Back to Home Page

 

CRUCIFIXION IN ANTIQUITY

THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

 

By Joe Zias

                       

 

Undoubtedly, one of the cruelest and most humiliating forms of punishment and eventual death in the ancient world was, according to ancient sources, crucifixion. The Jewish historian Josephus best described it following the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 66-70 CE as “the most wretched of deaths” (War 7:203) whereas in Seneca’s Epistle 101 to Lucilius he argues that suicide is preferable to the cruel fate of being put on the cross. The widespread fear of crucifixion was such that Josephus reported that following the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE the threat by the Romans to crucify a Jewish prisoner alone caused the Jewish garrison stationed at Machaerus to surrender in exchange for safe passage from the city (War 6:4).

 

ORIGINS

This form of state terror, widespread across the Roman Empire which included Europe, North Africa and Western Asia, originated several centuries before the Common Era continuing into the fourth century CE when the practice was discontinued by Constantine, the emperor of Rome. Hengel, in his monumental work on the subject entitled Crucifixion (1989:22-23) writes that while authors generally regard it’s origin as in Persia due to the writings of Herodotus it’s practice was found among the Indians, Assyrians, Scythians, Taurians, Celts, Greeks, Seleucids, Romans, Britanni, Numidians, Carthagians the latter who may have transferred it’s knowledge to the Romans. While its origins are obscured in antiquity it’s clear that the form of capital punishment lasted for nearly 900 years beginning with Darius’s (550-485 BCE) crucifixion of 3,000 Babylonian captives in 519 BCE (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1993, Vol.3, p.762) and ending with the Roman emperor Constantine in 337 CE, thus tens if not hundreds of thousands of individual victims were subject to this cruel and humiliating form of punishment. Mass executions in which hundreds and thousands died, such as the well known crucifixion of 6,000 followers of Spartacus as part of a victory celebration in 71 BCE appear in the literature (Bella Civilia I.120). While many people believe that crucifixion was reserved for criminals only, as a result of Plutarch’s (46-120 CE) passage that “each criminal condemned to death bears his cross on his back” (Mor.554A/B) the literature clearly shows that this class of individuals were not the only ones subjected to this ultimate fate. Alexander the Great had 2,000 survivors from the siege of Tyre crucified on the shores of the Mediterranean (Curtius Rufus, Hist. Alex. 4.4.17) while in the times of Caligula (37-41 CE) Jews were tortured and crucified in the amphitheater to entertain the inhabitants of Alexandria. Women are seldom if ever mentioned specifically in the ancient Jewish sources aside from two passages in the Mishna, one in Tractate Mourning 2.11 which suggests that women may have been sacrificed as well. The second reference is found in Sanhedrin 6.5 in which Simeon b. Shetah had 70 or 80 sorceresses hung in the city of Ashkelon. However, as crucifixion was widely employed with slaves one can assume that in the ancient world, its use was thus not limited by gender, but mainly by class.

In Ancient Israel crucifixion amongst the Jews was rare and except for a few instances, as when treason was involved, the subject was stoned to death first and then hung on a tree in accordance with the Biblical passage in Deuteronomy 21:22-23. [1]

“When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.”

There was one notable exception to this passage in which the Jewish victims were first killed via crucifixion rather that being hung on a tree after death as was the case with the high priest, Alexander Janneus in which 800 Jews were crucified in Jerusalem in 87 BCE before their wives and children. While on the cross, according to Josephus (Ant. 12:256) the women and children were then slaughtered before their eyes.[2] Perhaps one of the unique aspects of Jewish crucifixion was that when employed on women, according to the Mishna, they faced the cross whereas men were crucified with their back to the cross. (M. Sanh. 6.4)

As a deterrent in the ancient world, many of it’s victims were crucified where the criminal event took place as was the case with thieves or along the cities busiest thoroughfares. The situation can perhaps best be summed up by Quintilian (35-95 CE.) who wrote that “whenever we crucify the guilty, the most crowded roads are chosen, where most people can see and be moved by this fear. For penalties relate not so much to retribution as to their exemplary effect” (Decl. 274). Further evidence for this obscene and vulgar public display of the victim can be found in The Lives of the Caesars, as Suetonious (Vesp. 5.4) recorded that a stray dog made off with the hand of a crucified man from the cross roads and dropped it under Vespians breakfast table. (Rolfe).[3]

As one of the main objectives of this cruel method of execution was it’s deterrent value, Roman authorities also devised various means whereby the victim could remain on the cross for days in public before eventually expiring. Thus the manner in which the victims were crucified was not fixed by law but appears dependent on the number of individuals involved, the sadistic ingenuity of those carrying out the execution and the time needed for this spectacle to have its maximum deterrent effect.

 

Giving the victim a proper burial following death on the cross, during the Roman period was rare and in most cases simply not permitted in order to continue the humiliation. Thus the victim was in many cases simply thrown on the garbage dump of the city or left on the cross as food for wild beasts and birds of prey. Juvenal, for example, writes that in Rome ‘the vulture hurries from dead cattle and dogs and crosses to bring some of the carrion to her offspring’ (Satires 14.77f). The mention of dogs and crosses in this passage is interesting as Pliny (NH 29.57) wrote that dogs were also crucified by the Romans as they failed to alert the citizens of Rome of an attack by the Gauls on Capitoline hill. As a result of this failure dogs in Rome were thus subject to mass crucifixions each August in ancient Rome.

 

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

In 1968 building contractors working in Giv’at ha-Mivtar, a suburb north of Jerusalem accidentally uncovered a Jewish tomb dated to the first century CE. (Tzaferis 1971) Lying in a Jewish stone ossuary bearing the Hebrew inscription ‘Jehohanan the son of HGQWL’ were the skeletal remains of a man in his twenties whom had been crucified. The evidence for this was based on the right calcaneum (heel bone) of the individual, pierced by an iron nail 11.5 cms. in length. The nail penetrated the lateral surface of the heel bone emerging on the medial surface in which the distal end of the nail had become bent. The bending of the distal end of the nail upon itself suggests that after the nail penetrated the tree or the upright it may have struck a knot in the wood which made it difficult to remove from the heel when the victim was taken from the cross. Remains of olive wood found between the head of the nail and the heel bone suggest that prior to penetrating the heel bone the nail was driven through a wooden plaque so as to increase the head of the nail thus making it difficult for the victim to free his legs from the upright. Due to taphanomic processes which occurred over a period of 2,000 years the skeleton was in a poor state of preservation with many post-mortem breaks as well as being friable and fragmentary, thus the right heel bone was not amenable for proper anthropological investigation. Despite the assertion by Haas in the original article (1970) that both legs were affixed by one nail, a subsequent reexamination by Zias and Sekeles in 1985 found that many of the conclusions upon which his attempted reconstruction were made were flawed. The nail which he reported to be 17-18 centimeters in length was but 11.5 thus making it anatomically impossible to affix two feet with one nail. Furthermore despite the original belief that evidence for nailing was found on the radius, a subsequent reexamination of the evidence showed that there was no evidence for traumatic injury to the forearms therefore it would appear that the individual was bound and nailed to the cross as shown in the figure.

   This near total absence of any direct anthropological evidence for crucifixion in antiquity begs the question of why, aside from the one isolated case described below, is the record silent. There are two possibilities which may account for this silence; one is that most victims may have been tied to the cross as depicted in Christian art, as with the Good and the Bad thieves, despite the fact that the Gospels do not go into detail as to how they were affixed to the cross. Scholars have in fact argued that crucifixion was a bloodless form of death in that the victims were tied to the cross (Brandenburger 1969, Jeremias 1966). Martin Hengel, however who wrote what is perhaps the definitive scholarly report of the subject of Crucifixion in antiquity, takes along with Hewitt (1932) an opposing view and argues that nailing the victim by both hands and feet was the rule and tying the victim to the cross was the exception. During the first revolt of the Jews against the Romans in 66-73 CE Josephus mentions that in the fall of Jerusalem (70 CE) “the soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures (JW 5.11 and 451). In spite of these differences of opinion we would take a differing view and suggest that the number of individuals being crucified may in fact, determine the manner in which the execution took form. If, as in the case with the account of 6,000 prisoners of war being crucified by Crassus on the Via Appia between Rome and Capua (Bella Civilia I.120) as part of a victory celebration it would seem plausible that the most quick and efficient manner was employed which would be to simply tie the victim to the tree or cross with his hands suspended directly over his head. Death thus would occur within minutes or at most an hour if the victims feet were not nailed or tied down. While this would explain the lack of any direct traumatic evidence on the human skeleton when tied to the cross it would not explain the lack of evidence when the victim was nailed. This latter issue is best explained by the fact that nails of a victim crucified were among some of the most powerful medical amulets in antiquity and thus removed from the victim following their death. This is attested to by the Mishnaic passage (Shabbath 6.10) which states that both Jews and Amorites (colloquium for non-Jews) may carry a nail from a crucifixion, a tooth from a jackal and an egg from a locust as a means of healing. For the Jews, this was even, according to some Rabbis, permitted on Shabbath when Jews were normally forbidden to carry objects.[4] As this Mishnaic passage mentions both Jews and non-Jews carrying these objects one can infer the power of these amulets and their scarcity in the archaeological record. Not only do Jewish sources attest to the power of these objects but Plinus in Natural History (28:4) wrote that a nail from a crucifixion wrapped in wool and hung from the neck cures fever while a wood chip from the cross is a talisman for the modern intelligent woman.

 

PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSE CRUCIFIXION

The complicated and much debated issue regarding how the individual expired on the cross has generated widespread debate over the years. While many researchers have believed that death occurred as the result of a ruptured heart (Stroud 1874, Whitaker 1935, Wedessow 1978) due to the story in John 19:34 of the water and blood flowing out of the wound, pathologists such as Zugibe (1984) have ruled this out as medically untenable. Other scholars (LeBec 1925, Hynek 1936, Barbet 1937, Modder 1949) have regarded asphyxiation as being the cause of death, however the latest research findings have shown the issue to be more complicated depending upon the manner in which the victim was affixed to the cross. A series of experiments carried out by an American medical examiner and pathologist on college students who volunteered to be tied to crosses showed that if the students were suspended from crosses with their arms outstretched in the traditional manner depicted in Christian art, they experienced no problems breathing (Zugibe 1984). Thus the often quoted theory that death on the cross is the result of asphyxiation is no longer tenable if the arms are outstretched. According to the physiological response of the students, which was closely monitored by Zugibe, death in this manner is the result of the victim going into hypovolemic shock[5] which can be in a manner of hours, or days depending on the manner in which the victim is affixed to the cross. If the victim is crucified with a small seat, a sedile, affixed to the upright for minimum support in the region of the buttocks, death can be prolonged for hours and days. In fact, Josephus reports that three friends of his were being crucified in Thecoa by the Romans who, upon intervention by Josephus to Titus were removed from the crosses and with medical care one survived. (Life 76) If, however, the victims are tied with their hands extended over their heads and left hanging, death can occur within an hour or, in 4-10 minutes if the victim’s legs are nailed so that he cannot use his arms to elevate the body to exhale. For exhaling to occur in a normal manner two sets of muscles are needed, the diaphragm and the intercostalis muscles between the ribs. With the victims being suspended by their arms directly over their heads, these sets of muscles cannot function properly which results in the victims inability to exhale and resultant asphyxiation. Eyewitness accounts by prisoners of war in Dachau during WW II reported that victims suspended from beams by their wrists which were tied, expired within ten minutes if their feet were weighted or tied down and within one hour if their feet were unweighted and the victim was able to raise and lower himself to permit respiration. Death in this manner, which is one form of crucifixion, thus was the result of suffocation (Barbet 1953).

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

In the anthropological interpretation of past historical processes, one is usually hampered to a large extent by the limited information available. Therefore one must rely on both the literacy sources and the facts at hand. The literary sources for the Roman period contain numerous descriptions of crucifixion but few exact details as to how the condemned were affixed to the cross. Unfortunately, the direct physical evidence he is also limited to one right Calcaneum (heel bone) pierced by an 11.5 cm. iron nail with traces of wood at both ends.

In our attempt to reconstruct the crucifixion described here we have depended upon the skeletal evidence which was available from the ossuary in conjunction with observations by Haas, Barbet and the ancient historical sources. According to these sources, the condemned man never carried the complete cross, as it commonly believed; instead the crossbar was carried, while the upright was set in a permanent place where it was used for subsequent executions. Furthermore, we know from Josephus that during the first century C.E.., wood was so scarce in the Jerusalem region that Romans were forced to travel 10 miles from Jerusalem to secure wood for their siege machinery (War 5:552-553 (Loeb edition. P. 363). This alone was probably one of the decisive factors, along with the lack of space atop the Mount of Olives to suspend crucifying Jewish prisoners from the siege, as described by Josephus, opposite the walls of Jerusalem. One can therefore, reasonably assume that the scarcity of wood may have been expressed in the economics of crucifixion in that the crossbar as well as the upright would be used repeatedly. Thus, the lack of evidence for traumatic injury to the forearm or metacarpals on the hand seems to suggest that the condemned man described here was tied rather than nailed to the crossbar. There is ample literary as well as iconographic evidence for the use of ropes rather than nails to secure the condemned to the cross. (Hewitt 1932) Moreover, in Egypt, where according to one source crucifixion originated, the victim was not nailed but tied to the cross. (Hewitt p.40) It is important to remember that death by crucifixion was the result of the manner in which the condemned individual was hung from the cross and not the traumatic injury caused by nailing, the latter being of negligible consequence in cause of death. Hanging from the cross with the arms directly above the head resulted in a painful process of asphyxiation, in which the two sets of muscles used for breathing, the intercostalis and the diaphragm, became progressively weakened. In a short time, the victim expired, due to the inability to continue breathing properly. Zugibe’s experiments in the 1980’s with volunteers suspended from a cross under laboratory conditions, in which the physiological status of the volunteers was closely monitored presents a convincing argument that if the victims arms are outstretched in the usual manner in which crucifixion scenes are depicted then the individual dies of hypovolemic shock.

In the case discussed here, the evidence suggests that the most logical reconstruction would have the victim straddling the upright with each foot nailed to the cross. The Calcaneum is the largest bone in the foot, which is presumably the reason why the executioners chose to place the nail here. The olive wood plague, the remains of which were found beneath the nail head, may have been intended to prevent the condemned to victim from releasing his feet from the nail. The plaque in effect, enlarged the diameter of the head of the nail, thus increasing the efficacy of the process.

This theoretical reconstruction may also provide an answer to why the distal end of the nail was bent downwards. Once the body was removed from the cross, albeit with some difficulty in removing the right leg, the victims family would not find it possible to remove the bent nail without completely destroying the anatomical integrity of the heel bone. This reluctance to inflict further damage to the heel led to the eventual discovery of the crucifixion.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

·        Barbet, P. 1953. A Doctor at Calvary: The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ as Described by a Surgeon. Garden City, New York.

·        Brandenburger, E. 1969 ‘Kreuz’ Theological Dictionary of the New Testament II, I, 1969, 826f quoted in Crucifixion Martin Hengel, 1977. Fortress Press, Phildelphia. p.31.

·        Haas, N. 1970. Anthropological Observations on the Skeletal Remains from Gi’vat ha-Mivtar, Israel Exploration Journal 20:38-59.

·        Hengel, M. 1989. Crucifixion. Fortress Press, Philadelphia.

·        Hynek, R. W. 1936. Science and the Holy Shroud, Chicago, Benedictine Press.

·        Hewitt, J. 1932. The Use of Nails in Crucifixion. Harvard Theological Review 25:29-45.

·        Jeremias, J. 1966. The Eucharistic words of Jesus, London and New York, p.223. Quoted in Hengel 1977, Crucifixion, p.31.

·        LeBec, A. 1925. A Physiological Study of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Chris. The Catholic Medical Guardian 3:126-136

·        Marcus, R 1966 (trans.) The War of the Jews; Antiquities of the Jews. The Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press and Heinemann.

·        Modder, H. 1949. “Die Todesurache Bei Der Kreuzigung”, Stimmer der Zei March.

·        Rolfe, J.C. 1998. The Lives of the Caesers (Eng. Trans.) Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass.

·        Stroud, W. 1874 Treatise on the Physical Cause of the Death of Christ, London Hamillen and Adams.

·        Tzaferis, V. 1970 Jewish Tombs at and near Giv’at ha-Mivtar. Israel Exploration Journal Vol.20 pp. 18-32.

·        Wedessow, U. 1978 “Considerazioni ipotetiche sulla causa fisica della morte dell’ iliomo della sindone”. Second International Congress, The Shroud and Science, Turin, Italy Oct. 7-8, 1978.

·        Whittaker, J.R. 1935 ‘The Physical Cause of the death of our Lord”, Address to the St. Luke’s Guild, London, England.

·        Yadin, Y. 1985. The Temple Scroll (ed. M. Pearlman) Weidenfeld and Nicolson , London.

·        Zias J. and Sekeles, E. 1985. The Crucified Man from Giv’at ha-Mivtar: A Reappraisal. Israel Exploration Journal 35:22-27.

·        Zugibe, F.T. 1984. Death By Crucifixion. Canadian Society of Forensic Science 17(1):1-13.6.