nail impaling both feet to the flat of the upright of the cross, as suggested by the image on the Shroud.
[1] Tzaferis, Vassilios, ‘Jewish Tombs at and near Giv’at ha-Mivtar, Jerusalem’, Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1/2, 1970
Naveh, Joseph, ‘The Ossuary Inscriptions from Giv’at ha-Mivtar,’ op. cit.
Haas, Nicu, ‘Anthropological Observations on the Skeletal Remains from Giv’at ha-Mivtar,’ op. cit.
[2] Yadin, Yigael, ‘Epigraphy and Crucifixion,’ Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1973
[3] Zias, Joseph and Sekeles, Eliezer, ‘The Crucified Man from Giv’at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal,’ Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1, 1985
[4] Gualdi, Emanuela, et al., ‘A multidisciplinary study of calcaneal trauma in Roman Italy: a possible case of crucifixion?’ in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, April 2018
[5] Ingham, David and Corinne, Duhig, ‘Crucifixion in the Fens: Life & Death in Roman Fenstanton,’ British Archaeology, Jan/Feb 2022
[6] Robison, John, ‘Crucififixion in the Roman World: The Use of Nails at the Time of Christ,’ Studia Antiqua, Vol. 2, No. 1, June 2002
[7] Tzaferis, Vassilios, ‘The Abba Burial Cave in Jerusalem,’ cAtiqot 7, 1974. This is the primary report on the excavation of the cave, but is in Hebrew, so I haven’t read it.
Smith, Patricia, ‘The Human Skeletal Remains from the Abba Cave,’ Israel Exploration Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2/3, 1977
[8] Tabor, James, ‘The Abba Cave, Crucifixion Nails, and the Last Hasmonean King,’ Taborblog, April 2016, online at: jamestabor.com/the-abba-cave-crucifixion-nails-and-the-last-hasmonean-king/
[9] Parks, Jerry, ‘Science Once Again Supports The Scriptures Prophecy Of Jesus’ Crucifixion,’ online raptureonline.blog/2018/07/01/science-once-again-supports-the-scriptures-prophecy-of-jesus-crucifixion/
[10] Shimron, Aryeh, et al., ‘Petrochemistry of Sediment and Organic Materials Sampled from Ossuaries and Two Nails from the Tomb of the Family of the High Priest Caiaphas, Jerusalem,’ Archaeological Discovery, Vol. 8, No. 3, July 2020
[11] Cook, John Granger, ‘Crucifixion as Spectacle in Roman Campania,’ Novum Testamentum, Vol. 54, Fasc. 1, 2012