Hello and welcome to another episode of the ancient warfare podcast. My name is Jasper Wirtize. I'm the editor of

Ancient Warfare Magazine and with me are Mark Dissentis. And today as a teammate and also special

guest, we have Lindsay Powell because we're going to talk about his new book. Lindsay,

it's a name that apparently requires some explanation.

So why don't you pronounce the title for us so we know how it should be done?

Well, thank you for calling me a teammate.

And I have to say, I feel like one.

It's a brilliant group of guys.

It's a wonderful product, the magazine.

I'm thrilled.

I'm actually part of the group of people that

make it happen. When I do have some hours spare from doing that, I actually do write,

and I've been fascinated by the figure of Barcochwa. If you talk to modern Israelis, that's

what they'll basically call him, Barcova. But for the purpose of the exercise, that's just calling Barcoqqa. How does he get a name?

Well, what we know is, that is an adopted name. That's the name that history has sort of assigned

him and there's a history to go with that history. The name that we know he actually lived by

was Shimon Ben-Koziba with an S, actually, and that's significant.

I'll explain that in a second. We know that because letters have been found in caves in the

Dead Sea area, the cave specifically of Murat, where some letters, one of which actually,

M-U-R, as it's called, 43, actually had a signature on it. So we know that he called

himself Shimon. And what's interesting is the fact that Ben Kosovo seems to be either a

patronymonic, so his dad may have been called Kosovo, or he may have come from a place called

...