The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

  Nevertheless, I calculate that an enormous amount of treasure is still just waiting to be excavated. Apart from the monetary value, items such as ritual vestments, unguents and scrolls could add considerably to our knowledge of the society that produced them.

  An indication of the content and weight of treasure still to be recovered is as follows:

  Table 5: Indication of treasure that remains to be discovered

  Type of treasure remaining to be discovered Weight according to new interpretation

  Gold 38.74kg

  Gold vessels 1 lot

  Silver vessels 3 lots

  Precious metals 42.68kg

  Tithe vessels 6 lots

  Ritual vestments 2 lots

  Jars/pots of silver 16.92kg

  Consecrated offerings 3 lots

  Unguents/oils 1 lot

  Scrolls 3

  It is difficult to estimate the material value of the precious metal and jewellery that remains to be discovered, but at today’s prices, bearing in mind that much of the material is unspecified, a conservative estimate would put it at between $5,000,000 and $10,000,000. Actual values could multiply this figure ten-fold.

  The region of Elephantine and around Lake Tana, in Ethiopia, are other likely venues for further researches!

  Some of the treasures of the Copper Scroll have now, I believe, been positively identified. The probable locations of many of the remaining treasures have also been detailed.

  Exciting as these discoveries are, it is far from the end of the story. There are vastly more significant and profound implications to be discerned as a consequence of these discoveries. The Copper Scroll now underlines a connection from the religion of the Qumran-Essenes to the religion of Akhenaten and Egypt. This connection has been suggested by Sigmund Freud, in his book Moses and Monotheism, and hinted at by Jeffrey Katzenburg in his film The Prince of Egypt. The further, ‘hard’ evidence I have gathered together in the final chapters of this book confirms, I believe, that connnection.

  Figure 22: Possible sites where, according to the Copper Scroll, treasures still remain awaiting to be discovered.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE LEGACY OF AKHENATEN

  Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt.

  And in a short space the tribes of living things are changed, and like runners hand on the torch of life.

  Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II, line 771

  I believe that I have now established beyond the balance of reasonable doubt that the early Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob), Joseph and Moses were all heavily influenced by the religion and culture of early Egypt – particularly that of the Amenhotep family and Pharaoh Akhenaten.

  The endorsement of the Copper Scroll’s connection between a sect at Qumran that guarded the scroll’s secrets inherited over 1,300 years earlier, and Akhenaten, can leave little doubt that there was a commonality between the two communities. That connection extended to religious beliefs that, in turn, affected the formative principles of the three great monotheistic religions of the world.

  The connections between Akhenaten and the Qumran-Essenes are too numerous to be mere coincidence, and there are more to come!

  When Akhenaten died, attempts were made by other Egyptians to remove all traces of his inscriptions and of his teachings. The monotheistic ‘torch of light’ that the followers of Akhenaten picked up was eventually to become bifurcated – carried by the priestly heirs of Akhenaten in Egypt, and by Moses and the Hebrews into the deserts of Sinai.

  Akhenaten’s religious revolution left an indelible mark on the development of early Judaism, and the record of those early, formative years has been preserved for us in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  As descendent authors and guardians of the holy texts, it therefore would not be surprising to find characteristics of Akhenaten’s beliefs and other Egyptian influences evident amongst the Essenes, even after so long a period of immersion in a foreign culture and a refined Judaism that had cleansed itself of as many foreign influences as possible. If my assumptions are correct, it should be possible to detect a greater Egyptian influence within the closed sect than was apparent in the common body of Judaism. And we do.

  In fact the Qumran-Essenes exhibited many of the characteristic beliefs of the Atenist priests that came out of Egypt – modified by time, but still in a very recognizable form. Their strong sense of an inherited mission, mysterious customs and exclusivity can all be fully explained in terms of their sacred connection to the priests of Akhenaten.

  As well as the influences carried over from the Akhenaten period, there are also ‘overlaying commonalities’ of more general Egyptian effects, garnered from across the spectrum of Egyptian paganism and social practice.

  Three main subjects remain on the agenda. I have presented the weighty evidence linking Akhenaten and the Qumran-Essenes, mainly through the unravelling of the Copper Scroll, and I will now delve further into the body of the Dead Sea Scrolls to see what additional evidence can be found from them. I will then take a more general look at how many of these ‘overlaying commonalities’ from Egypt have entered the conscious and subconscious mind of the western world and its religions. Finally, there are two loose ends relating to the mysterious pseudo-Jewish communities of priestly-soldiers at Elephantine, in Southern Egypt, and to the Falasha Jews of Lake Tana in Ethiopia, that need tying up.

  These two latter locations are, as I have already suggested, possible places where residual treasures of the Copper Scroll might still be found.

  ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE FROM THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS

  The contents and format of the Dead Sea Scrolls, commentaries by contemporary writers and the findings of archaeologists at the Qumran ruins provide a vast number of threads from which to weave a tapestry depicting the lives and thinking of these hermit-like people. At the time of Jesus they numbered about 4,000 across Judaea, with some 200 resident and working in the area of Qumran at any one time.

  They talked in terms of apocalyptic events and of a ‘last days’ eschatological philosophy. Their ‘War Scroll’ speaks of the final battle in which two Messiahs – one kingly, one priestly – will triumph. Their way of life was geared to preparing themselves for this great event. They were the ‘righteous ones’ whose mission was to preserve and protect the true faith.

  Excavations at Qumran have shown that there was a settlement there between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE, shortly before the Babylonian exile. This was destroyed during the fall of the Southern Kingdom. Several centuries later, around 150 BCE, it was resettled by the Essene Community and remained occupied until a severe earthquake in 31 BCE badly damaged the buildings, causing the inhabitants to leave Qumran for a short period.2

  No-one seems to know quite where they went in the interim period between 31 and 4 BCE when they returned. One suggestion is that the Qumran-Essenes journeyed to Damascus because the city finds mention in their texts. But this seems very unlikely. Earlier, I proposed an association with Damascus during the previous Babylonian exile, which seems a much more plausible explanation for its mention.

  The archaeological evidence finds them returned to Qumran at a peculiarly coincidental date. The Community that was to affect so markedly the teachings of Jesus returned to its home in the year 4 BCE, the year now accepted by most scholars as that of Jesus’s birth. Those writers that attempt to make close links between the Qumran-Essenes and Jesus might even postulate that they went to visit Jesus at Bethlehem in the meantime, but there is no evidence to that effect. The Community site was eventually destroyed in 68 CE by the Romans.

  COMMUNITY RULES AND LIFESTYLE

  A passage from Josephus gives an insight into the daily lives of the Qumran-Essenes:

  Before the sun is up they utter no word on mundane matters, but offer to him certain prayers, which have been handed down from their forefathers, as though entreating him to rise. They are then dismissed by their superiors to the various crafts in which they
are severally proficient and are strenuously employed until the fifth hour, when they again assemble in one place and, after girding their loins with linen cloths, bathe their bodies in cold water. After this purification, they assemble in a private apartment which none of the uninitiated is permitted to enter; pure now themselves, they repair to the refectory, as to some sacred shrine. When they have taken their seats in silence, the baker serves out the loaves to them in order, and the cook sets before each one plate with a single course. Before meat, the priest says a grace; thus at the beginning and the close they do homage to God as the bountiful giver of life. Then laying aside their raiment, as holy vestments, they again betake themselves to their labours until evening. On their return they sup in like manner.

  The Jewish War II

  Some of the Essenes’ main characterizing features were that they did not recognize the Temple practice in Jerusalem, they held all goods in common (a theme picked up in the New Testament, Acts 2:44) and disapproved of sacrifices. They stressed prayer, study, ennoblement of the spirit, and ritual purity and cleanliness through the purification of bathing. They maintained an hierarchical structure of discipline, had a different calendar from the general Jewish population and therefore celebrated their festivals at different times from the rest of the population.3

  Our knowledge of the behavioural requirements of the members of the Community throws intriguing light on what lay behind their thinking and beliefs. Much of this knowledge comes from a Dead Sea Scroll that deals with Community Rules. It has been identified as the final part of the Damascus Document and is corroborated by another version from the Egyptian Genizah Collection.4 The piece deals with a disciplinary convocation of the Council of the Essenes that is addressed by ‘the Priest commanding the many’. His role can be discerned (from analysis of both documents), as that of Head of the Community, the final arbiter of the law, the knower of all the ‘secrets’ and the senior priest. He is referred to variously as the ‘Mebaqqer’ or ‘Hamerverkah’ – ‘The Merverkyah’. How long this title had existed is not certain, but in sound it has a remarkable resemblance in the role to the name of the High Priest of the Great Temple to Aten, at Akhetaten. His name can be found inscribed on his tomb at Amarna and transliterates as ‘Mervyre’. The Council are the ‘sons of Levi’, the priestly strain of Israel from which the High Priest would be drawn.

  Curious as to why documents found in Egypt should corroborate scrolls found by the Dead Sea, the next step in my journey took me to Cambridge, courtesy of two rather eccentric Scottish Presbyterian ladies – Mrs Agnes Lewis and Mrs Margaret Gibson.

  The Genizah Fragments

  It was customary in Victorian times (and earlier in the eighteenth century) for British gentry to make the ‘Grand Tour’ of famous foreign landmarks and historical sites. Our two inveterate ladies, however, were more than just casual tourists and made themselves learned in the history of the Middle East. Their journeys took them off the beaten track, ferreting out the mysteries of the Biblical lands. One such mission led them to an obscure part of Fostat, Old Cairo, into the dingy dim interior of a thousand-year-old synagogue named ‘Ben Ezra’. High in the wall of a back area of the building they discovered a ‘Genizah’ – a place of safe-keeping for documents. There they found a cache of papyrus, vellum and paper, unparalleled in importance and comparable in significance to that of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They carried some of the fragments back to England and, in May 1896, Agnes Lewis brought them to the attention of Dr Solomon Schechter, Reader in Talmudic Literature at Cambridge University (who later became President of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America).

  Dr Schechter’s excitement can be imagined. Realizing the possible ramifications of the find, he enlisted the moral and financial support of Dr Charles Taylor, Master of St John’s College, Cambridge. Together they journeyed to the synagogue in Cairo and were given permission to bring all the remaining fragments back to England.5

  Why was this discovery so significant, particularly in relation to the Damascus Scroll? The Collection has within it an enormous archive of religious and secular documents, much written between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE; some dating back to 600 CE and others up to the nineenth century. They illumine Jewish religious experience of these periods and refer back to Biblical times. There are hand-written letters and manuscripts by some of the most influential Hebrew scholars of the Middle Ages, including Moses Maimonides and Jehudah Halevi; Zadokite documents; ancient liturgy; poetry; music; and letters from Palestine, Babylonia and Spain.6

  Some of the oldest papyrus documents are pages from the Old Testament Book of Kings and Psalms. They are written in Greek, and are copies of the second-century Aquila version of the Bible.

  Among many Hebrew texts is a tenth century CE copy of the ‘Wisdom of Ben Sira’, which dates back to the second century BCE. It contains poetic syllogism or reasoning, and proverbs that advocate a life of moderation. The texts were translated into Greek by Ben Sira’s grandson in 132 BCE and incorporated into the Apocrypha as Ecclesiasticus. The Hebrew text of this work was previously thought lost, and therefore it was not included in the Hebrew Bible. Authenticity of the Genizah copy was later confirmed by its similarity to finds amongst scrolls excavated from Masada, in Israel. Although basically the same, there are differences in the Genizah text when compared to the Greek from which our modern Apochryphal Ecclesiasticus is translated.

  The fragments of Jewish prayers and commentaries prove, as the Director of the Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge, Dr Stefan Reif (now Professor of Medieval Hebrew Studies at Cambridge University), put it: ‘that there had been at the least an intermittent active Jewish presence in Israel, since biblical times right through the early centuries up to the time of the Crusaders in the thirteenth century CE.’

  What was most significant, for my line of enquiry, was a reference amongst the Genizah fragments to the mysterious Zadokite brotherhood of scribes that we now know as the Qumran-Essenes, some forty years before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  The Genizah contained two copies of the so-called Damascus Document, similar to ones found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls. How this document, which was obviously a sectarian text peculiar to the Qumran-Essenes, could turn up in a Cairo synagogue 2,000 years after it was thought to have been composed has proved, as one can imagine, somewhat of a conundrum. The conventional explanation is that a version was discovered in the caves of Qumran around 800 CE and somehow found its way to Egypt.

  This idea is based on the contents of a Syriac letter sent by Timotheus I, Patriarch of Seleucia (726–819 CE), to Sergius Metropolitan of Elam (who died c.805 CE).7 The letter refers to the finding, by an Arab, of Hebrew and other scrolls in a rock-dwelling near Jericho.8 According to the letter’s contents, Jews from Jerusalem came out to study the documents and found them to be ancient books of the Old Testament, together with over 200 Psalms. There is no known reference in Jewish literature to the find that, considering the apparent excitement amongst those who rushed out of Jerusalem when they heard about it, and its obvious importance, is rather surprising.

  The supposition that somehow the Damascus Document of the Cairo Genizah was a later copy of the Dead Sea Scroll version of the Damascus Scroll, which also happened to be hidden in caves near the Dead Sea, and this latter document (or a copy of it), eventually found its way from this find in the eighth century to Cairo, seems rather fanciful. Especially as the Timotheus episode makes no mention of the Damascus Document, which would have been one of the more significant finds, and that the dates of the Genizah Damascus Documents (there are two differing versions of the original composition) are tenth and twelfth centuries CE respectively.

  From the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls versions and the Cairo Genizah versions (which collectively are generally referred to as the CD (Cairo-Damascus) scrolls), it is apparent that the original Damascus Document may have been written soon after the destruction of the First Temple, from its references to Damascus and King Nebuchad
nezzar. But there are also ‘exhortations’ on how to obey God’s laws that seem to date from much earlier times.

  How the Damascus Documents found in the eighth century actually made their way to Cairo is a matter of conjecture; I am not convinced by the conventional explanation.

  One possible scenario that gets over these difficulties goes like this: the Damascus and Psalms scrolls found in the hills near Jericho in the eighth century CE, were originally written by the Qumran-Essenes and were subsequently lost. We know that the Qumran-Essenes wrote copies of the Damascus document and knew more psalms than the canonical 150. The Damascus scrolls found in Cairo were copied from much earlier examples of the text written shortly after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, which found their way to Heliopolis (Cairo) through the interaction of residual Atenist priests at Heliopolis with the old strand of priestly guardians in Judah from whom the Qumran-Essenes were descended.

  We know that Heliopolis was the first place where an Atenist temple was built and that it was likely to have remained a centre for secretive monotheistic worship.

  THE MESSIANIC ‘SOLDIERS OF LIGHT’

  Buffeted from desert to Temple and Temple to desert by the sandstorms of time, the ‘Priestly Essenes’ had seen their sacred place of worship desecrated by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE. After returning from exile in Babylon, they had preserved their beliefs and way of life and eventually found sanctuary in the forbidding reaches of the Dead Sea.