The Bar Kokhba Letters

The letters come from two groups of caves in the Judaean desert where refugees and rebels hid at the end of the war: Wadi Murabba’at, found by Bedouin in 1951, and Nahal Hever, excavated in 1960–1961. In the “Cave of Letters” at Nahal Hever a leather waterskin held fifteen letters in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, most of them sent by the leader of the revolt.

They are short orders to local commanders at En-gedi and elsewhere: send men, hand over grain, arrest a named person, with threats of punishment for delay. One asks for palm branches, citrons, myrtle and willow for the festival of Sukkot. In several the sender calls himself “Shim’on bar Kosiba”, and once “ruler over Israel”. That is the leader’s own name; “Bar Kokhba”, son of the star, is what later Christian writers call him. The letters are documents of the revolt itself, taken down by scribes who sign several of them.