Reports of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain, Jordan, vol. 1, Bab edh-Dhra: Excavation in the Century Directed by Paul W. Lapp, 1965-67.

• Author: Schoville, Keith N.

To begin with a personal note, I first met Paul Lapp in the summer of 1965 during my first visit to Jerusalem. He and his wife, Nancy, were gracious hosts to our travel group, introducing us to the American Schools' facility on Saladin Street which we now know as the Albright Institute. His untimely death in the tides of Cyprus a few years later shocked all who knew him and left his work undone. The volume under review is the result of the worthy effort of the authors and their associates to complete in part the work of Paul Lapp at the site. Had Lapp had the opportunity to choose who might publish the results of his 1965-67 excavations at Bab edh-Dhra, he could not have chosen better than Rast and Schaub. In the preface to the publication they acknowledge their debt to Lapp for introducing them to the site. They were destined to continue the work at the site, and now, whenever Bab edh-Dhra is mentioned, the name of Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub come to mind rather than the name of Paul Lapp; nevertheless, they freely acknowledge that they have built on Lapp's foundations.

Anyone in the field realizes that the publication of a final report of one's own work is a demanding and time-consuming task. Rast and Schaub have competently accomplished the even more demanding task of publishing another's work. In slightly over six hundred pages they have summarized the discovery of the site; discussed and illustrated the tombs of EB I, II, III, and IV; surveyed the human skeletal remains and associated grave goods; and provided conclusions that indicate the historical and cultural significance of the Bab edh-Dhra cemetery. A bibliography and four appendices complete the work. An innovation is the provision of three microfiches containing ninety-seven figures in an envelope affixed to the inside back cover, a publishing technique no doubt intended to reduce the number of printed pages in the volume, but an inconvenience to anyone wishing to examine the illustrations sans a microfiche reader.

What have Rast and Schaub wrought? First, they have provided a succinct history of the exploration of the region and the site. What is clear is that, despite the fact that the southeastern Dead Sea plain is off the beaten track, it had been noted by ancient authors such as Diodorus, Strabo, Josephus, and Tacitus and visited sporadically by Western explorers from the Middle Ages to the present. Archaeological investigation began with the W. F. Albright and M. G...