Looters prompt Israel to launch urgent effort to find any remaining Dead Sea scrolls

EVEN a scrap can be worth millions. And the words they contain can shake the world. Now Israel is launching a desperate hunt to rescue any surviving Dead Sea scrolls.

EVEN a scrap can be worth millions. And the words they contain can shake the world. Now Israel is launching a desperate hunt to rescue any surviving 2000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls.

A steady stream of fragments of ancient biblical manuscripts have been appearing on the black market ever since the caves of Qumran in the Judaean Desert were found to hold a hidden cache of scrolls in 1947.

The tattered, decaying and darkened documents are widely regarded as the ‘crown jewels’ of Israel’s archaeological heritage. Inscribed on their pages is an early insight to the evolution of religious thought in the decades before the emergence of the biblical Jesus, as well as transcripts of much older documents.

The most recent fragments emerged just a few months ago, after their new American owners forked out millions for the opportunity to own a piece of religious history.

It’s spurred Israel’s Antiquities Authority to act.

It fears fragile, more complete manuscripts are being looted from previously unknown caves near the Dead Sea before being broken up — and possibly forged — before being sold to the highest bidder.

A government-funded research team will now spend the next three years on an extensive survey of the hundreds of poorly documented Dead Sea caves in an effort to ensure what remains is properly preserved and documented.

The urgent mission will begin as early as next month.

An student of archeology works near the remains of a cave found at the West Bank archaeological site of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. Picture: AP

TOMB RAIDERS

Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the new project was being funded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The Prime Minister is yet to comment.

Israel’s Antiquities Authority was last year prompted to carry out an urgent three-week survey and excavation on the famous Cave of the Skulls, where many of the original scrolls were found, after a group of six Palestinians were caught digging there illegally.

But their efforts proved insufficient. More fragments have appeared on the antiquities and black markets in the past year.

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The last time a serious effort was made to find more Dead Sea scrolls was in 1993. Operation Scroll was launched before Israel returned part of the West Bank to partial control by the Palestinian Authority. Nothing was found.

“We know there are more,” Ganor said. “Most of the places haven’t been reached.”

The researchers may also excavate Dead Sea-area caves in the West Bank, Ganor said. Such a move, however, is bound to stir controversy.

Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast War, and the Palestinians want the territory back in order to establish an independent state.

A visitor looks at a replica of a dead sea scroll at the Dome of the Book museum in Jeruslem which houses many of the scrolls. Picture: Getty

UNQUESTIONING COLLECTORS

Some 70 new pieces of supposed Dead Sea scrolls have begun circulating in private collections in the past year, though the contents of some have raised eyebrows.

The head of the controversial US Hobby Lobby chain has bought some. As has the US Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Its piece has sparked the most controversy.

The scrap of papyrus contains two writings — which are otherwise widely separated in the book of Leviticus — attacking homosexuality. It is the ‘marketability’ of such texts to groups such as the Baptist seminary that have raised suspicions they are forgeries, or doctored original documents.

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“I think this fragment was produced for American evangelicals,” Dead Sea Scroll researcher Arstein Justnes, of the University of Agder in Norway, reportedly said.

Another recent papyrus ‘find’ — the ‘Jesus wife’ fragment — appears to imply the central figure of Christianity was married to a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. However, its history cannot be traced beyond the dealer who sold it.

“There is a real danger that an increasing number of forgeries is accepted into the datasets on which we base our knowledge of the ancient world,” Dr Justnes said.

Small pieces of an ancient Torah scroll dating from around 135AD are shown shortly after being found by a Bedouin in a cave in Nahal Arugot near the Dead Sea in the West Bank, in 2004. Picture: Getty

TREASURE HUNT

The Nahal Mishar Hoard hoard copper crown, found in the Judaean desert in 1961.

Ganor told AP that the expedition hopes to find and document other historical objects, some possibly dating back as far as 5000 years.

The scrolls are not the only objects of significance to be found in the Dead Sea caves. Another is the oldest known crown.

The copper head piece was found in 1961, bundled in the remains of a straw mat which contained 441 other metal, stone and ivory objects. Dated to 3500BC, the stash is believed to have been a hurriedly hidden collection of sacred and ceremonial objects from the shrine of Ein Gedi, 12km away.

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Israel has been keenly excavating bronze-age sites in an effort to establish the truth of the Old Testament tale of King Solomon — the king that founded the nation of Israel — as well as evidence of the First Temple on the hotly contested Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Both would help justify Israel’s territorial claims.

The Judaean Desert was also the scene of fierce fighting between Jewish resistance fighters and the Roman Empire in the First and Second Centuries AD.

Not all new scrolls have been dug out of the desert.

In 2014 a catalogue error was discovered to have concealed the identity of nine small Qumran scrolls for decades after their discovery. These had been hidden inside three leather cases carried by Jewish religious leaders.

A fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls before and after being captured using spectral photography. Thousands of fragile fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls have been put online. Picture: AP

PAGES FROM HISTORY

The first scroll fragments were found in Israel antiquities markets in the late 1940s. The story went that a Bedouin shepherd had thrown a rock into a cave, heard the sound of breaking pottery, and investigated.

This prompted a series of archaeological excavations — and lootings — that have uncovered the remains of hundreds of fragile scrolls. These had been preserved in their ceramic containers by the hot dry desert, and the darkness of the caves in which they were placed.

More than 900 manuscripts were pulled from 11 caves near the Qumran site in the West Bank.

Most of the recovered fragments have been assembled at the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

They have since revealed the tumultuous religious and political circumstances of Israel’s Second Temple period, and the occupation by the Roman army.

Fragments of almost every book of the Old Testament have been identified. Some are identical to modern versions, while others demonstrate how the traditions have evolved over time.

Others reveal the thinnings and operations of the Essene cult which occupied a desert monastery above the Qumran caves during the Roman occupation.