CHAPTER 2

LATER DISCOVERIES

The First Cave

IT WAS PLAINLY of great importance that the cave where the manuscripts were said to have been found should be visited as soon as possible by an impartial commission of investigators, competent to assess the various lines of evidence. Dr. Burrows tells14 how he and his colleagues at the American School tried to arrange a visit in March, 1948, but the arrangements fell through. Soon after that, fighting broke out between the Arab states and Israel, and a visit was out of the question so long as hostilities lasted. When at last a truce was called to the fighting, and the frontier between the opposing sides was patrolled by United Nations observers, the northern half of the western shore of the Dead Sea lay within the territory of the newly extended Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Thanks to the help of a Belgian officer among the United Nations observers, Captain Philippe Lippens, who was personally interested in the discovery of the scrolls, it was possible for a party to visit and inspect the cave in February, 1949. Mr. G. Lankester Harding, the Director of Antiquities for Jordan, took charge of the excavation of the cave, with the cooperation of Father Roland de Vaux, of the DominicanÉcole Biblique.

It was immediately evident that they had been forestalled by other investigators, who found their way to the cave in November or December, 1948, cut a more convenient opening into it, lower than that through which the Bedouin goatherd had first entered, dug up the floor of the cave and threw some of the débris out through the new entrance. This inexpert excavation destroyed much of the evidence which the official party might otherwise have found and interpreted. One of the unofficial investigators left a clue to his identity behind in the shape of a cigarette roller bearing his name; Mr. Harding was able later on to give it back to him and tell him where he had left it. It was probably as a result of the illegal excavation that the Syrian monastery acquired three fragments of the Book of Daniel from two separate scrolls; one of these fragments contains the passage in Daniel 2:4 where the Hebrew text of the book gives way to Aramaic.

The expert excavation of the cave was carried on with the utmost care; in consequence, several hundred fragments of inscribed leather or parchment and a few papyrus fragments were discovered. Most of these fragments were so small and brittle that the excavation had to be done with penknives, tweezers, small brushes and fingers; otherwise irreparable damage would have been done. No intact jars were found, but there was an abundance of broken shards, and also several pieces of the linen in which the scrolls had been wrapped before being put into th