Israeli archaeologists fighting treasure hunters in search of caves near the Dead Sea have made a remarkable discovery involving a set of objects, including fragments of a Greek text that they have not seen in decades.
The finds, preserved from the hot, dry air of the Judean desert, also include the partially mummified skeleton of a 6.000-year-old child and a perfectly intact, well-woven basket dating back 10.500 years, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The parchment in Greek
The pieces of parchment, about 2.000 years old, have a biblical verse written in Greek and match a parchment that was discovered about 60 years ago called the "Book of the 12 Little Prophets".
This scroll is one of the ancient Hebrew texts called "Dead Sea Scrolls" found in 1947 by the local Bedouins in the caves of Qumran, about 20 km east of Jerusalem.
The collection, which includes texts found elsewhere along the west coast of the Dead Sea, provided a "window" on Jewish society and religion before and after the time of Jesus.
An exploration "fever" followed their discovery, but the investigation eventually stopped - until recently, when new pieces of rollers and parchment appeared on the black market. Since 2017, archaeologists have resorted to marble and limestone rocks to map hundreds of caves. Many were filled with centuries of sand and debris, and about a dozen believed to be probably hidden pieces were completely excavated.
The new pieces of the manuscript were found in the "Cave of Terror", in which 1.900-year-old skeletons of Jewish revolutionaries who had fought against the Roman Empire were found years ago.
"These are new pieces of the puzzle and we can add them to the bigger picture of the period and the text," said Oren Ableman of the Antiquities Authority. "Although these pieces are small, they gave us some new information that we did not know before."
The new pieces allowed the reconstruction of 11 lines of text and provided information about the parchment.
papyrus
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
The Cylinders of the Dead Sea make up a vast collection of Jewish texts, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, that deal with many subjects in various literary genres. They include passages from every book of the Hebrew Bible, except the book of Esther, all written about a thousand years before the known biblical manuscripts. The scrolls also contained the earliest biblical commentary on the book of Habakkuk, and many other texts, including religious works, on Jewish sects of the time.