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Qumran Caves

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The Qumran Caves are a series of caves, some natural, some artificial, to be found around the archaeological site of Qumran. It is in a number of these caves that the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were found. The rock cliffs above Qumran contain numerous caves that have been used over the millennia: the first traces of occupation are from the Chalcolithic period then onward to the Arab period.[1] The artificial caves relate to the period of the settlement at Qumran and were cut into the marl bluffs of the terrace on which Qumran sits.

For an abbreviated list of scrolls found in the caves see here.

Scrolls in caves

In early 1947 or perhaps the previous year a Bedouin boy of the Ta'amireh tribe, Muhammid Ahmed el-Hamed called edh-Dhib (the wolf), found a cave after searching for a lost animal. He had stumbled onto the first cave containing scrolls from two thousand years ago. More Ta'amireh visited the cave and scrolls were taken back to their encampment. They were eventually shown to Mar Samuel of the Monastery of Saint Mark in April 1947 and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was made known. The location of the cave was not revealed for another 18 months, but eventually a joint investigation of the cave site was led by Roland de Vaux and Gerald Lankester Harding.

Cave 4Q with other caves in the distance.

The interest in the scrolls with the hope of money from their sale initiated a long area-wide search by the Ta'amireh to find more such scrolls, the first result of which was the discovery of four caves in Wadi Murabba'at about 15 kilometers south of Qumran in 1951.[2] In the Qumran area another cave was discovered, now referred to as Cave 2Q (1Q was the first scroll bearing cave), in February 1952. However, only a few fragments were found in the cave.[3] Fear of the destruction of archaeological evidence with the discovery of caves by the Bedouin led to a campaign by the French and American Schools to explore all other caves to find any remaining scrolls. Although 270 caves were examined, only 40 contained any artifacts and one alone, 3Q, produced texts, the most important being the Copper Scroll.[4][5]

4Q was discovered in September 1952 by the Ta'amireh. De Vaux, on being offered a vast amount of fragments, contacted Harding who drove the Qumran site to find that the Bedouin had discovered caves very near the Qumran ruins. These were Caves 4Q, 5Q, and 6Q, the most important of which was 4Q which originally contained around three-quarters of all the scrolls found in the immediate Qumran area.[6] The first two of these caves had been cut into the marl terrace. The third was at the entrance to the Qumran Gorge just below the aqueduct.[7]

In 1955 a survey of the terrace brought to light the remains of four more artificial caves, 7Q, 8Q and 9Q at the end of the Qumran esplanade,[8] all of which had been eroded, and 10Q on the outcrop which housed Caves 4Q & 5Q.

The last cave containing scrolls to be found, once again by the Ta'amireh, was 11Q. Among its contents was the Temple Scroll, though it had been spirited away and its recovery was to prove long and complex.

Artificial caves

Caves 4QA just right & 10Q just left of center, seen from Wadi Qumran to the south.

The location of the six marl cut caves necessitates a direct connection with the Qumran settlement. The three caves at the end of the esplanade could only be accessed via the settlement. These caves are thought to have been cut for storage and habitation. Marl is a soft stone and makes excavation relatively easy, but as seen with Caves 7Q - 9Q they haven't survived well.

4Q, which is now visible from the Qumran esplanade,[9] is actually two caves, one adjacent to the other. De Vaux referred to them as 4a and 4b. When the Ta'amireh removed all the fragments they could before Harding's arrival, there was no way to tell which scrolls belonged to which cave, so they were later all catalogued simply as from 4Q. In excavating the caves hundreds of fragments were still to be found in 4a while only two or three in 4b. 4a was 8m long and 3.25 m wide with tapering walls reaching 3m in height.[10]

Later cave investigations

In 1984-1985 Joseph Patrich and Yigael Yadin carried out a systematic survey of over 57 caves north of Qumran and two to the south.[11] In 1985-1991 Patrich excavated five caves, including Caves 3Q and 11Q. One of Patrich's conclusions was that the caves "did not serve as habitations for the members of the Dead Sea Sect, but rather as stores and hiding places".[12]

In the winter of 1995-1996 Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel carried out further excavations in the caves north of Qumran. They reported other caves not examined by Patrich and believed that they served as dwellings for the inhabitants of Qumran along with other artificial caves that have long ago eroded away from the edge of the marl terrace.[13]

Footnotes

  1. ^ de Vaux 1973, p.51.
  2. ^ Allegro 1956, p.35.
  3. ^ VanderKam 2002, p.15.
  4. ^ Allegro 1956, p.36.
  5. ^ Patrich 1994, p.74.
  6. ^ Allegro 1956, p.37.
  7. ^ Humbert 2003, p.67.
  8. ^ VanderKam 2002, p.18.
  9. ^ Before the cave was found there was nothing to indicate its presence except for a small hole in the vertical face of the wadi wall. Allegro 1956, p.37.
  10. ^ Humbert 2003, p.96.
  11. ^ Patrich 1994, p.75.
  12. ^ Patrich 1994, p93.
  13. ^ Broshi 1999.

References

  • Allegro, John M., The Dead Sea Scrolls (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1956).
  • Broshi, Magen, and Eshel, Hanan, "Residential Caves at Qumran." Dead Sea Discoveries 6 (1999), 328-348.
  • de Vaux, Roland, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). English translation from the French.
  • Humbert, Jean-Baptiste & Chambon, Alain, The Excavations of Khirbet Qumran and Ain Feshkha, Vol. 1B. trans by Stephen J. Pfann, Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Goettingen, 2003).
  • Patrich, Joseph, "Khirbet Qumran in the Light of New Archaeological Explorations in the Qumran Caves", in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects (ed. Michael O. Wise, Norman Golb, John J. Collins, and Dennis G. Pardee; Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 722 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1994) 73-95.
  • Patrich, Joseph, "Did Extra-Mural Dwelling Quarters Exist at Qumran?" in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery. Edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, James C. VanderKam, and Galen Marquis (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000) 720-727.
  • Trever, John C., The Untold Story of Qumran, (Westwood: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1965).
  • VanderKam, James & Flint, Peter, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002) ISBN 006068464X
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