It would therefore be natural to suppose that Quietus’ exterminatory action, whether carried out before or after the suppression of the rising, was impelled by the success of the insurrection in Egypt in 116, by the intensification of ferment in contemporary Judaea and, not least, by the considerable military potential of Babylonian Jewry.
There are no proofs that any link existed between the Jews of Cyrene and Egypt and those of Mesopotamia during the rebellion or before it. But it may be remarked that the timing of the revolt in the latter country (A. D. 116) coincides, at least where the year is concerned, with the widest spread of the war in Egypt. Yet we may have more tangible evidence that the ideas and aims of the Jewish war in Cyrene, Cyprus and Egypt left their mark and memory on the Jews of the Euphrates valley. I refer to certain elements visible in the wall-paintings of the synagogue at Dura-Europus. We have seen (p. 299) that the Roman forces treated Dura as a conquered city, and the Roman triumphal arch nearby bears witness that a battle took place here during Trajan’s advance. The synagogue’s third-century wall-paintings embody four general themes, namely, the achieving of independence, the exodus to freedom, the destruction of idolatry, and national rebirth. The upper frieze of the west wall shows the Exodus, and more especially the departure of the Israelites as warriors in array in full hellenistic panoply.[1748] The central frieze of the same wall exhibits, among other themes, the episode of the capture of the Ark of the Covenant by the Philistines and its restoration to Beth Shemesh. In one of the pictures[1749] is seen the temple of the Philistine god and his shattered image, while fragments of the idols lie scattered over the entire area before the building. These two elements, the departure from exile “with a high hand” as an armed force, and the smashing of the idols, figure so prominently in the rebellion of Trajan’s time, that their prominence on the Dura murals is not likely to be a coincidence. In the Diaspora rising of 115-117 the consciousness of these aims as part of the aspiration to national independence, had struck so deep, that their influence was still alive over a century later, and found expression in the mural paintings of the synagogue of Dura Europus.[1750]
The epigraphical and literary evidence for the situation in Judaea at the time of the revolt has been surveyed, and they point, in sum, to tension and even to bloodshed, although not to a genuine military outbreak. Some words, however, must be added on certain social factors which may have intensified a readiness for revolt among the Jews of Judaea.
The two relevant factors demanding consideration are the absorption of the kingdom of Agrippa II into direct imperial administration, and the general agrarian position. Smallwood[1751] has rejected the possibility that the first event influenced the attitude of the Jews of the country, observing that the greater part of Agrippa’s kingdom lay outside the areas of dense Jewish population. Recent archaeological surveys may not bear out her assessment,[1752] which in any case does not take into account the royal estates in Judaea which Agrippa II would have inherited indirectly from the last Hasmonean rulers.[1753] These estates, which corresponded technically to the χώρα βασιλική of the hellenistic kings, were identical in my opinion with the “King’s Mountain” (Har ha-Melekh)[1754] of talmudic sources, which extended over the entire western area of the mountains of Samaria and Judaea as far as the Darom.[1755] These contained several centres which had been foci of the Great Rebellion,[1756] and it may be supposed that at the end of it, when Vespasian confiscated considerable areas in Judaea,[1757] some tracts in Har Ha-Melekh passed into imperial hands. The change doubtless induced Vespasian to inaugurate various innovations in tenurial procedures, although Agrippa II had remained loyal to Rome. It is very probable that the “King’s Mountain” means simply χώρα βασιλική, and when Josephus wrote[1758] that Vespasian “kept the χώρα for himself” (to lease out), that the same region was meant. The Mishnah and the Midrashim leave very little doubt that much of the confiscated land was taken by the so-called matziqim, whose precise status may be controversial but whose social and economic impact is clear, for they harassed and oppressed the Jewish peasants who, in so far as they were allowed to remain, became their tenants. The con temporal Jewish sources make it clear that they held land from Galilee to the borders of Nabataea.[1759] The tradition that R. Eliezer ben Harsurn, who lived after 70, “had ten-thousand villages in the King’s Mountain and a thousand ships on the sea”,[1760] though doubtless hyperbole, nevertheless suggests that the region so named survived the destruction as an administrative unit. It may also be supposed that on the transfer of Agrippa II’s kingdom to the Empire on his death (c. A.D. 100), his administration of such land as remained in royal possession was dissolved, and its work transferred to non-Jewish officials, a change which may well have caused a further deterioration in the position of the Jewish subtenants.[1761]
If this was the case, the annexation of the kingdom to the Empire at the beginning of Trajan’s reign may have been a factor in the sharpening of the agrarian situation, nor were the confiscation of lands, the expansion of imperial estate and the increase of oppressive new landowners (the matziqim) restricted to the King’s Mountain. The catalogue of the distribution of the matziqim occurs in a document datable on internal evidence at latest to Trajan’s time but probably of the 1st century, since the reference to Tzoar, outside the Empire until 106, is likely to be an interpolation.[1762] A comparison of these sources with the distribution of imperial estates in the country as known from other evidence,[1763] confirms their presence in all the regions mentioned in the Midrashim — in Galilee, the Plain of Jezreel, Ephraim, western Judaea, Yavneh, Jericho, ‛Ein Geddi, in the Beer Sheba district and in Transjordan. In addition areas round Jerusalem were confiscated for the use of the Tenth Legion, and thus became, legally, imperial land.[1764]
The agrarian situation created by the confiscations at the end of the war of 66-73 continued into the reign of Trajan, and is indirectly reflected in the documents of Ben Kosba’s administration found in the caves of Murabba’at[1765] and Nahal Hever.[1766] These include a number of lease-contracts signed between the officials of the Nasi’s administration and various Jews in the time of the restored Jewish commonwealth (132-135), their subject being the leasing of plots of land by the Nasi to assignants who thus became lessees of the government. This evidence makes it clear that Ben Kosba as secular ruler had taken over considerable tracts when the Roman yoke was thrown off; these would have consisted of Roman state-land not till then inhabited by Jews, lands of gentiles who had fled or been killed, and also Jewish lands whose previous owners had died without heirs. And although it is clear from other contemporary documents that land existed held by Jews in private possession, state-domain must have been an important economic and social factor when the revolt broke out in 132. This, indeed, can be demonstrated by the centres associated with the outbreak.[1767]
1748
C. H. Kraeling,
1750
Kahrstedt seems to have interpreted the Dura murals in much the same spirit — see his
1752
Fifteen ancient synagogues have been identified on the Golan plateau since 1967. — See the
1754
A. Biichler,
1755
S. Klein,
1759
1761
Momigliano was certainly right in believing (
1762
1764
For a summary, Applebaum,
1766
Yadin,