Letters to the Editor, Autumn 2007
Dear Editor
I read with great interest the report of Dr Paul Wilkinson’s recent excavations at Bax Farm near Faversham (Newsletter no. 70). The one element of his report that I feel needs to be discussed further is Dr Wilkinson’s belief that the large bath discovered on the site is possibly either a Christian or Jewish ritual bath. Whilst I have great respect for Dr Wilkinson’s interpretation of his excavation, I must disagree with his theories concerning the baths.
I have excavated two Jewish ritual baths, at Yavane Yam and Apollonia in Israel; the pictures of Bax Farm bear no resemblance to these baths.
Ritual baths in the Jewish tradition and in the early Christian eras were used to ritually cleanse an impure body or for baptism. It was believed within the Jewish tradition that the body could become unclean through childbirth, during certain times of a woman’s menstrual cycle, and through contact with unclean animals or people. The only way to cleanse these impurities from the body was to bathe in a mikvah or in simple English, a ritual bath.
There were very strict rules about the construction and use of these baths, but from the description and pictures given, they bear no resemblance to the ones found by Dr Wilkinson. Firstly, the average size was 2 x 2 meters, designed to hold one person at a time. The dimensions of the Bax Farm bath, at over 5 meters, are much too large and it was without doubt designed to hold more than one person!
Secondly, a ritual bath had to be constantly fed directly from a natural water source, which flowed directly through the bath to replicate a river or stream and would not have been heated. Dr Wilkinson’s description is of a bath designed to hold a large quantity of heated water for communal bathing in the traditional Roman style.
A distinctive and key feature of a Jewish bath, that I believe was not located during the excavation, is the foot-cleaning basin. This basin would have been positioned at the entrance to the bath and was used to ritually clean the feet before immersion.
Finally, the bath would normally have only one set of steps leading into it, which would also be used to exit after the cleansing ritual. The pictures provided seem to suggest all-round steps leading directly into the bath. This would rule out these baths having been constructed with a Jewish religious function in mind.
The one tangible link with a possible Jewish connection was the discovery of a seal that may contain the image of the 7-branch candelabra. I would be surprised if this image does turn out to be of Jewish origin, as after the second Jewish revolt of 163AD most Jewish individuals were treated with distrust and suspicion. This was the result of their history of revolt against Rome and their refusal to engage in the worship of the emperor as a deity. In addition, after the declaration of Christianity as the state religion, Jews were actively persecuted and discriminated against within late Roman society as the “Killers of Christ”. The owner of this high-status villa would have done irreparable damage both to his social and political standing by having any Jewish connection.
If we consider a possible Christian bath, we again must look at both construction and function. In the early Christian tradition, full immersion was used to baptise adults (not children). Whilst the construction was very similar to a Jewish bath, they had one entrance for the un-baptised person to enter and an opposite exit to leave as a full Christian. Again, the bath is too large and does not have a defined entrance and exit to match existing baptism pools. One of the best-preserved examples of this type of pool can be found in the Bardo Museum in Tunisia; it does not match the discoveries at Bax Farm.
I would suggest that instead of the Bax Farm discoveries having a religious function, they reveal a standard Roman-style bath, albeit on a much larger scale than normally found in the UK.
I hope my observations help in the assessment and debate in connection with these fascinating excavations at Bax Farm. I also look forward to Dr Wilkinson’s continuing reports from this exciting site.
Diarmid Walshe
Dear Editor
I wish to contribute to a debate which has been circulating amongst some KAS members regarding Archaeologia Cantiana; an important issue and worthy of real consideration.
The current format is no doubt cherished as a link with the past, when Archaeologia Cantiana was an outstanding example of the technology of its time, reflecting the interests, enthusiasm, and academic credentials of those who contributed to and read it. However, in my opinion, the publication definitely no longer fulfils 21st-century expectations. In fact, the format almost certainly hinders what is now possible in terms of modern computer graphics, thus possibly discouraging contributors more used to modern formats, with all their possibilities for presentation that these offer.
The hard-back format is expensive and unnecessary. I cannot think of a journal of equivalent standing which continues to publish in hard-back. The content of the journal, surely, is of far more worth than the cover, however aesthetically pleasing this may be.
It is time to revise the production of Archaeologia Cantiana and to use all that modern technology offers to produce a journal that is worthy of a society operating in the 21st, not the 19th, century.
Angela Muthana