The Judean date palm is a date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) grown in Judea. It is not clear whether there was ever a single distinct Judean cultivar, but dates grown in the region have had distinctive reputations for thousands of years, and the date palm was anciently regarded as a symbol of the region and its fertility. Cultivation of dates in the region almost disappeared after the 14th century AD from a combination of climate change and infrastructure decay but has been revived in modern times.
In 2005, a team of scientists sprouted a preserved 2,000-year-old seed, the oldest seed germinated with human-assistance (with the claim in 2012 of a 32,000-year-old arctic flower involving fruit tissue rather than a seed). The palm, a male tree, was named Methuselah (not to be confused with a bristlecone pine tree of the same name). Following this success, six further preserved seeds were sprouted.
History
Fruit of the date palm was considered a staple food in the Judaean Desert, as it was a source of food and its tree of shelter and shade for thousands of years, and became a recognized symbol of the Kingdom of Judah. It grew around the Dead Sea in the south, to the Sea of Galilee and the Hula Valley 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 Psalms (), "The righteous himself will blossom forth as a palm tree does", and date clusters () are mentioned in the Song of Songs ().
In ancient times, date palms were used for their supposed medicinal properties to cure many diseases and infections, promoting longevity and acting as a mild aphrodisiac. Modern studies have been done in an attempt to confirm their medicinal value.
Its likeness was engraved on shekalim, the ancient Hebrew unit of currency. According to historical sources, the taste of them was something splendid. Already in the fifth century BC, Herodotus noted that the greatest importance of the Judean dates was that they were drier and less perishable than those from Egypt and thus suitable for storage and export, which is still an important distinction today. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist of the 1st century AD, wrote that Jericho's dates were known for their succulence and sweetness, though he distinguished a considerable variety of them and discussed several different varieties by name.
When the Roman Empire invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date palm up to high and 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 the Roman emperor Vespasian celebrated the reconquest after the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 AD) by minting Judaea Capta coinage, a series of coins sometimes depicting Judaea as a mourning woman beneath a date palm. The palm tree can appear on the coin either in combination with the mourning woman, or without her. Andrea Moresino-Zipper contests that in the former case, it is the woman who symbolises the defeated Judaea and the towering, dominating palm stands for victorious Rome, while in the latter case the palm tree does represent Judaea.
An ancient coin design depicting a date palm and two baskets full of dates has been reused for the front side of the modern Israeli ten-shekel coin.
Decline
It is sometimes claimed that date growing as a commercial fruit export stopped at the end of 70 BC, when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. However, study of contemporary sources indicates that the date industry continued in Judea throughout the Roman period and that, indeed, the Roman Imperial treasury collected a good deal of the profits. Asaph Goor, in his 21-page article History of the Date through the Ages in the Holy Land, never mentions any such Roman devastation of the date palms, but rather cites numerous contemporary accounts attesting to the continuing extent of date cultivation through the Roman period. Goor only detects a decline in date cultivation through the period of Early Arab rule and especially during the Crusades, when he notes that the devastation of the region was particularly hard on the palm plantations. However, despite this, extensive cultivation persisted in Jericho and Zoara, until the agrarian economy collapsed during Mamluk rule around the 14th century, which he attributes to a change in the climate. Goor quotes several later, Ottoman-period travellers to the area as to the rarity of date palms, including Pierre Belon, who in 1553 scoffed at the idea that the region could have ever produced the bounty of dates reported in ancient sources.