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TIL the Dead Sea Scrolls weren't just found in one big cave
I was reading an article from the Biblical Archaeology Society last night and it blew my mind that the scrolls actually came from 11 different caves near Qumran, not just one. I always figured it was like one discovery in the 1940s and that was it, but apparently most of the fragments were found in caves 4 and 11 over a decade later. Some of the caves had nothing but pottery shards, which is wild to think about. Has anyone else run into a common archaeology fact that turned out to be way more complicated than you thought?
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susanm2211d ago
Bedouin shepherds found the first batch in the 40s, then archaeologists found more in the 50s. The wild part is how many people assume a big find is just one thing and done, but it's usually a messy puzzle over years. It reminds me of how everyone thinks a leaky faucet is just one washer, but then you pull the whole valve apart and find three different problems stacked on top of each other. The scrolls are the same way, all scattered and hidden across different caves, with some caves basically empty and others stuffed with fragments. Kinda makes you wonder how much other stuff is still out there, just waiting for someone to stumble into the right cave.
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Was it Bedouin shepherds who found all of them, or were some discovered by archaeologists later?
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