The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

  The Copper Scroll is mysterious and there is a considerable variety of opinions on how it should be translated. Two problems lead to the difficulty of translation. First, not all of it can be read very clearly. It is quite apparent, from the scroll, that the people who copied it onto copper did not in every instance understand the language that they were copying. Thus, not all of the letters are as clear as we would like. Second, there are Greek characters inserted into the text that seem to have very little to do with the content of the Copper Scroll itself.

  This mystery has not really been explained in any comprehensive sense, except by the hypothesis that Robert Feather develops in his book. He introduces novel ideas that come from completely unexpected and surprising directions. He forces us to view the Dead Sea Scrolls, and particularly the Copper Scroll and its relationship to the Qumran community, in a completely new way. In doing so he has opened up some patterns of insight and trajectories of inquiry that will, in the long run, be enormously fruitful in understanding both the Copper Scroll and ancient Judaism before the time of Christ and Qumran. These ideas relate to complex and intriguing Qumran links with Egyptian sources that may well hold the key to discovering the treasures described in the Copper Scroll.

  The notion that we are onto some intriguing discovery of ancient treasure is in itself magical and exciting. However, much more importantly, is the possibility that this Copper Scroll sets forth a link between ancient Judaism, post-Exilic Judaism and Egyptian religion. Remarkably, a better understanding of the Copper Scroll may demonstrate that significant ideas and movements within ancient Judaism were a direct result of developments in ancient Egypt going back as far as Abraham, or the Israelite bondage, or the Exodus under Ramses II and the life of Moses. To be able to establish that Judaism and hence Christianity, which started as a form of Judaism, has its roots in or links to Egyptian culture and monotheistic religion would be quite interesting and intriguing in the extreme.

  Feather’s detailed analysis of the weights and numbering systems used in the Copper Scroll and his finding that they are Egyptian in origin, and, therefore, point to an Egyptian connection, seem basically correct. The set of Greek letters inserted at peculiar places at the end of sections in the scroll have for many years been completely impossible to figure out. Feather’s argument unveils a crucial insight into this problem. He contends that if those Greek letters are read in the sequence in which they stand in the scroll, they clearly spell out a reference to the ancient Egyptian king Akhenaten. This claim anchors an element of Feather’s hypothesis, that the Copper Scroll has something to do with that king, the great monotheistic Pharaoh and his temple at Amarna.

  Feather argues that the Copper Scroll text suggests that it incorporates a code and that the code is also incorporated in a document that was hidden in a specific place, near some of the treasure listed in the scroll. The location is purportedly in either Palestine (Israel), near Jericho or Gerizim, or in a comparable location in Egypt. Interestingly, the places in Israel are apparently minor historic sites, and the major ones probably lie in Egypt. If I were to undertake an archaeological investigation following up on Feather’s hypothesis, I would certainly spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and budget in Egypt, primarily at Amarna, and I would take a careful look at the monotheistic site of the Jewish or pseudo-Jewish Zaddokite temple at Leontopolis, near Cairo.

  The huge time gap of twelve hundred years between Pharaoh Akhenaten and his Holy City of Amarna, on the one hand, and the community at Qumran, on the other, presents major difficulties in making the connection Feather undertakes to establish. Add to that the distance of 600 km and one has a very complicated scenario. This is a point at which I differ somewhat from Feather’s hypothesis. I doubt that the Copper Scroll was created by the Qumranites. I think that the Egyptian numbering, the archaic Greek lettering inserted in the columns of text, the quality of the copper material, and the archaic nature of the Hebrew language as it is transmitted in the scroll make it highly likely that the copper scroll came into the possession of and was preserved by the Qumranites, but that it was obtained from another much earlier source community that had copied the text from a standard papyrus or vellum scroll to the copper sheet. It was then rolled up in the manner of the original scroll. The original source might even be an ancient Akhenaten Egyptian from the time of Moses. The difficulty that those who transmitted the information to the Copper Scroll had with distinguishing, for example, between a Hebrew bet and dalet, or between a tav and a vav, indicates that they were dealing with a language, or an archaic form of a language, that was not altogether familiar to them. This interpretation would solve the problem of the gap in time and distance.

  Feather contends, however, that there are other indications, within other Dead Sea Scrolls, of possible Qumran connections to Egypt, including the community’s extreme reverence for light and use of a solar calendar. But it is likely, as the traditional perspective proposes, that the issues around such concepts as light, the kingdom of light, the source of light, the association of light with deity, the nature of the light in the temple, and the like, reflect Persian Zoroastrian influence. It is even possible that these notions derive from Hellenistic sources, or that they were generated within the theological ideology of the Qumran community itself, or are taken from standard Israelite traditions. There seems to have been a generalized orientation toward central religious notions about the importance of light and the sun throughout the Mediterranean Basin in ancient times, and these notions seem to have cross-fertilized each other in all adjacent cultures. The interactions are already evident in the early centuries of encounters between Egypt and Greece (sixth century BCE and before), and especially during the Hellenistic Era, with its interaction between Greece, Syria, Persia, Palestine, and Egypt.

  Moreover, religious concepts about light seem to generate rather naturally in most religious settings. American Indians were sure that God was represented in the universe as the great translucent spirit who was associated with the sun. The strength of this facet of Feather’s model is not in the claim that this veneration of light is in itself persuasive evidence of Egyptian influence, but rather that the concatenation of multiple strains of enormously suggestive data that Feather assembles, including the role of light and the sun, urges one to consider seriously a substantial Egyptian connection with the Qumran community and its temple-describing scrolls. Thus, within this very suggestive model, the information we have about Qumran notions regarding light fit in well. Once fitted in, they illumine the other aspects of the total model.

  As noted above, reverence for light includes reverence for the sun. Certainly the way in which Akhenaten at Amarna conceptualized the deity in his monotheism was to associate it with the rising and setting sun. However, it was-n’t a conceptualization that focused on the sun as a divine object, it was more a focus on the sun as an expression of the beneficence or presence of the transcendental spiritual deity that inspired the people to worship. Feather indicates the emphasis at Qumran upon light phenomena demonstrates a similarity between Amarna and Qumran. That assumption is somewhat precarious because one cannot rule out what most in the field, prior to Feather’s book, thought was a clear-cut relationship between the Qumran preoccupation with the duality of light and darkness, the sons of light and darkness, and so forth, and Zoroastrian worship of Ahura Mazda in Persia. Zoroastrian influences were believed to have entered into the thinking of the Israelites while in exile in Babylon and to have been carried back from Babylon upon the return from exile.

  However, there has been an excessive willingness in the scholarly world to associate the Israelite tradition with Babylon or Mesopotamia, and a resistance against associations with Egypt. This resistance has risen primarily from two sources. One is that the relationship between Zoroastrianism, with its emphasis upon light and darkness and various other kinds of theological notions, and the sort of magical Judaism is called apocalyptic Judaism, in which the Qumran community stood, always seemed
so obvious that there was no need to further develop new hypotheses that would connect Qumran with Egypt. The other is that in the modern era there has been a basic antipathy to the notion that the Israelites would have a significant dependency for the origins of their religion upon Egyptian sources, considering that the Egyptians are the bad guys in the Exodus tradition and the Exodus tradition has shaped most of Israelite thought from the beginning of its formal development to this day.

  The Exodus was a process, about which certain concrete things can be said. There was a move of a major population from Egypt. That is hardly assailable. That move was under the influence of a major leader. There is no reason to discount the notion that that leader was a person named Moses. Whether that was a forty-year enterprise or a forty-day enterprise, there is no way of knowing with certainty. However, there really is not any good reason to gainsay the biblical record that a kind of nomadic migration over a number of decades took place on the part of a relatively primitive community of people moving from Egypt to what later became, or was known then as, Canaan and became the location of the Israelites. Who the Israelites were, how many there were, whether they picked up nomadic bands or tribes along the way to join them, and whether they found other agrarian nomadic people in Canaan and joined up with them, are all peripheral questions. Certainly so defining was their Exodus tradition that it was to become the theological, cultural, and historical master story of a community of people with the specific identity that the Israelites developed, and a story that one cannot easily set aside.

  Feather’s argument very adequately describes why and how this migration of Israelites from Egypt during the Exodus happened to be carrying with them treasure and a treasure map. The possibility exists that part of this treasure was the actual wealth of Moses himself as the prince of Egypt, probably also the wealth of the monotheistic priest caste that still existed at the time of Moses and with which he identified. That in turn would constitute a reason for Moses to initiate the Exodus and, of course, have with him some of the temple treasure of the monotheistic priest caste, who probably were preserving the treasure of the ancient Amarna temple.

  The idea that the monotheism established by Akhenaten, in the company of Joseph and Jacob, was preserved within this priestly caste, is not a surprise. Unless you completely eradicate an ideology by exterminating everybody associated with it, any repression of an ideology only reinforces it. There is an old adage that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. That principle has always been true in history. If people have broken through to a great insight and someone attempts to repress that or exterminate the community that only causes the insight or the idea to go underground and expand and eventually resurge. That may very well be what happened, and for that to continue over a 1,200-year period would not be a complete surprise.

  In fact, at Armana a system of religion and a city were destroyed, and that period of history erased. So all the elements, in the repression of monotheism, exist for exactly the kind of situation that would guarantee the underground perpetuation of that ideology. Certainly the community that was covertly or overtly holding on to that great idea and that great tradition would be holding on as strongly as possible to the artifacts of that tradition. They would have been holding on to the liturgies, the documents, and certainly the accoutrements of their religious practices and their treasure. Therefore, they would have gone to great lengths, even in creating a copper scroll, to record whatever they could record of these things.

  For these reasons, Robert Feather’s hypothesis works, when his argumentation is taken as a unitary whole. In that context, the details seem adequately supportive of the whole. The hermeneutical circle is inevitably involved in all legitimate scientific hypothesizing. The hermeneutical circle is the essence of the scientific method of data gathering, hypothesizing, analyzing and testing of the sample data, expanding the sample, drawing general applications from it, and then reviewing the hypothesis and data-adducing process in terms of what seems to manage the data best. Thereafter, one can draw conclusions and propose laws. Robert Feather has done this appropriately and thoroughly. Therefore, his proposal should be taken seriously as one that manages the data adequately. It should get much exposure so that it is not overlooked, just because it is novel, innovative, or not derived from the prime centres of academe and the mainstream academic authorities.

  Every possible perspective gained on the moment in the ancient world that was so generative of all the influences that have shaped the western world needs to be addressed seriously. Here is a moment in history, maybe 500 to 800 years, of the return from exile in Babylon until the rise of Rabbinic Judaism that has had a greater effect than any other era of ethical or religious influence. If that moment can be better explained or understood by a careful study of Feather’s work, such attention should be the scholarly imperative.

  For my own part, upon the basis of independent personal research since reading Robert Feather’s book, I have been able to confirm heuristically a large part of his findings and conclusions. I am persuaded that his work moves along the most helpful scholarly research trajectory so far available to this area of inquiry.

  PROFESSOR J. HAROLD ELLENS

  Research Scholar in Middle Judaism and Christian Origins

  Department of Near Eastern Studies

  University of Michigan

  FOREWORD

  TO THE FIRST EDITION

  The Dead Sea Scrolls have played a part in popular imagination for over fifty years. Their public appeal stems from a distinct combination of factors. Reflecting some of the highest human aspirations, they were found in caves near the lowest place on earth, in an area where it was thought no ancient manuscripts could have survived. Against the odds the scrolls speak to us from 2,000 years ago. They tell us of the time when the Pharisees established their dominance and formed the religion that was the immediate predecessor of the Rabbinic Judaism, which in many ways is still with us. They describe for us much of the background of Christianity, in their portrayal of views of the end times and their expressions of messianic hope. They fill a void that historians and theologians of many generations have tried to sketch in vain.

  Of all the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, none is more fascinating than the famous Copper Scroll. Here is what seems to be a list of buried treasure, perhaps in quantities that would impress even the richest person today, engraved peculiarly on copper pieces, written in a Hebrew that is difficult to decipher, with several coded elements in Greek. After over a generation of study by some of the best modern detectives of the ancient world it still refuses to yield all its secrets.

  Robert Feather’s study represents the best work of the English amateur, a tradition of research that is based on asking common-sense questions from a variety of angles, and then pursuing the answers doggedly so as to take the discussion forward. The great enthusiasm with which the work is written may result in more being said than the sceptic might allow, but there are some nuggets of insight here that even the authors of the Copper Scroll might well have recognized.

  From the outset the debate about the meaning of the Copper Scroll was focused on whether the treasure was real or fantastic. To begin with, those on the side of realism were few and far between. They were argued against vociferously by some experts whose principal evidence was that the weights of the gold and silver mentioned in the scroll were simply incredible – producing a total of precious metal that exceeded all that had been smelted in the world until then. The realists could only argue back that to inscribe a fantasy on expensive copper plates with such care and with elements of code seemed to being playing a game too far.

  Nevertheless, in recent years the reality of the treasure has become increasingly accepted by the experts, but always with qualified remarks about the quantities. Now Robert Feather, from his own background expertise as a metallurgist, offers us a very intriguing interpretation of the troublesome signs for weights, by reading them in light of Egyptian systems of a somewhat earli
er time. The results may not convince everybody, but as far as understanding the system of weights and measures in use by the authors of the scroll is concerned, they are a valuable contribution to the ongoing, weighty debate.

  Significantly too, Robert Feather recognizes almost instinctively that the Dead Sea Scrolls deserve to be set in a broader context than that of the desolate desert domicile of the Qumran-Essenes. The scrolls can no longer be marginalized by historians and theologians alike. More than any other evidence, the biblical manuscripts from Qumran tell us about the transmission of what were to become the official canonical books of the Hebrew Bible in the three centuries before the Romans destroyed the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE. Furthermore, the manuscripts that describe the life of what most take to be the Essene sect show them not to be a narrow-minded group of bigots, but sharing much in common with their Jewish neighbours and thoroughly involved in the arguments and debates of the period.

  Most significantly, however, over half of the manuscripts found in the caves near Qumran describe Judaism more broadly than their sectarian traditors may have supposed: here to be rediscovered by us today are the wisdom texts, the prayers and the poems, the biblical interpretations, the astronomical calculations, and the best-loved stories of a golden age of Jewish literature. The comparable flourishing of Jewish literature in Egypt in the late Second Temple period is an obvious, but seldom recognized, place to start looking for evidence that might help in the better appreciation of the Dead Sea Scrolls themselves.

  Robert Feather’s work is also stimulating for the way it raises acutely a major historiographical problem. Put simply, the issue is about how two apparently similar phenomena should be related. Some scholars naturally tend to split all the evidence into minute pieces and, in so doing, to stress the differences between things; however similar things may seem, they can rarely be directly associated with one another. Other readers of the same evidence will tend to put things together and in so doing emphasize the similarities; differences are explained away through acknowledging that the evidence comes from alternative times and contexts, but the similarities remain and often suggest a direct causal relationship between the two phenomena. Those who read this book will be faced with placing themselves in one school of thought or the other.