426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



the approximate date of their manufacture. There seems to be little 

 question about the fact that the jars were manufactured in the early 

 first century A. D., during the early Koman period. Here, then, is 

 one important means of determining the approximate age of the scrolls 

 found in the cave, since the homogeneity of all the pottery gives a 

 strong indication that the jars were made for the purpose of storing 

 manuscripts.^ 



Also in the cave the Bedouins found a great deal of linen cloth, much 

 of which was recovered by the excavators in February 1949. Anal- 

 ysis by textile experts revealed it to be native Palestinian cloth.* 

 The radioactive carbon-14 test, developed by Dr. Willard F. Libby 

 of the University of Chicago, resulted in a mean date of A. D. 33 for 

 some of this cloth, but a 200-year plus or minus margin of error must 

 be allowed.^ 



Hundred of fragments of manuscripts, trampled into the dust of 

 the cave, were picked up by the archeologists. During a recent 

 leave of absence for the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls the writer was 

 able to examine photographs of about half of these fragments and 

 the originals of the other half in the British Museum in London, 

 through the courtesy of G. Lankester Harding, Director of An- 

 tiquities for Hashemite Jordan. Some 45 different hands or varia- 

 tions of script were counted, indicating that as many manuscripts 

 were apparently at one time in the cave. Yet there is a definite 

 homogeneity of script among all the materials from the cave. One 

 group of unpublished fragments, matted together, was secured in 

 November 1948 by the Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Jerusalem 

 from the vandals who rifled the cave, and these proved to contain 

 parts of a scroll of Hebrew prayers and of two scrolls of Daniel. 



The Bedouins sold the best-preserved of the documents to the St. 

 Mark's Syrian Orthodox Monastery in Jerusalem in July 1947, 

 through the help of some Syrian merchants in Bethlehem who were 

 friends of the Bedouins. Five scrolls, making four different manu- 

 scripts, were in this collection. It was with this group of manu- 

 scripts that the writer first came in contact with the whole discovery, 

 when on February 18, 1948, the Orthodox Syrians called the Amer- 

 ican School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem to obtain information 



» since the original publication of this article the Palestine Exploration Quarterly for 

 JIay-October 1952, and the Revue Blblique for January 1953, have arrived, telling of the 

 excavations at Khirbet Qumran, the ruin of a site occupied In the first century A. D., 

 apparently by the sect (Essenes?) who owned the scroUs. Pottery similar to that from 

 the cave was found with coins dating from A. D. 10-67. 



* Report upon a fragment of cloth from the Dead Sea Scroll Cave, Bull. Amer. School 

 Orient. Res., vol. 119, PP- 9-11. April 1950. Crowfoot, G. M., Linen textiles from the cave 

 of Aln Feshka In the .Jordan Valley, Palestine Espl. Quart., January-April 1951, pp. 5-31. 



' Collier, Donald, New radiocarbon method for dating the past, Chicago Nat. Hist. Mas. 

 Bull., vol. 22, No. 1, January 1951, and Bibl. Archaeol., vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 25-28, February 

 1951. Sellers, O. R., Date of cloth from the 'Aln Fashkha cave, Blbl. Archaeol., vol. 14, 

 No. 1, p. 20, February IfiSl. 



