The Mystery of the Copper Scroll of Qumran

by Robert Feather

  As guardians of the original covenant, the Qumran-Essenes were convinced that they were the only true Israelites and that all other Jews were in the wrong. Their messianic fervour foresaw two Messiahs coming to save them: one Kingly and the other Priestly, with Aaronic connections – i.e., a saviour dating back to the times in Egypt.

  The Dead Sea Scroll texts written in the third century BCE referring to a King as ‘Son of God’ are, as Lawrence Schiffman, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, asserts: ‘the statement of a notion already in existence, and not a reference to Jesus’.31 This notion is entirely consistent with the concept of the King, or Pharaoh, being the appointed human representative of God on earth, and of his High Priest being the second of the Messiahs they awaited.

  The imagery of a Messiah who ‘…will extend his hands to the bread’, described in the Messianic Rule of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is unmistakably reminiscent of the extended hands of Aten towards the bread of offering. The Community’s conviction of a future that was ordained confirms their overt belief in predestination, in direct contradiction of Jewish teaching at the time and of today. Needless to say, belief in predestination was the current canon in the religion of Akhenaten.

  Suddenly a lot of other things fall into place. Many references in the New Testament not only allude to the coming of the Messiah, but state that the Messiah took an active part in the Old Testament. Professor A. Hanson, of Hull University, who wrote Jesus Christ in the Old Testament in the 1960s, put it more strongly: ‘Paul (and John) frequently perplexes us by apparently throwing Christ’s activity back into the Old Testament’.32 Perhaps they are merely reflecting an older tradition that one Messiah had already been on earth.

  Polygamy, The Gander and The Goose

  The rules applying to the Qumran-Essenes on marriage are spelled out in the Damascus Document. They prohibit a man to take two wives and positively reject polygamy. The practice is condemned by the Document as unacceptable fornication. (King David, c.1000 BCE, is exonerated apparently because he was not privy to the laws, which were kept hidden in the Ark of the Covenant.)

  Marriage between uncle and niece is not forbidden by the Mosaic Law and seems to have been quite acceptable in normative society, but marriage between aunt and nephew is forbidden. What was sauce for the gander was not sauce for the goose. The Damascus Document, however, maintains that the Law applies equally to males and females, and that both connubia are forbidden.33

  The Temple Scroll of the Essenes also confirms this sanction and makes it clear that whilst marriage after the divorce or death of a first wife is acceptable, polygamy is not.

  The attitude of the Egyptians, particularly the Pharaohs pre- and post- Akhenaten, appears to be rather similar to that of the Kings of Canaan. They were polygamous and could take numerous wives, for sexual pleasure and to procreate the dynastic line.

  Akhenaten appears to have taken a different stance – a stance echoed by the Qumran-Essenes. As far as is known he only had one wife to bear his children throughout his life, and there is no mention of another sexual relationship in Egyptian chronicles (although there is mention in the Tell-Amarna Letters of a ‘diplomatic’ wife). The circumstantial evidence that he practised and preached monogamy can be discerned from the fact that whilst his wife, Nefertiti, produced six daughters for him (there was possibly a seventh), he did not ‘do’ a Henry VIII and get rid of her to obtain a son. Nor did he take additional wives – despite the inevitable pressure to ensure the continuity of his dynastic line through a son.

  A Second Torah?

  It is amongst the Essene writings on marriage that further strong evidence can be found of the extreme antiquity of the texts of these ‘Guardians of the Ark of the Covenant’. We come back to the enigmatic statement in the Damascus Document that King David was apparently unaware of the ‘hidden laws’ that related to marriage and other divine injunctions. How could it be that the general populace, many of the priests and the King of his people were not acquainted with a huge chunk of divine writ?

  Carbon dating and palaeographic comparisons place the writing of the earliest Dead Sea Scrolls at 300, possibly 350, BCE. The Damascus texts, which apparently existed at the time but were not available to King David, make the link from these dates back to the time of David, and to the time of Joshua before the entry of the Hebrews into Canaan, c.1200 BCE, as the following passage reveals:

  And about the Prince it is written: he should not multiply wives to himself. However, David had not read the sealed book of the law which was in the ark, for it had not been opened in Israel since the day of the death of Eleazar and of Jehoshua, and Joshua and the elders who worshipped Ashtaroth had hidden the copy until Zadok’s entry into office.

  Damascus Document, Column 5

  The Torah confirms the Damascus texts in relation to David’s ‘taking of more concubines and wives’ (II Samuel 5) and also tends to confirm the implication that the contents of the Ark were, at that time, privy to a select priestly line only and not available to David. II Samuel 6 describes how the Ark of the Lord was brought from Baalim, but that David was initially afraid to go near it, or to bring it to the tent he had prepared for it in the City of David. The Ark was left in the keeping of Obed-edom until David changed his mind.

  The references to Baalim, which indicate an association to idolatrous worship of Baal, and to Ashtaroth, a favoured god of the Amenhotep faction, also support the contention that David had not yet seen, or taken to heart, the contents of the Ark and had allowed a degree of backsliding amongst his people.

  Even with the Ark of the Covenant in his possession it is not clear that David had an understanding of all the laws. Later Biblical writings also confirm the assertion of the Qumran-Essenes that the priests kept at least some of the Torah hidden from the people. This can be clearly deduced from the Second Book of Kings, and to an event that, in itself, led to profound changes in the way Judaism was practised.

  And it came to pass in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, that the King sent Shaphan the son of Azaliah, the son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the house of the Lord, saying, ‘Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may sum the silver which is brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the door have gathered of the people…’ …And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, ‘I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.’ And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.

  II Kings 22:3–4, 8

  What on earth was going on here? Does this mean that one of the Five Books of Moses, apparently given to him on Mount Sinai, had been lost for at least 400 years? You may well ask, but that is exactly what the Bible is saying. It means someone or some persons were privy to a different and sometimes contradictory, version of the laws and commandments, versions which may have been as old as 1200 BCE but also incorporated new ideas developed around 600 BCE.

  Alternatively, this Book was fully originated around 600 BCE, and did not exist before. Because this ‘newly found book’ is written in a style consistent with the seventh century, it is believed by most scholars to have been a product of that era, developed by its authors to put across their own contemporary programme of views and given authority by pretending it was a work of Moses.

  The Scroll that Shaphan read and brought to the King was almost certainly, in essence, what we now know as the Book of Deuteronomy. When King Josiah, who was in the eighteenth year of his reign in 621 BCE, read the Scroll he immediately realized its significance, decreed that sacrifices should henceforth only be performed at Jerusalem and immediately stopped sacrifices everywhere else in Israel. According to II Kings, he destroyed all the other shrines and altars sited on high places, at Beth-El, Ahaz, Carmel and on the hills around Jerusalem, and had all the associated priests put to death. (It appears he left Mount Gerizim untouched.)

  This measure had the effect of controlling sacrifices that, up until that time, had been subject to local cultic abuse and pagan practices – wo
rship of Baal, Astarte, and even possible child sacrifice to Moloch, by earlier Kings in times of dire trouble. (All sacrifices within Judaism were finally ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE.)34

  We can date the finding of the Scroll of Deuteronomy by King Josiah reasonably precisely to 621 BCE from excavations at Megiddo, where the King was slain by the Egyptian Pharaoh Nechoh in 608 BCE.

  The conclusion must be that a priestly group, which I believe can only have been the predecessors of the Qumran-Essenes, were aware that David was in the wrong in 1000 BCE, and that their ‘Second Torah’ held additional and sometimes contradictory details of the Pentateuch that derived from well before 1000 BCE.

  There is not enough space in this book to consider all the detailed similarities that exist between the writings and prayers of Akhenaten and those of the Qumran-Essenes (and on into Hebrew, Christian and Muslim texts). It will suffice to cite the generality of themes running throughout both varieties of texts. Themes of reverence to light, truth, peace, predestination, ritual washing, and admonitions against the forces of darkness, lying, insincerity, serpents and vipers.

  One specific example illustrates the flavour of these similarities. The Dead Sea Scrolls record ‘daily prayers’ that the Qumran-Essenes followed every morning and every evening, as did the priests of Akhenaten.

  Longer Prayer found at the tomb of Panehesy at El-Amarna, Egypt35 Daily Prayers of the Essenes, found at Cave 4 at Qumran36

  Homage to Thee! And at the rising of the sun . . .

  Thou dawnest in the sky and shinest in to the vault of the heavens,

  the morning on the horizon of heaven, they shall bless.

  coming in peace the Lord of Peace.

  All mankind lives at sight of Thee, They shall say: Blessed be the

  the whole land assembles at Thy rising; God of (Israel). Today He

  their hands salute Thy dawning. renews in the fourth [gate of light ...] for us the rule

  [...][...] teen [...] the heat of the [sun] when it crosses

  [. . . with the streng]th of His powerful hand

  [peace be with you].37

  We see in 4QFlorilegium, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Cave 4 discussed by Professor George Brooke in his extensive work on the subject ‘Exegesis at Qumran’,38 another reference to light, in Fragments 6–7:

  They shall cause your laws to shine before Jacob and your laws before Israel.

  THE LINKS FROM AKHENATEN TO THE QUMRAN-ESSENES

  It is now possible to summarize the essential and exclusive elements that connect the Qumran-Essenes to the priests of Akhenaten. We find that the Qumran-Essenes:

  believed God’s commandments predated Sinai

  did not recognize the Jewish Oral Laws and had their own version of the Laws

  rejected the conventional Temple cult priests

  rejected any form of necromancy

  rejected polygamy

  rejected, at least temporarily, ritual animal sacrifice

  venerated light, calling themselves the ‘Sons of Light’

  followed a solar calendar and recognized ‘Jubilees’ related to the sun’s movements

  only recognized four festival days

  believed in predestined fate

  wanted the Temple to be the same design as the Temple at Akhetaten

  included reference to Akhenaten and Aten in their texts

  called their leader by a similar name to that of the High Priest of Aten, i.e., ‘Merkabah’ for ‘Meryra’

  used numerous Egyptian phrases and literal forms, particularly those extant at the time of Akhenaten

  possessed a detailed description of the location of the treasures of Akhetaten, engraved on a Copper Scroll.

  All of these elements, apart from the penultimate one, were quite contrary to the practices and beliefs of mainstream Judaism that the Essenes were surrounded by.

  Taken en masse, it is evident that the Qumran-Essenes were aware of and pursued a number of characteristic religious practices and rituals, many in fundamental contravention to mainstream Judaism, that can only be explained as being derived from practices and beliefs of the Egyptian Akhenaten period.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PHYSICAL, MATERIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL LINKS BETWEEN QUMRAN AND AKHETATEN

  Historians and archaeologists have noted many differences in various technical aspects of the scrolls’ manufacture between techniques used by the Qumran-Essenes and those of mainstream Jewish society, and in the design of structures and other objects used at Qumran. These differences have just not had any satisfactory explanation. Virtually all of these ‘mechanical’ anomalies can, however, be explained by the connections that I have made between the Qumran-Essenes and the Egypt of Akhenaten.

  WRITING MEDIA

  The majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on leather or skins, except for a few fragments written on papyrus or pieces of ceramic and, of course, one engraved on copper. Papyrus was not used in the Holy Land until around 190 BCE. Prior to that time writing was on potsherds (pieces of broken pottery); one assumes there was some use of leather, but no examples are known from Israel prior to the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Examples from outside Israel of the use of leather date back to 2000 BCE Egypt.1

  Ruled Lines

  An intriguing characteristic seen in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls (notably the Commentary on the Book of Habakkuk) is the use of vertically ruled lines to separate columns, and horizontal ruling. It is extremely rare for papyrus (or leather) to be ruled horizontally in this manner, as the lines of fibre are sufficient guide to writing in straight lines. Ruled Aramaic or Hebrew papyri are virtually unknown prior to 68 BCE.2 There are however examples of Egyptian papyri ruled both vertically and horizontally, for example in the British Museum’s collection from the ‘Book of the Dead’.

  The Red Ink Mystery

  Another link can be made from the strange existence of apparently random passages and words written with red ink in three of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Most notable are the examples in the scroll 4QNumbers, shown in Eugene Ulrich and Frank Moore Cross’s contribution to Discoveries in the Judaean Desert VII, Qumran Cave 4.3 However, the significance of this phenomenon has not yet been determined.4 The practice was unknown in Israel or in any other country, except ancient Egypt.5 Coincidentally the main source of red pigment in Egypt was from the Elephantine region, and one can conjecture a connection between the Jewish Community at Ab, utilizing the local red ink, and a harking back to this old usage by the Essene Community at Qumran.

  Analyses using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) have shown that the inks used in writing the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls were all based on carbonaceous pigment – either lampblack or soot, with traces of copper, lead and bromine6 – not unusual for the period or location of the scribal activity. What is surprising, however, is their use of red ink to highlight sections of some of the scrolls – a practice unknown in Judaea at the time, or previously. XRF analysis has shown the red ink to contain mercury in the form of its sulphide compound (HgS), which derives from a naturally occurring mineral known as cinnabar. This finding was totally perplexing, as cinnabar is not present in Israel.

  Why would the Qumran-Essenes go to the trouble and expense of importing red pigment or even want to use it in the first place?

  The answer is by now all too familiar. Red ink was selectively used in ancient Egypt for scribal texts and was in use at the time of Akhenaten. There are good examples of scribal palettes from this period in the Museum of Liverpool, and in the Tutankhamun collection in the Cairo Museum. These examples show the use of two separate palette containers for black and red ink, and many Egyptian religious documents, dating back to at least the fifteenth century BCE, show red ink being used to highlight sections of text.

  TEXTILES

  In the spring of 1949, Lankester Harding and Father Roland de Vaux collected samples of textiles from the floor of Cave 1 at Qumran, which were carbon-14 dated in 1950, by Dr W. F. Libby
at the University of Chicago, to between 167 BCE and 237 CE. Samples were subsequently sent to England for analysis.7

  When the first box of samples was opened, at HM Norfolk Flax Establishment, it gave off a smell ‘like that of an ancient Egyptian tomb’. Much of the material was identified as being fine-quality flax of natural colour or with blue-dyed lines, which had been used as scroll wrappers or jar covers for some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There are no known examples of similar wrappers from Judaea of the period, or prior to it, and exact dating of the material is therefore quite a problem. However, because the material is entirely of flax and contains no wool, there is one indicator of its date. To quote Dominique Barthélemy and Jozef Milik:

  The indigo lines suggest at once the blue of the fine linen of Ancient Egypt, where until the Coptic period [395–641 CE], there was a strong religious prejudice against the use of wool. Perhaps it was the conservatism of Jewish piety that assured the continuance of the Ancient Egyptian practice into the last centuries BC and even later.8

  As in ancient Egypt, the Qumran yarn was all spun with the natural twist of the fibre (S-spun), and some of the cloths had fringes. Barry Kemp, an eminent Cambridge University archaeologist, has been excavating at the site of Akhetaten for many years, and in his study of the local textile industry he noted that it was normal to weave fringes onto the bottom hem of flaxen cloths.9

  Yet another, crucial, factor entered my analysis of the linen cloth wrappers found with some of the jars of the Dead Sea Scrolls: they bore an embroidered pattern of concentric squares, which appeared to the original investigators to allude to ‘the ground plan of some religious building’. The embroidered weave consists of six concentric rectangles and ‘presents a most intriguing problem, for the blue weft threads actually turn round corners and become warps’. Clearly great effort and technical skill were employed to achieve the desired design.