Qumran copper scroll

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Strip of copper roll (Jordan National Museum, Amman)

The Qumran Copper Scroll ( 3Q15 ), an ancient Hebrew scroll made of sheet copper , is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls . It was found in two fragments in cave 3 near Qumran on the Dead Sea and contains a list of places with information on how much gold, silver or vessels with priestly taxes were deposited there. Various attempts to locate the hiding places and to recover the treasures were unsuccessful.

Discovery, investigation, museum presentation

Cave 3 was the only limestone cliff scroll cave discovered by archaeologists. Not very high, but about 10 meters wide, it had collapsed long before the settlement of Qumran, with the exception of an approximately 3 m × 2 m large remnant. In 1952, the Roland de Vaux team discovered fragments of about 40 jugs in the front area. The fact that the letter Ṭet ט was scratched twice in a jug before it was burned is often used as a designation for a product that has not yet been tinned ( Hebrew טֶבֶל ṭevel ). In the back of the cave, the archaeologists found small fragments of scrolls, remains of cloth and - on the last day of the excavation (March 20, 1952) - the copper scroll. The reel was heavily oxidized and could not be opened without destroying it. The height varies between approx. 28 and 29 cm, the original length is estimated at 2.30 m. Paleographically, Émile Puech dates the role to the middle of the 1st century AD, although he would like to rule out a later date (around the turn of the century or before the Bar Kochba uprising ).

In the period from July 1955 to January 1956, the brittle material was cut into strips with a very fine saw using a process developed by John Marco Allegro and engineers from the College of Technology in Manchester . Józef Tadeusz Milik was entrusted with the deciphering, translation and publication and submitted a preliminary text in June 1956; a translation and a topographical commentary followed in 1959. The diplomatic text edition was delayed until 1962; meanwhile, Allegro published its own unauthorized edition in 1960.

From 1994 to 1996 a cleaning and restoration with detailed documentation by the Électricité de France (EDF) took place.

The scroll was in the Archaeological Museum in Amman , Jordan ; since 2014 it can be seen in the new Jordan National Museum in Amman.

particularities

The scroll is unusual and differs from the other Qumran scrolls in content and form. It is the only reel that is not made from leather or papyrus, but from an alloy of 99% copper and 1% tin. The hammered script is difficult to compare palaeographically with the scripts of the other Qumran scrolls. As the work progresses, the script becomes more fleeting and flawed. In ancient times, texts were engraved in metal to make them particularly durable. B. Roman military diplomas or Egyptian temple archives. Metal amulets were also made for the same reason: the text engraved on them should accompany the owner for a long time.

Orthography and language have strong characteristics:

  • The relative pronoun Hebrew שֶׁל shel is typical of rabbinical Hebrew of the Mishnah, rare in Qumran, it appears frequently in the copper scroll;
  • The final “a” is often written as Aleph א rather than He ה;
  • The copper scroll is the only Hebrew Qumran text to contain Greek and Latin loanwords such as Hebrew פרסטלון Peristyle or Hebrew אכסדון Exedra ;
  • There are several combinations of Greek letters, the meaning of which is unclear.

Real or fictional treasures

Apart from large quantities of gold and silver, silver gifts, consecration offerings, boxes and vessels as well as scrolls are listed. The hiding places are noticeably places where a Jew would not look because they were ritually unclean, such as graves, canals and basins with unclean liquids: which also made the objects deposited there ritually unclean. "Such an action was clearly directed against Jewish looters ... not against Romans who did not know such traditions."

The treasures listed are so large that, if real, they represent a national treasure of a king or a temple. Even if you think of the Jachad as an organization with thousands of members, it could hardly have such a fortune. So if it is a Jachadic text, then the treasures are fictional and the reasons for making such a list in such an elaborate form remain in the dark.

Alternatively, it is also assumed that it is the temple treasure of Jerusalem . The dumps in cave 3, on the northern periphery of the Qumran caves area and furthest from Khirbet Qumran , are not related to the other text repositories, but are the work of Jerusalem priests. This thesis is particularly represented by Stephen Pfann. It can be argued that the clay from five jugs from Cave 3, which was checked with neutron activation analysis, apparently came from Jerusalem. The text fragments from cave 3 do not have a specific Jachadic character, but their small size does not allow a certain judgment. Puech considers it unrealistic to remove treasures from the city of Jerusalem shortly before the start of the siege and to distribute them unnoticed in the area; one could have tried to hide in the city sooner. When Titus ' legionaries conquered Jerusalem in AD 70 , they stole considerable wealth in the temple, so that, according to Flavius ​​Josephus, the gold price in Syria fell by half.

Web links

Commons : Copper Roll of Qumran  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

literature

  • John Marc Allegro: The Treasure of the Copper Scroll . Doubleday, Garden City 1960.
  • Daniel Brizemeure, Noël Lacoudre, Émile Puech: Le rouleau de cuivre de la grotte 3 de Qumrân (3Q15). Expertise, restoration, epigraphy. (= Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah . Volume 55). 2 volumes, École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem, EDF Foundation, Brill, Leiden 2006. ISBN 90-04-14030-1 .
  • Émile Puech: Some results of a new Examination of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) . In: George J. Brooke, Philip R. Davies (Eds.): Copper Scroll Studies . T & T Clark, London / New York 2004, pp. 58-90.
  • Émile Puech: The Copper Scroll Revisited . Brill, Leiden / Boston 2015. ISBN 978-90-04-17100-8 .
  • Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra : Qumran: The Dead Sea Texts and Ancient Judaism (UTB 4681). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, ISBN 9783825246815 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran: The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 125.
  2. ↑ Émile Puech: The Copper Scroll Revisited , Leiden / Boston 2015, p. 8.
  3. ^ A b Émile Puech: Some results of a new Examination of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) , London / New York 2004, p. 87.
  4. ↑ a b c Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran: The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 163.
  5. ↑ Émile Puech: The Copper Scroll Revisited , Leiden / Boston 2015, p. 2.
  6. ↑ Émile Puech: The Copper Scroll Revisited , Leiden / Boston 2015, pp. 2 f.
  7. ^ Émile Puech: The Copper Scroll Revisited , Leiden / Boston 2015, p. 3.
  8. ↑ Émile Puech: The Copper Scroll Revisited , Leiden / Boston 2015, p. 7.
  9. ^ Émile Puech: Some results of a new Examination of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) , London / New York 2004, p. 80.
  10. ↑ a b c Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra: Qumran: The texts from the Dead Sea and ancient Judaism , Tübingen 2016, p. 164.
  11. ^ Émile Puech: Some results of a new Examination of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) , London / New York 2004, p. 86.
  12. ^ Émile Puech: Some results of a new Examination of the Copper Scroll (3Q15) , London / New York 2004, p. 81.