The object
The right heel bone (calcaneus) of an adult man, pierced from the side by an iron nail whose tip is bent back. Remains of wood survive between the nail head and the bone.
The inscription
The ossuary that held the bones is inscribed with the dead man’s name:
יהוחנן בן חגקול: “Yehohanan son of Hagakol”
The second name is not a known personal name, and its reading and meaning are debated. The first, Yehohanan, is the Hebrew form of John.
Discovery
The tomb was found during building work at Giv’at HaMivtar in 1968 and excavated by Vassilios Tzaferis. His report and the first anatomical study, by Nicu Haas, appeared in the Israel Exploration Journal in 1970.
How he died
Haas proposed that both heels were fixed with a single nail and that the man’s legs had been broken. A re-examination by Joseph Zias and Eliezer Sekeles, published in 1985, found that the nail passed through the right heel alone, from the side, and that there was no clear evidence of broken legs or of nails through the arms. They concluded that his arms were probably tied to the crossbeam and that each foot was nailed to the side of the upright. Their reading is the one generally followed today.
The Gospels
The Gospels describe the breaking of legs to hasten death (John 19:31–33) and the marks of nails in the risen Jesus’ hands:
“Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
They also describe Joseph of Arimathaea receiving the body from Pilate and laying it in a rock-cut tomb (John 19:38–42). Yehohanan’s tomb is an example of the same practice: a crucified man buried by his own people in a family tomb near Jerusalem.
What it establishes
That crucifixion with nails was practised in Roman Judea in the first century, how one victim’s feet were fixed, and that a crucified man could receive a normal Jewish burial.
Open questions
Yehohanan’s crime and the date of his death within the first century are unknown, and a single skeleton cannot show that every crucifixion followed the same method. The heel speaks to the practice, not to any particular execution.
Where it is now
Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
