The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

  Eventually, after much entreating and fulfilled threats, the reigning Pharaoh, according to the Bible, accedes to Moses’ demand to ‘let my people go’. A number of suggestions as to why Pharaoh finally let the Israelites go have been proposed, apart from the Biblical explanation of the ten plagues that were visited on Egypt. These suggestions include the threatening increase in numbers of the Hebrews, and as a pragmatic reward for the work they had done in completing Pharaoh’s building programme.

  However, if Moses was a Prince of Egypt, he would have been very rich in his own right, and this gives us a another intriguing possibility: Moses did a Schindler and bought the freedom of the slaves. This type of exchange was a common practice at the time and the only way valuable commodities such as slaves could ever gain their release. The Songs of Deliverance (Exodus 15:16) that Moses and the Children of Israel sang as they left Egypt gives probity to this theory:

  Terror and dread descend upon them;

  Through the might of Your arm they are still as stone;

  Till your people cross over, O Lord

  Till your people cross whom You have ransomed.3

  The word ‘ransomed’ is, in fact, alternatively translated as ‘purchased’ in authorized versions of the Bible. The same allusion to the Hebrews being ‘purchased’ by God at the time of the Exodus occurs in Psalm 74 of the Old Testament, and again in Jeremiah 31:11:

  For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob [the people of Israel], and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.

  In Deuteronomy 28, we have an even clearer hint that Moses paid for the freedom of the Hebrews, as he taunts them in the desert with the penalty awaiting them if they do not keep God’s laws:

  God will bring you back to Egypt…and you will offer yourselves for sale as slaves and bondswomen there, but there will be no buyer.

  Deuteronomy 28:68

  So Moses, a wealthy Prince of Egypt and skilled military tactitian, leads his newly found people, his Egyptian priests and Egyptian associates, guarded by soldiers of his loyal troop, out of Egypt. Exodus 13:18 puts it as follows and causes endless confusion for modern translators who strive for all sorts of convoluted explanations to understand why the Hebrews were ‘armed’:

  Now the Israelites went up armed out of the land of Egypt.4

  The simple answer is that they were ‘armed’, most probably with lances, and they would have had war chariots in their entourage.

  When Pharaoh went in hot pursuit of the departed Hebrews (Exodus 14) with 600 chariots, it may have been that he had got wind of the enormity of the treasures that Moses had taken with him – or had just changed his mind for the eleventh time. Either way he and his forces met determined resistance and came to a messy end in the marshy Bitter Lakes region north of the Gulf of Suez, somewhere between modern Suez and Ismalia.

  Exodus 13 recounts that some 600,000 Children of Israel left from the region of Ramses, in the northern Nile delta, after spending 430 years in Egypt. Both these figures, as I have said earlier, are extremely suspect.

  When the Israelites departed from Egypt, we are told (Exodus 3:21–22 and 12:36) that they took with them much plunder and wealth. On the surface this action, like the Bible’s recording that they were armed, appears to be a very strange occurrence for slaves leaving in such a hurry that they hardly had time to finish baking their bread.

  And I will give the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. And it shall come to pass that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty [handed]; but every woman shall ask of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.

  Exodus 3:21–22

  These passages, repeated again in Exodus 12:36, have presented a real conundrum for religious traditionalists. How could a nation of slaves come away with such wealth? Why should the Egyptians simply let some of their belongings be taken from them? Were the Hebrews stealing from their host nation?

  Some of the ideas put forward to explain this rather strange behaviour towards an enslaved community are quite quaint. One idea proposed by Dr Nina Collins at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds, is that the plunder was only to be borrowed and would be returned after a three-day festival in the desert.5 The Biblical passage about a festival comes in a section unrelated to the taking of valuables from the Egyptians. Were the Egyptians really that gullible? It also implies that the Israelites perpetrated a deception and knowingly stole the goods.

  Even commentators on differing translations of the Old Testament are at odds. In the Sonchino version,6 edited by the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr Joseph Herman Hertz (who died in 1946), the translated phrase ‘every woman shall borrow of her neighbour’ is labelled as thoroughly mischievous and misleading. This is a phrase that, in almost identical form, appears in the later Plaut translation of the Torah.7

  The favoured explanation by the commentators in the Sonchino version is that the Egyptians demonstrated their humanity and gifted household valuables to their departing slaves in wishing them well on their forthcoming journey. They probably put roses in their hair as well!

  This idea that the gold and silver vessels and jewels were given with formal sanction by the Egyptians just does not ring true. It appears to be the only pleasant explanation that gets around the charge of theft. It is in itself thrown into doubt by the Talmud’s recording of a later formal claim for indemnity put forward by the Egyptians before Alexander the Great. Another curious aspect of this story is that we are told that the valuables were to be later employed in the adornment and enrichment of the Sanctuary – the consecrated place for Divine worship. Hardly a role suited to domestic and household jewellery.

  However, if my theories are correct there is a very simple explanation. The wealth of the departing group in the Exodus was derived partly from Moses, as a Prince of Egypt, and partly from the accompanying Atenist priests who still retained some of the treasures from the Great Temple at Akhetaten – some of which might even have been described in the Copper Scroll.

  This explanation vindicates the Israelites from having ‘despoiled, borrowed, or plundered’ from the Egyptians. It also explains why vessels of gold and silver, and jewels – effectively a treasure trove – were ‘gifted’ to the Israelites by a particular group of Egyptians but not formally sanctioned by the Egyptian authorities.

  It also answers the question of how a community of impoverished Hebrew slaves could provide the exotic accoutrements for the Tabernacle, and the large amount of gold required for the Golden Calf some of them temporarily worshipped. Whilst he was away on the Holy Mountain receiving the Ten Commandments, as the Bible describes, Moses would have entrusted the treasures to Aaron, his chief priest – who apparently helped in the making of the Golden Calf.

  The treasures that the Hebrews took with them when they left Egypt were not stolen from the Egyptians. They were given to Moses by the Atenite priests and, in addition to his own Princely wealth, were partly used to buy the freedom of the Hebrew slaves and partly to adorn the ‘Tabernacle’ – a transportable tent that acted as the shrine for the Holy Ark, where the holy written or inscribed laws were kept.

  After making good their escape the Children of Israel continued to wander for forty Biblical years in the deserts of Sinai to the east of Egypt. This period of ‘purification’ seems to imply that an entire generation died out, so that no-one who came out of Egypt, except Joshua and Caleb, survived to reach the Promised Land, not even Moses.

  THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

  Early in their wanderings the Hebrews made an eternal Covenant with God. The acquiring of the Covenant was the most momentous moment in Jewish history. Traditionally, Mount Sinai, in the Southern part of the Sinai peninsula, is taken as the place for the receiving of the Ten Commandments and the Covenant. (Some historians place it at Jebel Helal in North Sinai, or at a mountain east of the Gulf of Aqab
a.)

  Moses spent forty Biblical days on the Mountain of the Lord receiving from God Ten Commandments written on two tablets of stone, together with details for the construction of an Ark to contain the holy words, a Tabernacle to contain the Ark, and for prayers and sacrifice.

  Impatient at the delay, some of those waiting prevailed on Aaron to make them a Golden Calf to worship. When Moses came down the mountain he was furious. He broke the two tablets, destroyed the idol and had 3,000 offenders put to the sword.

  The design of the ‘Golden Calf’ that Aaron made for the Children of Israel, and that they danced around whilst waiting for Moses to descend from Mount Sinai (Exodus 32), was almost certainly based on the Theban idol Hathor, goddess of motherhood, gold, revelry, music and dancing. Moses spent a further forty days on the mountain collecting a duplicate set of tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Then he came down from the mountain:

  And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face sent forth beams; and they were afraid to come nigh to him.

  Exodus 34:30

  The Hebrew word translated as ‘beams of light’ can also mean ‘horns of plenty’. The correspondence between this description and the ‘beams of light’ radiating life and bounty from Akhenaten’s vision of God cannot be ignored.

  What was the language of the works Moses brought down from Mount Sinai? It is generally assumed to be Hebrew in much the form we have it today. But that just cannot be the case – Hebrew had not yet been invented.8

  Figure 8: Egyptian model for the ‘Golden Calf’. Divine cow inscribed on the back panel of the outer shrine found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, Luxor.

  At the time of the receiving of the Commandments at Sinai, therefore, no other form of writing, apart from Mesopotamian cuneiform or Egyptian hieroglyphs, would have been available to the Hebrews. It is therefore inevitable that the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai were inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and that in laying the foundations of the ‘Torah’ Moses would have written on papyrus in Egyptian hieratic.*32

  It was only after the Israelites settled in Canaan that they developed a paleo-Hebrew alphabet, probably based on Phoenician writing – at the time the Phoenicians lived along the coastline of the Northern part of Canaan. (Like the Phoenician alphabet, derived from ‘Ugarit’, paleo-Hebrew had nineteen letters, but it only crystallized into linear independent Hebrew writing in the middle of the ninth century BCE.)

  Figure 9: Time line of the Bible.

  THE ARK OF THE COVENANT

  The Tabernacle and the Ark, which were to house the Ten Commandments, are described in detail in the Old Testament, in Exodus 25:10–40; 26:1–36; 27:1–19; 36:8–38; and in Exodus 37.

  Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood, two and half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. He overlaid it with pure gold, inside and out; and he made a gold moulding for it round about. He cast four rings for it, for its four feet: two rings on one of its side walls and two rings on the other. He made poles of acacia wood, overlaid them with gold, and inserted the poles into the rings on the side walls of the ark for carrying the ark.

  He made a cover of pure gold, two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. He made two cherubim of gold; he made them of hammered work, at the two ends of the cover: one cherub at one end and the other cherub at the other end; he made the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at its two ends. The cherubim had their wings spread out above, shielding the cover with their wings. They faced each other; the faces of the cherubim were turned toward the cover.

  Exodus 37:1–9

  The description in Exodus 25 is very similar to that in Chapter 37, but is specific in saying that the poles are not removable. Some translations refer to the cover as a ‘mercy seat’. The word for ‘cherubim’ cannot be translated directly, but in Aggadic (oral Jewish tradition) they are conceived as having the body of an animal and the face of a human, rather like the Egyptian sphinx (with the face of a human and body of a lion), whilst in Ezekiel 1:5–14, they are winged creatures, calf-footed, with the body of a man and the face of a man, or lion, or ox, or eagle.

  The question of why the Ark, a supreme vehicle of Hebrew holiness, should be adorned by Egyptian images is perplexing and has never been answered satisfactorily. However, in the light of the comparisons to be discussed here, a plausible explanation for their existence becomes apparent.

  The mysterious figure of a creature with the body of a falcon with outstretched wings and the face of a human is seen in the head section of a coffin now in the British Museum. Inscribed on the cartouche, or name plate, of the coffin is the name ‘Amenophis ruler of Thebes’, who ruled from 1557 to 1530 BCE.

  A similar design can be found on the Canopic Chest of Akhenaten, and many of the treasures of Tutankhamun show the same motif of winged beings spreading their wings in a protective mode – the interior panel of the third shrine, the head of a sarcophagus, the innermost gold coffin. Plate 9 shows a fine example.

  When compared to a ‘portable chest’ found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, the next but one successor to Akhenaten,9 we find the Old Testament description of the Ark is remarkably similar. Tutankhamun’s chest measures 0.830m in length, width 0.605m, height 0.635m, with a ratio of length to height of almost exactly 1.33:1, whilst the Ark, also rectangular in shape, measures 1.275m long by 0.765m wide by 0.765m high, with a ratio of length to height of 1.66:1.10

  Although there are depictions of such portable chests in tombs of high officials, like Mereruka and Ankhmahor, at Saqqara, dating from c.2300 BCE, the Tutankhamun chest (see Plate 9) is the only one ever to have been discovered.

  The Tutankhamun chest is both a magnificent and practical piece of furniture, with ornate carvings and fine embellishments. The lid, or cover, and body of the chest are made from ebony with inner recessed panels of red cedarwood. The joints are close fitting mortise and tenon secured by pegs, or dovetailed. Each panel is bordered by alternate strips of ivory and polished ebony veneer. Solid bronze shoes support the weight of the chest on four curve-edged legs. On top of the cover is a large gilded knob that, together with a similar knob on the upper face of one end, forms a fixing point for a ‘tie’ to seal the lid. Each knob has the cartouche of Tutankhamun inset on the hieroglyph for gold.

  Because of its probable use as a treasure chest, the chest could not easily be carried by simple handles, and is fitted with four poles which can slide under the chest through two bronze rings. Collars on the ends of the poles prevent them from slipping forward. When the chest was placed on the ground, the poles could be pushed back until the opposite poles touched and were out of sight. The poles were therefore not removed, and could not be removed, when the chest was not in use. Compare Exodus 25:14–15:

  …then insert the poles into the rings on the side walls of the ark, for carrying the ark. The poles shall remain in the rings of the ark: they shall not be removed from it.

  When the portable chest of Tutankhamun is verbally described there can be little doubt that it is very similar to the Biblical description of the Ark.

  THE TABERNACLE

  The ‘Tabernacle’, or tent in which the Ark was to reside, is described in the Old Testament as being made of blue, purple and scarlet fine linen curtains, worked with cherubims. The curtains were held together by blue woollen loops and gold clasps. The roof of the Tabernacle was made from goats’ hair with a covering of tanned ramskins, with a covering of dolphin skins above. The sides of the Tabernacle comprised planks of acacia wood held together with tenons set in silver sockets. On the side walls there were centre bars held in gold rings on planks overlayed with gold. Within the Tabernacle was a curtained off section separating the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant stood.

  Inside the Tabernacle were also to be set a gold overlayed table with offering and libation vessels, a six-branched gold lampstand with a central stand (giving a total of seven lamps), and an altar
for sacrifices decorated with horns and overlayed with copper. The altar and table could be carried by poles similar in construction and design to those used for carrying the Ark.

  The custom of making offerings of animal sacrifices, libations, incense, and bread and cake, at a particular time, all have analogies with previous practice in Egyptian temples of worship. For example, in the Pyramid Texts and later inscriptions, we find:

  Your bread of worship is (in) its due time…

  The sacrificial bread and cake in its time…11

  The Tabernacle needed to be a size sufficient to house all its specified contents and yet be portable in structure. It measured approximately 15.3m x 5.1m x 5.1m high (30 cubits x 10 cubits x 10 cubits – measurements based on plank sizes (being ‘upright’ planks) and a cubit at 51cm). Biblical descriptions of the Tabernacle show that in the method of linking the wooden planks that formed the walls of the tent using bars, the curtaining, and the cover of cloth and skins, it was very similar to portable tent structures in use in Egypt at the time. They may have been similar to the ‘pavilions of life’ used for embalming. These were light tents made of rush matting and other materials that could be easily erected and transported or destroyed after use.

  The description of the cups on the lampstand (Exodus 37) is particularly reminiscent of the ‘Lotiform Chalice’ found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, now in the Cairo Museum collection, and seen in a faience plaque owned by Eton College, England. In its white lotus form this type of cup was used for drinking, but in a blue lily form it was used for ritualistic purposes.