The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

  I was soon to discover that many thousands of researchers, scholars, academics, historians and theologians were beavering away around the world, deciphering and analysing the voluminous contents of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most of these people were also interested in the Copper Scroll.

  When the Copper Scroll was discovered it was in an highly oxidized condition and had broken into two separate rolled up sections. In its original state it measured 0.3m in width, 2.4m in length, and was about 1mm thick. No-one knew quite how to open it up without damaging the text. One lunatic suggestion was to try to reduce the copper oxides with hydrogen, or even electrolysis, to recover the copper! After considerable preparatory research, John Allegro of Oxford University, a member of the original international translation team working on the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem,1 persuaded Lankester Harding, Director of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, and Father Roland de Vaux, Head of the École Biblique in Jerusalem, to let him take one of the copper pieces to England. There the first piece of scroll was finally ‘opened’ by Professor H. Wright Baker at Manchester College of Science and Technology (now UMIST) in 1955, followed by the second piece in 1956. The technique Wright Baker used was to coat the outside of the scroll with Araldite adhesive and then slice the scroll, using a 4,000th/inch-thick saw, into twenty-three separate sections (see Plate 2 (bottom)). (Ever since that time Manchester has retained a special interest in the Copper Scroll.)

  THE LANGUAGE OF THE COPPER SCROLL

  In academic circles the Copper Scroll is known, rather prosaically, as 3Q15, the 3Q indicating that it was found in Cave 3 at Qumran. The scroll was written in an early form of Hebrew – a square-form script – and has been shown to have linguistic affinities to pre-Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic (see Glossary), with some terms only comprehensible through study of Arabic and Akkadian cognates.2 Other Dead Sea Scrolls were written in square-form Aramaic script, or the so-called ‘Paleo-Hebrew’ script, derived from ‘Proto-Canaanite’ – itself an evolution from ‘Ugarit’, Egyptian hieroglyphs and ‘Phoenician’.3

  There are many unusual things about the Copper Scroll, but the language in which it is engraved is one of the major puzzles for scholars. The Hebrew palaeography (style of script) and orthography (spelling) in the Copper Scroll is quite unlike anything found in other texts of the time, from Qumran or from elsewhere. Palaeographic analysis shows the style of writing to be relatively crude, partly because the artisans working on the scroll had to tap the shapes out with fairly primitive tools, and partly because they appear to have had difficulty in reading some of the material from which they seemed to be copying.

  The scroll doesn’t fall into the category of being a religious or literary document, unlike other Dead Sea Scrolls. It contains words, particularly architectural terms, which are not found in any other of the scrolls. The Copper Scroll is truly a ‘one off’, totally unlike any of the other Qumran scrolls. It has, nevertheless, been almost unanimously classified as one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and now resides in the Archaeological Museum of Amman, in Jordan.

  I knew from my experience in handling non-ferrous metals that engraving on copper, at the period before 68 CE (the terminus ante quem for its production4), would have been an extremely expensive and laborious process. Its use indicates the importance the Qumran-Essenes attached to this text and their determination that it should not deteriorate easily – unlike parchment or papyrus.

  The next step, obviously, after its opening was to decipher and translate the scroll’s contents. Not such an easy task in view of the ‘odd’ nature of the writing, style and language. So difficult, in fact, that different versions are still coming out to this day, and scholars argue relentlessly about how best to read individual letters!5

  It was because of these differences in scholarly interpretations that I felt I had something to contribute to the debate, by bringing a scientist’s view to the problem. Virtually all those currently working in the field of Dead Sea Scroll research are linguistic scholars, historians, theologians or archaeologists attached to learned institutions. They tend not to be highly numerate; there are almost no engineers and, to my knowledge, no metallurgists studying the problem. Little did I know then that metallurgy would provide the lever to prise open the secrets of the Copper Scroll.

  DECIPHERING THE COPPER SCROLL

  In essence the Copper Scroll contains a list of sixty-four locations,*4 spread over a wide geographical area, where large quantities of gold, silver, jewellery, precious perfumes, ritual clothing and other scrolls were said to be buried. Because of their relative rarity, all these materials would have been of considerable value in the ancient world. Perfumes, oils and unguents, for example, were sought after items that could have come from distant lands, whilst ritual clothing would have been heavily embroidered with gold and silver thread.

  The first translation of the Copper Scroll was done by John Allegro in Manchester, and the first published translation (in French) was by Father J. T. Milik, in 1959.6 John Allegro, a member of the original translation team, strongly disagreed with the content of this published translation, but his superiors in Jerusalem would not permit him to publish his version. They liked to keep a tight control on everything in their possession and make sure that their official stamp was on all related publications.

  The mixture of frustration and excitement soon became too much for John Allegro as he began to realize that there were other – more sinister – reasons for the strictures that were being put on him. In particular, the Copper Scroll contents tended to undermine the official line that the Qumran-Essenes were not interested in worldly goods. He relieved his frustration by mounting two archaeological expeditions to Jordan hoping to find some of the treasure mentioned in the Copper Scroll, in December 1959 and again in March 1960. Like many who get lost in the desert, he wandered around in a circle, eventually coming back to where he started from, having found absolutely nothing.

  John Allegro’s frustration with the École Biblique team in Jerusalem was only vented when he disregarded his ‘masters’ orders’ and published an English version of the translation in 1960, under the title The Treasure of the Copper Scroll.7 The reasons put about after his book came out for trying to delay its publication, and for not allowing him to use photographs of the scroll text, were that the Jerusalem ‘team’ feared an invasion of treasure hunters storming down to the area of Qumran and interfering with their serious work. A more probable explanation was that the Copper Scroll’s listing of vast treasures conflicted with the already committed view that the Qumran-Essenes were an impoverished, spiritual community that eschewed wealth of any kind.

  Scholars, notably Father Roland de Vaux, Head of the École Biblique et Archéologique Française de Jerusalem, and Father Jozef Milik, a member of the original Dead Sea Scrolls translation team, denounced John Allegro’s translation as defective and even cast doubts on the authenticity of the Copper Scroll’s contents, assigning them to folklore. Others were not so sure.

  The Jerusalem team’s translation finally came out in 1962, entitled ‘Les “Petites Grottes” de Qumran’ in the Discoveries in the Judaean Desert series. Although this is the ‘official’ version, there is no accepted ‘definitive’ translation of the Copper Scroll to date, and all of the numerous editions that have been published have many significant variations.

  Most scholars, however, are now convinced that the Copper Scroll was engraved by the Qumran-Essenes and that it forms part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.9 Nevertheless, opinion still differs as to whether the Copper Scroll was an original piece of work by the Qumran-Essenes. Some scholars suggest that it was copied, possibly from an earlier document. I tend towards this latter view and, later on, I will put forward my own arguments as to the origins of the Copper Scroll.

  In conventional translations of the Copper Scroll10 the weight of gold mentioned in the various locations is generally given as adding up to a staggering twenty-six tonnes, with sixty-five tonnes of silver,11 although different understandings
of the terms for gold and silver allow totals of approximately forty-four tonnes of gold and twenty-three tonnes of silver.

  When the weights of the treasures itemized in the Copper Scroll are added up, we reach the following:

  Gold 1,285 Talents

  Silver 666 Talents

  Gold and silver 17 Talents

  Gold and silver vessels 600 Talents

  Mixed precious metals 2,088 Talents, 21 Minas, 4 Staters

  Items with unspecified weights are as follows:

  Gold ingots 165

  Silver bars 7

  Gold and silver vessels 609

  In Biblical Talent terms, the sheer weight of the gold and silver is enormous. One Talent is estimated to have weighed about 76lb or 34.47kg, a Mina about 0.5kg, whilst a Stater was a coin (equivalent to a half Shekel) weighing about 5g.12

  Where weights are given of the listed treasures, the approximate amounts of precious metals, using a Biblical Talent weight of 34.47kg, are as follows:

  Gold 44.3 tonnes today worth approx. £414 million

  Silver 22.9 tonnes today worth approx. £3 million

  Mixed precious metals 93.2 tonnes today worth approx. £583 million

  In addition, there are lists where no weights are given but enormous quantities of precious materials are mentioned. These lists are divided into twelve columns and itemize the location and type of treasure hidden.

  The Copper Scroll seems to be referring to precious metals worth around $1.5 billion at current prices, but whose intrinsic historic value would be many, many times this figure!

  Measuring some 2.4m (8 feet) in length, the Copper Scroll was engraved in twelve vertical columns, each of between thirteen and seventeen lines of right-to-left reading text, some 30cm deep.

  Where numerical amounts of precious materials are given in the text of the Copper Scroll these are indicated in the Table. The asterisks indicate where only a more general description of precious materials is mentioned in particular columns of the text.

  WHOSE TREASURES WERE THEY?

  The scroll does not reveal by whom, or when, the treasures were buried, let alone why. But from some of the recognizable place-names mentioned, the treasures are generally assumed to have been hidden within Judaea or near to Mount Gerizim in Samaria (both parts of modern Israel), and to relate to treasures of the Second, or possibly First, Temple of Jerusalem. Both temples were known to be places where considerable wealth was accumulated through donations of sacrificial gifts and tithes.

  The First Temple of Jerusalem was built by King Solomon, around 950 BCE, to house the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments, and to be the central place of worship for the Israelites. After its destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, it was partly rebuilt some 50 years later and became known as the Second Temple. Its reconstruction continued until a final reconstitution was undertaken by Herod the Great around 30 BCE. It was subsequently destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

  The Copper Scroll makes no mention of the Qumran-Essenes, nor does it contain any of their sectarian style of terminology.13 Controversy over the origins of the treasures listed in the Copper Scroll has led to the proposition of almost as many conspiracy theories as those put forward for President Kennedy’s assassination. There are, however, five main theories held by modern scholars.

  These are that the treasures were:

  a) hidden by the Qumran-Essenes and came from the Second Temple in Jerusalem just prior to its destruction by the Romans in 70 CE

  b) hidden by predecessors of the Qumran-Essenes and came from the First Temple in Jerusalem at the time of its destruction by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar

  c) hidden by the Qumran-Essenes before 68 CE and belonged to them

  d) not real, and that the Scroll was a hoax perpetrated by the Qumran-Essenes14

  e) from the Second Temple, but were hidden by priests or others coming out of Jerusalem, and that the Qumran-Essenes did not write the Dead Sea Scrolls.15

  (There is another theory, that the treasures were collected and hidden in Jerusalem, after the destruction of the Second Temple, suggested some 35 years ago by Manfred Lehmann and some others,16 but there is little following for that idea today.)

  There are counter-arguments to all these theories; the main elements of these are listed below in the same order:

  a) the Qumran-Essenes held the priests and those attending the Second Temple unworthy and even contemptible (a theme taken up by Jesus in his ministry). Relations would hardly have been consistent with the Second Temple priests entrusting the Qumran-Essenes with any treasures. The testimony of Josephus17 on the antipathy between Jerusalem and the Qumran-Essenes also conflicts with this possibility

  b) the intervening period is too long; the Qumran-Essenes were not established at Qumran for another 400 years

  c) an impoverished small community would not have been able to acquire such priceless treasures

  d) engraving on copper was an expensive and difficult business – the scroll was obviously intended to have some permanency. The ‘realism’ in the style and content of writing, so unlike any other ancient legends, and the lack of any sensible explanation of why the Qumran-Essenes would invent such information tends to refute this idea. Who would they be trying to fool? The Qumran-Essenes were the people of righteousness and truth. Elaborate and expensive frauds were not their style

  e) the close connection between the Copper Scroll and the Qumran-Essenes, and the difficulty in imagining how or why vast Temple treasures were hidden prior to 68 CE, before the Temple came under threat.

  The majority of scholars, such as John Allegro, Kyle McCarter, Judah Lefkovits, Michael Wise, David Wilmot and Al Wolters,18 now favour the theory that the treasures came from the Second Temple and were hidden by the Essenes (or others), just before its destruction. Part of their justification for this theory is that the Triumphal Arch of Titus, in Rome, depicts items of treasure, such as trumpets and the seven-branched candlestick, carried off by the Romans when they captured Jerusalem. Whilst the Copper Scroll describes other items of Temple treasure, it makes no mention of any of the items depicted on the Arch of Titus, so there is a sort of logic in absentia.

  Most scholars discount the theory of the First Temple as being the source of the listed treasures. There are two protagonists of the theory, however, Conklin and Andrea,19 who have expounded a curious idea known as ‘Jeremiah’s Wheelbarrow’, which has the Prophet Jeremiah wheeling the treasures of the First Temple around the countryside to hide them, before fleeing to Egypt having confided their locations to ‘caretakers’ in the Qumran hills. Some seventy years after the destruction of the Temple, Ezra,20 a relative of Jeremiah, and Nehemiah return from forced exile in Babylon but are not given the information about the locations of the treasure by its guardians. Personally, I find this theory extremely seductive as an explanation of from where part of the treasures described in the Copper Scroll may have come.

  Some French scholars and others21 tend toward the view that the treasures came from the wealth of the Qumran Community itself, on the basis that new members gave all their worldly goods to the Community on joining.

  Arguments that the contents of the Copper Scroll are fiction were initially propounded by Father de Vaux and his Polish colleague, Father Jozef Milik. They met bitter opposition from John Allegro and, increasingly, other scholars have come round to the view that they were wrong.

  The remaining theory, that the treasures came from and were hidden by Second Temple personnel, and that the Qumran-Essenes had nothing to do with it, is a pet theory of Professor Norman Golb of the University of Chicago. It finds limited support.

  However, there are over-riding problems with all of these theories that, until now, have not been resolved. Scholars have all puzzled over how so much gold could have come from either the First, or the Second, Temple of Jerusalem, let alone could have come into the ownership of an ascetic, relatively impoverished sect like the Qumran-Essenes.

  Another
major stumbling block for all of the current theories is that not one of them has led to the discovery of any of the treasures listed in the Copper Scroll.

  Well, that last statement is open to challenge by a certain Mr Vendyl Jones, who is sometimes portrayed as the role model for Indiana Jones in Steven Spielberg’s film Raiders of the Lost Ark. I will briefly digress to deal with his claims. He was born on 29 May 1930 and grew up in the State of Texas. By the age of sixteen, Vendyl knew that his life was to be dedicated to doing God’s work, and he eventually founded the Institute of Judaic-Christian Research (now known as the Vendyl Jones Research Institute, based in Arlington, Texas).

  I first met Vendyl in September 1996 at the Conference on the Copper Scroll held in Manchester. He appeared a friendly, larger-than-life Dead Sea Scroll enthusiast, with a fierce white Mormonesque beard, who asked rather too many awkward questions. When I met him again, in July 1997 at a Conference in Jerusalem, we had a long chat about his ‘discoveries’. Vendyl had done a lot of digging in Israel, and from 1967 onwards had concentrated his efforts on the area around Qumran. He claimed that in April 1988 he found the anointing oil from the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and in 1992, the spices mentioned in the Copper Scroll. I was suitably impressed, especially as I had never heard of, or seen any report on anything being found from information given in the Copper Scroll. As we talked another Conference delegate walked by and, en passant, delivered a verbal assault on Vendyl.

  Not surprisingly I was a bit non-plussed, but subsequently learned that Vendyl was banned from digging in Israel by the Antiquities Authority. No-one in scientific circles takes his claims seriously, and no learned journal has confirmed the authenticity of his claims.