Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (36 page)

Although some of the Qumran
Scrolls were written during the time
of Jesus, none of them refer directly
to him, or to any of his apostles. This
may be because the scrolls as a whole
only consist of a fraction of what was
probably once a huge library of manuscripts, most of which is now lost. One
of the most fascinating aspects of the
scrolls is that they contain the oldest

group of Old Testament texts ever
found, the only other Hebrew document of similar antiquity is the second century B.c. Nash Papyrus from
Egypt, which contains a Hebrew text
of the Ten Commandments. The Dead
Sea Scrolls can be separated into two
categories-the biblical, which consist
of copies of the actual books of the Hebrew Scriptures and commentaries on
these texts, and the non-biblical, which
consist of the prayer books and rules
of life of the community that wrote the
scripts. In the Biblical texts, every
book of the Old Testament is represented, apart from the Book of Esther
and the Book of Nehemiah. There are
prophecies by Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and
Daniel as well as traditional stories
involving Biblical figures such as
Noah, Abraham, and Enoch, none of
which are recorded in the canonical
Hebrew Bible. Some of the most important texts discovered in the caves
at Qumran include the Great Isaiah
Scroll, which contains the entire 66chapter book of Isaiah; a commentary
on the Book of Habakkuk-one of the
books of the Old Testament Minor
Prophets; a book of community rules
known as the Manual of Discipline,
consisting mainly of a summary of the
responsibilities of the Master of a sectarian Jewish community and his disciples; and the controversial Temple
Scroll. The Temple Scroll is the longest and probably the best-preserved of
all the Dead Sea Scrolls, and focuses
on the ideal design and operation of a
new and perfect temple, including its
laws and sacrificial procedures.

The question of who wrote the
Dead Sea Scrolls and subsequently hid
them away in the caves around Qumran is a controversial issue. Researchers have christened the probable authors of the text, a small Jewish
group who lived at the nearby settlement of Qumran, the Dead Sea Sect.
The Dead Sea Sect are often identified
as the Essenes, credited with introducing monasticism, and one of the three
leading Jewish sects discussed by Jewish historian Josephus (c. A.D. 37-c. A.D.
100), the others being the Pharisees
and the Sadducees. The Essenes do
appear in other contemporary sources,
such as Josephus Flavius, Philo of Alexandria, and Pliny the Elder, though
they are not mentioned at all in the
New Testament. Apparently the
Essenes left Jerusalem in protest at
the way the Temple, the central institution of Judaism, was being run, and
set themselves up in the Judean
Desert, away from what they saw as
the worldliness of Jerusalem. They
became an ascetic monastic community, though there seems to have been
women among them, and were strict
observers of the Torah, or the Written
Law (usually the the first five books of
the Hebrew Bible).

Close to the caves where the scrolls
were found lie the ruins of Qumran,
an abandoned fortress thought to have
been reestablished as a settlement
between 150 and 130 B.C. Investigations at the site have revealed that a
group of Jewish ascetics inhabited the
settlement, which included an assembly hall, ritual immersion pools,
aquaducts, cisterns, and storehouses.
The inhabitants do not appear to have
lived within the main settlement, but
in tents and caves on its outskirts. One
long narrow room at Qumran, known
as the Scriptorium, contained two

inkwells and a series of writing
benches thought to be for the use of
scribes. Archaeologists believe that it
was in this chamber that many of the
Biblical scripts found in the caves were
copied. Although no traces of manuscripts were discovered in this room,
it is linked to the scroll caves by the
presence of a distinctive pottery type,
which was found at both sites.

Many of the Dead Seas Scrolls give
an important insight into the lives
and beliefs of the community that
wrote them. For example, there are
calendrical documents that include a
sophisticated solar calendar of 364
days, as opposed to the more popular
354-day lunar calendar used at the
temple in Jerusalem. Another illustrative manuscript is entitled "The War
of the Sons of Light against the Sons
of Darkness." The Sons of Light are
probably the Dead Sea Sect, and the
Sons of Darkness seems to refer to the
remainder of humanity. This scroll
describes an imminent cataclysmic
battle, not just between these two
forces, but between the cosmic forces
of good and evil, and represents the
way in which this community viewed
Armageddon. For the Dead Sea Sect,
this battle was to come perhaps sooner
than they thought. During the First
Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66-73) the Roman
army besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and various Jewish strongholds,
including Masada on the eastern edge
of the Judean desert, overlooking the
Dead Sea.

During the battle at Masada in A.D.
73 the Jewish defenders of the site
committed mass suicide rather than
fall into the hands of the Romans.
Interestingly enough, among the frag ments of 14 biblical, apocryphal, and
sectarian scrolls found at Masada was
a sectarian manuscript identical with
one discovered in Qumran, and using
the same 364-day solar calendar as the
Dead Sea Sect. There is little evidence
for what happened at Qumran when
the Roman legions arrived in A.D. 70.
The sect seem to have taken their
scrolls to the nearby caves for safekeeping prior to the Roman attack,
though whether the inhabitants themselves perished in battle or escaped to
safety is a mystery.

There are some scholars who believe that the group at Qumran were
not responsible for the Dead Sea
Scrolls at all. One theory is that the
manuscripts were written by priests
of Jerusalem's Second Hebrew Temple
and then transported to Qumran and
safely hidden from the Roman legions.
One interpretation of this hypothesis
could involve the Dead Sea Sect on one
level, perhaps as those with the task
of secreting the scrolls from Jerusalem and depositing them in the caves.
This would mean the sect were the
keepers of the scrolls rather than their
authors. However, this hypothesis
does not tie in well with the sect's
fierce criticism of the the priesthood
of the Temple. Professor Norman
Golb, of the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago, believes that the
scrolls represent such a wide range of
ideas that, rather than being the product of one community, they likely
represent the writings of various
Jewish sects and communities of
ancient Israel.

The most unusual and mysterious
of the ancient scrolls from the Dead
Sea is without doubt the Copper Scroll.

This particular scroll was found in
1952 in Cave 3 at Qumran, and, as its
name suggests, is made from copper.
The scroll is written in a different form
of Hebrew than the other Qumran
manuscripts, and probably dates to the
mid-first century A.D. Unlike the rest
of the scrolls, the Copper Scroll is not
a literary work, but a list of 64 underground hiding places throughout Israel. These hiding places are described
as containing vast caches of gold, silver, scrolls, ritual vessels, containers
of incense, and weapons. In 1960 it was
estimated that the total value of this
hypothetical treasure would be over
$ 1 million. Although many have
searched for these riches, nothing has
ever been discovered, convincing most
scholars that the actual Hebrew text
of the scroll is some kind of code. The
presence of groups of two or three
Greek letters appended to the end of
seven of the entries tends to reinforce
this viewpoint. Due to the specific nature of some of the items (including
ritual vessels and incense), the riches
described are believed by some researchers to be the famous lost treasure from the Temple at Jerusalem,
hidden away for safekeeping before
the destruction of the Temple by the
Roman legions in A.D. 70. One intriguing aspect of the Copper Scroll is the
last entry on its list of locations, labeled as "Item 64." It reads "in a pit
adjoining on the north, in a hole opening northward, and buried at its mouth:
a copy of this document, with an explanation and their measurements,
and an inventory of each and every
thing." Does this entry mean that there
is another yet undiscovered copper
scroll hidden somewhere, containing
more substantial information?

Although all of the manuscripts
discovered in Cave 1 appeared in print
between 1950 and 1956, publication of
the Dead Sea Scrolls has often been a
slow process. Lack of access to the
Scroll material has persuaded some
researchers, such as Michael Baigent
and Richard Leigh in their book The
Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, that the
Vatican was behind a plot to suppress
the release of the manuscripts to the
public out of fear of the dangerous
material related to early Christianity
that the scrolls contained. Such theories have been considerably weakened
by the release of more scroll material
in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in
particular the publication of the entire
collection of Biblical scrolls. With the
publication of much of the material
from the caves at Qumran, the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls can now
be better appreciated. Not only do the
scrolls provide fascinating religious
and historical information about a
poorly documented period of history,
but they also shed considerable light
on the sources of both Judaism and
early Christianity.

An interesting parallel with the
Dead Sea Scrolls material has recently been provided by the newly
translated Gospel of Judas, a text
which gives completely new insights
into the relationship of Jesus and the
infamous disciple who betrayed him.

This early Christian leather-bound
papyrus manuscript includes the only
known text of the Gospel of Judas,
and has been dated to around A.D. 300.
The manuscript was found in the
1970s in a cavern near El Minya,
Egypt, and circulated among antiquities dealers in Egypt and Europe for
years before it found its way to the
United States where, in 2000, it was
purchased by Frieda NussbergerTchacos, a Zurich-based antiquities
dealer. Ms. Nussberger-Tchacos eventually sold the manuscript to the
Maecenas Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, for restoration and translation.
In April 2006, at a news conference in
Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Society announced the completion of the restoration and translation
of the manuscript. As with the Dead Sea
Scrolls, a significant amount of the
original material from the El Minya
texts is missing, though some of it is
believed to be in circulation among antiquities dealers or in private hands. In
this light, one can only wonder what
other manuscript treasures the complete library of scrolls at Qumran once
included, and if, in a secluded cave
somewhere around the northwestern
shore of the Dead Sea, further scrolls
lie buried in the sand, waiting to be
discovered.

The Crystal Skull of Doom reproduced from the July 1936 issue of Man,
when the skull was the property of Sidney Burney.

The crystal skulls are enigmatic and
controversial objects. Credited by some
as ancient artifacts with remarkable
magical and healing properties-but
dismissed by others as relatively modern forgeries-there is no agreement
about their origins. Some researchers
have claimed that there are 13 crystal
skulls located in various places around
the world, only five of which have so
far been located. The objects themselves are models of human skulls
carved from clear quartz crystal, and
the examples so far recovered vary in

size from a few inches to the size of a
human head. Where the skulls originated or what they were used for is a
mystery, but an origin with the preColumbian cultures of South America,
such as the Aztecs and Maya, have been
suggested. Without doubt the most fascinating and puzzling of these crystal
skulls is the Mitchell-Hedges Skull,
which possesses an eerie, alluring
beauty, unequalled in other examples.
The baffling story of the Skull of Doom,
as it has become known, is almost as
strange as the object itself.