In 1947, the Bedouin shepherds Juma and Muhammad ed-Dib came across a cave in the Qumran region (a dry river bed on the northwestern coast of the Dead Sea). In this cave, they then found many jugs half-buried with earth. One of them was accidentally smashed by shepherds, and old parchment scrolls were born. This is how the first manuscripts of the Dead Sea were discovered.
The manuscripts found at Qumran were attributed to the Essenes, a Jewish sect that arose around 170 BC and existed until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD. The Essenes ("the pious") separated themselves from official Judaism, considering it mired in wickedness, and, having gone to the mountains (in particular, to Qumran), created a commune, something like a monastic community.
Teacher of the godly
About 800 leather and parchment manuscripts were found in Qumran, and only one of them was made of copper. The oldest of the Qumran manuscripts is dated to the 3rd century BC, and the latest is from the seventies.
According to one of the Qumran texts, the "Damascus Document", the Essenes "for twenty years, like the blind, groped their way, wandering in darkness, until God put them a Teacher of Righteousness to guide them along the path of His heart …".
This teacher is nowhere named by name, but he is mentioned more than once in the scrolls. He is often identified with Jesus Christ. The image of the Teacher of Righteousness, his earthly destiny and teaching truly resemble the legendary life of Christ. According to the texts, he died in the same way, at the hands of his pursuers. After the death of the Master, the community continued to exist, awaiting the imminent arrival of the Messiah.
About 30 BC, the village in Qumran was destroyed by an earthquake, but in the early years of the new era, it was restored and populated. When the legions of Titus Flavius Vespasian came to Judea in 66 AD, the Essenes left their shelters, having previously hidden the library they had collected. They probably joined the rebellious inhabitants of Judea and died during the war with the Romans, for later on this religious sect completely disappears from the historical scene.
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Tons of gold
A new, exciting find was made on March 20, 1953, about two kilometers north of the cave, where the manuscripts were first found. Archaeologists have found a cache at the foot of the rock, the vaults of which collapsed long ago. The collapsed ceiling formed something like a niche. It contained two rolled copper sheets with text engraved on them. The scrolls, 30 centimeters wide, turned out to be two halves of one document, the total length of which was almost 2.5 meters.
Over the centuries, copper has oxidized to such an extent that it was almost impossible to unfold the scrolls, so it was decided to cut them into strips. The researchers were surprised that the metal sheet was 99% copper. It was extremely difficult to achieve such purity in those days. Undoubtedly, whoever produced this document, called the Copper Scroll, wanted it to last as long as possible.
The study of the Copper Scroll lasted four years. The text is engraved in Hebrew, interspersed with Greek words. I immediately managed to read two words - "gold" and "silver". It turned out that the document contains a detailed list of treasures hidden from the Romans, and indications of their location.
At first glance, all the explanations seem to be quite clear. For example: “In the fortress in the valley of Achor, 40 cubits under the stairs of the eastern gate, there is a chest with money: its contents are 17 talents. In the tombstone, in the third row of masonry, there are light ingots of gold. In a large cistern located in the courtyard of the peristyle, in the pavement of its bottom, 900 talents are hidden in a depression …”.
So, treasure after treasure, storehouse after storehouse, impassively, like an accounting report, the Copper Scroll lists the hiding places where considerable good is hidden: ingots of gold and silver, chests and jugs filled with coins, precious vessels, sacred vestments. A total of 63 caches are named in the scroll, indicating where to find them, and an inventory of 64 treasures, mainly silver and gold, and expensive utensils is given.
The weight of the jewels is given in units called "talent". But since the value of this measure of weight fluctuated greatly at different times, the size of the treasure can be estimated only approximately. According to the most conservative estimates, the total weight of the hidden treasures reaches approximately 26 tons of gold and 66 tons of silver; today this treasure is estimated - if we estimate only the value of the metal - at $ 2 billion. However, some consider these figures to be halved.
Everything has already been found
The decipher of the text of the Copper Scroll, the English professor John Marco Allegro, who holds the honor of its first complete edition, faced serious problems. It was not easy to understand from the context which words are local names. Over the past centuries, many geographical names have been forgotten, new ones have appeared, and some have disappeared altogether. The scroll's copper was highly oxidized, and some parts were difficult to decipher; among connoisseurs of Hebrew, disputes about the meaning of this or that fragment do not cease. Perhaps that is why until now no one has managed to find even a small part of the treasure of the Copper Scroll.
The first search expedition was organized by Allegro himself. He began with a fortress in the valley of Achor, which was destroyed in the 5th century: “42 talents of silver are under a scroll in an urn. To find the urn, dig three cubits at the north entrance to the pillared grotto. There are two entrances. You will find 21 talent of silver by digging nine cubits at the entrance to the cave, which is near a large stone and faces east. 27 talents of silver are buried at a depth of 12 cubits in the western part of the Queen's Mausoleum. It seemed - come and take it, but in reality they did not find anything.
Having failed at Achor, Allegro traveled to Jerusalem, where he dug around the tower of Absalom, another object under which a large treasure was allegedly buried. The effect is zero.
The professor himself believes that the values mentioned in the Copper Scroll in 68, during the first uprising against the Romans, were hidden by the Zealots - the most resolute supporters of the struggle for liberation from Roman rule. They were able to hide some of the treasures of the Jerusalem temple and buried them. Others insist that the treasures are still the treasury of the Essenes, because everyone who joined the community had to transfer all his property to it.
Many people doubt that in Ancient Judea it was generally possible to collect so much gold and silver, and even more so it is unlikely that the Essenes, a small sect of ascetics, managed to accumulate such wealth.
The only place in Judea where great values were concentrated was the Jerusalem temple; from which was born the assumption that the scrolls were hidden by priests who secretly made their way from the Temple Mount to the coast of the Dead Sea. If so, then among the treasures may well be such relics as the breastplate of Aaron or even the Ark of the Covenant.
Qumran is a fortified settlement with a high tower that served as a shelter in case of attack. There are no doors in the tower, it was only possible to get into it via a wooden bridge (probably a lift one) directly to the third floor. In the event of an attack, the inhabitants of Qumran hid in the tower, which was also a food warehouse for them. Interestingly, a long table and a bottle of ink were found on the top floor, which gave historians reason to believe that many of the Dead Sea scrolls may have been born here, including the mysterious Copper Scroll.
A dam was built in the settlement to retain water during the winter rains; from there, water flowed through the aqueducts into a stone drainage basin. In the Copper Scroll, the catchment is mentioned several times, and this suggests that perhaps the treasure caches were located in Qumran itself.
In 68, the tower became the last stronghold of the defenders. The historian Flavius Josephus writes that the surviving Essenes were tortured by Roman soldiers. Most likely, in order to find out where the treasures of the Copper Scroll are hidden. It is possible that the Romans still got them, so in our time they were never found.
Mikhail EFIMOV