Dan Pinhas Alfred Barag
The following obituary for our late Fellow Dan Barag, written by David Hendin, first appeared in the coin-collectors' journal The Celator.
I’m sad to report on the death of my friend and my teacher, Prof. Dan Barag, who died in Jerusalem at age 74, and was buried there November 22. Happily, I spent some hours with him last summer when I visited Jerusalem. He was, at the time, recovering from a serious traffic accident, in which a car collided with his motor scooter—he had driven one around Jerusalem for decades. The apparent cause of death was a heart attack.
Every time I have visited Jerusalem during the past 35 years, I have been lucky to be able to spend time with Dan. He did not base his scholarship on a flamboyant personality, but an ethic of study, hard work, and willingness to engage with his students and colleagues.
Our visits would usually be in the evening, at Dan’s home. In the middle Eastern fashion he would instantly offer me coffee and cookies, which I always accepted. And we sat in his dining area, over a table, looking at articles, books, and coins he had gathered, often on behalf of Hebrew University, whose collection he added to regularly until his death. Sometimes he would show me a coin and say “you know, the Hebrew University would love to have this in their collection.” It was not usually a very expensive coin. And of course I was always happy to purchase a coin for them.
Dan was born in London in 1935, while his parents, Drs. Gershon and Gerda Barag, both physicians, were on their way back to Palestine from Berlin, where they had been studying and practicing medicine. Later Barag’s parents both became well known Freudian psychoanalysts in Tel Aviv.
Israeli men go into military service following high school, and Dan served as an officer in the Intelligence branch. His interest in archaeology began when he was quite young and in 1956 he began studying at Hebrew University. Eventually Barag would publish some 150 scholarly articles, reports, and book chapters or sections. They ranged from his first, in 1959, a note on the canopy coins of Agrippa I, to his last, a 2006 article on the coins of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the collection of the Hebrew University.
While numismatics provided book-ends to his accomplishments, Barag was a leading academic and field archaeologist in Israel for the past 40 years. His doctoral dissertation on glass in the ancient near East was under the legendary Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad. Barag became a worldwide expert in the study of ancient glass, and in 1968 when he returned from London where he had worked on his dissertation at The British Museum among other places, he became an assistant to his mentor Avigad, and took his place as a faculty member at Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology in 1970, an appointment he held until he retired and became “emeritus” in 2003. That was short-lived; however, since just a year or two ago he filled in for an ill colleague and once again taught a course in ancient glass. In 1985 Barag was principal contributor to the Catalogue of Western Asiatic Glass in the British Museum.
In a memorial letter Dr. Andrew Burnett, deputy director of the British Museum, referred to Barag’s work at the BM on glass as “outstanding.”
Barag also was a student and expert in the study of Jewish art, including important articles on topics such as meaning of the use of the menorah in early Jewish art, and the showbread table, which he convincingly showed was depicted inside the temple on the large silver coins of Bar Kokhba. Only around a third of his published articles dealt with numismatics, and the rest with a broad and deep range of archaeological topics. Unbeknownst to many, Dan was an avid collector of small objects ancient Christian art from the local markets. Objects that caught his fancy ranged from rings to amulets to oil lamps, candelabra, and small containers. He was in the extremely generous process of transferring his collection of nearly 1,000 objects to the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, at the time of his death.
“Dan was a true friend to the Museum,” said chief curator of archaeology Dr. Michal Dayagi-Mendels. “He promised this gift to the museum, and he was true to his word. It is wonderful and very important to us.”
During his career, Barag participated in several excavations for the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums and for Hebrew University. He was the head of the excavation team that uncovered the synagogue at Ein Gedi, used from the third century AD until the Byzantine Period. Here the Barag team discovered the large, important bronze menorah on permanent display at The Israel Museum. He was also involved in excavating or publishing material from Bet Shearim, Hanita, Nahariya, and Tel Qasile, among other sites, according to Prof. Zeev Weiss, head of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, who eulogized Barag.
I remember many years ago when I was visiting Jerusalem, Dan called me to come over to his home where he had just finished cleaning part of a heavily encrusted hoard of Hasmonean bronze coins found in the market, but said to have come from Samaria. This group, along with another part of it later recovered, proved beyond a doubt that it was John Hyrcanus I (134-104 BC) and not Alexander Jannaeus (104-76 BC). The Jannaeus theory was made popular by Barag’s academic colleague Prof. Ya’akov Meshorer. My conversations with Dan lasted another 8 or 10 hours over the next week and, with Dan’s permission, I was happy to be the first to report this information in Guide to Biblical Coins, third edition.
Dan was not a mercurial scholar. He was a rock. “In his courses he imparted from his great breadth of knowledge, which was both varied and probing, in a large number of subjects relating to the region’s material culture, from the Hellenistic period through to the end of the Byzantine period,” Prof. Weiss said.
Dan’s memory was almost photographic and he was able to recall references, individuals, and articles almost at will. This strength served him well the long-time president of the Israel Numismatic Society and the editor of the revitalized Israel Numismatic Journal since 1980. In that position it was Barag who wrote the journal’s warm memoriam to my other dear friend and teacher Ya’akov Meshorer. In that article, Barag referred to Meshorer as the most “prominent scholar of the second generation of Israeli numismatists.” Barag was not selfish with his praise, even for those with whom he sometimes disagreed. Now Barag must join Meshorer as an equally prominent scholar of their generation.
Dan liked nothing more than a spirited conversation, and often showed me small objects or coins only to provoke an interesting conversation about them. As Prof. Weiss said, “Dan’s personality was complex. He was a man whose immense vitality could not be ignored. Discussions with him…were on many and varied subjects… Dan had a phenomenal memory, great intellectual ability and honed research skills—not merely in the archaeological pursuits closest to him, but also in other related fields, particularly history, art, and Jewish studies. Dan’s knowledge of things archaeological became a byword. Anyone looking for a detail on some small find deriving from a forgotten excavation, or for a little known aspect of the history of archaeological research in the region, knew to turn to Dan. Dan’s face lit up when he would relate about a certain researcher, some mysterious affair or some forgotten event in the history of the Institute of Archaeology, even from before his own days there.”
The British Museum’s Burnett also added that Barag “was always very generous to me personally in sharing his scholarship… He had an admirable combination of scholarship and good humour, I always thought.”
Weiss and Burnett gave accurate descriptions of the essence of Dan Barag. He was a giant of archaeology and ancient numismatics in Israel for the past 4 decades. His cleverness, his open mind, and his willingness to discuss and share will be greatly missed. Prof. Weiss pointed out that among Barag’s serious interests were ancient monuments, and he studied several of Jerusalem’s in his research.
There is no doubt that, as Prof. Weiss observed, Dan Barag’s varied and extensive body of archaeological and numismatic studies will “undoubtedly stand as a memorial of (him) for future generations, as clearly as any other cenotaph can stand in a man’s memory.”
The following obituary was first published on the website of the Israel Numismatic Society.
Professor Dan P. Barag died in mid-November and was buried in Jerusalem on Sunday, November 22, 2009. He was born in 1935 in London to Gershon and Gerda Dina Barag, who were later to become well-known Freudian psychoanalysts. Dan grew up in Tel Aviv, where he first developed his interest in archaeology. He was probably the youngest member of the staff excavating in Tell Hazor, the first large Israeli archaeological expedition after the state’s independence. Following military service, Dan moved to Jerusalem in 1956 and began his studies in archaeology at the Hebrew University. He completed his doctoral dissertation in 1970, on glass vessels in ancient Palestine. Field archaeologists still consider this unpublished work the best reference on the subject. Dan’s extensive publications on the history of ancient glass made him well known and he also served a term as vice-president of the Association Internationale pour l’Histoire du Verre. His greatest work in the field was his Catalogue of Western Asiatic Glass in the British Museum (1985).
Dan maintained interests in other subjects, however. He conducted a number of archaeological excavations on behalf of the Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums, and later headed a joint expedition of four institutions at the synagogue at Ein Gedi. He studied and published finds from more than a dozen excavations by others; examples are Ashdod, Hanita, Nahariya and Masada.
In 1970 Dan joined the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, where he taught until his retirement in 2003. His many courses focused on the material culture of the southern Levant from the classical period onwards, and included Hellenistic through Byzantine ceramic lamps, ancient glass, and burial customs. Dan also edited the Israel Exploration Journal between 1973 and 1975 and wrote more than 150 scholarly articles and chapters in books published both in Israel and abroad, on historical geography, tomb architecture and burial practices, Jewish art, and, of course, numismatics.
Dan’s interest in numismatics saw expression very early. His first published article, written when he was still in his mid-twenties, was on this subject. He had established himself as a force in this field well before 1975, when he took over the helm of the Israel Numismatic Society, following Arie Kindler and serving as chairman/president of the INS for some thirty years. The INS’s English language publication, the Israel Numismatic Journal, had published a (third) volume in 1965/1966, but nothing had appeared since. Dan rose to the occasion and reconstituted the journal, becoming its editor. The first INJ after the hiatus was published in 1980 (volume 4). Dan continued to serve as its editor until his death, almost to the completion of volume 17. In many respects this was a one-man operation, with Dan recruiting articles, supervising the journal’s finances and production, and also arranging for its sale. In addition, Dan himself wrote an impressive 22 articles for the journal. Even before his retirement, the INJ had become one of his primary concerns. Dan’s coin expertise did not fall short of his achievements in other fields. His many numismatic articles covered a plethora of subjects, from the Hellenistic, Hasmonean and Herodian periods, through the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt, up to the era of the Latin Kingdom in Jerusalem. They also included the fields related to numismatics, such as bullae and scale weights.
Dan had an admirable combination of scholarship and good humor. He was an active participant at the monthly meetings of the Jerusalem branch of the INS, regularly lecturing and, when not, contributing to the discussions from his almost photographic memory. Dan enjoyed sharing his knowledge of the history of the INS and of the Jerusalem archaeological scene. The intellectual rigor which characterized him will ensure that his memory will be as enduring as the ancient coins he studied.