Newly discovered caves may hold more Dead Sea Scrolls

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Archaeologists believe a pair of recently discovered caves at the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found may contain additional religious texts from antiquity.

Though no new manuscripts have yet been unearthed in the newly discovered caves at Qumran, archaeologists have discovered a number of objects indicating scrolls were stored there, among them jars, wrappings, and possible scroll fragments.

“This cave was robbed by Bedouins maybe 40 years ago,” archaeologist Randall Price explained to National Geographic, referring to one of two caves known as 53b and 53c.

“Fortunately for us, they didn’t dig very deep. Our hope is that if we keep digging, we hit the mother lode,” he added.

Price, a professor Liberty University, is leading the dig at Qumran along with Oren Gutfeld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The two were part of a team last year that discovered Cave 53, the twelfth such cave of its kind to be found at Qumran, and though no scrolls were found there, researchers found a blank piece parchment and storage jars identical to those discovered in other caves at Qumran.

Next to that cave, archaeologists uncovered Cave 53b in January and came across a bronze cooking pot dating to the first century BCE and a nearly intact oil lamp from the Hellenistic-Hasmonean period.

They also found pottery such as storage vessels, cups, and cooking pots, as well as pieces of textiles, braided ropes, and string.

“The significance of this discovery involves the new evidence it provides that the caves south of Qumran represent sealed loci, despite the attempts by Bedouin to loot these sites,” Price and Gutfeld wrote in an abstract to a paper for the American Schools for Oriental Research.

“Also significant is the relation of these caves to the Qumran community, and how the scroll cave found in 2017 is associated with the new cave found in 2018,” they added.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/newly-discovered-caves-may-hold-more-dead-sea-scrolls/
 
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