Qumran Caves are a series of caves, some natural, some artificial, found around the archaeological
site of Qumran in the Judaean Desert.
It is in a number of these caves that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
History The limestone cliffs above Qumran contain
numerous caves that have been used over the millennia: the first traces of occupation
are from the Chalcolithic period then onward to the Arab period.
The artificial caves relate to the period of the settlement at Qumran and were cut into
the marl bluffs of the terrace on which Qumran sits.
Dead Sea Scrolls
In early 1947, a Bedouin boy of the Ta'amireh tribe, Muhammid Ahmed el-Hamed called edh-Dhib,
found a cave after searching for a lost animal.
He stumbled onto the first cave containing scrolls from two thousand years ago.
More Ta'amireh visited the cave and scrolls were taken back to their encampment.
They were shown to Mar Samuel of the Monastery of Saint Mark in April 1947 and the discovery
of the Dead Sea Scrolls was made known.
The location of the cave was not revealed for another 18 months, but eventually a joint
investigation of the cave site was led by Roland de Vaux and Gerald Lankester Harding.
The interest in the scrolls with the hope of money from their sale initiated a long
area-wide search by the Ta'amireh to find more such scrolls, the first result of which
was the discovery of four caves in Wadi Murabba'at about 15 kilometers south of Qumran in 1951.
In the Qumran area another cave was discovered, now referred to as Cave 2Q, in February 1952.
However, only a few fragments were found in the cave.
Fear of the destruction of archaeological evidence with the discovery of caves by the
Bedouin led to a campaign by the French and American Schools to explore all other caves
to find any remaining scrolls.
Although 230 natural caves, crevices and other possible hiding places were examined in an
8 kilometer area along the cliffs near Qumran, only 40 contained any artifacts and one alone,
3Q, produced texts, the most unusual being the Copper Scroll.
4Q was discovered in September 1952 by the Ta'amireh.
De Vaux, on being offered a vast amount of fragments, contacted Harding who drove the
Qumran site to find that the Bedouin had discovered caves very near the Qumran ruins.
These were Caves 4Q, 5Q, and 6Q, the most important of which was 4Q which originally
contained around three-quarters of all the scrolls found in the immediate Qumran area.
The first two of these caves had been cut into the marl terrace.
The third was at the entrance to the Qumran Gorge just below the aqueduct.
In 1955 a survey of the terrace brought to light a staircase leading down to the remains
of three more artificial caves, 7Q, 8Q and 9Q at the end of the Qumran esplanade, all
of which had collapsed and had been eroded, and a fourth cave, 10Q, on the outcrop which
housed Caves 4Q & 5Q.
The last cave containing scrolls to be found, once again by the Ta'amireh, was 11Q.
Among its contents was the Temple Scroll, though it had been spirited away and its recovery
was to prove long and complex.
Artificial caves
In all there are ten marl cut caves in the near vicinity of Qumran: 4Qa, 4Qb, 5Q, 7Q,
8Q, 9Q, 10Q, an oval cave west of 5Q, and two caves to the north in a separate ravine.
Their location necessitates a direct connection with the Qumran settlement.
The three caves at the end of the esplanade could only be accessed via the settlement.
These caves are thought to have been cut for storage and habitation.
Marl is a soft stone and makes excavation relatively easy, but as seen with Caves 7Q
- 9Q they haven't survived well.
4Q, which is now visible from the Qumran esplanade, is actually two caves, one adjacent to the
other.
De Vaux referred to them as 4a and 4b.
When the Ta'amireh removed all the fragments they could before Harding's arrival, there
was no way to tell which scrolls belonged to which cave, so they were later all catalogued
simply as from 4Q.
In excavating the caves hundreds of fragments were still to be found in 4a while only two
or three fragments in 4b.
4a was 8m long and 3.25 m wide with tapering walls reaching 3m in height.
Archaeological exacavations In 1984-1985 Joseph Patrich and Yigael Yadin
carried out a systematic survey of over 57 caves north of Qumran and two to the south.
In 1985-1991 Patrich excavated five caves, including Caves 3Q and 11Q.
One of Patrich's conclusions was that the caves "did not serve as habitations for the
members of the Dead Sea Sect, but rather as stores and hiding places".
Patrich took a jack hammer into 3Q to break up and remove large fallen rocks in order
to discover that under the rocks there were only a few Chalcolithic sherds, showing that
the ceiling had collapsed before any Qumran era occupation could have happened.
The cave was uninhabited and used only to store the scrolls left there.
In 1988 in the cave Patrich designated as Cave 13, just north of 3Q, a small juglet
was found from the Herodian era, which was wrapped in palm fibres and contained a viscous
liquid which Patrich presumed was aromatic balsam residue.
In 1991 he discovered several jar stoppers and a complete jar along with date stones
and dry dates suggesting occupation, but as the area in front of the cave showed no attempt
to convert it into a terrace, he concluded that occupation was not of any length.
11Q was examined and no traces of Qumran era occupation was found.
A cave Patrich called Cave 24, which lay between 11Q and 3Q, was large and habitable, but showed
no sign of long-term habitation.
Cave FQ37 located high up on the cliff face 2 kilometers south of Qumran was also an improbable
site for permanent dwelling, due to its inaccessibility.
In the winter of 1995-1996 Magen Broshi and Hanan Eshel carried out further excavations
in the caves north of Qumran.
They reported other caves not examined by Patrich and believed that they served as dwellings
for the inhabitants of Qumran along with other artificial caves that have long ago eroded
away from the edge of the marl terrace.
Broshi and Eshel concentrated their interest in the area just north of Qumran, examining
two caves they designated as C and F in a small ravine.
The former had part of its ceiling caved in and was filled with silt from flash floods,
but contained 280 potsherds.
Cave F had completely collapsed, but when excavated yielded 110 potsherds.
They concluded that the area was residential.
See also Shrine of the Book
Rockefeller Museum Antiquities trade
References
Bibliography Allegro, John M., The Dead Sea Scrolls.
Broshi, Magen, and Eshel, Hanan, "Residential Caves at Qumran."
Dead Sea Discoveries 6, 328-348.
de Vaux, Roland, Archaeology and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
English translation from the French.
Stökl Ben Ezra, Daniel, "Old Caves and Young Caves: A Statistical Reevaluation of a Qumran
Consensus" Dead Sea Discoveries 14,3, 313-333.
Humbert, Jean-Baptiste & Chambon, Alain, The Excavations of Khirbet Qumran and Ain Feshkha,
Vol.
1B.
trans by Stephen J. Pfann, Editions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse.
Patrich, Joseph, "Khirbet Qumran in the Light of New Archaeological Explorations in the
Qumran Caves", in Methods of Investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Khirbet Qumran
Site: Present Realities and Future Prospects 73-95.
Patrich, Joseph, "Did Extra-Mural Dwelling Quarters Exist at Qumran?"
in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Fifty Years After Their Discovery.
Edited by Lawrence H. Schiffman, Emanuel Tov, James C. VanderKam, and Galen Marquis 720-727.
Trever, John C., The Untold Story of Qumran,.
VanderKam, James & Flint, Peter, The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls ISBN 0-06-068464-X
External links The Orion Center's Cave Tour.