The fateful year of 70 A.D. saw the priestly family at the height of its power. The 24 lines who had shared out power in the days of Ezra, based on the exclusive ownership of the Temple, and the exclusive administration of the priesthood, were all thriving, numerous and richer than ever, and firmly entrenched in the running of the Temple and the country. The number of priests ran into the thousands, and many of them had royal blood in their veins, as they descended from, or were related to the Hasmoneans. The Roman domination had brought peace and prosperity, but it had been marked by passionate tensions on the religious level, which had provoked a series of revolts, the last of which, in 66 A.D., was fatal for the Jewish nation and for the priestly family. With the destruction of Jerusalem, by Titus Flavius Vespasianus in 70 A.D., it was practically wiped out. The Temple, the instrument of its power, was razed to the ground, never to be rebuilt. From that moment on, it disappeared from the stage of history, never again to play a visible role.

Was it the end of a great family which went back a thousand years? 

The historical facts seem to confirm this, but reality does not always correspond to the appearances. It is certain, in fact, that the family was not extinguished. There were several survivors, members of the top social class, who were extremely wealthy and enjoyed the protection of the Romans. We are informed about them by the Jewish historian, Josephus Flavius, who lists them one by one, starting with himself.

Josephus, the son of Matthias, was a priest who belonged to the first of the 24 priestly families; he had royal blood in his veins, because he was related, through his mother, to the Hasmoneans. At the time of the revolt against Rome, he had played a leading role in the events which tormented Palestine. Sent by the Jerusalem Sanhedrin as Governor of Galilee, he had been the first to fight against the legions of  general Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who had been ordered by Nero to quell the revolt.

Barricaded inside the fortress of Jotapata, he bravely withstood the Roman troops’ siege. When the city finally capitulated, he withdrew into a cistern, and after lengthy negotiations, he surrendered, asking to be granted a personal audience with Vespasian (Bellum Judaicum, III, 8,9), who incredibly gave his consent [1]. Their meeting led to an upturn in the fortunes of Vespasian, as well as in those of Josephus: the former was shortly to become emperor in Rome, whereas the latter not only had his life spared, but not long afterwards, he was co-opted into the emperor’s family, and assumed the name “Flavius”, receiving Roman citizenship, a patrician villa in Rome, a life income annuity paid by the state treasury, and an enormous estate.

 

Josephus Flavius justifies these extraordinary favors by claiming that during their meeting after the fall of Jotapata, he had predicted that Vespasian would become emperor [2]. Absolutely ridiculous! The Roman historian Suetonius testifies that this prophecy made by Josephus was only the last in a series of similar predictions, which started on the day that Vespasian was born. Everybody knew of the existence of these prophecies; it is thus totally absurd to imagine that he covered  a vanquished rebel with unprecedented favors, simply because he had repeated a fact that was generally known. There must have been something else! The Roman general was under a terrible handicap in his race for the imperial purple robe: he was broke (it is Suetonius again who confirms this [3] ), whereas in order to become emperor, he needed ample financial means. Josephus provided him with them.

During his governorship in Galilee, he had put aside a considerable sum of money, both from the collection of the tithes due to the Temple, and, above all, from the requisitioning of the gold, the silver and the precious objects which had been plundered by the inhabitants of Tiberias from the palace of Herod the Tetrarch (Bellum Judaicum, II,21,3 - Life, 66).

He immediately handed over his personal savings to Vespasian, thus getting his life spared, and promised a far greater patrimony, in exchange for the benefits that he subsequently received: the treasure of the Temple in Jerusalem. His own works contain sufficient indications to provide charges to accuse him.

In the triumph celebrated in Rome some time later by Titus and his father Vespasian, the show-piece was represented by the treasure from the Temple in Jerusalem. This is testified by Josephus Flavius in his book [4] and his words are confirmed by the representation of the triumph engraved on the arch of Titus [5], clearly showing the “menorah”, the large candlestick with seven arms, in the procession together with other precious furnishings from the Temple.

 

Fig. 2 – A scene on the Arch of  Triumph of Titus, with the Temple’s treasure

 

There is no doubt, then, that Vespasian took possession of the treasure of the Temple. But how and when did this happen? Reading of the circumstances in which the siege of Jerusalem and the final attack on the Temple took place, we should expect that when the Romans succeeded in capturing it, little remained of the original treasure: the Temple had been occupied for months by the Zealots, who had not hesitated to strip it completely. When they finally realized that any kind of defense was out of the question, they set fire to it, and destroyed everything of any value that remained, to stop it from falling into Roman hands. The Romans found themselves the owners of a building gutted by fire and sacked by its own defenders.

The certainty that emerges from the story of Josephus Flavius is that the Temple treasure was not captured by Titus, the son of Vespasian, but was handed over to him by members of the priestly family, in exchange for a safe-conduct and economic benefits. It transpires that the treasure was hidden in various secret hiding-places, even if Josephus does not reveal where these were, and he is somewhat confused and contradictory about the times and methods of consignment. Above all, he is careful not to reveal the role that he himself played in the question.

The Copper Scroll

We can reconstruct the facts with the help of an extraordinary document which came to light only two thousand years later: the copper scroll. This was discovered in 1952 in cave 3Q, at Qumran. The scroll is composed of three sheets of copper, attached together, and rolled up like a sheet of paper, on the inner face of which was engraved a text in Hebrew. In view of its antiquity, it was not possible to unroll the scroll without ruining the text. It was therefore transferred to Manchester, where it was cut into vertical strips, corresponding to the columns of the text. As the strips were cut and cleaned, they were translated by the famous Qumranist, J. M. Allegro.

 

 

The text is substantially a list of localities where the treasure had been hidden. Initially, it was thought to refer to the treasure of the Essene community of Qumran, and the text was considered with profound skepticism, because it seemed to be impossible for that small community to possess such enormous riches. Among other things, most of the localities mentioned in the text are situated in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. Nowadays scholars are practically unanimous in their belief that the copper scroll refers to the treasure from the Temple in Jerusalem (partly because a large portion of it is made up of the tithes), hidden in preparation for the siege [6].

The scroll begins directly with the list of hiding-places: “ At Horebbeh, in the valley of Achor, underneath the steps that go eastwards, forty cubits deep: a silver coffer, the total weight of which is 17 talents.

In the funeral monument of  Ben-Rabbah from Shalisha: one hundred gold ingots.

In the large cistern in the enclosure of the small peristyle, stopped up by a stone with a hole in it, in one of the bottom corners, opposite the upper opening: nine hundred talents.

On the hill of Kohlit: vases of offerings collected, half-measurements and ransoms, all the offerings collected for the treasury in the seventh year and the tithes: …”

And it goes on in the same way for the rest of the document, listing as many as 74 different hiding-places, and the contents of each of them. It is useless to say that none of these treasures is found in the place indicated [7], which was only to be expected: the last sentence on the copper scroll recites: “In the cave of Kohlit, …there is a copy of this document, with the explanation, the measurements and a complete inventory, object by object.”.

The scroll found at Qumran, then, is only a reserve copy of an original which had been hidden in the cave of Kohlit, in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. Whoever had hidden the treasure must have taken every possible precaution to be able to take possession of it again, once the storm had passed. He had written out the list of hiding-places on a non-perishable substance like copper, and obviously, given the importance of the document, he had made two copies, hidden in two different hiding-places. Both the copies must have been written and hidden by the people who had organized the hiding of the treasure. And there can be no doubts about their identity: the owners of the treasure, that is to say, the heads of the priestly families of the Temple, undoubtedly including the treasurer.

At this point, it only remains to put two and two together. The scroll must have represented for some of them the safe-conduct in order to escape safe and sound from the destruction of the Temple and the following slaughter, and ensure a future for themselves and their family. Josephus Flavius was the first of the Jewish priests to fall into the hands of the Romans and he was the one who obtained the greatest favors. Seeing that he not only belonged to the first of the priestly families, but also occupied a very high position of responsibility in Israel, as governor of Galilee, and he had a profound knowledge of the desert of Judah, where he had spent three years of his youth, it is legitimate to believe that he knew about the operations to hide the treasure and was perfectly capable of finding the hiding-places.

During his private audience with Vespasian, immediately after his capture, Josephus must have negotiated his own safety and future prosperity in exchange for the Temple treasure. The proposal would have been irresistible for the broke Roman general, who thus saw the possibility of securing the necessary means for his ascent to imperial power. The two of them probably made a pact on that occasion which was to change the destinies of the world. 

Initially, Vespasian “did not free Josephus, but gave him a robe and other objects of value, treating him with favor and respect” (Bellum Judaicum, III, 8,9). He also gave him “a young prisoner, one of those captured at Caesarea” (Life, 414) to be his wife. This was just the beginning of an incredible series of favors and gifts that Vespasian and his son Titus reserved for their former enemy. Some time later, as soon as the legions stationed in Egypt proclaimed him emperor (though he was far from having purchased the throne) and the Roman governor Tiberius Alexander put himself at his disposal, Vespasian freed Josephus and took him with him to Alexandria in Egypt. Subsequently, Josephus remained at the side of Titus, the son of Vespasian, for the rest of the war at Jerusalem. After the fall of the city, “Titus several times attempted to convince him to take whatever he wanted from the ruins of his homeland” (Life 418). In the same period, he made him a gift of a vast land estate around Jerusalem, Eventually, he took Josephus with him to Rome, on board his own ship (Life 422).

When he arrived in Rome, Josephus received even greater gifts and honors. Vespasian gave him the house which had been his private home before becoming emperor, and granted him Roman citizenship, a life income annuity, and the ownership of enormous estates in Judea, and he even went so far as to co-opt him into his own family. These incredible donations are a clear charge against Josephus, with the result that the Jews of his period and the following centuries considered him to be a traitor. The quantity of benefits that he received must have been proportional to those that his treachery secured for Vespasian. We can be reasonably certain that during the siege of Jerusalem, or immediately after its destruction,  a group of soldiers loyal to Titus, accompanied by Josephus, and perhaps a few other priests, went out in great secret into the desert of Judah, and one after another, unearthed the treasures listed in the original copy of the copper scroll, found at Kohlit. The reserve copy, now useless, was left where it was, at Qumran.

This secret treasure hunt gave Vespasian a great advantage: he did not have to present an account to anybody for the treasure that he recovered, and could dispose of it as he willed. The discovery of the reserve copy of the list allows us to appreciate precisely how great the sum was that Vespasian suddenly found at his personal disposal. From this point of view, the favors granted to Josephus and his companions appear to be amply justified.

The most conspicuous objects used in religious worship, such as the menorah and the sacred vessels, were put aside for the triumph and the public treasury. After the triumph, they were deposited in the Temple of Peace, built by Vespasian [8]. In 455, they were seized by the Vandals, under Jensericus, during the sack of Rome,  and were taken to Tunis. Here, they were captured during the following century by the Byzantine general Belisarius, who took them to Constantinople, where all trace of them is lost [9].

On the contrary, the money from the tithes, the jewels, and the loose gold and silver were all confiscated by Vespasian, who thus managed to pay for his rise to power, and, once on the throne in Rome, to build a luxurious palace, and presented his old family villa to Josephus. The latter settled in Rome, where he created a family for the third time, and after a few years, he started to write down the events of which he had been a protagonist, and the history of the Jewish people, for which his name has gone down in history.

---

• Back: "home"
•     Back to: "Moses"
•     Buy a book