When the Royal Ontario Museum announced plans to exhibit the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls, the move was greeted with enthusiasm and criticism.
Some Palestinians voiced their disapproval, claiming the six-month exhibit violates international conventions or protocols on the treatment of cultural goods that have been illegally obtained.
Hamdan Taha, the director general of the archaeological department in the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, sent a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the museum’s directors in March. In it, he said the exhibit would include “artifacts removed from the Palestinian territories" by Israel.
Israeli officials said the complaint was unfounded. "We are the custodians of the Dead Sea Scrolls," Pnina Shor, head of the artifacts treatment and conservation department at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told a Toronto-based newspaper. "As such, we have a right to exhibit them and to conserve them."
The debate is just the latest chapter in the checkered history of the scrolls. Here are some interesting facts about one of the most significant archaeological finds in recent history:
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 21 kilometres east of Jerusalem. The texts are mostly fragmented and are numbered according to the cave in which they were found. Only Caves 1 and 11 have produced manuscripts that are mostly intact. Discovered in 1952, Cave 4 produced the largest find. About 15,000 fragments from more than 500 manuscripts were found. In all, scholars have identified the remains of about 825 to 870 separate scrolls. The Scrolls can be divided into two categories, biblical and non-biblical. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew canon (Old Testament) have been discovered except for the book of Esther. The Scrolls are for the most part, written in Hebrew, but there are many written in Aramaic. Aramaic was the common language of the Jews of Palestine for the last two centuries B.C. and of the first two centuries A.D. The discovery of the Scrolls has greatly enhanced our knowledge of these two languages. In addition, there are a few texts written in Greek. The Scrolls appear to be the library of a Jewish sect. The library was hidden away in caves around the outbreak of the First Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66-70) as the Roman army advanced against the rebel Jews. Near the caves are the ancient ruins of Qumran. They were excavated in the early 1950's and appear to be connected with the scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls were most likely written by the Essenes, a Jewish sect, during the period from about 200 B.C. to 68 A.D. The Essenes are mentioned by Josephus and in a few other sources. One of the most curious scrolls is the Copper Scroll. Discovered in Cave 3, this scroll names 64 underground hiding places in Israel. The deposits are to contain certain amounts of gold, silver, aromatics, and manuscripts. These are thought to be treasures from the Temple at Jerusalem, which were hidden away for safekeeping. The Temple Scroll, found in Cave 11, is the longest scroll. Its present total length is 26.7 feet (8.148 meters). The overall length of the scroll must have been over 28 feet (8.75m). The scrolls contain previously unknown stories about biblical figures such as Enoch, Abraham, and Noah. The story of Abraham includes an explanation why God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. The scrolls are most commonly made of animal skins, but also papyrus and one of copper. They are written with a carbon-based ink, from right to left, using no punctuation except for an occasional paragraph indentation. In fact, in some cases, there are not even spaces between the words. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls actually appeared for sale on June 1, 1954 in the Wall Street Journal. The advertisement read — "The Four Dead Sea Scrolls: Biblical manuscripts dating back to at least 200 BC are for sale. This would be an ideal gift to an educational or religious institution by an individual or group. Box F206." The major intact texts, from Caves 1 & 11, were published by the late fifties and are now housed in the Shrine of the Book museum in Jerusalem. Since the late fifties, about 40% of the Scrolls, mostly fragments from Cave 4, remained unpublished and were inaccessible. It wasn't until 1991, 44 years after the discovery of the first Scroll, after the pressure for publication mounted, that general access was made available to photographs of the Scrolls. In November of 1991 the photos were published by the Biblical Archaeological Society in a non-official edition; a computer reconstruction, based on a concordance, was announced; the Huntington Library pledged to open their microfilm files of all the scroll photographs. * Courtesy of the CenturyOne Foundation, a not-for-profit organization established to fund archaeological projects, historical and biblical research, lectures and symposiums, publications and education on subjects pertaining to the time of the first century.
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