The Dying Child: The Death and Personhood of Children in Ancient Israel

The death of a child is perhaps the most painful, heartbreaking, and seemingly-unnatural experience we have the displeasure of living with. Yet it is difficult to say with certainty whether or not this sentiment was shared by the inhabitants of ancient Israel. Many studies have explored death in ancient societies by examining types of burial, burial rites, biblical notions of death and the afterlife, care for the dead, even cults of the dead – yet no single study has been devoted to children and death in ancient Israel.

The study of childhood death is tightly entwined with the concerns of a field that is relatively new to the scholarship of ancient Israel: personhood. An exploration of the concept of personhood is needed in the context of childhood death. In The Dying Child, Kristine Henriksen Garroway argues for a stronger position of the child in current archeological trends. Many archaeologists hesitate to ascribe various domestic objects to children, despite their obvious presence in the ancient home. This functionally ignores an entire class of people in the study of death. In acknowledging the personhood of children in burials and other deathly-rituals, Garroway considers emotional and personal aspects of ancient Israeli life – filling a critical gap in our understanding of this culture.