Qumran Caves

The Dead Sea Scrolls


Useful Information

Location: Wadi Qumran, about 25 km east of Jerusalem.
(31.741584, 35.459957)
Open: Summer daily 8-17.
Winter daily 8-16.
[2020]
Fee: Adults ILS 29, Children ILS 15, Students ILS 25, Israeli Seniors ILS 15.
Groups (): Adults ILS 23, Children ILS 14.
[2020]
Classification: natural/artificial.
Light: none.
Dimension:  
Guided tours: only for the archaeological site, not for the caves
Photography:  
Accessibility:  
Bibliography: Roland De Vaux (1973): Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls, London, 1973
Hershel Shanks (Editor) (1992): Understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls, A Reader from the Biblical Archaeology Review
paperback, 384pp, Vintage Books, Reprint edition (July 1993), ISBN: 0679744452 Worldamazon.com
James H. Charlesworth (1995): Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, (The Anchor Bible Reference Library)
Paperback, 416pp, Doubleday, (August 1995), ISBN: 0385478445 Worldamazon.com
Michael Baigent (1992): Dead Sea Scrolls Deception,
Paperback, 288pp, Simon & Schuster; Reproduction edition (April 1993), ISBN: 0671797972 Worldamazon.com
Geza Vermes (1998): The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English,
Paperback, 672pp, Penguin USA, (November 1998), ISBN: 0140278079 Worldamazon.com
Address: Qumran Park, Israel Nature and Parks Authority, Tel: +972-2-9942235, Fax: +972-2-6482568. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then.
Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

3rd century B.C. Qumran settlement founded.
68 destroyed by an earthquake.
1947 first scrolls found by Bedouin shepherds.
1949 excavation of cave 1 by 0. Lankester Harding, director of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, and Pere Roland de Vaux, a French Dominican, head of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem.
1951-1956 eleven more caves discovered, five by Bedouins and six by archaeologists.

Description

photography
Qumran Caves, Dead Sea Scrolls. Public Domain.

The caves of Qumran are famous since the discovery of the The Qumran Scrolls, the oldest manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in 1920. Tens of thousands of scroll fragments written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. They were stored in cylindrical pottery jars with a lid of a type unknown elsewhere. The jars are about 50 cm high and 25 cm in diameter.

More than 2000 years ago, during the Second Temple Period, members of the Essenes, a separatist Jewish sect, lived in this area. They formed an ascetic monastic community. This landscape was a desert like today, but a nearby spring made Qumran a flourishing oasis. They had many well educated members, and produced copies of biblical scrolls, which they stored in nearby caves. To protect the valuable books, they used small caves in the wall of the nearby wadi, to hide them. In the year 68 those people were defeated by a huge earthquake and had to leave their home. They closed the caves with walls of raw stone, which made them nearly invisible.

As the Essenians never returned, the knowledge about the caves was lost, and the books were save until the 20th century. The first book was discovered by accident. Later other books were also discovered by accident. It took nearly 80 years until consequent scientific exploration started.

The books were restored in the institute of books in Jerusalem, which naturally took a rather long time. The old parchment was very fragile and the most important goal was, to prevent further damages. Some of the books were broken into small pieces, and it was difficult and time consuming to reassemble complete pages.

But while this work was going on, the Qumran roles became rather famous among pseudo scientists. They argued, if the content were only one more copy of a well known book, it would not be necessary to hide the content from the public for decades. So there must be written something which the "officials" do not want the ordinary people to know. The rumours were things like "God was an extraterrestrial making genetic experiments with mankind 3000 years ago".

Todays Qumran is an archaeological site, where the ruins of the habitation of those who deposited the scrolls in the nearby caves are shown. The caves are explained, but there is no possibility to visit them.