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Israeli archaeologists have unearthed two dozen Dead Sea parchment fragments from a remote cave in the Judean desert, the first discovery of such Jewish religious texts in more than half a century.
“For the first time in approximately 60 years, archaeological excavations have uncovered fragments of a biblical scroll,” the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement.
More than 20 pieces of parchment were found after teams rappelled down an 80-meter cliff and toured the Cave of Horror, named for its precarious position and because 40 skeletons of women, men, and children were found there during excavations in the 1960s.
Jewish rebels are believed to have hidden in the canyon about 25 miles (40 km) south of Jerusalem two millennia ago to escape a Roman advance. Fragments of the Hebrew Bible may have been hidden in the cave during the Bar Kochba revolt, a Jewish uprising against the Roman emperor Hadrian, between AD 132 and 136. C.
The IAA said the scrolls it found were Greek translations of the books of Zechariah and Nahum from the Book of Twelve Minor Prophets, and that they were radiocarbon dated to the 2nd century AD God’s name is written in Hebrew.
One excerpt read: “These are the things you must do: tell the truth to each other, do true and perfect justice at your doorstep.”
After years of excavation in dozens of caves and cliffs, the authority said it had also discovered a skeleton of a six-millennium-old boy and a basket that it described as the oldest in the world, more than 10,000 years old.
“As far as we know, this is the oldest basket in the world that has been found completely intact and its importance is therefore immense,” said the IAA.
Arrowheads and coins from the period of the Bar Kochba revolt were also found in other caves, he said. The authority had commissioned the operation in 2017 following reports of looting.
IAA Director Israel Hasson said the findings were “a wake-up call” to devote more resources to continuing the project and said it had only surveyed half of the cliffs so far.
“We must make sure that we recover all the data that has not yet been discovered in the caves before the thieves do. Some things are beyond their value, ”Hasson said.
According to an IAA archaeologist, the decision to fully excavate the Cave of Horror was made after he went to the bathroom during an initial search and discovered a Roman-era sandal, indicating an abundance of unearthed treasures.
“I bent down to urinate and suddenly I saw something that didn’t look like sand, and I realized it was the sole of a shoe,” Oriya Amichay told the local Haaretz newspaper. She said her male colleagues probably would have missed it.
A 1961 excavation of the Cave of Horror found earlier parchment fragments, but none since. The IAA said there were slight differences in the text of the newly found parchment fragments, which could help document “the changes that occurred over time to reach us in the current version.”
Some sections of the excavation were carried out in the occupied West Bank, a part of the Palestinian territories, a common Israeli practice that has generated controversy. The IAA coordinated with the Ministry of Defense, which runs the occupation.
Israel captured the West Bank from Jordanian forces in the 1967 war. International law prohibits the theft of cultural property from occupied territory.
The original Dead Sea scrolls, a collection of Jewish texts, were also found in desert caves in the West Bank. However, they were discovered by nomadic Bedouin herders in the 1940s and 1950s.
Those texts included sections of the Hebrew Bible 1,000 years older than any previously known copy and revolutionized the understanding of Judaism from which early Christianity emerged.
