Magen Broshi

Magen Broshi (1929-2011) was an Israeli archaeologist whose career bridged field excavation in Jerusalem and the curatorship of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He served as curator of the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum from its founding in 1965 until his retirement in 1995, overseeing the public exhibition and conservation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and related Second Temple-period material.

In the field, Broshi directed excavations on Mount Zion (1969-1979) and the western and southern slopes of the Old City of Jerusalem, recovering important evidence of Iron Age, Hasmonean, and Herodian-period occupation. His Mount Zion work contributed to the long debate over the location of the City of David, the extent of Hezekiah's expanded Jerusalem (referenced in the building activity of 2 Chronicles 32 and 2 Kings 20), and the western expansion of the city in the Second Temple period.

Broshi was an early and influential proponent of demographic archaeology in the Levant — using settlement counts, surface area estimates, and grain-storage capacities to reconstruct ancient population sizes. His widely cited 1979 BASOR article on the population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine period (and subsequent extensions to earlier periods) became standard reference material for population estimates of biblical-period Israel and Judah.

Later in his career he wrote extensively on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Qumran community, including studies of the sectarian texts and their relationship to Pharisaic and emerging Christian thought. His 'Bread, Wine, Walls and Scrolls' (2001) collected many of his shorter essays.