Judean date palm
Encyclopedia
The Judean date palm is a cultivar
of the date palm
(Phoenix dactylifera).
Prized for its beauty, shade, and medicinal properties, the cultivar was thought to have become extinct sometime around AD 150. However, in 2005, a preserved 2,000-year-old seed
sprouted. It is the oldest known human-assisted germination
of a seed. The palm, named Methuselah (not to be confused with Methuselah
, a bristlecone pine tree), is about 1.5 m (5 ft) tall as of June 2008.
in the Judean Desert
, as it was a source of food, shelter and shade for thousands of years, and became a recognized symbol of the Kingdom of Judea. It grew around the Dead Sea
in the south, to the Sea of Galilee
and Lake Hula regions in the north. The tree and its fruit caused Jericho
to become a major population center and are praised in the Hebrew Bible
possibly several times indirectly, such as in Psalm 92 ("The righteous himself will blossom forth as a palm tree does."), or date cluster mentioned in Song of Solomon
5:11; 7:7-8 (Heb: tal·tal·lim′; san·sin·nim′).
It was even said by some to have medicinal properties, supposedly curing many diseases and infections, promoting longevity and acting as a mild aphrodisiac
. Its likeness was engraved on shekalim
, the ancient Hebrew unit of currency
. According to historical sources, the taste of them was something splendid. Pliny the Elder
, a Roman
naturalist
of the 1st century AD, wrote that Judæa's dates were known for their succulence and sweetness
.
When the Romans
invaded ancient Judea
, thick forests of date palms
towering up to 80 feet (24.4 m) high and 7 miles (11.3 km) wide covered the Jordan River valley from the Sea
of Galilee
in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea
in the south. The tree so defined the local economy that Emperor Vespasian
celebrated the conquest by minting the "Judaea Capta
", a special bronze
coin
that showed the Jewish state as a weeping woman
beneath a date palm. The Judean Date is even mentioned in the Qur'an
.
The date growing as a commercial fruit
export stopped at the end of 70 A.D., when the Second Temple
was destroyed by the Romans
. From then, the tradition was lost. Judean date palms were wiped out by about A.D. 500.
A date palm is also featured on the ten-shekel coin of the New Israeli Shekel.
’s beautiful half sister was named Tamar.
's palace on Masada
, Israel
, revealed a cache of date palm seeds preserved in an ancient jar. They had experienced a very dry and sheltered environment for centuries. Radiocarbon dating
at the University of Zurich
confirmed the seeds dated from between 155 BC to AD 64. The seeds were held in storage for 40 years at Bar-Ilan University
, Jerusalem, until in 2005, the seeds were pretreated in a fertilizer and hormone-rich solution. Three of the seeds were subsequently planted at Kibbutz Ketura
in the Arabah
desert in southern Israel
. Eight weeks later one of the seeds had sprouted, and by June 2008, the tree had nearly a dozen frond
s and was nearly 1.4 m (4 ft) tall. By the summer of 2010, the sapling stood at about 2 meters tall.
The plant was nicknamed "Methuselah
," after the longest-lived person in the Bible. Methuselah is remarkable in being the oldest known tree seed successfully germinated, and also in being the only living representative of the Judean date palm, a tree extinct for over 1800 years, which was once a major food and export crop in ancient Judea.
Date palm trees are dioecious
. If Methuselah is female, it should have produced fruit by 2010. Methuselah's seeds could then be used to cultivate additional Date palm trees. However, Methuselah did not flower in 2010. Two possible reasons for this are:
1) Seedlings take longer to flower than offshoots.
2) The maturation may be slowed because of Methuselah still being in a pot, and not in the ground.
Plans are being made to plant Methuselah in the ground.
When compared with three other cultivars of date palm
, genetic tests showed the plant to be closely related to the old Egyptian variety Hayany (also Hiani, Hayani), 19% of its DNA
being different, and an Iraqi cultivar (16% different DNA). They may have shared the same wild ancestor.
In addition to its honoured place in Judean history, the palm may contribute useful characteristics such as environmental tolerance and disease resistance to modern date cultivars.
Dr. Sarah Sallon, the head of the project, wants to see if the ancient tree has any unique medicinal properties no longer found in today's date palm
varieties. “The Judean date was used for all kinds of things from fertility, to aphrodisiacs, against infections, against tumors,” she said. “This is all part of the folk story.”
Cultivar
A cultivar'Cultivar has two meanings as explained under Formal definition. When used in reference to a taxon, the word does not apply to an individual plant but to all those plants sharing the unique characteristics that define the cultivar. is a plant or group of plants selected for desirable...
of the date palm
Date Palm
The date palm is a palm in the genus Phoenix, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit. Although its place of origin is unknown because of long cultivation, it probably originated from lands around the Persian Gulf. It is a medium-sized plant, 15–25 m tall, growing singly or forming a clump with...
(Phoenix dactylifera).
Prized for its beauty, shade, and medicinal properties, the cultivar was thought to have become extinct sometime around AD 150. However, in 2005, a preserved 2,000-year-old seed
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
sprouted. It is the oldest known human-assisted germination
Germination
Germination is the process in which a plant or fungus emerges from a seed or spore, respectively, and begins growth. The most common example of germination is the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm. However the growth of a sporeling from a spore, for example the...
of a seed. The palm, named Methuselah (not to be confused with Methuselah
Methuselah (tree)
Methuselah is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree growing high in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California. Its measured age of 4,842 years makes it the world's oldest known living non-clonal organism...
, a bristlecone pine tree), is about 1.5 m (5 ft) tall as of June 2008.
History
The date palm was considered a stapleStaple food
A staple food is one that is eaten regularly and in such quantities that it constitutes a dominant portion of a diet, and that supplies a high proportion of energy and nutrient needs. Most people live on a diet based on one or more staples...
in the Judean Desert
Judean desert
The Judaean Desert is a desert in Israel and the West Bank that lies east of Jerusalem and descends to the Dead Sea. It stretches from the northeastern Negev to the east of Beit El, and is marked by terraces with escarpments. It ends in a steep escarpment dropping to the Dead Sea and the Jordan...
, as it was a source of food, shelter and shade for thousands of years, and became a recognized symbol of the Kingdom of Judea. It grew around the Dead Sea
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
in the south, to the Sea of Galilee
Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee, also Kinneret, Lake of Gennesaret, or Lake Tiberias , is the largest freshwater lake in Israel, and it is approximately in circumference, about long, and wide. The lake has a total area of , and a maximum depth of approximately 43 m...
and Lake Hula regions in the north. The tree and its fruit caused Jericho
Jericho
Jericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...
to become a major population center and are praised in the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
possibly several times indirectly, such as in Psalm 92 ("The righteous himself will blossom forth as a palm tree does."), or date cluster mentioned in Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
The Song of Songs of Solomon, commonly referred to as Song of Songs or Song of Solomon, is a book of the Hebrew Bible—one of the megillot —found in the last section of the Tanakh, known as the Ketuvim...
5:11; 7:7-8 (Heb: tal·tal·lim′; san·sin·nim′).
It was even said by some to have medicinal properties, supposedly curing many diseases and infections, promoting longevity and acting as a mild aphrodisiac
Aphrodisiac
An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...
. Its likeness was engraved on shekalim
Shekel
Shekel , is any of several ancient units of weight or of currency. The first usage is from Mesopotamia around 3000 BC. Initially, it may have referred to a weight of barley...
, the ancient Hebrew unit of currency
Currency
In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
. According to historical sources, the taste of them was something splendid. Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, a Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
naturalist
Naturalist
Naturalist may refer to:* Practitioner of natural history* Conservationist* Advocate of naturalism * Naturalist , autobiography-See also:* The American Naturalist, periodical* Naturalism...
of the 1st century AD, wrote that Judæa's dates were known for their succulence and sweetness
Sweetness
Sweetness is one of the five basic tastes and is almost universally regarded as a pleasurable experience. Foods rich in simple carbohydrates such as sugar are those most commonly associated with sweetness, although there are other natural and artificial compounds that are sweet at much lower...
.
When the Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
invaded ancient Judea
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
, thick forests of date palms
Date Palm
The date palm is a palm in the genus Phoenix, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit. Although its place of origin is unknown because of long cultivation, it probably originated from lands around the Persian Gulf. It is a medium-sized plant, 15–25 m tall, growing singly or forming a clump with...
towering up to 80 feet (24.4 m) high and 7 miles (11.3 km) wide covered the Jordan River valley from the Sea
Sea
A sea generally refers to a large body of salt water, but the term is used in other contexts as well. Most commonly, it means a large expanse of saline water connected with an ocean, and is commonly used as a synonym for ocean...
of Galilee
Galilee
Galilee , is a large region in northern Israel which overlaps with much of the administrative North District of the country. Traditionally divided into Upper Galilee , Lower Galilee , and Western Galilee , extending from Dan to the north, at the base of Mount Hermon, along Mount Lebanon to the...
in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea
Dead Sea
The Dead Sea , also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface. The Dead Sea is deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world...
in the south. The tree so defined the local economy that Emperor Vespasian
Vespasian
Vespasian , was Roman Emperor from 69 AD to 79 AD. Vespasian was the founder of the Flavian dynasty, which ruled the Empire for a quarter century. Vespasian was descended from a family of equestrians, who rose into the senatorial rank under the Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty...
celebrated the conquest by minting the "Judaea Capta
Judaea Capta coinage
Judaea Capta coins were a series of commemorative coins originally issued by the Roman Emperor Vespasian to celebrate the capture of Judaea and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem by his son Titus in 70 AD during the First Jewish Revolt. There are several variants of the coinage...
", a special bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
coin
Coin
A coin is a piece of hard material that is standardized in weight, is produced in large quantities in order to facilitate trade, and primarily can be used as a legal tender token for commerce in the designated country, region, or territory....
that showed the Jewish state as a weeping woman
Woman
A woman , pl: women is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent...
beneath a date palm. The Judean Date is even mentioned in the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
.
The date growing as a commercial fruit
Fruit
In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
export stopped at the end of 70 A.D., when the Second Temple
Second Temple
The Jewish Second Temple was an important shrine which stood on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem between 516 BCE and 70 CE. It replaced the First Temple which was destroyed in 586 BCE, when the Jewish nation was exiled to Babylon...
was destroyed by the Romans
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
. From then, the tradition was lost. Judean date palms were wiped out by about A.D. 500.
Symbolism
The book Plants of the Bible by Michael Zohary states: “The Hebrew word for the date palm is ‘tàmâr.’ . . . It became the Jews’ symbol of grace and elegance and was often bestowed by them to women.” For example, SolomonSolomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
’s beautiful half sister was named Tamar.
Germination of 2000 year-old seed
During 1963-1965, excavations at Herod the GreatHerod the Great
Herod , also known as Herod the Great , was a Roman client king of Judea. His epithet of "the Great" is widely disputed as he is described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis." He is also known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and elsewhere, including his...
's palace on Masada
Masada
Masada is the name for a site of ancient palaces and fortifications in the South District of Israel, on top of an isolated rock plateau, or horst, on the eastern edge of the Judean Desert, overlooking the Dead Sea. Masada is best known for the violence that occurred there in the first century CE...
, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, revealed a cache of date palm seeds preserved in an ancient jar. They had experienced a very dry and sheltered environment for centuries. Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
at the University of Zurich
University of Zurich
The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....
confirmed the seeds dated from between 155 BC to AD 64. The seeds were held in storage for 40 years at Bar-Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University is a university in Ramat Gan of the Tel Aviv District, Israel.Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is now Israel's second-largest academic institution. It has nearly 26,800 students and 1,350 faculty members...
, Jerusalem, until in 2005, the seeds were pretreated in a fertilizer and hormone-rich solution. Three of the seeds were subsequently planted at Kibbutz Ketura
Ketura (Kibbutz)
Ketura is a kibbutz north of Eilat in the Arabah rift valley. "Ketura" is the name of a hill nearby and the name of the second wife of Abraham . It has approximately 130 members and 150 children...
in the Arabah
Arabah
The Arabah , also known as Aravah, is a section of the Great Rift Valley running in a north-south orientation between the southern end of the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea and continuing further south where it ends at the Gulf of Aqaba. It includes most of the border between Israel to the...
desert in southern Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Eight weeks later one of the seeds had sprouted, and by June 2008, the tree had nearly a dozen frond
Frond
The term frond refers to a large, divided leaf. In both common usage and botanical nomenclature, the leaves of ferns are referred to as fronds and some botanists restrict the term to this group...
s and was nearly 1.4 m (4 ft) tall. By the summer of 2010, the sapling stood at about 2 meters tall.
The plant was nicknamed "Methuselah
Methuselah
Methuselah is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Extra-biblical tradition maintains that he died on the 11th of Cheshvan of the year 1656 , at the age of 969, seven days before the beginning of the Great Flood...
," after the longest-lived person in the Bible. Methuselah is remarkable in being the oldest known tree seed successfully germinated, and also in being the only living representative of the Judean date palm, a tree extinct for over 1800 years, which was once a major food and export crop in ancient Judea.
Date palm trees are dioecious
Dioecious
Dioecy is the property of a group of biological organisms that have males and females, but not members that have organs of both sexes at the same time. I.e., those whose individual members can usually produce only one type of gamete; each individual organism is thus distinctly female or male...
. If Methuselah is female, it should have produced fruit by 2010. Methuselah's seeds could then be used to cultivate additional Date palm trees. However, Methuselah did not flower in 2010. Two possible reasons for this are:
1) Seedlings take longer to flower than offshoots.
2) The maturation may be slowed because of Methuselah still being in a pot, and not in the ground.
Plans are being made to plant Methuselah in the ground.
When compared with three other cultivars of date palm
Date Palm
The date palm is a palm in the genus Phoenix, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit. Although its place of origin is unknown because of long cultivation, it probably originated from lands around the Persian Gulf. It is a medium-sized plant, 15–25 m tall, growing singly or forming a clump with...
, genetic tests showed the plant to be closely related to the old Egyptian variety Hayany (also Hiani, Hayani), 19% of its DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
being different, and an Iraqi cultivar (16% different DNA). They may have shared the same wild ancestor.
In addition to its honoured place in Judean history, the palm may contribute useful characteristics such as environmental tolerance and disease resistance to modern date cultivars.
Dr. Sarah Sallon, the head of the project, wants to see if the ancient tree has any unique medicinal properties no longer found in today's date palm
Date Palm
The date palm is a palm in the genus Phoenix, cultivated for its edible sweet fruit. Although its place of origin is unknown because of long cultivation, it probably originated from lands around the Persian Gulf. It is a medium-sized plant, 15–25 m tall, growing singly or forming a clump with...
varieties. “The Judean date was used for all kinds of things from fertility, to aphrodisiacs, against infections, against tumors,” she said. “This is all part of the folk story.”