A newly published study in *‘Atiqot* reports the 2022 excavation of a hewn tomb only 30 cm east of modern Route 40, about two kilometres north-west of ancient Avedat (Oboda) in the Negev Highlands. Inside the rectangular grave, archaeologists uncovered fragments of a wooden coffin dated by radiocarbon analysis to the second–third centuries CE, placing it firmly within the Roman administration of former Nabataean territory.
The burial shaft, cut two metres deep into soft limestone and originally sealed with five worked slabs, held poorly preserved adult male remains laid head-east, feet-west. Botanical examination showed the planks were Aleppo pine (*Pinus halepensis*)—a species growing around Jerusalem—which the authors note is the first time this locally available wood has been documented in a coffin along the Incense Road. Earlier Nabataean and Roman coffins elsewhere relied on transported Lebanon cedar because of its straight grain and natural resistance to insects and fungi.
The Avedat coffin is likewise the first wooden burial discovered on the 1,500-kilometre caravan route that carried frankincense and myrrh from Arabia to the Mediterranean ports. Although wooden coffins have been recorded at En Gedi by the Dead Sea, at Tel Malhata in the northern Negev, at Mamshit and at the Yoṭvata oasis, none had previously surfaced on the main overland trade corridor itself.
Excavators Tal Sapir and Tali Erickson-Gini emphasise that only isolated elements of the coffin survived looting, yet the workmanship parallels box-shaped coffins from Mamshit’s stepped tombs and Yoṭvata’s Hellenistic-Roman tower cemetery. While those parallels were made of cedar and cypress and often rested on stone pavements, the Avedat specimen reused the Aleppo pine boards directly within the pit, suggesting a pragmatic response to limited timber supplies once Roman control stabilised the region’s road network.
Wooden burials remain rare in Israel because most climates accelerate decay. At En Gedi, roughly forty coffins endured thanks to desert aridity; several contained up to five individuals as part of Jewish secondary-burial custom. Tel Malhata’s small pine coffins were reserved for children and accompanied by alabaster, glass and coin offerings. Against that background, finding an adult Aleppo-pine coffin beside the Incense Road adds a missing piece to southern Israel’s funerary map.
Although the tomb predates the spread of Christianity in the highlands, the site’s later landscape reminds readers of shifting religious identities. The authors note that a substantial Byzantine Christian necropolis, aligned with vineyards and watch-towers, was established immediately west of the same road in the fourth–seventh centuries CE. The proximity of these cemeteries—one Nabataean-Roman, the other definitively Christian—offers a rare fixed point from which to observe changing burial practices over half a millennium without moving far from the caravan artery that first brought wealth to the plateau.
Sapir and Erickson-Gini conclude that the coffin’s quality and the care invested in quarrying the tomb imply a person of means, possibly a Nabataean merchant whose livelihood depended on the very trade route beside which he was buried. With few artefacts left by robbers, identity remains uncertain, yet the Aleppo-pine planks themselves constitute the surprising headline: a local wood choice marking the first wooden coffin discovered on the Incense Road, broadening scholars’ understanding of how materials, trade and mortuary customs intertwined under Rome in the desert south.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
