Magen Broshi (M / Israel, 1929-2020), scholar
Magen Broshi (M / Israel, 1929-2020), scholar, archeologist.
Magen Broshi was a world-renowned Israeli archeologist, author, historian and lecturer. From 1964 to 1994, he was the curator of the Shrine of the Book, the wing of the Israel Museum where most of the intact Dead Sea Scrolls are housed. He was appointed to the committee that oversees the Scroll’s publication team. He is the past Chairman of the Museum Association of Israel and has been a guest lecturer at Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He has directed many important archaeological expeditions in Israel, including the excavations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount Zion excavations, and excavation of the inhabited caves at Qumran.
Works
Books
- Megilat Tehilim me-Kumran (Jerusalem 1981)
- Psalms Scroll from Qumran (Jerusalem 1986)
- The Damascus Document Reconsidered (Jerusalem 1992)
BAR Obituary 46.5 (Winter 2020)
Strata: Milestones: Magen Broshi: First Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Shimon Gibson
In July 2020, Magen Broshi, a leading Israeli archaeologist and Dead Sea Scrolls expert, died in Jerusalem at the age of 91.
Magen’s father, Azriel Broshi (formerly Brestovitzky), arrived in Palestine from Poland in 1920, at the time of the Third Aliya movement, and was instrumental in opening up the study of the land’s geographical history and organizing study tours for groups throughout the country. Broshi’s mother, Esther, an educator from Poland, was the daughter of the writer Moshe Yitzchak Wollach.
Broshi studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and at the University of Chicago. Throughout his career, his specialties included the Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran’s archaeology, the Second Temple period, ancient demography, ancient agriculture and viticulture, and Jerusalem’s history and archaeology. He published extensively, including the popular book Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001).
Broshi obtained his earliest archaeological experiences with Pierre Pinchas Delougaz in the 1960s and with Benjamin Mazar at the Beth Shearim cemetery in Israel, now the Beit She‘arim National Park, about 12 miles east of Haifa. Broshi also took part in the first expedition to Masada headed by Yigael Yadin. He went on to direct numerous excavations, notably at Tel Megadim on the coast, Mount Zion in Jerusalem (including the sites of Christ Church, the Western Old City Wall, Armenian Garden, Zion Gate, St. Saviours, and the Nea Gate), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Qumran caves (with the late Professor Hanan Eshel).
External links
- [ wiki.en]