Profile: Israel – Race on to save evidence of Dead Sea Scrolls from thieves

While the cavern is an important find, it was 60 years too late to prevent looters taking priceless ancient parchments. All that was left were the storage jars where the scrolls would have been hidden, the cloth that would have covered them and the leather straps that would have bound them.

Although the parchments are missing, US and Israeli archaeologists are still jubilant at the discovery.

“Thank God they took only the scrolls,” said Oren Gutfeld, of Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Institute of Archaeology. “They left behind all the evidence that the scrolls were there.”

The find has also led to hope that more treasures may be hidden in other caves in the parched hills of the Judean desert.

Until now it was thought that the Dead Sea Scrolls had been hidden in 11 caves at Qumran but this shows there was at least one more.

“It is the first time in 60 years we have the first evidence of a new scroll cave,” said Gutfeld.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Operation Scroll will now explore around 300 more caves in the area. They have no time to lose. According to the Israel Antiques Authority, thieves are still searching for more illicit plunder.

Proof that this 12th cave was looted was confirmed when the archaeologists from Liberty University, Virginia, and the Hebrew University, found two 20th-century iron pickaxe heads.

“I imagine they came into the tunnel. They found the scroll jars. They took the scrolls,” Gutfeld said. “They even opened the scrolls and left everything around – the textiles, the pottery.

“Although at the end of the day no scroll was found, and instead we ‘only’ found a piece of parchment rolled up in a jug that was being processed for writing, the findings indicate beyond any doubt that the cave contained scrolls that were stolen.

“The findings include the jars in which the scrolls and their covering were hidden, a leather strap for binding the scroll, a cloth that wrapped the scrolls, tendons and pieces of skin connecting fragments, and more.”

The cave also contained flint knives, ancient arrowheads, and a seal made from a semi-precious stone called carnelian which predate the scrolls – signs that humans used the caves at least 10,000 years ago, going back to the 8th or 9th millennium BC.

WHO FOUND THEM?

The first cache of Dead Sea Scrolls was found just after the Second World War in a cave near the site of Qumran in what is now the West Bank. The find was apparently made by a young Bedouin shepherd and his discovery began a hunt for more treasures. Within a decade thousands of fragments had been unearthed in a total of 11 caves to the north-west of the Dead Sea.

Some of the script was in Greek and Aramaic but most were in Hebrew and thought to date back around 2000 years.

Containing religious texts and psalms, the earliest known version of the Ten Commandments and sections of the Hebrew Bible, the scraps of parchment can fetch huge sums at auction although scholars argue they are priceless.

Some of the scrolls are too fragile to unwrap, but it is hoped that modern methods can reveal their secrets after a breakthrough was made last year when digital technology was used to read a charred scroll found buried in the ark of an ancient synagogue near the Dead Sea. Researchers were able to read it using a three-dimensional digital analysis of an X-ray scan.

WHAT WAS DISCOVERED?

SCHOLARS said the text in standard Hebrew is the first physical evidence that the version of the Hebrew Bible in use today dates back 2,000 years. They found the text was “100 per cent identical” to the version of the Book of Leviticus that has been used for centuries, according to scroll expert Emmanuel Tov from the Hebrew University.

“Not only were you seeing writing, but it was readable. At that point we were absolutely jubilant,” said computer scientist William Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky.

It was the first time ancient documents have been read without them being physically opened.

“We were amazed at the quality of the images,” said Michael Segal, of Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“Much of the text is as readable, or close to as readable as actual unharmed Dead Sea Scrolls or high-resolution photographs of them.”

Up until this time, researchers had only been able to date the oldest known pieces of standardised biblical text back to the 8th century AD.

They said the X-ray reading would shed welcome light on the Hebrew Bible’s development.

WHY IS THE RESEARCH IMPORTANT?

DURING the time that most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written, various Judean groups were struggling to win religious and political leadership.

As primary sources, the scrolls cast a spotlight on these historical events and reveal the ways that different groups of Jews of the Second Temple era responded to the world around them. They show that religious life at that time was more complex and diverse than initially realised and show more clearly the society from which early Christianity emerged.

Christian texts have not so far been discovered in these early parchments but many of the ideas and practices are reflected in later Christian and Jewish writings.

While all of the ancient Jewish sects appear to have agreed on the importance and centrality of the Bible, the non-biblical writings that have been found show glaring differences in the way it was interpreted, with disputes about issues like the priesthood, the afterlife, religious observance, various laws and the religious calendar. The scrolls make no mention of Jesus or his disciples but have been described as the “evolutionary link” between the two as they show Christianity has its roots in Judaism.