Archaeology & History

Long-lost Dead Sea Scroll resurfaces 60 years later

By T.K. Randall
September 9, 2022 ·  3 comments

The scrolls are a major archaeological treasure. Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 Israel Defense Forces Considered to be some of the most important ancient texts ever discovered, the Dead Sea Scrolls are comprised of several hundred documents dating back more than 2,000 years.

They were found inside eleven caves in the eastern Judaean Desert between 1946 and 1956.

Now one of the scrolls, which had been thought to have been lost to history after it went missing 60 years ago, has been rediscovered some 6,000 miles away from where it was last seen.

One of just three texts to have survived from the First Temple Period, the scroll had been spotted by Professor Shmuel Ahituv in a photograph, prompting him to launch a campaign to track it down.

It was eventually located in the US state of Montana where it had been hanging in a frame on the wall ever since the current owner's mother had received it as a gift during a trip to Jerusalem in 1965.It is now being properly looked after at an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) laboratory.

"Towards the end of the First Temple period, writing was widespread," said Joe Uziel who runs the lab's Dead Sea Scrolls unit. "However, First Temple-period documents written on organic materials - such as this papyrus - have scarcely survived."

"Whilst we have thousands of scroll fragments dating from the Second Temple period, we have only three documents, including this newly found one, from the First Temple period."

"Each new document sheds further light on the literacy and the administration of the First Temple period."

Mysterious Dead Sea Scroll that was lost to history turns up more than 6,000 miles away in the US after being given as a gift in Jerusalem nearly 60 years agohttps://t.co/oB4IZzdVjk pic.twitter.com/ig3FNhZ1Wi

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Source: Mail Online | Comments (3)

Tags: Dead Sea Scrolls