1963年，雅盖尔·亚丁带着来自二十八个国家的上千名志愿者，登上了马萨达。亚丁不只是个考古学家——他曾在1948年独立战争中指挥过以色列军队。如今他要发掘的，是死海边的这座沙漠要塞。公元73年，将近一千名犹太起义者在这里宁死不降罗马。古代史家约瑟夫斯记载，最后一夜，十个人被抽签选出，负责杀死所有同伴。亚丁想找到那些签。
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往昔之谜·3/5·1′
The place
Masada
十人之签
十一块陶片、三具遗骸、一缕编好的头发——那些既证实又动摇马萨达传说的考古发现
1963-1965 (Yadin's excavation); 1969 (state funeral); 1982-2019 (scholarly debate)Masada
故事寓意
“发现过去与构建过去之间的界限，比我们愿意承认的要薄得多。每一个从泥土中取出文物的考古学家，都在替那件文物选择它要讲的故事——而我们最希望是真的那个故事，恰恰是最需要审视的。编好的头发、刻字的陶片、散落的遗骨，都是真的。它们意味着什么，是我们自己决定的。”
人物
Y
Yigael Yadin -- archaeologist, former IDF Chief of Staff, excavator of MasadaT
The woman with braided hair -- an unnamed 17-18 year old whose remains were found in the Northern PalaceN
Nachman Ben-Yehuda -- Hebrew University sociologist who challenged the Masada mythJ
Joe Zias -- physical anthropologist who questioned the identification of the bonesS
Sarah Sallon -- scientist who germinated a 2,000-year-old seed from Masada来源
Yadin, Yigael. Masada: Herod's Fortress and the Zealots' Last Stand, 1966; Cohen, Shaye J.D. 'Masada: Literary Tradition, Archaeological Remains, and the Credibility of Josephus,' Journal of Jewish Studies 33, 1982; Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995; Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada, Humanity Books, 2002; Zias, Joe. 'Human Skeletal Remains from the Southern Cave at Masada,' in The Dead Sea Scrolls Fifty Years After Their Discovery, 2000; Sallon et al. 'Germination, Genetics, and Growth of an Ancient Date Seed,' Science 320, 2008