In Memoriam: Kenneth G. Holum ל”ז

Abstract

Ken Holum, esteemed historian, beloved teacher, and valued friend and colleague, lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on September 20, 2017. He was best known to archaeologists as the dedicated director of the University of Maryland's archaeological program at Caesarea in Israel and, under Ken's expert hand, invaluable research was conducted at that important site. The discoveries of the palace of Herod the Great, the temple built by Herod and dedicated to Augustus, the amphitheater of Herod the Great, Caesarea's Byzantine church, and the city's massive Roman harbor are the archaeological legacy of the Combined Caesarea Expeditions, to which Ken devoted so much of his career working alongside his Hebrew University and University of Haifa colleagues Joseph Patrich and the late Avner Raban.For more than four decades, Ken was a professor of late antique history in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. In addition, as those who knew him are well aware, he was a prolific and outstanding scholar. His authored and co-authored books, edited volumes, and many articles attest to his wide-ranging interests. Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity; Shaping the Middle East: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in an Age of Transition, 400-800 C.E.; The Greek and Latin Inscriptions of Caesarea Maritima; Caesarea Maritima: A Retrospective after Two Millennia, among many other titles, are a testament to Ken's erudition in his chosen fields.Ken was especially appreciated by JEMAHS as one of the first members of our board and an enthusiastic supporter of the journal, copies of which he displayed proudly on his coffee table. Both of us knew Ken for many years. We will miss his enthusiasm for eastern Mediterranean archaeology. We will miss his good advice and, most of all, his spirited conversation.As an active participant in national, local, and university affairs, Ken was a good, though by no means uncritical, citizen of his country and his university. Nevertheless, it was also clear that he had a particular affection for the land he explored for so many years. Inevitably, we associate Ken with Israel, where he and Marsha spent almost every summer for decades—until 2017 when Ken's illness struck. And, of course, we associate him with the unparalleled site of Caesarea.In the Caesarea exhibition book King Herod's Dream: Caesarea on the Sea, Ken and his fellow authors include the poem “To Caesarea,” in their epilogue, the last lines of which are: But reaching the city of ruinsSoft a few words we intone.We return. We are here.Soft answers the silence of stone,We awaited you two thousand years.1 The doomed poet Hannah Senesh wrote these words about her first trip to Caesarea in 1941, landing on the coast secretly at night. Senesh, who was killed in 1944 after parachuting into Nazi-occupied Hungary and is an Israeli national hero, was the most famous denizen of Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where many generations of Caesarea Expedition staff members and young volunteers stayed while exploring the “silent stones” of Caesarea.Senesh wrote another, more famous, poem about the site, however. It is more sentimental than the earlier work, pensive and hopeful at the same time. “A Walk to Caesarea,” was set to music—the song אלי, אלי (My God, My God), which repeats the first two words of the poem and, thus, belies the fact that Senesh herself was secular and was probably using the opening line as an exclamation. The song is considered one of Israel's “unofficial” anthems, and is sung particularly on Holocaust Remembrance Day—but, despite these exalted associations, it is really nothing more than an appreciation of the eternal nature of the sea and sky at Caesarea. We print it here in dedication to the life and legacy of Kenneth Holum, לברכה זיכרונו.My God, may it never end—the sand and the sea,the rustle of the water,the brilliance of the sky,the prayer of man.2