165 x 20.4g = 3,366g
This is virtually identical to the total weight of gold (3,375g) found at the ‘Crock of Gold Square’ in Amarna. The correlation is so close in fact (within 0.28 per cent or 99.72 per cent probability of correctness) that, bearing in mind the technical difficulty of consistently pouring the liquid gold into the original standard moulds to the exact level mark, the degree of certainty that they were the same gold bars the Copper Scroll refers to is virtually 100 per cent.
Clearly, as Dr Frankfort surmised, the thief had melted down the 165 light gold bars to produce twenty-three ingots, of varying sizes and weights, from his crude sand moulds.
If this is what transpired, we would expect some of the new ingots to weigh a multiple of the ‘KK’ 20.4g unit weight, purely on statistical grounds, particularly the larger ingots. This is just the case, and the largest of the new ingots is almost exactly fourteen times the ‘KK’ unit weight. (The twenty-three gold ingots from ‘Crock of Gold Square’ are in the Cairo Museum, and many of the silver and jewellery items are on show in the British Museum, London).
So, our thief had found the hoards hidden at the sepulchred monument and from the Hall of Foreign Tribute and had found a nearby house to sort through his plunder. He was also busy melting down silver, approximating to 40 KK, and other jewellery, perhaps from the hoard at Column 1’s ascent of the staircase of refuge where there were forty Talents of silver.
This finding that the gold bars mentioned in the Copper Scroll weighed almost exactly the same as a hoard of gold bars discovered at El-Amarna in the 1920s is virtually certain proof that I have made a correct interpretation of the Copper Scroll. More significantly, it puts a lock at the end of a chain stretching through the centuries that links the priests of Akhetaten to the Essenes of Qumran – a twenty-four Carat gold link!
Are there any other ‘finds’ in the region of Akhetaten that back up this conclusion? When we come to Column 6 of the Copper Scroll we will discover there is indeed another ‘gold link’, and although not quite so clear cut as the above example, it is still very convincing.
My conclusion is further reinforced by an astonishing design characteristic of the jar in which the treasures from the ‘Crock of Gold Square’ were found. All the jars in which the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Qumran-Essenes were found were unusually large. They are unique to the Essene Community who must have made them, and they are not found elsewhere in Judaea or ancient Israel. They have a mottled white coloured exterior with a squat curved lid. They vary in outline shape, maximum diameter and height, but virtually all have a lid diameter of 15cm – exactly the same diameter as the ‘Crock of Gold’ jar found at Amarna (see Plate 11). There is also a marked similarity in base design and size, and in lid design.18
Not to worry that some of the treasure has been found. There are still sizeable amounts not yet located!
Returning to the Column 1 text, we are probably still in the city centre and the next description is of a building with a peristyle courtyard (i.e., surrounded by columns) with a large cistern and a floor covered with sediment. Assuming the building is the Great Temple, its outer part had a colonnaded court that must have contained the Great Cistern, supplying water to the Temple area and the eight bathing tanks that stood at the back of the Temple. In front of the upper opening: 900 Talents.
Still near the Seventh Year Store we are told to look somewhere in the Place of the Basins: there, at the bottom of the conduit that supplies the water, six cubits down from the edge of the northern basin we will find vestments and tithes*44 of treasure. The Garcia Martinez translation of the section refers to the second tithe made unclean, implying contact with the dead or a sacrifice, and therefore proximity to burial chambers or places where offerings of animals might have been prepared.
These basins, of which there were eight, stood outside the Lesser Sanctuary housing the ‘Holy of Holies’ or ‘Benben’ of the Great Temple and were supplied in series by a main conduit from the Great Cistern. As the Temple was oriented approximately east to west lengthways, the northern-most basin was probably the first one connected to the water conduit. The Garcia Martinez translation can be explained by the proximity of this part of the building to a preparation area.19 These preparations would also have required large amounts of cleansing water. It appears, therefore, that 9m from this northern-most basin in, or near, the supplying conduit, the treasures were hidden.
Finally in Column 1 there is a phrase that Garcia Martinez (and Al Wolters) translate as: in the plastered cistern of Manos. He has, perhaps, been influenced here by the Greek letters scattered in the text and comes up with a Greek name – which is not very helpful! Manos is a legendary character, portrayed in the film Manos the Hands of Fate who encounters Torgo – a type of monster with huge knees who has trouble walking.20 Somehow I think the translators were on the wrong track here!
John Allegro translated the critical phrase as Staircase of Refuge, and Geza Vermes has it as In the hole of the waterproofed refuge; these probably allude to the Temple and could possibly refer to the screened portico section of the building known as ‘The Sunshade’.21 But as we know, Dr Frankfort’s thief has already cleaned out this cache.
Column 2
At the beginning of Column 2 there are said to be forty-two Talents (KK), in the filled tank which is underneath the steps. John Allegro and Al Wolters disagree with Garcia Martinez and translate filled tank as in the salt pit…. Either way, the steps may well be those depicted on the walls of the Tomb of Panehesy and shown in Plate 18 of N. de G. Davies’ Rock Tombs of El Amarna – Part II. They are the steps up to the Great Altar of the Temple, which stood in the centre of an open courtyard and was approached by a flight of seventeen steps.
The space within the altar and under the steps was used for storing offerings, and if the offerings were meat they would have been preserved by salting. N. de G. Davies, however, takes this usage as only being ‘sculptured on the sides’ of the altar. If this assumption is correct then the space under the steps could well have provided accommodation for a water storage tank to supply the two lavers, or basins, which stood next to the altar. Geza Vermes’s translation of in the cistern of the esplanade then makes much more sense.
The steps leading up to the altar are illustrated in Figure 6 – the Egyptian tomb inscription showing the assumed figure of Joseph.
Column 2 continues, according to Garcia Martinez: In the cellar which is in Matia’s courtyard. Two Hebrew letters in the name ‘Matia’ overlap and appear to have been translated as a tav – the Hebrew letter for ‘t’. Separated, the letters would translate as raysh and vahv, the Hebrew letters for ‘r’ and ‘v’ respectively. This then gives a rather different translation for the name of the courtyard – ‘Marvyre’. There is one name that is remarkably close to this sound: ‘Meryre’ or ‘Meryra’ – who was the High Priest of Aten. His name has been identified from tomb inscriptions in the group of Northern Tombs at Amarna, described previously. If this translation is correct, there was a cistern in the cellar or lower part of his house in Akhetaten and hidden in it were seventy Talents of silver.
Meryra’s house in Akhetaten was located near to the Treasury. It stood at the corner of a large walled-in courtyard. Deeper excavation of the house, to locate its cellar, could pay dividends to the tune of seventy Talents (KK) of valuables. Attached to the estate, beside the stables, was an Eastern Garden with a small park of trees, and servicing these trees were two large walled-in water tanks with steps leading down their steeply sloping sides. The tank in the middle of this small grove of trees could also have concealed the seventy Talents (KK) of silver, submerged at the bottom of it.
It would also be worthwhile looking more closely at the tank that stood some 7.65m in front of the Eastern Gate of Meryra’s house, for vessels and ten Talents (KK) of valuables.
John Allegro, however, translates this section in Column 2 rather differently, as:
In the underground passage which is in the Court a woo
den barrel(?) and inside it a bath measure of untithed goods and seventy Talents of silver.
I consider that there are two plausible possibilities for this particular hoard of treasure, as, if John Allegro’s translations are correct (which I do tend to go along with), then this and the next series of descriptions all relate to treasure still hidden within the Great Temple at Akhetaten. John Allegro’s translation of untithed goods also implies a location within a Temple environment. The seventy Talents of silver, in John Allegro’s version, were therefore hidden in an underground passage of the Temple Court.
The front and back halves of the Great Temple, shown in a modified cross-sectional drawing on the west wall of the Tomb of Panehesy, clearly show activity in subterranean passages, below the line of the Temple. However, these underground passages only appear to emerge in the upper, back-half part of the Temple, in the Court of the Inner Sanctuary, close to where the King sits by the altar.22 Here, no doubt, was a need for water and other offerings to be ‘bucketed up’ to the Sanctuary that, in itself, was difficult to reach and heavily secured.
The next three locations from Column 2 are of ten Talents of metal in a cistern 19 cubits (9.7m) in front of the Eastern Gate to the Temple (Garcia Martinez says 15 cubits or 7.65m); 600 pitchers of silver in the cistern under the Eastern wall of the Temple near what was the Great Threshold; and twenty-two Talents of treasure buried in a hole 2m deep, in the Northern corner of the pool in the Eastern part of the Temple. Archaeological work has shown that the Great Temple may only have had one gate, and that was an Eastern one. I take this as further confirmation that we are at the right Temple. The Copper Scroll descriptions for the above three locations are therefore fairly unambiguous, although there were two Eastern Gates – one outer and one inner. The inner Eastern Gate opened onto the Greater Sanctuary, where there were two lavers immediately in front of the Gate, which would have needed a water supply. It would seem prudent to re-excavate the area between 7.65m and 9.7m going inwards from both gates.
Column 3
Still in the Great Temple at Amarna, Column 3 pinpoints 609 gold and silver vessels, comprising sacrificial bowls, sprinkling basins and libation containers 9 cubits (4.6m) under the Southern corner of the courtyard, and forty Talents of silver at a depth of 16 cubits (8.16m) under the Eastern corner of the courtyard. Unfortunately the Copper Scroll is too damaged at this point to tell to which Court of the Temple is being referred. It would therefore be sensible to excavate to the recommended depths at the Southern and Eastern corners of all eight courts and forecourts within the Temple!
Continuing in Column 3 there is a very interesting phrase: In the tunnel which is in Milcham, to the North: tithe vessels and my garments.
John Allegro translates Milcham as some funerary structure. My garments, which are elsewhere also called vestments, seems to strongly indicate that the writer of the original Copper Scroll was a priest, and probably the High Priest. This deduction ties in with the description of tithes and the Temple-related locations we have isolated. It could also help unravel the last six Greek letters in the text that I have not yet deciphered:
Δ I # T P # Σ Κ
The Puzzle of the Remaining Greek Letters
Σ Κ are the last of the Greek letters to appear in the first four columns that relate to Egypt. Perhaps these two letters are also the missing ones from the very end of the document, which I would expect to have been signed off on behalf of the High Priest. Σ Κ would then have been the most appropriate Greek abbreviation for the Qumran copyist to have used for the traditional name of the High Priest of the Jewish Temple…Zadok. Zedek, from which the word Zadok was derived, also meant priest in ancient Egyptian.*45
What we also have is a title closely associated with the Qumran-Essenes. The connection of ‘Zadok’ to the Qumran community was made well before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Genizah fragments**46 found in Cairo in 1896, confirming the affinity between the two sources.23 These Genizah fragments have variously been referred to as ‘The Zadokite Fragments’24 or ‘Cairo-Damascus’ texts, and it has been generally accepted that the Qumran-Essenes were a ‘Zadokite Priestly Sect’.25 In their own writings the Community refer to themselves as the ‘Sons of Zadok’26 and some interpreters have equated their leader – ‘The Teacher of Righteousness’ – to ‘The Zadokite High Priest’27 with a sequential role for the ‘Sons of Zadok’ as guardians of the Ark and the Commandments, going back at least to the time of Aaron. Column 7 begins: Priest dig for 9 cubits…
The four Greek letters that still remain, and which may not be complete, are somewhat puzzling
Δ I # T P
To try and solve the problem I again approached it from the end – using the clues I already had to work backward towards the answer. On the basis that the original document from which the Copper Scroll was copied was written by the High Priest of Akhenaten, and from those texts I had deduced that some of the locations described were in the Great Temple of Akhetaten, I felt that the four remaining undeciphered letters could well be a more general reference to the location of the Great Temple.
Going back to the original text, only the Δ T P are clear and unambiguous. The second letter, which has been taken to be the Greek capital letter ‘Iota’, is nothing more than a tiny ‘floating’ vertical line. It could quite easily have been part of a capital Greek ‘Lambda’. The four letters would then come out as pronouncing the word: DELTRE.
If, however, the Qumran-Essene scribes wished to use a Greek word for ‘Temple’ there are few more appropriate than the most famous Greek temple that would have been within their purview – DELPHI. For the ancient Greeks, this was the centre of the world and was once the site of an oracle of the goddess Gaea, subsequently replaced by that of Apollo and Dionysus.
If the fourth letter had been a Greek ‘Phi’ this explanation would have been a lot more convincing. So possibly the four letters do simply refer to the DELTA area.
Going back to Column 3, the location for tithe vessels and my vestments is at the entrance to a funerary structure, beneath its western corner. The scroll goes on to describe a tomb to the north-east of the structure where there are thirteen Talents of valuables buried 1.5m below the corpse.
We appear to be back at the Northern Tombs. The thirteen Talents are described by John Allegro as being in the tomb which is in the funerary structure, in the shaft, in the north. If the original scribe is the High Priest Meryra, talking about his vestments, we must be at his tomb and looking for a shaft. John Allegro’s translation seems to be correct, as directly beyond Meryra’s tomb, some 61m to the north, there is indeed a deep burial shaft on the summit of the ridge. Although this shaft has been plundered, it could pay dividends to dig further down this shaft, well below where a corpse would have lain.
The vessels and vestments are therefore located at the western corner of the entrance to Meryra’s tomb.
Column 4
Unfortunately a number of words are missing in the first part of Column 4, and we can only interpolate the textual description of where fourteen Talents are hidden. We are directed to:
The large (great) cistern in the…in the pillar of the North…
We seem to be back in town now, or near it, as the next passage refers to fifty-five Talents of silver in a man-made channel. We can only speculate that the Great Temple and the Great Palace needed a Great Cistern to supply them both with water. If this is the case, then there are fourteen Talents in the hole of a pillar near the Great Cistern of the Palace or Temple at Amarna. The fifty-five Talents of silver are 20.9m up the channel from the Great Cistern.
Further out from town there are two jugs filled with silver, between two buildings [possibly oil presses] in the valley of Aton. They are buried midway between the two oil presses at a depth of 1.53m.
Still near presses, but this time ones used for wine, and in the clay tunnel [or pit] underneath it there are 200 Talents of silver. The location of these ‘presses’ is discussed more fully in Column
10.
Penultimately, in the eastern tunnel to the North of the Store House of the Seventh Year produce: Seventy Talents of silver. Perhaps this is the tunnel that ran east to west under the front section of the Great Temple, or might even have connected the storehouses with the Temple.
For the final paragraph of Column 4 we appear to be in a different valley:
In the dam sluice [burial mound?] of the Valley of Secacah, 1 cubit down there are twelve Talents of silver
Column 5
Column 5 also talks about Secacah, and it is tempting to associate this translation with the Old Testament reference where the land of Canaan is being allotted to the tribes of Israel. Judah are to take control of land:
In the wilderness, Beth-arabah, Middin, and Secacah, and Nibshan, and the city of Salt, and En-gedi; six cities with their villages.
Joshua 15:61–62 (my italics)
There is archaeological evidence that Khirbet Qumran was occupied in the Israelite period as early as the fifth century BCE,28 and that Secacah might have been the ancient name for Qumran. (The site was apparently deserted between 600 BCE and the time of the arrival of the Qumran-Essenes, c.200 BCE.) Unfortunately the exact whereabouts of ancient Secacah is unknown and in his search for the city John Allegro, like many others, was unable to locate it.
However, even though there is also an adjacent translated reference to Solomon’s trench, I am not convinced we have yet left Egypt. John Allegro, in fact, annotates his translation of Solomon’s reservoir (or trench), which occurs in conjunction with the word ‘Secacah’, as a technical description of the shape and function of this type of reservoir. If we are still in Egypt, ‘Secacah’ could easily be to the north of Akhetaten, at ‘Sekkara’, or Saqqara.
The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran Page 22